Taking the cup with the willow brew, Lily knelt beside her mother’s mattress. Gently, she raised Allyce’s head with one hand and held the cup to her cracked lips with the other. She dribbled the liquid into her mother’s mouth. More spilled down her chin and neck than was swallowed, but Lily hoped any little bit would help.
For what seemed like hours, Lily moved ceaselessly back and forth between the apothecary and the cottage, stepping over her father and occasionally stopping to give him a good shake or a swift kick in hopes that he would awaken. He slept on while Lily racked her memory for infusions or powders that might cool her mother’s fever.
At last, exhausted in body and ideas, she knelt beside her mother.
Allyce coughed weakly and her eyes fluttered open.
“I’m here, Mother,” Lily said, bending forward and smiling with relief.
“Lily,” her mother said, her voice barely a whisper. A fit of weak coughing followed.
Lily lifted her mother to a sitting position, supporting Allyce’s back and head with her arm. She didn’t notice her father until he spoke.
“What are you doing?” he hollered, stumbling into the room.
“I’m caring for Mother!” Anger rose in Lily’s voice. “While you slept off your ale, I nursed Mother. She burns with fever and she is too weak to cough as strongly as she should.”
“Why didn’t you awaken me?” her father demanded.
“Find the bruises on your leg,” Lily retorted, “and you’ll know that I tried.” Lily had never before spoken to her father like this, and she half expected a thrashing, but he simply knelt beside Allyce and took her hand out of Lily’s.
“My Allyce,” he said in a voice Lily hadn’t heard in a long while. “Gentle Allyce, what ails you?”
Lily blinked with surprise. Her parents rarely passed harsh words to each other, but neither did they speak sweetly as her father did now. At least not when Lily was around to hear it.
“’Tis just a bit of fever,” Allyce whispered in a breathy voice. “Yesterday’s rain…”
Will smoothed a large hand over his wife’s forehead. “Hush. I’ll prepare some comfrey and willow tea. Just rest.”
“Father, I gave her some while you slept,” Lily said, stung that he would think she hadn’t already done all she could for her mother. She went on to list what she gave.
Her father nodded. “You’ve done well.”
Lily sagged with relief, glad her father was finally awake. Surely he could cure her mother. “What can we do now?”
Will uncovered a sharp instrument from a shelf in the apothecary. Lily recognized it right away, though she had only seen this procedure done once when she had secretly watched her parents tend to a patient.
“We need to balance her humors,” he said.
Lily named the four humors silently: choler, phlegm, black bile, and blood. She knew that if they were not in perfect balance, any number of maladies could attack a person. Bloodletting would help realign them so her mother would get well.
Her father stretched Allyce’s arm out to the side. Lily saw blue veins, like rivers, running down the length of her arm. Will chose one of the veins and cut into it. Blood poured from the incision. Lily held a cup to collect it.
As time passed, her mother grew weaker, but her cough subsided and she seemed to rest easier.
“’Tis working, I think,” Lily whispered.
Her father nodded solemnly. “We’ll bleed her a little more to be sure. Go prepare a bit of self-heal to mend the wound.”
Lily let her father take the cup of blood while she prepared the poultice, which would act as a styptic to stop the bleeding. She finished quickly so she could return and be by her mother’s side.
Her father applied the poultice, wrapping Allyce’s arm tightly with a strip of cloth.
Lily felt her mother’s forehead. “She’s still warm.”
“She’s sleeping now,” Will replied, “but the bleeding will help her.”
Lily nodded firmly, as if by agreeing and believing it would make it so.
* * *
They sat with Allyce all night. Though she tried not to, Lily dozed off and slept fitfully. Every time she jerked awake, she found her father feeding her mother or talking to her in a low voice.
At last dawn crept into the tiny cottage. With eyes that itched from lack of sleep, Lily tended her morning chores while her father remained at Allyce’s side.
