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house wall. “He’s not a halfwit,” she said with a frown.
    Bess dropped her spindle, giving it a deft twirl. She and Maddie had been spinning thread for years. It was one of the most important activities women did, and they did it whenever and wherever they could.
    â€œHe doesn’t even know how to talk,” she retorted.
    â€œHe can talk,” countered Maddie. “He talked to me last night, but he was afraid someone would see him. The old man probably beats him when he talks.”
    â€œWhy would anyone do that?” Bess wanted to know, hauling on the strings to pull the sheep back from the house ridge. The small brown sheep always wanted to eat whatever was out of reach.
    â€œFather Mac said he probably doesn’t want the boy to sell his own carvings. Otherwise, he’d keep the goods for himself, and then the drunkard couldn’t afford his drink, and serve him right.”
    â€œYou should have seen the old man this morning with the cattle,” chuckled Bess. “Mad Angus was trotting back and forth just like he always does, and he was stumbling along after him and cursing until he was hoarse. I brought the children out to watch, and they had such fun they didn’t give me a bit of trouble the whole time.”
    â€œThe poor carver hasn’t opened his eyes all day,” Maddie said. “I wonder what he was doing out so early. The Travelers were staying in the bottom level of the castle, but Dad said he was on the path right by the houses.”
    â€œMaybe he saw that you were in danger,” suggested Bess. “He must have seen the Water Horse at your house and run out of the castle to fight it. It probably screamed because he stabbed it and saved your life.”
    Maddie was thrilled. “Do you really think he fought a monster for me? He couldn’t have killed it. They didn’t find the body.”
    â€œThen it crawled away to die,” declared Bess, with the air of one who has an answer for anything. “I’ll bet it crawled back into the loch and sank right to the bottom.”
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    The next morning was windy and cloudy. Maddie’s parents were both out in the fields, but Fair Sarah had told the girl to stay at home so she could keep an eye on the sick wood-carver. He tossed and turned in delirium, muttering strange sentences and crying out in pain. Maddie brought her work and sat by him, putting wet rags on his head, but the fever was so high that the rags dried out almost at once. When Fair Sarah came home to check on him, she couldn’t think what else to do. She was sure they were losing the fight.
    â€œDo you fetch Lady Mary,” she decided. “She’ll know something to help him.”
    If Lady Mary had been their real kin, the townspeople never would have minded the keeping of her, and even if she had acted like a normal old woman, they wouldn’t have minded her then. But she wouldn’t spin thread or watch the little ones while their parents did the work, and she didn’t cook dinner for them when they labored in the fields. They had to cook for her. She didn’t even walk among them if she could help it, and she never once came into the church. She just sat in her great, gloomy hall day and night and read books or worked on her embroidery.
    The only thing that Lady Mary did do for the townspeople was curing the sick and the injured, and Maddie tended a patch of healing herbs for her up on the hillside. But of all the strange things about Lady Mary, this was the strangest. She always seemed to know just how to cure an illness, and that was white witchcraft. If she could cure, she could probably harm, too. That was black witchcraft.
    Lady Mary stepped into the weaver’s house and knelt down by the settle to examine the carver. “His fever is very high,” she reported, “but there is no flush to his cheeks. A poison is locked deep inside his chest, drying up his blood. The element of