Dream of Me/Believe in Me

overly indulgent brother who damn well should have known better. This is a hard land and we are ahard people. Your little luxuries and privileges are a thing of the past. You will learn to do without them, as you will also learn to—”
    He was about to instruct his wife in the absolute necessity of obeying him at all times and in all ways when she stared at him blankly and, to his utter astonishment, burst out laughing.
    “Luxuries?” Cymbra repeated. She knew she was being rude to laugh but this was just so blatantly, typically, mule-headedly male that she couldn't contain herself. “You think a garden is a luxury? A garden, at least the kind I have in mind, is an absolute necessity if people are to be healthy.”
    She gestured down at the sack. “The plants are God's blessing upon the earth, proof that He truly cares for His children and wants us to be well.”
    When her husband failed to respond with the interest she felt he ought to have shown, Cymbra faltered slightly. She was extremely aware of his powerful hands on her shoulders. He had stopped shaking her after scarcely a moment but he was glaring at her most fiercely. Perhaps he just didn't understand….
    “I told you I am a healer,” she said gently. “I have my medicine chest and am grateful for it, but eventually the supplies in it will have to be replaced as they are used up. These plants and others I expect to find are essential to that.”
    “You think to dose people here?” When her silence confirmed his suspicion, it was his turn to laugh. He let go of her, threw back his head, and roared. Birds scattered from the overhanging branches. His horse started and pawed the ground nervously.
    Grinning broadly, he gazed at his naïve little wife. Damn, but she was beautiful standing there in the golden sunlight, her hair only thinly covered by a veil, her skin satiny smooth and begging to be touched.
    Sternly, he reminded himself of his duty. She was only a woman and a stranger at that; he would have to explain things to her very clearly. “We are not weak like the Saxons who need such cosseting. Our remedies are few— fire on a wound if it won't heal, knife to a limb if it must come off—but sufficient for us. We don't expect to live to old age, indeed the thought horrifies us. A man seeks to die with his sword in his hand so that he may enter Valhalla. Anything else is what we call a ‘straw death,’ unnatural and the path to extinction.”
    Color flooded Cymbra's cheeks. His callousness horrified her, but it also confirmed what she had noticed in her two days of exploration. The people of Sciringesheal did look robustly healthy for the most part, but that worried rather than reassured her. It suggested that anyone who was not in peak health simply perished.
    “And what about a woman suffering in childbirth or an ailing child?” she demanded. “Do they just give up and die? What about those who do live to an old age even if they do not want to? Are they denied comfort in their final days? I can't believe that all your people are so ignorant and cruel!”
    Indeed, she knew better, for Brother Chilton had told her of Norse women, crones he called them, who he claimed consorted with the devil to brew potions of great power. Although she would never have said so to him, Cymbra suspected he had misunderstood what the women were about and that they were merely healers like herself. But there were none such as that here. Perhaps it was because the Wolf's keep was so purely a male domain, with the women relegated to positions of servitude.
    “I am a healer,” she said again stubbornly. “I cannot ignore the suffering of others.” Although she held her head high and regarded him steadily, inside Cymbra quaked. She could not imagine what she would do if her husband forbade her the pursuit of her life's calling. If shewas forced to live among these people, to feel their pain without being allowed to help them, she would shrivel and die.
    Slowly, Wolf surveyed her. He could see this was very important to her although he didn't understand why. He supposed it had something to do with her overly tender nature—the same nature that had prompted her to take the insanely stupid step of entering the cell with him and the others in order to help them.
    He remembered that, seeing her as she had been then, and acknowledged the great courage it had taken for her to act as she did. Courage he could not help but admire. Now that he thought of it, perhaps