Blossom scratched at the door a long while before giving up. Lily wanted to play with her dog and walk through the forest to relieve the cramps of sitting in one place for so long, but she felt ashamed for even thinking of leaving her mother’s side.
That afternoon when the sun was high, her mother opened her eyes and smiled. It was all Lily could do to keep from bursting with joy.
Allyce tried to talk, but Will hushed her. “Save your strength, dear wife,” he said soothingly.
Lily leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek. Then she flew outside, calling for Blossom. The dog appeared from behind a pile of firewood, wagging her stubby tail.
“Come along,” Lily called, running into the forest. “Mother’s going to be just fine.”
* * *
A sennight passed. During those seven days and nights, Lily helped her father with the medicines, since her mother was still too weak to rise. Allyce still lay by the hearth, though she said she felt stronger every day. Secretly, Lily didn’t think she looked any stronger. But she was afraid to voice her fears.
Some afternoons, Lily found John waiting for her outside by the cages. She came to expect him, and when he didn’t come, she missed his company.
One day, she found the boy sniffling and curled up under a willow. Blossom nudged him with her cold nose, and even that didn’t make John smile.
Lily crouched next to him and tentatively lay a hand on the back of his shoulder.
When he looked up, she saw a purple bruise around his eye and a long, shallow cut on his cheek. “What happened?” she exclaimed.
“I left the flour keg open. The rats came and feasted,” he said bleakly.
Lily groaned. “Was it all ruined?”
“Most of it. And Mum said ’twas especially disgraceful because I’m to be Master Miller’s apprentice soon, and if the miller hears of this, he may not want to take me on.”
Lily sat next to him. “Does your father beat you often?” she asked gently.
He looked at her sideways, his injured eye nearly puffed closed. “’Twas my mum who did this.”
Lily couldn’t imagine her mother hitting her, or even her father, though she was sure she’d deserved it a time or two. “Does it hurt?”
“Nay,” he said, but she could see from the streaks of dried tears on his cheeks that he was trying to be brave. A few weeks ago, she might have taunted him about the tears. But it was different now.
Lily jumped to her feet. “I’ll be back in a moment.” She crept into the apothecary and took what she’d need for John’s injuries. Her parents, sitting in the cottage by the crackling fire, didn’t hear her. Under the willow tree again, the trailing branches hiding them from sight, Lily cleaned John’s wound with wine, then applied a poultice.
John wrinkled his nose. “What’s in it?” he asked.
Lily laughed and told him the contents. He didn’t seem too impressed by her knowledge of herbs and got up soon after to leave. But before he left, he looked at her shyly through his one good eye.
“It feels better already,” he admitted. “Thank you.”
Lily waved her hand at him, feeling a blush creep into her cheeks. “Be gone, John the brave,” she said, pretending irritation. “I have no more time for you.”
He grinned at her, his puffy eye looking painfully squeezed. With a slight nod in her direction, he took off.
Lily lay back and smiled up at the tree branches. She had helped her mother get well and now John. Perhaps someday she would be a real healer like her parents. She blew a strand of hair off her
forehead. A healer and an executioner’s assistant, she corrected herself. She knew one did not necessarily have to come with the other, except in her case it did, and there was no escaping it.
CHAPTER FIVE
Her mother’s recovery was slow. Even after a fortnight, she still complained of a constant pain in her side, and her breathing became labored if she did more than stand. But Lily’s father assured her that all was going as well as could be expected.
Every day, Lily checked on her animals, letting go a few of the rabbits, only to capture one of them a few hours later that had barely escaped the claws of a falcon. Then the day finally came to release the fox.
Lily crouched beside the collection of cages. The kit ran in circles with excitement. “Aye,” she said to the animal, “today you are going free. And the rest of you, too, as soon as you are strong enough to run away from hunters with arrows and boys with sharp sticks. And birds of prey,” she added for her reinjured friend.
