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‘This monk managed to haul him out of the water?’ Edild asked.

‘Yes, yes, then he went for help and they carried him — Morcar — back to his lodgings on a hurdle.’

‘Then-’ Edild began.

‘Oh, will you stop interrupting!’ Alvela shouted with sudden, impatient fury. Edild folded her lips on whatever retort she had been about to make. ‘Sorry,’ Alvela muttered. She took a mouthful of her infusion, then another. It seemed to be doing her good. She looked up, first at her sister and then at me, eyes narrowed as if she were assessing our relative strengths. Then she said, ‘A peddler brought word this morning. Morcar lies abed wracked with pain and nearly out of his mind with fever, and if you don’t help him he’ll die.’

THREE

I think I probably made the herbal infusion too strong, for quite soon Alvela started yawning, and then her body went all sort of floppy, and I had to help Edild get her over to my bed, where we laid her down and covered her with my woollen blanket.

Then Edild shooed me out of the way as she began methodically assembling the potions and medicaments that she required.

‘He’ll need something immediately to bring down the fever,’ she said, reaching for balm mint, cinquefoil, wood sorrel, ‘something to expel the poisons — ’ her busy hands found the dandelion, or piss-the-bed as it was known — ‘something to help him sleep — ’ dill — ‘and something to clean the wounds in his foot.’ She drew a huge bag of dried lavender from its place on the shelf. ‘Put water on to boil, Lassair,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘and I’ll tell you what you must do.’

I hurried to obey, flying around the small room as my aunt thought up more ingredients that might or might not come in useful and telling me what to do with them. I thought at first that there were so many potions and remedies to prepare that I was going to have to do my full share of the work. She kept saying you and not we, so I amended this and thought instead that I would be doing all the preparation while she went away to think quietly how best to treat her sick nephew.

I must have been very stupid that morning. I didn’t realize that I was going to Ely on my own until my aunt told me so.

I can’t!’ I hissed in a sort of muted scream, anxious not to wake the slumbering Alvela. ‘Morcar’s got a fever and a spear wound in his foot! I can’t deal with all that!’

‘Yes you can,’ Edild said calmly. ‘You have treated many fevers and there’s nothing to tending a wound, even a deep one, except cleaning it carefully, inserting a stitch or two if necessary and binding it up with a bit of comfrey ointment to knit the skin together, all of which you have been doing without my supervision for many months.’

Her cool tone and her obvious confidence in me were affecting me, as no doubt she knew they would. ‘But he’s really ill,’ I said, my voice a good deal closer to its usual tone. ‘Suppose he dies?’

‘If he does, then it will not be because you failed in your care but because you got to him too late, which would not be your fault,’ Edild said in that same voice of reason. ‘Otherwise, you know how to care for a man coming back from the brink of death. Keep him resting, help him sleep if necessary, keep him warm, make sure he drinks and, as soon as he’s ready, start him on a light diet.’

Yes, she was right. I did know all that, for with her help I had nursed more than one villager recovering from a serious or lengthy sickness.

I had one last objection. ‘What about Alvela?’ I whispered, as if the sound of her own name would wake her up. ‘Won’t she be cross if you send me instead of doing what she said and going yourself?’

Edild glanced at her sleeping twin. ‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘But I am not on this earth to do my sister’s bidding. I am fully occupied here in my accustomed place, and I neither wish nor am prepared to desert those who depend on me.’

She was right, as she usually is. There are several people in the village who, for one reason or another, Edild has reserved to care for by herself, without any help or interference from me. One is a frightened and very young woman about to bear her first child; my aunt and I both know that it will take all Edild’s skill to bring both mother and baby safely through the labour. There is a skinny old man with an ague so severe that the shakes are almost making his bones fall apart; I could treat him, but for some reason he has taken against me and will not let me near. There’s also a younger man who finds it a torment to discuss whatever serious condition ails him with my aunt, never mind a girl like me, as well as a crop of severe coughs, colds and putrid throats among the village children that are driving them and their families close to despair. And a small boy with an angel’s face has the quinsy, his poor little throat so constricted with swellings that it takes all Edild’s skill and patience to get as much as a drop of the soothing medicine into him.

No. If I stopped to think about it, I could see that now was no time for the village healer to absent herself on a mission to help one man. Not when she had an apprentice to send in her place.

I squared my shoulders, met my aunt’s eyes and said calmly, ‘Tell me very carefully what I must do.’

It was October, wet, the roads and the tracks were ankle-deep in mud and probably impassable in places, and there were reputedly robbers and bandits about. I was not allowed to go on my journey without an escort. Hearing what I was planning to do, my father at first said I couldn’t but then relented — thanks to my mother and Edild — and said he would go with me. It was a lovely thought — I get on so well with my father, and the idea of several days in his company was just wonderful — but we all knew that Lord Gilbert would be reluctant to spare a hard-working man unnecessarily. Then Edild suggested Sibert and, even as she spoke his name, I felt glad. Not quite as glad as I would have been if my father were to be my escort, but not far off. As I said, most of the time Sibert and I like each other.

I had to go up to Lakehall, Lord Gilbert’s manor house, to explain my mission and seek permission to leave the village. I was expecting to see his reeve, Bermund, who usually heads the lower orders off at the gates and takes messages inside to Lord Gilbert — as if Bermund alone out of all of us is deemed fit for the lord’s presence. That is probably quite true in Bermund’s estimation, if in nobody else’s. Bermund is not a bad man — we all know we could do a lot worse — but he is humourless, meticulous to the point of being fussy, solitary and withdrawn. He treats us with scrupulous fairness — again, we know that is more than can be said of many men in his position — but there is no true humanity in him. He is not a family man and has never once been seen in the company of a woman. It is said that on the few occasions he allows himself a tiny spell of relaxation he heads for neighbouring villages where he is not well known and seeks out youths in the scruffiest taverns. That, however, is gossip, and nobody should listen to gossip.

Today it was not Bermund to whom I had to address my request but Lord Gilbert himself, sitting on a bench by the fire in his great hall in the midst of his family: red-faced, bulging paunch pushing against the rich crimson cloth of his tunic, mouth stretched in a happy smile. After the usual courtesies — he struggled to remember who I was, and then immediately asked after my father, who supplies him with the finest eels — he told me to state my business, and I did so.

At first I thought he was going to refuse; to his credit, he seemed well aware that quite a few were sick in Aelf Fen just then. Happily for me, his wife, Lady Emma, sat beside him, her little boy playing with a wooden sheep at her feet and her baby girl in her arms. Lady Emma smiled at me in a conspiratorial way and then, turning to her husband, said softly, ‘My dear, we are blessed in that we have not one but two healers here in our village. The younger, Lassair here — ’ her dimples deepened as she smiled at me again — ‘is already skilled, but she has much to learn.’ How right she was. ‘To me it would appear that it can only serve to increase both her experience and her confidence to go on this pilgrimage of mercy to aid her kinsman, and the consequential augmentation of her skills can only be of benefit to all of us here in the manor. Do you not agree, my love?’ She has a dainty way of putting things, even if it does take a few moments to understand exactly what she is saying.