Chapter 1

“And what would you use for birthing pains?”

“A pinch of Babblewort, one of Fire- root, one of Carol-vine steeped in a tincture stewed preferably in vinegar rather than alcohol, for at least eight hours to be administered orally no more than three times in an hour and no more than fourteen times in one day.”

“In what amount?”

“A teaspoon or if one isn’t available, a small sip only.”

“Good.”

The fire crackled in the hearth and Beth snuggled up closer to her mother on the single bed as her mother continued to grill her about apothecary potions and their use for another half hour as the fire slowly died down and sleep took them.

Beth emptied the well bucket into the pail and sent it down for another fill. The wooden branch squeaked as it rotated in the two posts as the rope coiled around it. With the deceptive ease of many years of practice, Beth swung the still dripping bucket over and emptied it into the other pail. With an envious and covetous look, Beth watched two girls walk past, giggling at some whispered comment about the group of boys watching them walk past. Wearing dresses with scandalously high hems - Beth could clearly see their knees- and necklines that drew the eye to ample cleavage, Beth fumed at her own mother’s continued insistence that she wore trousers and tunics that hid and did nothing for her newly burgeoning figure. Granted, her breasts were nowhere near as developed as those belonging to the girls, but they were growing and had started to do so a lot over the last few months. Other girls were allowed to show some flesh but not her, oh no, not her. It was so unfair.

Her mother insisted that it was beneath her as the village’s apothecary in training. It was so unfair. You couldn’t help deliver over a score of bairns and not understand how what went where, with the pretty inevitable results nine months down the line. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how to make the potions to hinder a woman’s fertility or to make an unwanted child fail to reach term.

Her mother seemed determined that she failed to catch the eyes of the local boys. Blood burning in anger, she bent her knees, not her back, as her mother always insisted, and draped the yoke over her shoulders. Muscles in her legs flexed as she straightened, lifting the two large pails off the ground. In her adolescent mind, the boys rushed over to relieve her of her wet and sloshing burden. They fought over who would have the task of fetching and carrying the water for her, shyly passing her tokens of their everlasting love. In reality, Beth sloshed through the mud, her shoulders aching from all the trips she had already done that morning. Why couldn’t she sit on a bench and watch the opposite sex walk past. No, she had to lug water like a slave. Where was all this respect this position was supposed to garner amongst the villagers?

Beth balanced precariously on one leg as she kicked off a boot and then the other as she walked sideways through the doorway.

“Did you take your boots off!” Her mother, Saoirse, called out from further inside.

“Yes mumm...”

“And what took you so long? I sent you to fetch water, not go for a walk around the village...”

Beth carefully lowered the yoke with its two pails from her shoulders and picked up the kettle from the fire, steam lazily climbing from the spout. She pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the small room. Beth didn’t spare the naked man in the bed even a glance. She had seen enough naked men over her short years for the novelty to have worn off somewhat. Beth picked up the bowl of dirty water as her mother poured some of the water from the hot kettle into another bowl. Taking the bowl with the dirty water outside, Beth tossed it into the street and headed back inside to help her mother finish bathing the patient.

“So, tell me again how his sons can’t do this mother?”

“What’s got into you lately Beth? This is your job, it’s a bit late now to decide you want to do something else.”

“I don’t ever recall being given a choice...”

Her mother didn’t even pause in her body scrubbing as she gave Beth what Beth had termed from a young age as ‘The Look’ which managed to convey a whole sentence worth of disgust, condescension and a heap of other unflattering words into a mere glance.

“Well, I wasn’t...” Beth mumbled.

Tired, hungry, Beth and her mother made their way through the village. Beth with a now thankfully empty yoke and pails over her shoulders and her mother carrying her herb bag, substantially lighter of contents. Which meant that Beth would be spending the following day looking for and picking, the herbs to refill it. Probably in the rain. Her mother always sent her out in the rain. “Because that’s when they are at their best.” Her mother would say in reply to Beth’s grumbles. Beth didn’t understand the logic of picking plants in the rain when the very first thing she was to do with them when she dripped her way back inside, was to dry them out...

