Chapter 5 #2
Every person who touched his skin set off a reaction in his own body.
The villagers were rife with pain, injuries, malnutrition, or like the ancient woman who’d passed him a few minutes ago and touched his hand, the infirmities of old age.
If he didn’t find the herb seller soon, he’d be too weak from battling his discomfort and fighting to keep from using his healing energy to continue.
He would have to find the most direct way out of the market and back to the keep, or at least to a place where he could rest undisturbed for a few minutes.
Getting through this market was akin to anything from being stabbed with an embroidery needle to hit with a mallet, again and again, in his hand, his shoulder, and the length of his spine, his belly, then hip or knee or foot, never knowing when or where each blow would land in his body, depending on what troubled that person.
The touches were as unrelenting as they were unintended, and the fatigue from them would soon bring him down.
He missed the battle-lust that kept him from feeling anything, even his own pain.
Ah, there. He’d found what he sought. Jamie stepped up to the cart, out of the way of passersby, and inspected the bunches of fresh herbs, leaves, and roots, each tied securely with string, ready to be hung and dried if that was the use they’d be put to.
He glanced up at the seller. Did Aftyn know this man?
Jamie looked around, hoping to see her in the press of market-goers, but not really expecting to.
Yet there she stood. As soon as he noted her, she turned aside to inspect the contents of a merchant’s stall. Jamie had the strong feeling she’d been watching him, and he’d caught her at it.
She was as lovely as the first time he’d seen her, crossing the great hall.
Even more so, with the sunlight gilding her dark hair, making it shine like silk and making Jamie want to touch it.
He longed to unravel her braid with his fingers and let the soft strands slip over his palms. She wore a simple homespun kirtle of deep blue.
Not a healer’s color, but still, it suited her.
She smiled at the merchant showing her his pottery, and jealousy suddenly spiked through Jamie’s belly. He wanted her smile for himself.
She glanced in his direction, but quickly turned back to the potter. So she had been following him. Without thinking, he took a step toward her. If she wanted to see what he was doing here, she could do so at a closer remove.
“A moment, if ye will,” he paused and told the farmer before he strolled to Aftyn’s side, giving her plenty of time to glance his way again and see him coming. She didn’t, but if her skin prickled at his nearness like his did at hers, she fought to keep her gaze on the potter’s wares.
“Good morrow to ye, Aftyn.”
She spun as if she hadn’t known he stood right beside her.
But her expression gave her away. In that moment, he realized she could not keep anything from him.
She had to have told the truth about her efforts for Niall.
He could trust her, but not with everything.
His secrets were too important to divulge to someone he’d known only a few days.
“Ach, Jamie, ye startled me. Good morrow to ye, as well.”
If she’d spoken smoothly, he might have doubted his judgement in trusting her, but she looked past him and didn’t meet his gaze. She was a terrible liar. “I’ve something to show ye, if ye have a moment,” he told her, satisfied with his assessment.
She resisted for a moment, glancing aside at the display she’d used to keep him from being aware she had been studying him. Then she shrugged. “What is it?”
“I found a merchant with an extensive collection of useful herbs. Do ye ken him?” Jamie led her to his find.
She shook her head, eyes wide, but not, as Jamie expected, with excitement for his find.
Rather, she looked… frightened. Seeing that, Jamie took her arm and led her beyond the cart out of earshot.
“What fashes ye, lass? Do ye ken that man?”
“Nay, I dinna think so.”
“Then why are ye upset?”
“I’m not upset. I simply dinna need anything he has.”
“Dinna need? Or dinna ken how to use?” And if so, why did that make her afraid?
Aftyn covered her mouth with one hand. “How did ye ken?”
“It makes sense, lass. Ye didna ken all ye need, so why would ye ken the less common healing herbs and how to prepare them.”
“I have a sufficient supply of the ones I ken how to use.”
Jamie nodded. “Perhaps. But ye must learn more. Ye have said so.”
She glanced around, then dropped her gaze. “Will ye teach me?”
Why was that difficult for her to ask of him? “I’ll do as much as I can until Niall is fit to travel. But I dinna understand yer fear. Has someone threatened ye?”
She paled and a sheen of tears glinted in her downcast eyes. Then her lips pressed into a thin line.
“Ye canna tell me? Or ye willna, Aftyn?”
Instead of answering, she turned back to study the man’s cart, then sighed. “I suppose ye will say we’ll need at least one of everything he has.”
So she would not tell him. Jamie wanted answers, but the midst of a public market was not the place to demand them.
He could see that Aftyn had enough problems without him making them worse.
She feared something. Or someone. After the way he’d berated her the first night he arrived, he didn’t blame her for not trusting him.
But a healer afraid to heal was no healer at all.
He should be angry for her sake that her mother’s death left her so poorly prepared.
She clearly did not recognize many of the tools most healers in Scotland used—even his mother—among the contents of the farmer’s cart.
But he vowed he would discover the secret behind her fear before he left to return to the Aerie.
“Yer basket is nearly full,” he finally said. “Take it home. I will deal with the farmer for his crop and bring it to yer herbal.”
She looked up then and met his gaze. He wasn’t sure what he saw in her eyes.
Sadness? Gratitude? Without another word, she turned and left him.
Jamie bargained for the entire contents of the man’s cart and carried it all in a fold of his kilt back to the keep.
It might serve to get the clan through the winter, until the next growing season would allow Aftyn to replenish any stock she used.
He’d show her how to make any common preparations she didn’t know and would likely need.
