Medieval 01 - Untamed

pinched out the candle, put it in the basket, and began crawling forward, pushing the basket in front of her. She had come this way many times before, when her mother was alive and used the bolthole to escape John’s fury at having married a woman who would not give him heirs.
    The tunnel’s floor was covered with woven mats of reeds that creaked and rustled and barely cushioned the rocky stretches. Where the tunnel passed beneath the moat, the walls and floor were dank with seepage. Meg crawled as quickly as she could, for she had never liked the tunnel’s clammy embrace, though she no longer feared it as she had when a child.
    Despite the need to hurry, Meg waited at the far end as she had been taught to do, breathing the clean outer air and listening for anyone nearby. Nothing came back to her but a silence disturbed only by the sound of wind toying with the emerging leaves of the thicket that guarded the bolthole’s exit.
    Meg pushed through the tangle of shrubs and looked around the pasture. At the far corner, ewes ate spring’s bounty with single-minded intensity. Around them, lambs leaped and scattered like white flowers bobbing on a green sea. Neither shepherd nor dogs were in sight. The ewes barely lifted their heads when Meg emerged from the thicket.
    She hurried through the gate. Harry’s home lay just over the hill, amid fields whose shining dark earth showed a frosting of green. The lane leading to the cottage wound between waist-high dry-stone walls whose rocky faces were a patchwork of lichen and moss in shades of green, black, and a rich rust. In sunny places beyond the reach of sheep or plow,gorse bloomed in bright yellow profusion. In grassy areas daffodils burst from the earth like small children set free to play.
    Normally Meg would have savored the pearly light and the elegant shapes of the oaks rising naked from steep green hills, the sharp scent of gorse and the silent laughter of flowers; but today she barely noticed the signs of spring’s victory over winter. She had eyes only for any obstacle in the lane that might trip her and send her sprawling, scattering the precious medicines in her basket.
    Harry’s cottage was of stone and timber, for his father had been a favorite knight of John’s. At fourteen, Harry had been a squire well on his way to becoming a knight, but he had been crippled in the same battle that had killed his father. Instead of becoming a knight, Harry had become Blackthorne’s gatekeeper and a freeholder with a tiny bit of land to call his own.
    The local midwife must have been watching from the window, for she rushed out while Meg was still in the lane.
    â€œThank you, my lady,” she said, grabbing Meg’s hand and kissing it in relief. “The poor woman is at the end of her strength.”
    â€œIs there ample water?”
    â€œAye,” the midwife said.
    Her emphatic tone said she well remembered the previous birthings she had attended when Meg had been called to aid. The midwife might not understand Glendruid water rituals, but she no longer questioned them.
    Meg could barely walk beneath the lintel without ducking her head. Inside, the cottage showed evidence of Adela’s difficult pregnancy—cold porridge spilled and left everywhere, scraps of food even the dogs disdained left on the floor, half-rotted turnipsbrought from the cellar and discarded, weeks of refuse piled about waiting to be removed. After the clean air outside, the smell was like a blow.
    â€œShe is sleeping lightly,” the midwife said in a low voice.
    Adela’s pallet was against the far wall. The mattress was the only fresh-smelling thing in the cottage, for Meg had sent herbal sachets home with Harry every fortnight.
    Though only three years older than Meg, Adela looked twice her age. She had married at thirteen and produced her first babe before she was fourteen. After nine years of marriage, she had six living children and three dead.
    Meg went to the hearth, poured a basin of warm water and took it outside. There she added three herbs and some slivers of the soap she made herself. Chanting softly in the silence of her mind, Meg pulled off her outer tunic with its long, narrow sleeves and thrust her hands into the basin.
    Cast off the clothes of field and keep
    Bathe away old sins and sorrows deep
    Put on the smock of Glendruid reverence
    Touch sickness with hands of health .
    Ease where you must death’s slow dance