“I’m thinking of getting a dress.” Beth stated in what she hoped was a firm commanding tone of voice

Many years of being it’s recipient had inured Beth somewhat to the effects of ‘The Look’, which was just as well as she was currently the sole focus of its full intensity.

“Don’t be daft.” Her mother took Beth’s firm commanding tone and crushed it like a flower between a mortar and pestle.

“The other girls wear them. I used to wear them as a child.”

“You aren’t a child, and the other girls don’t need to wade through brambles, Ripper vine, Tangle vine, Nettles and a lot of other skin problematic horticulture. Nor have to lift, bathe, birth, sew, restrain, etc, patients.”

Okay, you have a fair point about the nettles... “Okay, not then, but when, you know, I’m not doing those things.”

“And when are you not doing those things?”

Beth had a sudden desire to get one over her mum. “When I am asleep.” She said, somewhat triumphantly.

“Well, if you are asleep, you won’t need to wear a dress then, will you?”

Fuck!

Beth left Edgar’s hut as the evening drew in. There was not a lot Beth or her mother could do for lumberjack Edgar. He had been hit by a falling tree and his chest had been crushed. Unfortunately, he had survived the strike, though the damage had been too severe for his prospects to outlive the remains of the week. All they could do was ensure his passing was as painless as possible. Exhausted, Beth slowly, made her way through the mud of the street outside Edgars house, hugging the walls of the houses as the ground was slightly drier there. Hushed whispers snaked out of an alleyway. The furtiveness of the tones attracting attention more than casual voices would have done. Beth peeked around the corner. Amalene was there, speaking in hushed tones to two cloaked individuals. Beth’s interest has piqued, she knew everyone in the village, but she didn’t know those two. Cloaked or not, she could tell who people were just by how they stood, walked, carried themselves.

Amalene held out a leather pouch that clinked when one of the figures hastily grabbed it and moved his cloak aside to tie the pouch to an overly ornate belt. Some transaction had just been carried out, and knowing the nature of Amalene, it was bound to be nefarious. Of an age in her early twenties, Amalene had her sights set on being the village’s healer. She had initially approached Saoirse, but Beth’s mum had rejected her. “Something is just not right about her.” Her mom had said, though she hadn’t explained to Beth what that something had been. Whatever Amalene was up to, it looked like the transaction was nearing its conclusion. Beth slipped away, before she was spotted and accused of spying.

Removing her boots, leaving them just inside the door, Beth closed the simple wooden slatted door. One of the leather bindings that served as a hinge was rotting and would need to be replaced soon lest the door fall off. The stone flags were cool against the soles of her bare feet. Pleasant in summer, the stone flags were torturous in winter. Her mother refused to buy rugs. “Flagstones are quicker and easier to keep clean girl!” Her mother would always say. Though Beth couldn’t see why they couldn’t roll them aside when a patient came in...

Helping herself to a ladle of stew from the cauldron above the fire, Beth ate in exhausted silence as her mother ground herbs in a pestle on the table. “If a patient is coughing and shows red dots on the neck...”

“Not tonight mum.”

Saoirse stopped her grinding at Beth’s tone, but said nothing as Beth finished the stew in her wooden bowl, washed it out, and changed into a simple shift before she climbed into bed. Her mother finished her grinding and tidied away her herbs and equipment. Changing into her own sleep shift, Saoirse climbed into bed and wrapped her arms around Beth. “I love you Beth, you know that, right?”

“I know mum.”

Beth didn’t expect to be woken until dawn peaked over the trees, but something had awoken her and it wasn’t dawn. A moment of befuddled confusion before she realised that it was her mother being awake that had awoken her. There was something in the air ... Breathing that wasn’t theirs, they weren’t alone in their hut.

The realisation must have come to them simultaneously as they both rolled over at the same time. Beth couldn’t see anything because of her mother’s body.

“If you need help, it’s deemed polite to knock and wait outside. Shout if you must. But since you are in now, what is your medical need? And it better be serious.” Saoirse at up and pulled her cloak off the hook on the wall beside the bed. Beth groaned, but groaned quietly under breath and prayed to gods she made up on the spot, that she wouldn’t be needed or required and that her mother would tell her just to stay in bed. It was a fantasy. A nice fantasy, granted, but just for once it might come true.

