I did not fit anywhere. A wise woman might have many folk coming in and out of her house, bringing gifts or bribes or payment, taking away herbs and draughts and good advice. But our kind generally lived alone. If I’d been attached permanently to a noble household – unlikely – I’d perhaps have been afforded the respect owed to, say, a druid. Perhaps. But at Winterfalls I was an oddity, and it was clear folk did not quite know what to make of me.
For all its smooth and seamless organisation, this was not a household in harmony. There was tension between the household guards and those who had come to Winterfalls in Lady Flidais’s escort. Nobody could fail to pick up on the unease when they were all gathered together at meal times. Maybe Grim could find the reason for this animosity, and whether it was important to us.
Something was going on between the prince and Donagan. If anyone had asked me, I’d have said the two of them were avoiding speaking to each other. Maybe they’d had a falling-out. And while I hadn’t been asked to investigate that, I was learning that the slightest oddity could prove important in hindsight.
The women’s days followed a pattern. First to rise was Lady Sochla, who would head out early for a walk with Bramble. Only a storm of the sleeting, tempestuous kind would keep the prince’s aunt indoors. If the day was inclement she would leave the dog behind and have Sinead take it into the garden instead. A pretty little garden. I heard from Brid the cook that Prince Oran had created it especially for Lady Flidais, but I didn’t once see her spend time in it. Nor did I ever see her walk her own dog. But in that first letter, the one the prince had let me read, Flidais had given a charming description of the woodland near her home; she had implied that she enjoyed walking in it with her maid and Bramble. I wondered which maid she meant, Ciar, who had drowned, or one of the others? I’d have to talk to all three of them: Deirdre, Nuala and Mhairi.
After breakfast, Lady Flidais and her attendants generally went to the sewing room, a long chamber with windows placed to let in morning light, and a hearth where a crackling fire would already be burning. That was unless Lady Flidais had some reason to ride out – a visit to the settlement, for instance. This did not occur often. At this time of year, I’d have expected the prince to be off hunting stag or boar, as princes and chieftains commonly did in autumn. But I already knew Oran was not like other princes, and it seemed he was more likely to be writing letters, inspecting his cattle or holding councils than engaging in blood sport. When I asked Brid about this, she told me Niall’s men took what game was necessary to sustain the household, and the cottagers had permission to provide for their own needs in the same manner. Meat and fish were salted away for the winter months. But the prince had declared there would be no wanton slaughter of wild creatures on his land, and since his folk held him in high respect, despite his unusual attitudes, they abided by his rules.
The headaches afflicted Lady Flidais severely. More often than not she retired to her bedchamber rather than attend the midday meal in the hall. This malady was surely the key to winning her trust. At eighteen years old she was living the life of an invalid. I could not understand why she had not asked me for help before, unless she was one of those folk who feared wise women, suspecting us of dark magic. The day I’d first met her, the day of the drowning, I could not recall doing or saying anything to earn her distrust. The headaches were alarming. If the story of Oran’s courtship was accurate, this young woman had been in good health at the time she left home.
I did not want to believe she was lying. An imposter would have an obvious reason for pretending to be indisposed. But Flidais was no imposter; not unless her entire escort was telling lies along with her. An imposter could have used the headaches to conceal the fact that she could not read and write. She might have been conveniently indisposed so she need not respond to questions she could not easily answer; so she need not make conversation with her future husband until they were safely hand-fasted. Oran was not a simple kind of man. He would not be content with a wife who looked decorative, said little and kept out of his way. No, Oran had expected a wife who was his equal. A wife who could converse on his own level. A wife who loved the things he loved, a wife who was in every respect the Lady Flidais of the letters. Whoever had written those letters had done Flidais no favours at all. If they were a trick, the perpetrator had vastly underestimated the prince of Dalriada.
I’d have to tread carefully, despite the short time we had left. No leaping right in with probing questions, no tests of the lady’s skill with the pen or her knowledge of strategy or scholarship. I was in this household as a guest, and I must keep the real reason for my presence among these women secret.
On one point at least, Prince Oran had been right. I was good at my craft, and I’d been in Winterfalls long enough for the local people to know they could trust me. Within three days of our arrival, the prince’s serving people started bringing their aches and pains to me in the little storeroom off the kitchen where, at Brid’s invitation, I had set up my healer’s equipment. A day or two later I strapped up a training injury suffered by a man-at-arms and gave a groom a curative wash for a nasty case of nettle rash. I went out to the village to attend to one or two folk with chronic complaints, people who were used to seeing me every few days. In the past I’d undertaken those visits grudgingly. Now they made me feel like a captive creature set free.
I made sure I was in the sewing room with Flidais and her attendants for a good part of each morning. It was necessary to find some sort of task for myself so my presence there did not draw suspicion. The choice was limited. Me, sewing? Hah! If anything at the cottage needed mending, Grim did it. I could sew up a wound just fine, but the hem of a garment was another matter. Once, in that long-ago life, I must have managed. But the skills were lost. They were part of what I had left behind.