After tying up Blossom, she fed the animals and examined their healing wounds, then she took a long length of rope to the fox’s cage. Opening the small door, she blocked the exit so the creature couldn’t run out and disappear into the surrounding forest. Lily wanted to lead the fox far away from town, where, hopefully, he would find a family of his own.
Once the rope was tied around the fox’s neck, she pulled the reluctant animal out of his cage. He balked, straightening his forelegs and twisting his head back and forth to rid himself of the rope.
“Come on, stubborn kit,” Lily said, relaxing the tension on the lead. “You can’t stay here forever.”
With the rope slackened, the fox took a tentative step out of the cage. Then another. Soon he was trotting beside Lily, just as long as she didn’t pull on the rope. When she did, he stiffened his legs and Lily had to drag him. She put up with this for a while, but finally she scooped the kit into her arms, where he settled quite comfortably.
“We’ll never get far enough away with you dawdling and me dragging you,” Lily said, picking up her pace. As she walked, she scratched behind the fox’s large ears and hummed the songs her mother used to sing to her as a child.
Suddenly she stopped and turned. “I see you, John the tailor’s son,” she called to the small figure behind the tree. “I know you’re there,” Lily said, tapping her foot. “You want to see where I leave this poor animal so you can catch him with your pointy stick,” she teased. By now she knew very well that John loved the animals almost as much as she did.
“Nay,” the shadow said, finally pulling away from the tree. John came closer. “He’s too handsome to kill.”
“Oh, so the rabbit you near speared wasn’t handsome enough to let live?”
“I can eat a rabbit,” John said stubbornly. “Besides, I haven’t hunted with the others for a long while.”
“True,” Lily agreed.
They walked the rest of the morning side by side. Lily glanced at his eye and was pleased to see it had healed nicely.
When they came to a small clearing, Lily put the fox down and untied the rope.
“This will be your new home,” she said.
The fox scuttled off, sniffing the ground. Soon, even the white tip of his tail was lost from sight in the tall meadow grass. He was healed and free, but he had run away without saying goodbye. She remembered helping her mother tend his wounds, and staying up with him the first few nights as he lay on a rush nest she had made for him next to her own pallet. Just then his nose poked out of the grass and he yipped. Lily laughed. He said goodbye after all.
* * *
John headed off on his own when they neared the town walls.
“Come see Blossom,” Lily called after him. “She’s getting fatter every day.”
He waved without looking back.
At home, much was the same. Her mother rested before the fire, while her father sat on a bench whittling a spoon, his eyes rarely leaving his wife.
Lily set about making supper. She and her father ate roasted chicken and leftover mutton pie. Allyce ate next to nothing.
After the meal, Lily started to clean up when she heard a familiar sound coming from outside the cottage. She gasped. It couldn’t be.
She ran to the window and peered out. Indeed it was! She raced out the door, her father calling after her, “What is it?”
Lily gave her answer by returning with a bundle of red fur in her arms. Her kit had come back to her. She knelt beside her mother. “Look who followed me home,” she said. She couldn’t help the smile that curled her lips.
Her mother shook her head. “This is not his home.”
“But he likes it here. Why can’t I keep him?”
“Blossom will tear him to shreds as soon as you untie her.”
Lily frowned. That was true. Though her dog was sweet and dear to her, she was a hunter. “I could keep him in a cage.” But even as she said the words, she knew how wrong they were. All creatures deserved to be free.
“What can I do?” she said. “I took him far away this morning.”
“The kit loves you, so you must make him hate you,” her mother said.
“What do you mean?”
Allyce paused for a bit, catching her breath. “You must scare him away. Chase him. Throw rocks at him if you must.”
“Nay! I could never do that.”
“If you love him, you must set him free even if it tears you apart,” Allyce said. She closed her eyes as though the conversation were too much for her.
Will put a heavy hand on Lily’s shoulder, shaking his head to silence her. “Put him in a cage for tonight. You can set the fox free tomorrow.”
