Hugh smiled and inclined his head respectfully, 'I am what you have made me, brother.'
Osborn beamed at him with evident pride. Then, wrapping his arms round the shoulders of both Hugh and Raoul, he turned them towards the stairs.
'Come now, let's eat, that ride's given me the appetite of a dozen men.'
Raffe, trembling with rage, watched the three of them mount the stairs together. It was all he could do to stop himself charging after them and hurling them back down the steps. He strode back towards old Walter who was still cradling the crofter's lad.
'Never mind what Osborn says, go fetch a bier and we'll get him inside.'
Walter shook his head. 'Too late, Master Raffaele, lad's dead. And I reckon he's the lucky one, for if that bastard's really to be lord here, then God have mercy on the rest of us, especially our poor Lady Anne.'
The cunning woman's cottage was the last in the village, tucked among the trees, built hard against an old oak. In fact, you might say that the ancient tree was her cottage, for a great branch of the living tree came right through the thatch and formed the beam which supported the roof. Like Gytha herself, the cottage half belonged to the village and half to the forest.
It was a fair stride from any of the neighbouring crofts, for though land was scarce people were reluctant to build too close to her. Healer she may have been, but what might happen, the villagers asked themselves, if you accidentally crossed a woman like that? Supposing your chickens wandered into her toft and uprooted her seedlings, or your children broke her pots in a game of football? An ordinary villager might get angry and demand compensation, or might even break your own pots in revenge. But there was no way of knowing what dark magic a cunning woman might weave if she took against you and gave you the evil eye.
Although they were wary of her, that still didn't stop the villagers hastening to her door when they or their cattle fell sick, or they wanted a charm to protect their crops. Elena had been to Gytha's croft several times over the years. Her mother had taken her there as a baby when she'd fallen ill with the quinsy and later with agues and fevers. A neighbour had carried her as a child with a deep stab wound to her thigh when she had fallen on the prongs of a dung drag. If such a wound had festered, Elena might easily have lost her leg or even her life, as many a strapping man had done.
But Gytha had dressed the cut with herbs and then she had taken a rosy apple and thrust twelve thorns into it to draw the poison from the wound. And it had worked; the deep wound had healed without festering, though Elena still bore a silvery-white scar in the shape of a rosebud on her hip. A sign of hope and promise, everyone said. What better omen of future love and happiness could any young girl be blessed with?
Now Gytha sat sideways to Elena on a low stool, trying to catch the last of the fading winter light from the open doorway as she picked over a bowl of beans. She was a tall, lithe woman, with hair as dark as a raven's wing and slate-blue eyes, colder than steel in winter. Her mother occupied the single bed in the corner of the cottage which was heaped with blankets and threadbare cloaks piled over her against the cold.
The old woman, once a great healer herself, sat upright in the bed, her blue eyes now milky with blindness. She mumbled constantly to herself, her twisted fingers fumbling with a heap of bleached white bones in her lap, the vertebrae of cats, foxes and sheep mostly, though some in the village whispered that there were little children's bones among the pile. All the same, they pitied the poor old woman for her infirmity. Gytha and her mother had cures for every ailment a man could suffer, so the villagers said, but they had no cure for old age.
Gytha tossed a handful of beans into the pot bubbling on the fire in the centre of the earth floor. 'So how does this dream of yours end?'
'I pick the baby up . . .' Elena faltered, twisting a handful of her thick russet kirtle.