Aftyn put her basket down in her mother’s herbal.
What would Jamie think of it? She’d done little in here since her mother’s death save try to understand the journal she’d left behind.
Both she and Neve had been over it carefully, and had copied several preparations for poultices Aftyn knew would be useful, but had only managed to recognize one or two symbols from those.
Not enough to help Niall. In her urgency to save him, she’d substituted ingredients, timing, even temperature, steeping at room temperature or heating the mixture, all to no avail.
She didn’t doubt she’d done something wrong in preparing them, but what?
Her ignorance could have killed Niall, had Jamie not arrived in time to save him.
She raked a hand through her hair in frustration, then growled as her fingers got stuck in the top of her braid.
She pulled them free and looked around her mother’s domain. Now hers, at least for the time being.
Bunches of dried herbs still hung along one wall, but all carried fairy tracings of cobwebs, showing how little they’d been used.
A collection of pots and vials remained.
Aftyn had feared to disturb them, except for a few she had become familiar with before her mother’s death.
Those she had remade, replacing tinctures and poultices with fresh preparations.
The mint she’d used to continue her mother’s treatment of the Keith heir was nearly gone.
But Braden had survived and now thrived.
She ran a finger over the pot and inhaled its fresh scent, grateful its contents gave her some guarantee of a home.
Before long, Jamie arrived and dumped the plants he’d bought next to her basket. Hands on hips, turned to look around.
Aftyn cringed. What would he think of the dust? The spiderwebs?
Jamie moved to the cabinet that held pots and stoppered bottles, picking one up and sniffing, then another, seemingly at random. He studied the dried herbs and pinched a few leaves between two strong fingers.
Despite the apprehension hollowing her belly over how he would judge what he found, Aftyn found herself watching his hands, not what he touched.
He moved with grace and assurance. No trace remained of the limp she’d noticed the other night.
She could imagine his hands touching her the way he touched the things in her herbal.
The thought made her blood heat and tingles spread from her chest to her fingertips.
She forced herself to ignore those feelings and concentrate on why she and Jamie were here.
She had no doubt he knew exactly how to use each of those dried-up greens, and how to prepare them.
Finally, he ceased his inspection and faced her.
“How long ago did ye lose yer mother?”
Aftyn cringed. He could probably guess from the state of the place. “Nearly two years gone.”
“I can tell that in the age of much of what I see. Most will have to be discarded. There are a few things that may remain useful, but only a few.”
“I made new batches of the ones I kenned how to prepare.” Aftyn’s heart sank. As she’d expected, the rest had gone to waste.
“Aye, of course,” he answered, his gaze sweeping the chamber yet again.
“Who looks after this if ye are not here? There are dangerous preparations, even some plants, that bairns should never go near.”
He was a healer, after all, and a man. What man noticed dust and spiderwebs? “Any of those that remain are out of reach of wee fingers. The clan respected my mother’s skills and did not intrude. I expected that forbearance to continue, and it has.”
And the rest? How was she supposed to replace the potions in the entire herbal in the few days Jamie would remain? She fingered the fresh herbs he’d bargained for. She knew a few by name, none by function. This was hopeless.
“I fear ye wasted yer coin,” she told him. “There’s too much to replace, too much for me to learn, and ye will soon leave.”
“We’ll set this to rights as best we can, and I will write down all of it. Ye can read?”
“Aye. I have my mother’s journal…”
“Ye do?” His eyes widened. “Let me see it.”
Aftyn wanted to warn him, but decided he would understand better if he saw it himself.
She left him to continue exploring and retrieved the journal from her sleeping chamber.
“It is not very useful,” she told him when she returned.
“She used terms I dinna ken, symbols and such I have yet to be able to puzzle out, that she didna teach me.”
While she talked, Jamie turned pages, occasionally running one finger down her mother’s crabbed writing, as if that might make it easier to understand.
He nodded. “Some of this, I can follow, some will take some thought. But much of what ye need is here.”
“Not in any form I’ve been able to use.” Her frustration turned to embarrassment, then anger.
She fought back the tears that still came all too easily when she dealt with anything to do with her mother.
“She taught me simple cures, and stitching wounds, which I’m good at,” she added, needing him to hear at least that small point of pride in her voice, “but she wanted to wait until I was older for many of the more difficult or dangerous preparations, so she never explained the symbols she used.”
“We’ll work on it. This journal may save time,” Jamie said, clearly unaware of her distress.
She gave a choked laugh. “It has wasted plenty of mine up to now.”
He looked up then and met her gaze. He must have noticed the sheen in her eyes that she fought to keep from slipping down her cheeks. He touched her sleeve, never taking his gaze from hers, and told her, “We’ll change that, together.”
He sounded so sincere. Did he truly mean he would spend the time he had left here to help her? “But Niall…”
“Niall is much better. I dinna need to spend all my time with him. Do ye no’ want my help?”
Perhaps she would not have to embarrass herself by explaining how little esteem her father held for her, and how much at risk she remained. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and thank him, but she didn’t dare. She opened her mouth to speak.
His gaze dropped to her lips.
Heat sizzled along her veins at the desire in his eyes. What did he think? That she would repay him that way? She took a breath and moved away from him. She gathered her courage, cleared her throat and told him, “Of course I want yer help. I need it.”
He pursed his lips, crossed his arms and glanced around. “Do ye ken where Neve is?”
“Aye, she went home.”
“Fetch her and we’ll make a start.”