“Together with the instruments and clothes and such, they’ll fetch a heavy penny,” I agreed. “Split two ways, it’ll make a fine dowry,” I said firmly.
He met my eyes, nodded slowly in understanding. “That it will.”
“What about the things they stole from us?” a stout man in an apron protested. “They smashed up my place and stole two barrels of my best ale!”
“Do you have any daughters?” I asked him calmly. The sudden, stricken look on his face told me he did. I met his eye, held it. “Then I think you came away from this pretty well.”
The mayor finally noticed Jason clutching his broken arm. “What happened to you?”
Jason looked at his feet, and Seth spoke up for him, “He said some things he shouldn’t.”
The mayor looked around and saw that getting more of an answer would involve an ordeal. He shrugged and let it go.
“I could splint it for you,” I said easily.
“No!” Jason said too quickly, then backpedaled. “I’d rather go to Gran.”
I gave a sideways look to the mayor. “Gran?”
He gave a fond smile. “When we scrape our knees Gran patches us back up again.”
“Would Bil be there?” I asked. “The man with the crushed leg?”
He nodded. “She won’t let him out of her sight for another span of days if I know her.”
“I’ll walk you over,” I said to the sweating boy who was carefully cradling his arm. “I’d like to watch her work.”
As far from civilization as we were, I expected Gran to be a hunched old woman who treated her patients with leeches and wood alcohol.
That opinion changed when I saw the inside of her house. Her walls were covered with bundles of dry herbs and shelves lined with small, carefully labeled bottles. There was a small desk with three heavy leather books on it. One of them lay open, and I recognized it as
Gran wasn’t as old as I’d thought she’d be, though she did have her share of grey hair. She wasn’t hunched either, and actually stood taller than me, with broad shoulders and a round, smiling face.
She swung a copper kettle over the fire, humming to herself. Then she brought out a pair of shears and sat Jason down, prodding his arm gently. Pale and sweating, the boy kept up a constant stream of nervous chatter while she methodically cut his shirt away. In the space of a few minutes, without her even asking, he’d given her an accurate if somewhat disjointed version of Ell and Krin’s homecoming.
“It’s a nice clean break,” she said at last, interrupting him. “How’d it happen?”
Jason’s wild eyes darted to me, then away. “Nothin’,” he said quickly. Then realized he hadn’t answered the question. “I mean . . .”
“I broke it,” I said. “Figured the least I could do was come along and see if there’s anything I could do to help set it right again.”
Gran looked back at me. “Have you dealt with this sort of thing before?”
“I’ve studied medicine at the University,” I said.
She shrugged. “Then I guess you can hold the splints while I wrap ’em. I have a girl who helps me, but she run off when she heard the commotion up the street.”
Jason eyed me nervously as I held the wood tight to his arm, but it took Gran less than three minutes to bind up the splint with an air of bored competence. Watching her work, I decided she was worth more than half the students I could name in the Medica.
After we’d finished she looked down at Jason. “You’re lucky,” she said. “It didn’t need to be set. You hold off using it for a month, it should heal up just fine.”
Jason left as quickly as he was able, and after a small amount of persuasion Gran let me see Bil, who was laid up in her back room.
If Jason’s arm was a clean break, then Bil’s was messy as a break can be. Both the bones in his lower leg had broken in several places. I couldn’t see under the bandages, but his leg was hugely swollen. The skin above the bandages was bruised and mottled, stretched as tight as an overstuffed sausage.
Bil was pale but alert, and it looked like he would probably keep the leg. How much use it would be was another matter. He might come away with nothing more than a heavy limp, but I wouldn’t bet on him ever running again.
“What sort of folk shoot a man’s horse?” he asked indignantly, his face covered in a sheen of sweat. “It ain’t right.”
It had been his own horse, of course. And this wasn’t the sort of town where folk had horses to spare. Bil was a young man with a new wife and his own small farm, and he might never walk again because he’d tried to do the right thing. It hurt to think about.
Gran gave him two spoonfuls of something from a brown bottle, and it dragged his eyes shut. She ushered us out of the room and closed the door behind her.
“Did the bone break the skin?” I asked once the door was closed.
She nodded as she put the bottle back on the shelf.
“What have you been using to keep it from going septic?”
“Sour, you mean?” she asked. “Ramsburr.”
“Really?” I asked. “Not arrowroot?”
“Arrowroot,” she snorted as she added wood to the fire and swung the now-steaming kettle off of it. “You ever tried to keep something from going sour with arrowroot?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Let me save you the trouble of killing someone, then.” She brought out a pair of wooden cups. “Arrowroot is useless. You can eat it if you like, but that’s about it.”
“But a paste of arrowroot and bessamy is supposed to be ideal for this.”
“Bessamy might be worth half a damn,” she admitted. “But ramsburr is better. I’d rather have some redblade, but we can’t always have what we want. A paste of motherleaf and ramsburr is what I use, and you can see he’s doing just fine. Arrowroot is easy for folk to find, and it pulps smooth, but it hain’t got any worthwhile properties.”
She shook her head. “Arrowroot and camphor. Arrowroot and bessamy. Arrowroot and saltbine. Arrowroot hain’t a palliative of any sort. It’s just good at carrying around what works.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then looked around her house, at her heavily annotated copy of
Gran poured hot water from the kettle into two cups. “Sit yourself down for a bit,” she said. “You look like you’re on your last leg.”
I looked longingly at the chair. “I should probably be getting back,” I said.
“You’ve got time for a cup,” she said, taking my arm and setting me firmly into the chair. “And a quick bite. You’re pale as a dry bone, and I have a bit of sweet pudding here that hain’t got anybody to give it a home.”
I tried to remember if I’d eaten any lunch today. I remembered feeding the girls. . . . “I don’t want to put you to any more trouble,” I said. “I’ve already made more work for you.”
“About time somebody broke that boy’s arm,” she said conversationally. “Has a mouth on him like you wouldn’t believe.” She handed me one of the wooden cups. “Drink that down and I’ll get you some of that pudding.”
The steam coming off the cup smelled wonderful. “What’s in it?” I asked.
“Rosehip. And some apple brandy I still up my own self.” She gave a wide smile that crinkled the edges of her eyes. “If you like, I can put in some arrowroot, too.”
I smiled and sipped. The warmth of it spread through my chest, and I felt myself relax a bit. Which was odd, as I hadn’t realized I’d been tense before.
Gran bustled about a bit before setting two plates on the table and easing herself down into a nearby chair.
“You really kill those folk?” she asked plainly. There wasn’t any accusation in her voice. It was just a question.
