The Apothecary Rose

'I'd like to help.'

'You'll have enough to do. Besides, what could you know about cleaning a hearth?'

'A man learns many things on campaign.'

'There are no hearths on campaign.'

She exhausted him. 'You'd be right about that.' He caught her watching him with a puzzled frown.

It was her turn to look away. 'It's odd for a soldier to offer such help’ she said.

'I was not always a soldier, I helped my mother as a lad.'

'Did your mother teach you to clean a hearth?'

'Aye. She did that. And many other things besides. Didn't yours?'

'My mother died when I was young' Lucie said.

'And then it was the sisters.'

'Yes.' Her guard came up. 'Who told you that?'

'Camden Thorpe. I asked a few questions. Natural curiosity. He said that your mother was fond of Nicholas's garden.'

'It reminded her of home.' There was a breathless tension in her voice. He trod on dangerous ground.

He tried to make her comfortable. 'My mother believed that tending a garden was the highest form of devotion to the Lord. She made all her children work in the garden’

It worked. She met his gaze. 'And did it bring you closer to God?' she asked.

He tried a smile on her. 'It showed me what a lot of work He'd made for us.'

The corners of her mouth twitched. So she had a sense of humour. 'Well, then, you can see the work ahead of you.' She went back to the fire, quiet for a while. 'And did your soldiering teach you anything?'

'That I loved to make an arrow sing through the air and hit its target straight and true, but that war is not confined to the armies who fight it’

He'd spied a lute in the corner. Now he picked it up. Lucie started as the strings hummed with the motion. About to reprimand him, she was silenced by his gentle, sure touch on the strings. He brought the lute to life with a doleful tune and began to sing. He'd been told by many a woman that he had a beautiful voice. Lucie did not want him to see that it affected her. Though tired and aching to sit for a while, she got up and tidied the kitchen while he sang. She tried not to look at him. He lost himself in the song, letting the story move him.

The music rose to a shivering cry and stopped.

They were both quiet, lost in the echo of the music. The fire crackled and hissed. A branch scraped against the house.

Lucie shivered. 'What a beautiful language’

'Breton. I learned it from a jongleur,' Owen said. 'It is close to the language of my country. Though at first I did not understand all the words, I understood the heart of it’

Lucie sat down tentatively, acutely aware of how little she knew this man with whom she was to share her days. 'What is the song about?'

'Across Brittany are great cairns — they call them dolmens — built with stones so immense only giants would have moved them. They are said to be the graves of the old ones, the people who came before. In one of these lives a gentlewoman who has vowed to save her people from the routiers of King Edward.'

'Routiers,' Lucie whispered.

Owen thought she was asking for a definition. 'Soldiers our noble King strands across the Channel without pay. The people say there are hundreds of them roaming the countryside, raping and looting. Perhaps they exaggerate’

'My mother told me about them.'

'Your mother was French?' He had seen she did not respond well to his knowing about her.

Lucie nodded. 'There are hundreds of routiers.'

'They are the scourge of the French.'

'My mother said that war was the scourge’

'Aye. Well, she would think so. It is different for us here, on an island. Our wars are fought on foreign soil. When our King is victorious, those who return come with booty. When our King is defeated, those few who return come with empty hands. But in France, whether the French king wins or no, the people suffer. The soldiers on either side burn their villages and towns to starve the enemy. It makes no difference to a homeless, starving child whether he starves for his own king or another's’

Lucie watched him, seeming to see him for the first time. 'You do not speak like a soldier.'

He shrugged.

'How does this woman save her people?'

'Acting the part of a defenceless gentlewoman lost in the forest, she lures the routiers, then surprises them with traps she has laid, and with her skill wielding a knife. She tells them she has lost all and wishes to join them. To prove herself, she will lead them to a noble house at the edge of the wood, where much treasure and wine are to be found. She has prepared an ambush. That is the part all Bretons know. What follows changes with each song. This one tells of her compassion for a routier who stands apart from his fellows, troubled by what he has become. As the company approaches the hiding men, the gentlewoman is moved to spare him. Calling to him, she leads him away from the party to a circle of standing stones on a hill. As the cries of his fellows reach them, he is incensed by what she has done. "You are free to choose death," she tells him. "Say it is your choice, and I will set my men against you. Or look into your heart and admit you have no stomach for slaughter without honour’"

'Which does he choose?'

'The song does not say.'

Lucie looked disappointed. 'Is it a true story?'

'I do not know.'

'It cannot be. Else the jongleur would have been betraying the saviour of his people by singing the song.'

'Perhaps that is why he sang it in his own tongue.'

'You understood it. Many of your archers would be Welsh, too.'

'And like me they keep their peace.'

'And the others. Did no one ask you what it meant?'

'I told them it was "Aucassin et Nicolette" in Breton.'

'You protected him?'

Owen sighed. 'And in return for my protection, he blinded me. Or rather his leman did.'

Lucie reached across the table and touched the scar. 'Why did his leman blind you?'

'She was protecting him.'

'From you? I don't understand.'

He told her the story. 'I was a fool. And for my pains I must begin again, find a new path in life. I was already disgusted with soldiering.' He'd said it so many times it felt true. 'But what they did to me I cannot forgive. They betrayed me when I'd done everything to help them.'

Lucie watched him a few minutes more, 'You feel crippled without the eye. But you do not seem crippled to others. I don't suppose it helps to know that.'

'Kind words. I thank you for them. But you cannot imagine what it is like to lose half your sight.'

'No, I cannot.' She stood up. 'I must take Nicholas his supper, then sleep for a while.'

'You won't let me help?'

'Not with this.'

Owen saw that she meant it, and wandered back to the inn in a thoughtful mood.

Bess called to him as he entered the tavern. 'You've a visitor’ She nodded toward the back corner. 'It's been a long time since Guildmaster Thorpe gave us custom. You're good for business, Owen Archer.'

Few heads turned, no conversations died as Owen passed among the tables. That was a good sign. He'd been accepted as a regular. He was pleased.

But his pleasure faded when he saw the Guildmaster's expression. The man's round, comfortable face was creased with worry. 'Archdeacon Anselm made a fuss about your appointment. Wanted to see the letter Jehannes sent. Asked all sorts of questions. Alluded to your not being who you say you are. It's worrisome, it is.'.

Owen told him about the apprenticeship in Durham.

Camden Thorpe pulled at his beard. 'Now isn't that queer? He never said a word about that to me. On the contrary. He sounded as if he suspected you of being some sort of outlaw, lying low for a time.'

'I wonder how Archbishop Thoresby would take the implications of that?'

Thorpe frowned, unsure of Owen's meaning.

'The letter of introduction?'

'Oh, aye.' The Guildmaster smiled. 'The Archdeacon is confused, isn't he?'