Free Heart's Magic by Flora Speer Page A

preparation. On the morning following her
conversation with Hugh, Mirielle was once again in her private room
working on a distillation when a knock came at the door. Without
waiting for her response the door swung open.
    “Come in, Robin,” Mirielle said, recognizing
the boy. With great care she set down the bottle she had just
finished filling and stoppered it. After wiping both the bottle and
her hands on a cloth she gave Robin her full attention. “I trust
you have not come to me with an injury or an illness. You look well
enough.”
    “No, my lady. I mean, yes, my lady.” Robin
would have gone to his knees before her had Mirielle not caught his
shoulders to keep him on his feet. The boy’s cheeks turned bright
pink at her touch and he stammered as he spoke. “It’s not me, my—my
lady. It—it’s the blacksmith.”
    “He has not burnt his hand again?”
    “No, Lady Mirielle. It’s his forearm, and
Ewain says ‘tis not serious. He would think nothing of it save that
you have warned him about burns festering. He asks if you could
send a bit of the same ointment you gave him to use last time?”
    “It is one of the preparations I am making
this morning, but the fresh batch is not quite ready. You may tell
Ewain I will send a pot of ointment shortly, or I’ll carry it to
him myself. Assure him he will not have long to wait. In the
meantime, he can put clear, cold water on the burn.”
    “I will tell him. Thank you, my lady.” With a
wide-eyed look around at the bunches and jars of herbs and the
glass vessels, Robin left.
    Minn, who had opened one languid golden eye
when the door opened and had lifted her head at Robin’s familiar
voice, snuggled down again in her favorite warm spot near the
furnace and went back to sleep.
    Mirielle also went back to what she had been
doing before Robin’s interruption. It was not often that the
superstitious castle folk knocked on the door of her workroom. Most
preferred to stop her while she went about her daily chores
elsewhere to ask for the herbal medicines she provided. Only Robin,
his mother Donada, Ewain the blacksmith, and one or two others were
brave enough to come directly to the workroom when they needed
help. Therefore, when a new knock sounded at the door Mirielle at
first assumed that Robin had forgotten part of the message for the
blacksmith and had returned to ask her to repeat it. With her back
to the door while she stirred the bowl of burn ointment, she called
out to the boy.
    “Come in again, Robin. What have you
forgotten? No matter, if you can delay a few minutes longer, I will
give you the ointment to take with you. It is almost ready.”
    “If you mean the lad from the stable, the one
who has it in him to be far more than a stableboy, he has run off
to the bailey. We passed him on our way.”
    “Master Hugh.” Mirielle turned to greet him.
She nearly dropped the bowl she was holding when she saw that Giles
was with him. Her heart began to pound. Giles’s eyes were on her
face with a look that said he was recalling how close he had been
to kissing her on the previous evening. It took some effort to
remember her manners. “Good day to you both.”
    “We have interrupted you.” Hugh crossed the
room to see what she was doing. Mirielle explained about the
blacksmith’s injury.
    “If you like, I will take the ointment to
him,” Hugh offered. “It will serve as an introduction, since
wherever I go I try to converse with others who also work with
metals.”
    “I imagined you were here to tell me more
about the wonderful things you have learned on your travels,”
Mirielle said, to hide her dismay at the thought of being left
alone with Giles.
    “I only came to guide my friend to your
door,” Hugh replied. “Thanks to this cold and rainy day, the wound
that forced us to stop here at Wroxley is even more painful this
morning and it will require treatment. But it is not necessary for
me to stay if there is an errand I can do for you. We two can