Now that her mother was sat up. Beth could see into the room, the coals in the fire emitting just enough light to reveal shadows. There were three shadows in the room that shouldn’t have been there. “I haven’t time for reticence. State your need-and it better be good- or be gone. If it’s for some aphrodisiac because you are too drunk to get it up, then you’d better pray that I don’t give you something that makes you shit nonstop for a month.” Saoirse shrugged herself into her cloak as what sounded to Beth like a lantern was jostled. A beam of light shot out, bathing Saoirse in its weak light that was still strong enough to make both mother and daughter squint.

Saoirse raised a hand to shield her eyes. “Get that damn light out of my eyes you idiot!” Beth winced. Her mother was verging on anger. Never a good thing to do to someone as well versed in herbal lore as her mother was.

One of the figures poked at the fire and added a couple of logs. The dry timber quickly caught, flames leaping up and illuminating the room further. The fire poker tossed the fire iron casually aside and spotting a candle, lit it from the fire, placing it down on the table.

“Unless you plan on replacing or paying for that candle, you can put it out. Candles aren’t cheap, nor do they grow on trees or in bushes.”

“We don’t fucking care about your candles.” The accent wasn’t local and the demeanour of the three men sent a chill down Beth’s spine.

One of the men was staring at Beth lasciviously. She didn’t like it. Seeing her looking back, the man smiled. “I want the girl.”

“You’ll do no such thing. In fact, all three of you can leave right now.” Her mother’s tone took on a cold edge.

“We’re not leaving. We’ve been paid to do a job, and we shall do it. And we’re going to have a little fun in the process, aren’t we lads?”

The men laughed and spread further out in the room, blocking the doorway from Beth and her mother’s view. One of the men headed towards Beth, discarding his cloak on the floor, hands working at the bindings of his trousers. “I’m going to make you scream girl, and not in a good way...”

Fear like nothing she had ever felt before, rooted her to the bed. No matter how hard she willed it, her body refused to move. The man stepped closer. Beth could smell him. The sharp tang of cheap Rotgut whisky, the smell of a body that hadn’t bathed in weeks, wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed in even longer, scraggly beard with hints of skin lesions poking through.

Her mother stepped in between Beth and the disrobing male. “I’ve already told you that you’ll do no such thing. Leave now, and the village as well, or I’ll have you run out, or hung as rapists.”

“We don’t care what you think hag. We are going to enjoy watching you scream as Droodge splits your girl in twain. Is she still a maiden? Not that it matters either way as she’s still going to be left with child. We might even take her with us. She seems quiet enough, so what do you think lads? Shall we let her keep her tongue?”

One of the other thugs stuck his tongue out and waggled it lewdly. “Leave it in. She can wrap it around my cock head...”

The men laughed and the one that had been loosening his trousers pulled out a weeping pustule dotted hard cock. Beth couldn’t see it clearly, blocked mostly from her view by her mother. The apothecary part of her mind dispassionately took in the brief glimpse, noted the cock rot and assembled the ingredients needed to treat it. It was at an advanced stage, pissing would be quite painful and the accompanying itching would be very distracting, requiring a steady alcohol consumption to take his mind off his symptoms, though he would have been far better off soaking his manhood in alcohol than drinking it.

Saoirse reached out and pushed Droodge back a step. “No.”

“Fuck you, cunt!” Droodge regained his balance and stepped forward again, lifting his arms to drag Beth’s mother out of the way. Saoirse surprised everyone in the room, including Beth, by stepping close and ramming her forehead hard into Droodge’s face. There was a hard crunch as his nose crumpled with an accompanying sharp ‘crack’ That implied that his jaw or cheek bones had also broken. He collapsed whimpering to the ground like a marionette who’s strings had been suddenly cut.

“What the fuck! I’m going to cut your tits from your body and stuff them into your whore of a daughter, you cunt!” The second thug pulled out a pitted iron knife and made to stab Saoirse. Beth couldn’t see what happened next, the view blocked by her mother’s body. All she saw were rapid arm movements from her mother, heard surprised grunts from the second thug as the woman in front of him deftly fended off his knife thrusts. Then, strong fingers clamped onto his wrist, fingertips pushed into his wrist, pushing straight against nerve endings. He cried out at the unexpected pain as his fingers released their grip around the knifes hilt.

