The Valcourt Heiress (Medieval Song 7)

“Aye, he is.” Wareham’s head stable lad had been killed, and there was no one to take his place. Hobbs was in charge of the stables at the moment, but Garron needed to hire a new head stable lad. He’d forgotten to write it on his list. He saw that Merry was looking at the trees surrounding them, so at ease he feared she might fall off her horse.

Garron felt a punch of lust as he looked at her damned hair. One of those ridiculous ribbons had come unthreaded and was dangling in front of her ear. Hair was hair, who cared? Was that a small braid he saw twined in that ribbon?

He said, “You don’t have freckles.”

She jerked in her saddle and he reached out his hand to steady her. “What? No, I do not. Neither does my mother—I mean, my mother didn’t either, so my father once told me.”

So now I am a party to your lies and you expect me to swallow them. He realized he would. He said to her with a good deal of dislike, “I will leave you be, so long as you are useful to me.”

18

They stopped briefly at the two small towns now under Garron’s protection. Thanks be to St. Allard’s beautiful voice, neither Abbenback nor Stour had been visited by the Black Demon, but both towns had heard what had happened at Wareham. They welcomed the new earl enthusiastically, particularly when they realized he was buying goods. Everyone treated Merry like his wife.

They spent the night near Stour after Garron sent back three men with goods purchased at both towns bound for Wareham.

Late the next morning they arrived at Winthorpe, a much larger trading town set at the mouth of the Porth, a short snaking river that fed into the North Sea. Winthorpe’s protector was Baron Norreys, a foul man Garron had met when he was but a young boy, a man no one considered friend, including, Garron remembered, his own father.

The road that bisected the town was hard and dry. Clouds sat high in the sky, the air was warm and ripe with the smells of bodies, manure, fish, and, oddly, jasmine. There was activity and noise everywhere. Stalls filled both sides of the main roadway. Haggling was loud and fierce, the very air pungent with arguments and insults.

He learned quickly enough that Merry could bargain with the craftiest of merchants. When he was satisfied she would spend his money wisely, he left her with the four mules and the three men he’d assigned to assist and protect her. He found skilled laborers, including a master carpenter to join Inar, a smith, and an assistant mason. He offered them all steady work until Michaelmas, with the possibility of remaining at Wareham. Twenty of them accepted.

He was rubbing his hands together, praying Merry hadn’t spent all the coins he’d given her, when he spotted her near a stall at the very end of the vast trading center. She was surrounded by his men, the pack mules now piled high with roped bundles.

As if sensing his presence, Merry looked up and gave h

im an excited smile.

“What have you got?”

“It is Book One of Leech Book of Bald, written two hundred years ago. Our healer told me about it, told me how amazing it is, how he’d studied from it, but did not have a copy. I was told my mother also has—had—a copy. And now here it is in Rabel’s stall. This is Rabel, my lord. He told me it once belonged to a monk who stole it from his monastery many years ago. He says its infusions and decoctions are still as effective in this modern day as they were in William the Conqueror’s time. Look, in Chapter Sixty-three, it says to cure lunacy one must add a goodly number of different herbs to ale and drink it for nine mornings. Hmmm, it also says to let the lunatic give alms and earnestly pray to God for his mercies.”

She raised her face to his, holding the book tightly to her chest. “Rabel sells all the herbs I will need as well.” She drew a deep breath. “I think it would be wise to have this book and the herbs.”

“Would it also be wise to see if Rabel wishes to live at Wareham?”

“Why did I not think of that?”

But it was not to be. Rabel, nearing his fiftieth year, his stiff white hair haloing his head and his seamed face, could not leave Winthorpe. He lived with his daughter and her husband and three boys, and helped support the household.

“With this amazing book, my lord,” Rabel said, “the lady will be able to become a fine healer.”

“There are not many pages in it,” Garron said as he paid out surely too many of his few remaining coins. “How many illnesses can you cure with so few pages?”

“Look here, Garron, fennel is used for insomnia, indigestion, and vomiting. And just look at the beautiful illustrations,” Merry said, pointing. “One can see exactly what to do. Rabel is right. I can learn, my lord. I will learn.”

“I now have barely enough coin to buy the additional tools to repair the barracks at Wareham.”

“To make a man well again is surely more important than giving a sick or dead man tools, my lord.”

He eyed her with dislike, as Rabel, trying not to look too pleased with himself, carefully wrapped white linen around the book and reverently handed it to Garron. “You will guard it, my lord. I am glad it is now yours, in your protection. I feared someone would steal it. It was my own grandmother who bought it from the monk. She was a witch, a very good one.”

Garron looked down at Merry. “It appears to form a circle since it comes to a witch.”

“A witch’s daughter.” She came up on her tiptoes to say close to his ear, “I read that if a poisoned man drinks old wine with the ooze from the white horehound, the poison will soon pass off. Now you are safe, my lord.”

“It is a pity my brother did not know this.”

She frowned. “Miggins said it happened so quickly there was nothing to be done.”