A Moment in Time (40 page)

Gently she unwrapped her improvised bandage from the little hand, saying as she did so, "I am going to wash your hand, child, and then flush away all the evil humors with a bit of wine. 'Twill sting, but you will be brave, I know." Then Wynne smiled at the small girl and, as carefully as she could, cleansed her injured hand, cooing sympathetically when the little one winced. When the hand was cleaned to her satisfaction, Wynne said, "You were very brave, my dearie. Now I will put my good healing salve on your wound and bandage you with a clean cloth." She worked quickly as she spoke. "Come to me tomorrow morning, and I will check to see how your injury is faring. There," she noted, finishing the bandaging. "You are done. Go back to your mother and tell her that I am well pleased with you."

The little girl ran quickly back to her parent, and the mother approached Wynne as she stepped down from the high board, falling to her knees. "Lady," she said. "I thank you for healing my daughter. May God bless you!" Then scrambling to her feet, she departed the hall with her child, the other serfs following behind her.

"Ealdraed, find me a stone jar and store the rest of that salve. I will need it tomorrow," Wynne told the servant.

"Aye, lady!" came the reply.

"You are indeed a healer," Eadwine Aethelhard said quietly, "and you know how to keep a cool head in a crisis. I think old Ruari Ban has done me a greater favor than he knew. You may have whatever you need to make your medicines, Wynne. There is a small room off the hall that has been used for storage. Ealdraed knows the place. You may have that as your pharmacea, and whatever you want to stock it."

"Thank you, my lord," she answered him coolly.

He turned about and went out again into the fields.

Wynne spent the remainder of the day cleaning out the little room that the thegn had given her for her pharmacea. The house serfs brought her a wooden table and a bench to furnish the room. Wynne, old Ealdraed by her side, sought out jars, bowls, and pitchers for the pharmacea.

"Where did you get the rue?" Wynne asked her companion.

"From the cook," came the reply.

They hurried to the cook house, where Wynne found that the child whose hand she had tended that morning was the cook's granddaughter, and the apple of his eye.

"I've herbs and spices aplenty, lady. Take what you need. I am grateful to have a healer at Aelfdene," he said.

Ealdraed shook her head in wonderment. "That old Heall is usually a bad-tempered creature. I held little hope of your getting what you needed easily."

"I will need far more than these few things," Wynne told her. "We will go out tomorrow, and I will see what I can gather myself. Though it is November, the weather is still fair, and the plants I need have not yet died back."

The dinner hour approached and Ealdraed said, "Come, lady. You must return to the Great Chamber to repair yourself," and when they had entered the room, she brought a basin of water that Wynne might wash her face and hands. Then she began to undo Wynne's thick, heavy braid.

"I have no brush or comb," Wynne said.

"The lord said you were to use those which belonged to lady Mildraed," was the reply, and Ealdraed began to brush out Wynne's long black hair, saying as she did so, "The lord has also had fabric brought from the storeroom, that you may choose several for your gowns. I will help you with the sewing." Then her gnarled old fingers began to rebraid Wynne's hair, cleverly weaving a bit of colored wool into the plait as she worked. When she had finished, she said, "We will return to the hall now. The dinner hour is upon us."

When they reached the hall again, Wynne saw that Eadwine Aethelhard and his family were already seated at the high board. She stood silently at the opposite end of the hall waiting, and finally the thegn, an amused look in his eyes, called to her. "Come, Wynne, and sit by me. Baldhere, give up your place and move down that Wynne may sit next to me."

"You would seat a slave at our table, Father? Have you gone mad?" demanded Caddaric angrily of his parent, his eyes all the while undressing Wynne as she came toward them.

"It is
my
table, my son," Eadwine Aethelhard said quietly, "and, aye, I would seat Wynne by my side. She has found favor in my eyes."

"By spreading her legs for you?" Caddaric replied insultingly. "Any whore would do that for you, Father."

Before the thegn might answer his son, Wynne said sweetly, "If I had spread my legs for you, Caddaric Aethelmaere, would that have made it all quite different? In future you will speak to me with respect. I have done nothing to merit your disrespect. You will also speak to your father with respect, for he is the lord of Aelfdene, and a good lord." With a swish of her skirts she seated herself at the high board.

"What is happening here?" Caddaric's voice was tight with his inability to wield any authority. "This woman has been here but a day, and you not only seat her at our table, I have heard that you have given her a place of her own. This Welsh witch has ensorceled you, Father!"

The thegn's booming laughter rang out, filling the hall with his merriment. "Caddaric, Caddaric! Your fears are groundless. As I have previously said, I bought Wynne because for the first time in many years I was stirred by a woman's beauty and I felt desire. If that is bewitchment, then surely all men have succumbed to such bewitchment at one time or another. As for the
place
your gossips have told you that I gave her, it is the small storeroom at the end of the hall. Wynne is a healer, and this afternoon I saw evidence of her skill when she tended to an injured serf child. We have not had a healer at Aelfdene in many years. I am. grateful for her skill, which will be of value to the manor. A healer needs a place in which to have a pharmacea. Even you, my son, must understand that Wynne's skills may prove useless unless she can prepare and store her medicines, ointments, and lotions."

"I still think you set this slave above her station," grumbled Caddaric.

"And I think, my son, that you presume too much in
my
hall," his father replied with a warning tone. "Wynne is here because I wish her here. If you cannot treat her with respect, Caddaric, then you will no longer be welcome at my board."