* * *
The next morning, Lily went about churning the goat’s milk and making dough. She swept the hearth, brought in a new pile of wood for the fire, then scrubbed the largest of the kettles.
“Lily?”
Lily dashed to her mother’s side. “What is it? Are you chilled?”
With a weak smile, her mother waved away her words. “What are you doing?”
Lily sat back on her heels. “I’m doing my chores.”
“You’re stalling,” Allyce said.
Lily bit her lip. “But there’s so much to do…”
“Go,” Allyce said. “Take the kit where he belongs. ’Tis what you must do.”
Lily sighed. With one last pleading look, which only got her another wave of her mother’s hand, she went outside to the cages. She took the young fox in her arms, as she had the last time, and made her way through the forest, taking care to stay off any paths. The closer she got to the clearing, the slower she walked. The light from the clearing became brighter and brighter, as though the sun shone down only on this small patch of land and nowhere else. And no matter how much she dragged her feet, she came at last to the edge of the small meadow.
Lily rubbed her cheek against the kit’s head and he nudged her with his nose. Laughing sadly, she set him down. This time he didn’t bound off into the tall grass; he sniffed around her shoes, scooting under her skirts and winding between her legs.
“Go on,” Lily said. “Be off with you.” Gently she nudged the animal away with one foot. “No, fool, I’m not playing. Go away. This is your home now.”
The little fox tilted his head and looked up at her.
Gritting her teeth, Lily pulled a stone out of the sack she had tied around her waist. “Please go,” she begged. Then she shouted, “Go! Leave!” The fox jumped away from her. Lily threw the rock, and then another, and again and again until her sack was empty and the bushy tail of the fox was nowhere to be seen.
With an aching heart, Lily ran back into the woods, feeling as though she’d just smashed her soul into pieces.
* * *
“I cannot!” Lily exclaimed the next day.
“You must,” her father replied.
From her bed, Allyce said softly, “You can, child. You went with me every year, and now you will go alone.”
“But all those people,” Li
ly said, “they’ll taunt me.”
“You’ll wear a cloak and hood to shade your face as we always do,” her mother interrupted. “No one will look too closely.”
Lily stared beseechingly at her father. “Can’t you go?”
Will shook his head firmly. “Lord Dunsworth has called for me. I must go to the castle.”
Lily turned to her mother, but one look at Allyce’s frail countenance stopped her tongue. She couldn’t ask her mother to come with her, not when it was still such an effort for her to simply sit up.
Lily bit her lip. She could see her parents were firm on this. She must go to the town fair and buy goods. Her father had already listed the needed items, among them wool cloth, leather for boots and pouches, and secretly he’d told her to get a ribbon for her mother’s hair. Something to help cheer her.
Lily put on her cloak and pulled a hood over her head. Taking a deep breath, she stooped next to her mother and tried to smile bravely.
“I go now,” she said, trying to sound confident. She didn’t want her mother worrying about her while she was gone.
Her mother stroked Lily’s cheek. “All will be well,” she assured her.
Lily placed her hand over her mother’s even though terror coiled in her stomach. She stood up and turned quickly to the door. Her father nodded to her as she left.
The autumn air swirled briskly through the trees and clouds scuttled across the sky, piling up on the eastern horizon. Lily was glad for the cloak for more than one reason. She decided to take a different path toward town so that she’d have a better chance of arriving unrecognized. She could blend in with the others attending the fair and, with any luck, no one would know who she was.
Farmers and travelers from nearby towns made their way through the gates. There was much gaiety as friends and families reunited after many months since the last fair. This was a time for laughter and games and goodwill toward all. Toward all except me, Lily thought, burrowing deeper into her cloak.
She walked quickly, keeping her face down. The dirty, winding streets finally led her to the center of town, where the merchants had set up colorful tents to display their wares. Jugglers wended through the crowds, making people laugh. A group of musicians played while the audience finished off a bawdy ditty.
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