Saoirse caught the hilt with her other hand and stabbed him once, twice, three times. He stumbled back. “The cunt stabbed me!” He said in surprise as his knees buckled, darkness encroached his vision as he felt so weak, so very weak, if he just closed his eyes for a moment...

The third thug dropped his cloak and kicked it out of the way as he drew a short sword. Saoirse had tried to quickly close the distance and she almost managed it, the thug dancing back three steps and managing, just, to block the knife thrust at him. Before he even managed to reply with a swing of his own, he was fending off knife thrust after knife thrust.

Adrenaline kicked in and he threw a punch that was blocked. Fear swept through him as the reality that he may very well lose this fight and his life became a very real outcome. He put everything he had into his swings, desperately walking backwards around the room, trying frantically to avoid being herded into a corner. His every sword thrust and swing blocked or parried by the knife. How was she even ... There was a sudden and loud ‘ting’ as the knife blade sheared off where the tang was joined to the cross guard and wrapped within the wooden handle. The woman automatically ducked away from the broken blade that had been heading for her face. He saw his chance and took it.

Beth watched in stunned silence as her mother not just fended off the thug with the sword, but was attacking and looked to be winning. There was a sharp sudden ‘ting’ and her mother grunted as the back of her nightdress pushed out and then split under the tip of a sword.

“MUM!!!” Beth screamed.

He pulled back his arm, intending to remove the sword from her chest, but she stepped forward with his arm, denying him. He stepped back to give him more space to try again, but hard stone met his back. She grinned up at him. Blood flecked on her lips and teeth. “Shit cheap iron.’’ She whispered, a fleck of her blood landing on his chin as she raised her arm and slammed the broken hilt against the side of his neck and pulled it savagely down. He felt something puncture his skin and then tear it as she pulled down. It had almost been a clean break. Almost. There was just enough jagged iron sticking out to puncture his skin and nick his artery. There was a clatter as the broken hilt slipped from her grasp and fell to the stone flags.

Blood spurted out of the ragged gash in his neck and splashed across the still smiling woman’s face. The hilt of his short sword slipped from his grasp as the woman slumped to the floor, pulling the sword with her. He looked down at her dazed, wishing he had never met with that woman in the alleyway, never taken her money. It was too late now. What was done was done, so be it. His knees buckled and he slid down the wall, his life blood spurting out of his neck and down his chest. He snorted, “Shit...”

“MUM!!!” Beth cried out again as her mom collapsed to the bare flags.

Beth looked down at the iron sticking out of her mum. It was a killing blow. She ransacked her memories, her teaching, there must be something that she could do.

“Beth, it’s over.” Her mother whispered.

“There must be something we...”

“It’s my time.”

“But...”

“Let me speak, I’ve not long. I want you to know that I’ve loved you with all my heart and looking back now, you are the thing I’m most proud of in my life. You are my greatest achievement...”

Beth sobbed “Mum...”

Her mother placed bloody fingertips against Beth’s forehead, whispered words Beth didn’t quite catch. Her hand fell down and she seemed to rally for a moment. “The flag that’s always annoyed you, lift... “ And she was gone.

“NOO!!!-MUM!!!” Beth wailed into her mother’s shoulder, the sword hilt jabbing into her breast, but she paid it no heed as she tightly hugged her mother’s corpse. Beth was roused from her grief by a moan and movement next to her. Her eyes red, raw and puffy, looked up from her mother as the first thug rolled to his knees, threw up. He cried out as his throat muscles contracted to force the contents of his stomach up and out of his broken mouth, the acidic bile burning into a wound where a broken piece of jaw had punched through flesh into his mouth.

Beth gently let her mother rest on the floor. The sword was ugly, horrible, it had no right being where it was. Beth grabbed the hilt and pulled it out. The man on his knees was holding his jaw, puke all down his front. His pleading eyes turned to that of terror as Beth lifted the sword.

