The stones are beautiful. I have no jewels, nor am I ever likely to have any, but even if someone offered me any I would prefer to have rune stones like Hrype’s. They are pale, translucent green, and he tells me they are made of jade, brought to this land from far, far away by one of his ancestors who voyaged east to find the rising sun. Into each stone had been carved a strange shape whose lines glitter like gold, and Hrype reads their mystic messages as easily as a scholar reads words from a parchment.
Once, unable to help myself, I stretched out a finger to touch the nearest stone. Quick as a snake Hrype’s hand was wrapped round my wrist, holding me in a grip that hurt. I gave a little bleat of pain and he eased the pressure. Then, staring deep into my eyes so that I felt quite unable to look away, he said softly, ‘They are not for you, Lassair. Their power would unmake you.’
Despite my fear of Hrype and having to deal with embarrassing ailments, I am happy. I want to be like my aunt, for as well as being fascinated by her craft I love her independence. She is the only grown woman I know who lives on her own — well, apart from me and I don’t really count — and I envy her that so much. Most of my contemporaries are already settling for this boy or that and quite a few are married with babies. They often look at me pityingly, believing that my thin, boyish body is unattractive beside their curves and that no man would ever want me to warm his bed and bear his children. I don’t want their pity, even when it is kindly meant and not prompted by spite. Any fool of a woman can conceive a child — even I could, for although I am still flat-chested and my hips are as slender as Sibert’s, my courses started some time ago and I know that I am fully mature — but not many are called to be a healer. No; I want to stay here with my aunt until she has taught me all the things I want so much to know.
This morning Edild and I were working on a basket of comfrey root that we had harvested the previous day. Comfrey is such a generous plant; in spring and summer we use its fresh green leaves for healing wounds and knitting broken bones, and mixed in wine it makes a remedy for an abnormal blood flow in women. Today we made sure to set aside some of the root we had collected for drying, so that we would have supplies through the winter, but the majority we intended to use straight away. Like almost all preparations, the potency is greatest with fresh ingredients. Edild was making a decoction. She had boiled pieces of comfrey root in fresh water and now was carefully placing the vessel at the edge of the fire so that it would simmer steadily until reduced by a third. She planned to take some to an elderly man in the village who was suffering from burning in his stomach; Edild had diagnosed ulcers. The remainder of her brew would be made into a syrup and set aside for the first of the winter’s crop of coughs. We could be sure that, living as we did so close to the Fens and their perpetual damp air, almost everyone in Aelf Fen would succumb to the phlegm sooner or later.
I was busy with Edild’s mortar and pestle, crushing the comfrey root and steadily adding little dribbles of water to make a paste. This paste is good for slow-bleeding wounds that are reluctant to heal and I planned to use some in the afternoon on my mother’s cousin’s haemorrhoids.
Edild and I were so absorbed in our tasks that neither of us heard our visitor till she rapped on the door. Edild shot a significant glance at me — as the apprentice, one of my jobs is to answer the door — and, trying not to let my reluctance show, I laid down the pestle, wiped my hands on my apron and, making sure my hair was neat under its white cap, went to see who had come calling.
I opened the door to my aunt Alvela, youngest sister in the brood that includes my father and my aunt Edild. She is actually Edild’s twin, and I suppose they are quite alike to look at even though they are very different in temperament. Edild is level and cool; Alvela tends to lose her head and fall nose-first into panic at the least provocation.
She was in a real state this morning. Before I had got further than, ‘Good morning, Alvela, what can we-?’ she had elbowed me out of the way and, eyes frantically searching, cried, ‘Where’s Edild? I need her! Oh, don’t say she’s not here, she must be here, she must!’
‘I am,’ said Edild coolly, rising gracefully to her feet from her crouching pose beside the hearth. ‘What’s the matter, Alvela?’
Alvela’s face crumpled and tears overflowed from her red-rimmed eyes. It was obviously not the first time she had succumbed to weeping this morning. She threw herself into Edild’s arms and said, ‘It’s Morcar, it’s my boy, my precious boy!’ Morcar was in his mid twenties and therefore hardly a boy, I thought, to anyone but his mother. ‘Oh, Edild, what am I to do?’ she wailed. ‘What is to become of me?’
‘Calm yourself,’ Edild said, somehow managing to give her twin sister a comforting hug and a bracing shake at the same time. ‘Come and sit down — ’ she led Alvela to the bench on the far side of the hearth — ‘and Lassair will make you a soothing drink.’ She shot me a glance, nodding towards the pot in which we keep the mildly sedative herbal mix that we prescribe to those whose fears and anxieties threaten to make them ill. I hastened to obey, reaching down a clean mug and checking to see that there was water almost on the boil in the pot suspended over the fire.
‘Now,’ said Edild as Alvela collapsed on to the bench, ‘tell me what has happened.’
Alvela stared at her for a few moments, her mouth working although no words came out. Then she gulped, blew her nose on a soaked piece of cloth, dabbed at her streaming eyes and said, ‘He went to Ely to work on the new cathedral.’ She sobbed again. ‘He’s had an accident, a terrible accident,’ she managed through the tears, ‘and he’s all but drowned!’
‘But not drowned?’ Edild demanded.
Alvela raised her head to stare at her sister. ‘Not quite,’ she acknowledged.
Edild gave her another little shake. ‘Well then!’ she said encouragingly. ‘He’ll probably-’
But Alvela was not ready to be comforted. ‘He’s stabbed through the foot like Our Lord on the cross!’ she cried out, agony in her voice.
What? They’d crucified him? Surely not. .
Edild, similarly perplexed, glanced at me, her frustration evident in her eyes. ‘Explain,’ she commanded, her arm around her sister’s waist.
The infusion was ready. I blew on it to cool it and handed it to Alvela, who took it with barely a nod and then stared at it as if wondering how it came to be in her hand. ‘It’s very hot so you must sip it,’ I said gently. ‘It’ll do you good, Aunt.’
She gave me a weak smile and did as she was told. She sipped once, twice. Then, haunted eyes back on Edild’s face, she said, ‘He stuck an eel spear in his foot. Then he fell in a ditch. Someone found him — thank God, some monk was hurrying back to the abbey before they locked the gates for the night and heard my poor boy spluttering and gasping.’