For a time there was an uncomfortable silence. Aeldra Swanneck had a slightly disapproving twitch about her mouth, but she remained silent. Although she hoped that Aelfdene would one day belong to her infant son, Boc, she and Baldhere would eventually inherit her father's manor and leave here. For now this business with the new slave woman did not concern her. Eadgyth Crookback's eyes remained upon her plate, although she but picked at her food. Caddaric had been virtually unapproachable since yesterday when he had first seen the Welsh woman. He had been positively vicious with his four women last night in his frustration over losing the new slave to his father. Eadgyth had never seen him so filled with lust, and the knowledge that the object of his lust was now in his father's bed proved almost too much for him.

Eadgyth Crookback knew her husband well. He was a good warrior but a weak man. When they had wed, she knew that he took her only for her dowry of two and a half hides of land. Her father, no fool, had known his daughter's attraction was in her possessions. He had, in an effort to protect her further, promised that when he died, Eadgyth would inherit an additional two and a half hides of land. This bequest could only be effected if Eadgyth still lived. If she had predeceased him, then everything would go to his eldest son. With an additional two and a half hides of land, Caddaric Aethelmaere could attain the status of thegn in his own right. She knew how desperately he desired to be his own man. As her father was elderly, there was hope that Caddaric would attain his heart's desire sooner than he would inherit from his own father, who was in excellent health.

Eadgyth Crookback was by nature a sweet woman, but like her father, she was no fool. She had made her husband feel so comfortable with her that he had, to his own surprise, become her friend, and friends they remained even after ten years of marriage. Knowing her own physical weaknesses, she had encouraged him to take other women, even helping him to choose them, that her household not be unduly upset. As Caddaric gave her his respect and affection, so did his four lesser women, for it was impossible not to like Eadgyth Crookback. The Welsh girl, Wynne, had changed everything, however. She had never seen Caddaric so driven, and as she feared for him, so she feared for them all.

When the meal was finished, the women gathered about one of the fire pits gossiping, and Aeldra said to Wynne, "My daughter Willa has a cough. Can you give me something for her? If I cannot stop it, she will pass it on to her sisters, Beadu and Goda, and then the baby will get it. He is only six months old." She tried to keep the fear from her voice.

"Are there any cherry trees in the vicinity?" Wynne asked.

"Aye," replied Aeldra Swanneck. "Ealdraed can show you."

"Then I will be able to prepare something for your children, but it will take several days until it is at full strength and will do any good," Wynne told her. "Try and keep your daughter Willa from the others."

Aeldra nodded. "I will," she said.

"What about the lotion for my skin?" Berangari demanded.

"First I must set up my pharmacea," Wynne told her, "and gather all the ingredients that I will need. I have not half enough yet. Be patient," and she smiled at Berangari. "I will not forget you."

A pretty young girl with flaxen braids asked shyly, "Can you give me something so that my bowels will flow again? Between the child I carry and that, I am bloated and most uncomfortable.

Wynne looked at the girl. "What is your name?" she said.

"I am Denu, Baldhere Armstrong's lesser woman," came the reply.

"When is your child due?"

"In May, I believe," Denu answered.

"I can give you something," Wynne told her, thinking that Denu was already overlarge for a girl only a few months gone with child. Still, Denu looked healthy.

"I think it is a fortunate thing that you have come among us, Wynne," Eadgyth Crookback said quietly. "Not anyone can be a healer, I know. It is a rare and special talent."

"My mother and my grandmother taught me," Wynne told them. "My husband, Madoc, is a healer,
and,"
she added wickedly, "a sorcerer of some renown. If I can find one amongst you who shows an ability toward the healing arts, I will teach her, that you are not without a healer when I leave.

The women about her looked distinctly uncomfortable at her words. The Welsh woman was a slave, and yet she neither behaved nor spoke like a slave. It was not unusual for captives who had been born free to become slaves. They had never heard of a slave, freeborn or otherwise, who would not accept his lot in life. The women of Aelfdene were so sheltered that it did not occur to them that such a fate could easily be theirs. They were basically simple women whose lives revolved entirely about their men and their home life. Having said what they wanted to say to Wynne, the wives and lesser women drifted nervously away into another part of the hall, leaving Wynne alone.

"You frighten them," Baldhere Armstrang said as he moved to her side. "You frighten them, and you intrigue both my father and my elder brother."

"And you?" Wynne replied. "I know I neither intrigue nor frighten you."

He smiled, and she thought he looked rather more like his father than did Caddaric. "Nay, I am neither intrigued nor frightened. I am fascinated. There is magic about you, lady. Who are you really?"

"There is no magic to me, Baldhere Armstrang, for if there was, I should not be here at this moment. I should be home at Raven's Rock with my husband."

"What is Raven's Rock?" he asked her. "Is it a manor like Aelfdene?"

"Raven's Rock is a castle. It sits upon the spine of a dark mountain between two valleys. It is the ancestral home of the princes of Powys-Wenwynwyn, who currently owe their fealty to Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, our king, who was my father's cousin," Wynne told him quietly. "Those princes of Powys are famed for their magic."

"If your husband is a man of magic, lady, then why has he not found you before now?" Baldhere Armstrang asked her most disconcertingly.

Before she might consider the answer to that question, Aeldra Swanneck was by her husband's side.

"I would return to our hall," she said sharply. "It is late, and I am tired." She did not deign to acknowledge Wynne now. The woman was a slave, whatever her manner, and besides, she did not need her at this moment. The elixir had been promised and that was enough.