“Nnnn...” He begged, raising a hand up in supplication. The sword went in easier than she had expected. Her anger adding to her strength. Years of lifting patients and fetching water had given her strong arms and shoulders. She had to twist the hilt to break the suction of flesh against metal to remove the blade. She turned, surprised to find her mother’s killer still alive. He followed her movements with his eyes, one hand still clamped to his neck, a trickle of blood still seeping through his fingers. She met his defiant gaze, and he nodded, once, the blood trickling through his fingers speeding up for a moment. In silence, Beth punched the sword tip into his breast, leaning on the hilt with her body weight to drive the blade deep. His hand dropped from his neck, the blood flow from the ragged wound in his neck slowing to a stop.

Beth pulled her arms and shoulders back, the sword clattered to the floor, Beth following it. Hollow, she stared at the four corpses on the floor. At the blood, which was everywhere. Her mother, her life, was gone. As the daughter of the village healer, she was no stranger to death. Had watched dispassionately as those who had loved the recently deceased, huddled and cried round the body. “Death,” her mother had often said “was an important part of life. To have one, you needed to have the other.”

Numb, her gaze travelled over the bodies, over the two she had killed, though, her mind pointed out, only one of those two could have been saved. She had no feeling for them. Dead was dead, there was no coming back from it. Her mother, a shell of what had been. Beth held up her hands, red and trembling as the adrenaline drained from her blood stream. She let them fall back onto her lap. She looked from the sword lying on the floor to the man that had killed her mother, her eyes dropping to his belt. A familiar belt. He was one of the two men she had seen talking to Amalene.

Now that her memory was jogged, she looked at the other two, yes, the one who’s jaw her mother had smashed, had been the second one.

The pouch was still there, on the belt where it had been tied. Beth crawled over on her hands and knees through the sticky, congealing blood and untied the leather thongs. Opening the coin pouch she peered inside. There was a scrap of parchment and some coins. Not a lot. Had their lives really been so worthless? Blood stained fingers reached in and pulled out the tatty parchment. “I dont cayr wat yu do wit tem. Jus mak sur they ar both ded by sun up.”

It was still dark outside and there was no way that she was going to go back to sleep. How could she with four corpses on the floor. She stuffed the note back into the pouch and rose, walking to the door.

Slipping on her boots, she trudged towards the village. A route she had made so many times in all weathers at all times of the day, that her body didn’t need instruction as to where to go, ducking under that low branch next to that Elderbroom bush, stepping over the exposed root next to the
Sycamore tree ... Dawn was making its appearance as she trudged into the village, candle light flickering into life behind curtains as the early risers awoke to start their days.

Beth stopped at a particular door and banged on it. It was one of the best constructed houses in the village and belonged to Oreo and his wife Rosale. Oreo owned and ran the single inn in the village and was the closest thing the village had to a leader. Beth banged on the door again.

“Who is it?” A gruff male voice asked.

“It’s Beth.” Beth was surprised at how steady her voice sounded.

There was movement behind the stout door and the sound of bolts being drawn back.

“What’s the emergency Beth, who has ... Saints above child!! What has happened to you?! Are you okay?” Oreo looked down aghast at the blood covered girl dressed only in a pair of boots and a blood soaked shift that clung to the outline of slender hips and burgeoning breasts. He wouldn’t even have recognised the bloody horror stood in front as being Saoirse’s daughter had he not heard her voice first.

“Rosalee! Rosalee! I need you down here! Come in child, come in...”

There was a loud gasp from the stairs as Rosalee appeared, wrapping a thick shawl around a thick nightdress. “What’s happened my child?” She looked to her husband who shrugged.

Her voice dead, but clear and firm, as her mother had trained her to speak in times of stress. “It is important for an apothecary to speak clearly, calmly, in times of stress and panic,” her mother had always insisted, “so that confusion and miscommunication didn’t breed mistakes that could make a situation worse or result in the miss-treatment of a patient.” Or even worse, the wrong medication and possible death of a patient. “My mother is dead.”

Rosalee gasped, her hand coming up to her mouth. There were a few calamities that directly affected the survival of a village. Crop failure, the loss of the village well or nearest source of clean water, the loss of the village healer, they were at the top along with uncontrolled fire. “How?”