The solution was to write. I had long maintained a record of my work. The healer’s craft was not static in nature. Each salve, each solution, each remedy changed and progressed and improved each time it was prepared and applied. It was like a story told and retold over the years, passed from grandmother to mother to daughter. A wise woman would not be worthy of that name if she could not learn from her mistakes; if she did not keep on striving to find new and better ways. It might be a matter of gathering a herb just a little later in the season, or taking only the leaves from the very tip of each branch. It might be a decision to bruise a root before chopping it, or to make the slightest change in the proportions of a salve. Small variations, small risks could lead to significant improvements.
Since Grim and I had taken up residence in the cottage I had been keeping a record of the preparations I made, the folk I tended to and the results. My notebook had survived the fire; it had been in the bag I’d carried over to Silverlake that day. My writing materials had burned with the house, but the prince had replaced them.
The other women did not know how much I loathed company. They were ignorant of the truth: that if I’d had a real choice in the matter, I’d have been out in the woods on my own, not shut within four walls listening to their silly chatter. No, that was not quite true. Given a real choice, I’d be back in Laois seeing justice done. Seven years. Seven interminable, suffocating years. Where would I get the strength?
I took pains to tell the women the place was ideal for writing. The same light that enabled them to do their fine embroidery, their weaving and spinning, would allow me to complete my day’s record neatly and read over my previous notes. It seemed to be convincing, for nobody challenged my presence there. That did not mean they went out of their way to welcome me, but I had not expected that. Seeking a wise woman’s advice over an ailment was one thing; making her your friend was quite another.
Alongside Flidais’s ladies and the prince’s formidable aunt, there was a pair of girls from the household whose job was plain sewing and an older woman who did fine mending, including work on what looked like Prince Oran’s clothing. Others came in and
out. The household linen was stored in this chamber, in chests set against the walls, and this seemed to require daily attention by a number of serving women. There were always folk putting items away, taking others out, slipping lavender between the folds of aired sheets, rearranging the chests’ contents, debating whether something could be mended or was to be torn up for cleaning cloths. I could almost understand why Lady Flidais spent so much time in her bedchamber.
Fíona, wife of Aedan the steward, was a solidly built woman of middle years, who wore her hair pulled back under a neat veil. She was generally present in the chamber at some point of the morning, instructing the other serving folk or enquiring courteously as to whether any of the ladies wanted refreshments. At my request she’d cleared a small table of various objects so I could sit there to work. I liked the way she did her job without fuss, and the way she spoke to those under her authority – kindly but firmly, so they wanted to do well for her. I saw, too, that Lady Flidais did not care for her, finding fault with any number of little things, while Fíona listened without interrupting, and answered politely that of course the problem would be remedied right away. If I’d been her, I’d have told Lady Flidais she was a lazy, selfish cow who should make an effort to do things for herself. Which would, no doubt, have led to my being instantly dismissed from the prince’s service. Aedan and Fíona had been at Winterfalls since Prince Oran was a child. They’d had plenty of time to learn tolerance. I’d have to do so a lot more quickly.
‘Tell me, Mistress Blackthorn,’ said Lady Sochla, giving me a shrewd look across the room full of women as I sat at my little desk trying to look busy and listen at the same time, ‘what are the questions folk most often ask you? What are the most common ailments they bring to you?’
I guessed she was asking out of genuine interest, not in an attempt to make me feel welcome. Though if the prince’s aunt was as astute as I suspected, she’d have noticed the sideways looks some of the other women were still giving me, days after I had first joined them, as if they thought me as out of place as a fox in a rabbit warren.
‘It depends on the circumstances, Lady Sochla. A wise woman tends to all manner of injuries and ailments. There can be combat wounds; limbs broken in farm accidents; burns. Heads cracked in foolish brawls over nothing in particular. Agues, fevers, ill humours, complications in childbirth. We see new life into the world; we hold the hands of the dying and lay out the dead.’
Lady Sochla seemed to be waiting for more, and now all the others were listening too.
‘Then there are the chronic ailments, such as persistent rashes or weakness of the stomach or maladies of the mind. For those who suffer in that way, we have a range of preparations that can be made up regularly.’ I would not mention headaches; it was too soon. ‘For instance, on the day the young woman, Ness, was rescued – you’ll have heard the tale at the last council – I was at Branoc’s bakery tending to his sore neck and shoulders. That was a genuine ailment, and I had taken a salve with me, prepared for the purpose.’
A buzz of talk broke out among them, in lowered voices. I applied myself to a drawing of the various parts of thyme: root, stem, leaves, flowers.
Someone was breathing down my neck.
‘Oh, that is pretty!’ exclaimed Deirdre. ‘You are clever, Mistress Blackthorn.’
‘It’s not meant to be pretty. The drawings provide a record. Each is an accurate depiction of the herb – or as accurate as I can manage, not being a skilled artist – with notes to illustrate how it is used and for what purpose.’ I reminded myself that of them all, Deirdre had been most civil to me on the day of the drowning. ‘But yes,’ I made myself say, ‘some of the herbs are very decorative. Though at this time of year, only a few are in flower.’
