She called out to him, waving a small rolled parchment. “Here is my list, my lord. I have consulted all the women and compared my list to the goods the queen sent us. I have heard Winthorpe is an excellent marketplace, much larger than your closer towns, although I think it wise to purchase as much as possible from your towns since you will want them to flourish. You will be able to hire men to come back with you and I—”
He held out his hand to silence her and she immediately shut her mouth. She proudly handed him the scrap of parchment he’d given to her the previous evening. He unrolled the parchment and looked at the beautiful script. There were no ink splatters. Couldn’t she have made at least one mistake? His writing looked like a savage’s in comparison.
He scanned the list, then pulled out his own very different one.
He broke out with a laugh when he realized they had both written soap near the top of their lists.
“It is probably the least useful item on our lists,” he said. He sniffed her. “Ah, you smell li
ke the soap I gave you. Is there any left?”
“Nary a bit. I did offer the soap to Miggins before I used it. I thought she would faint she was so revolted. She told me her mother bathed once a year and had to spend a week in bed afterward to recover.”
“So the gracious Lady Anne taught you the glories of bathing?”
She grinned at him shamelessly. Bless St. Cuthbert’s boiled bones, there was humor in his voice now. She remembered there’d been no humor in her father’s voice the sicker he became.
“Just so,” she said.
“Ah, you have written down a score of herbs I have never heard of.”
“There is no healer here. The queen sent some herbs—rosemary, bramble, betony, chamomile, and horehound—but I will need—”
“How do you use horehound?”
Burnell cleared his throat. “Horehound is used for stomach pains, for colds in the head, and to counteract various poisons.”
Garron wasn’t surprised Burnell knew about horehound. In his experience, the man knew a bit about everything. He raised an eyebrow at Merry. “So you feel I must find us a healer?”
“Perhaps not. I had begun lessons with our healer, even though he didn’t wish to teach anyone what he knew, but he knew he would die soon, so even though he hated it, he began my lessons. I learned enough to make a difference.” Merry thought of her father’s devastating stomach pains, the constant vomiting at the end, the wasting of both his mind and his body, and how the little she’d known about herbs hadn’t helped. She’d sent a message to her mother since she’d been told her mother was vastly learned in the ways of herbs and their powers, and the power of other things as well. But her mother had not even acknowledged her message.
“The cloak you are wearing, it belonged to Lady Anne?”
She nodded and gave it a tug since it, like the gown, was too short, and its overlong sleeves made every task difficult. Merry didn’t care. It was beautiful.
Ten men and one woman rode from Wareham an hour later, Burnell looking down at them from the ramparts. Merry rode on Garron’s right, Sir Lyle of Clive on his left. He wanted to get to know the man. However, he knew he wanted to know about Merry more. Exactly who she was didn’t seem so important at this moment.
He hadn’t been around women all that much, the ladies at Edward’s court, certainly, and he’d enjoyed several of them when they’d cast him their sloe-eyed looks, but he’d never understood them, these soft-skinned creatures with their beautiful bodies who seemed to enjoy stroking him. He remembered his first girl, Con-stance. He’d been twelve, she an ancient fifteen, married to the fat draper, twenty-five years her senior. She’d died the following year in childbed. He remembered the draper had remarried three months later. So very young, he thought, and he heard her laughter in that instant, remembering how she had shown him what pleased her. He gave a sideways look at Merry. Her face was raised to the sun, her eyes closed. Did she yet know anything of a man’s mouth caressing her? He didn’t think so. When she’d told him the night before that he was well made, there had been no knowledge in her voice or her eyes.
She was riding one of the horses they’d taken from the dead robbers. He worried the coal-black brute was too big for her, too vicious, but she was handling him well.
Garron wasn’t wearing armor today. His tunic was dark gray as were his trousers, his sword fastened to the belt at his waist, his stiletto snug in its sheath inside the right sleeve of his tunic, strapped to his forearm. He wore dark hose and boots. He was bareheaded. He felt good. The morning breeze cooled his face, ruffled his hair. Tupper had been right—the storm that had raged throughout the night was gone, and in its place was a beautiful day. He heard a quiet laugh and looked at Merry.
He said, “The horse you are riding belonged to a robber. I don’t know the horse’s name. If you like him, you can name him.”
Of course she knew the horse; she’d ridden on it, seated in front of that huge villain with his foul breath and heavy fist, now dead, thanks to Garron. She remembered his name was Bollon. She cocked her head at Garron, and the hood she wore fell away. She wore her red hair in her typically neat braids twined atop her head, blue ribbon plaited through it. He remembered the ladies at court tended to wear their hair in coils over their ears, or if they were maids, their hair was loose, with silk bands around their heads.
He frowned. He was becoming an idiot.
He gave a start when she said, “To honor his former owner, I will name him Satan.”
For an instant he didn’t realize she was talking about the damned kidnapper’s horse.
A horse whinnied and he turned in his saddle to see Gilpin’s horse bite the neck of the horse next to him. For a moment, there was pandemonium, horses rearing, shouting, and ripe curses, until a ferocious-looking man with a pocked face separated them.
Garron turned to Sir Lyle. “Your man, his name is Garn? He handled the horses well.”
“Garn is a magician with horses,” Sir Lyle said. “I would say he is better with horses than he is fighting, and thus his worth to me. He can break them, train them, determine their abilities. He told me your man Hobbs is also excellent with horses.”