“Three men broke in, killed her.”

“Do you know where they are headed? Did they...” Oreo looked at his wife for help. It was sadly common, a fact of life this close to the frontier, that rape followed murder like night followed day. If there had been three of them then all three would have abused the poor girl. Her mother had probably died trying to stop the rape of her daughter, and they would have still satiated their lust on the girl as her mother’s corpse cooled nearby. If she hadn’t of struggled, then she would probably still be alive and the village would still have its healer. There was still Amalene, but she hadn’t been anywhere near as good as Saoirse had been. Oreo doubted that she ever would be. It was a terrible outcome for the village. His village. The three rapists would be long gone by now. A terrible tragedy for his village. He poured himself a whisky as his wife led Beth into the kitchen.

Rosalee motioned for the girl to sit on the wooden bench and not on one of the cushioned seats. She didn’t want the girls blood and the men’s seed to soak into her expensive cushions. She stirred the fire into life and poured some water into a kettle and hung it over the embers. Pouring some water into a pan she dipped a rag into the water and started cleaning the blood from Beth’s face. “Do you have any cuts, did they beat you hard?”

“No.”

The girls voice was clear, but flat, devoid of emotion. It must have been bad, she was still in shock. “Are you bleeding between your legs? Do you have pain in your stomach?”

“What? No! They didn’t rape me.”

“They didn’t?” Rosalee was surprised. Beth didn’t fully have a woman’s curves yet, but she was no child. Saoirse had tried her best to keep Beth from the attention and interest of the village boys, and men, dressing her up in clothes that hid her growing woman’s body, but it was a battle Saoirse wouldn’t have been able to have won for much longer. Nature couldn’t be denied. It had been popular topic of conversation amongst the gossiping women of the village, Saoirse’s attempt to hide her daughter from the gaze and attention of men. How that would have worked when Beth herself decided that she wanted the attention, was, had, Rosalee corrected herself, been something the gossips, Rosalee included, had been looking forward to “Were they local men?” Rosalee gently asked “Did you know them?” Whilst she doubted any local men would knowingly kill their healer, men did do the stupidest things when deep in their cups. Running the village inn had brought that point home hard on more than one occasion.

“No, they weren’t local.”

Rosalee felt relief at that news, then immediately felt guilty for doing so.

“Amalene paid them to do it.”

“She did what! That’s a terrible thing to say about someone! I know you’ve had a terrible shock, so I’ll let it pass, but don’t say such despicable things again Beth. I expect better from you. Your Moth...” Rosalee trailed off, realising how crass ’Your mother would be ashamed of you.’ sounded in light of the current situation.

“It’s not rumour. I saw Amalene talking to two men in an alleyway when I was walking back from Edgars hut the other night. She handed over this to one of them.” Beth held up the pouch and Rosalee took it, opening it up to look aside. She pulled out the bloodstained note and read it. Not many could read in the village and even less could write. Just a handful in the village had the ability and even less had the ability to do it well. With the passing of Saoirse, those who could do it well were currently in her house, it being herself, her husband and Beth. Of the others who had some semblance of ability, she knew them and their hand. This was definitely written by Amalene. The way she formed her letters, the needless flourishes to the letters.

“Is everything okay?” Oreo poked his head round the door.

“Get me a drink, would you please love.” Oreo nodded and slipped away. Rosalee poured some hot water from the kettle into the bowl and carried on removing the dried blood from Beth.

Oreo came back in with an amphora and three wooden cups. He put the cups out and filled the first half way up. “Keep going...” Rosalee said and Oreo started pouring again, stopping when the wooden up was full. He poured half into another cup and a quarter into the last which he handed to Beth. Rosalee took a large mouthful. Beth took a sip and winced at the strength of the alcohol.

Oreo didn’t touch his, instead, he placed a fingertip on a blood free spot of the note and slid it closer, spinning it round so he could read the words. “Looks like Amalene’s handwriting.” He said before reading the words.

“So what happened after she handed over the pouch?” Rosalee gently guided Beth back to the events of the previous evening.