‘I’d say you are something of an artist, Blackthorn,’ put in Lady Sochla’s maid, Sinead, who had wandered over to have a look. With two of them crowding me, I gave up the attempt to draw. ‘You have a fine hand with the pen.’
Lady Flidais whispered in Mhairi’s ear, and they both smiled.
‘One cannot perform tasks such as sewing up wounds or extracting foreign bodies from folk’s ears or noses without a certain delicacy of touch,’ I observed, suppressing the urge to kick someone. ‘Just as one cannot set a broken limb to rights or pull out a diseased tooth without a certain brute strength. A wise woman needs both.’
‘Does your man help you?’ enquired Mhairi, lifting her brows.
I did not like her tone. Nor did I like the look on her face, which was mirrored on Lady Flidais’s. They were ready to mock me, the two of them, at the first opportunity. Never mind that. I had endured far worse in my time. Don’t snap. Don’t bite. Remember why you are here.
‘You mean Grim?’ I said lightly. ‘It is sometimes useful to have the assistance of a person who is physically stronger, yes. To restrain a patient who is thrashing about in pain, for instance, or to hold a severely broken limb straight while I splint and bandage it. Grim has helped me once or twice.’
‘Only once or twice?’ Mhairi was not letting this go. ‘Surely you’ve needed help more than that.’
‘Grim and I have not been travelling together long.’ I turned my attention back to my notebook. It was hard to work with Deirdre and Sinead standing right beside me; they were still too close, and it set my teeth on edge. ‘What are you working on?’ I asked, with a glance intended to take in both of them.
They did as I’d hoped, retreating to fetch their work so I could admire it. Sinead was embroidering a border of ivy around the hem of a skirt. It seemed a waste of time to me – wouldn’t it soon get muddy? – but the result was pleasing enough. Deirdre was making a little gown for a baby, with birds on it. I muttered a comment, finding it impossible to be kind. She could not know what images had flooded my mind when I saw the garment. My baby in a gown almost twin to this. Brennan in my arms, his slight, sleeping weight, the sweetness of his breath, his mouth hungry on the breast. My baby gone. Gone to the flames.
‘Mistress Blackthorn?’
Someone had been talking and I had not heard a word. ‘I’m sorry, what was that?’ Pull yourself together. Listen. Learn. If only I hadn’t told Grim the story. I’d had it well locked away before. Now it was close again, a darkness on the edge of everything.
‘It was a foolish question.’ Lady Sochla sounded repressive. ‘Teafa asked whether folk come to you for spells. Magical potions and cures.’
Teafa was one of the young seamstresses. She was blushing now, her head bent over her work. Had I seen her before, perhaps asking for something to make a certain youth notice her? I couldn’t remember; one silly girl tended to fade into another after a while. ‘They ask, yes. Cures for broken hearts. Love potions. Sometimes they want curses to be cast on an enemy, or spells to make them beautiful or to help them please their wives better.’
Now I really had everyone’s attention.
‘And do you give them what they want?’ asked Fíona.
‘I give them what they need.’
Sinead’s eyes had gone wide. ‘You can do magic?’ she breathed. ‘Real magic?’
‘I didn’t say that. These matters are not as simple as they may sound. If by magic you mean the right gathering of plants, the thoughtful preparation of draughts and suchlike, and the wise dispensing of the same, then yes. If you refer to a person waving a hand and conjuring coloured lights or heaps of gold coins, then no.’
‘But a love potion,’ said Sinead, ‘or what you said, a curse on an enemy, have you given folk those things? They are magic, surely, or any one of us could find the ingredients and make up the mixture ourselves.’
‘That way lies disaster. Get the smallest component wrong, or make a slight error with the proportions, and you might find yourself charged with unlawful killing. That’s if the draught was for someone other than yourself.’
‘And if it was for yourself,’ put in Lady Sochla, ‘yo
u might be dead. I think that is what Mistress Blackthorn is telling us.’
‘Indeed so. That is why the details of potions and charms are kept secret. Always.’
They looked suitably impressed, and for a little while there was silence. Then Lady Flidais spoke up. ‘Don’t you have them written in your little book, Blackthorn? You’re always scribbling in there.’
Count to five before you speak. ‘This is a record of my daily work, my lady. My book does include some cures and remedies, but it is by no means a comprehensive guide. It contains nothing of a magical nature.’ Not strictly true; but only a person of some wisdom and skill would recognise that.
‘Isn’t one of the village girls learning from you?’ one of the women asked. ‘I’m sure I heard someone say you were training a girl up to be a healer.’
‘Emer. Yes, she is learning the skills.’ This was starting to feel a little like an interrogation.
‘But if they’re secret,’ said Deirdre, ‘how can she learn them?’
‘Some are secret. Those, a wise woman learns only when she is ready. That may take many years of study, many years of practical work. Not every student achieves the wisdom and good judgement that allows her to be trusted with the most arcane learning. But some do, or there would be no wise women to teach the next generation, and the one after that. From what I have been told, I believe the last one at Winterfalls – Holly, was that her name? – died without leaving a successor.’ This might turn the conversation away from me and onto more general lines.