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“Go, make her take it back. Maybe then her son will recover.”
    Superstition; even God’s name could be used in its service. “I will do what I can,” Anne said, slowly, unwilling to call their beliefs foolish with so much at stake. “But the doctor cannot find out what is making Robbie sick. Can you tell me, was there anything at all that you know of, any herb that the mother and the boy may have shared?”
    The woman saw what must have seemed a trap, an intent to blame the gypsies for Robbie’s illness. First fear, then watchfulness clouded her eyes. Glances were exchanged between she and Florrie. They would say no more.
    “May I send my doctor to see Madam Kizzy?” Anne asked, desperation welling up in her stomach. “I only wish her to recover, you must believe me. Have I not been a friend to you all?”
    A hoot of distant laughter made them all look back to the woods. What was that? But the break had given the gypsies all the time they needed to think.
    The old man had ambled over and was the first to speak. “No, lady, no,” he said, clutching his tin cup. “We want none of your doctoring. If your doctor cannot help the Robbie child, then why should he look at our mother? No. We will give her the old medicine, for it is still best.”
    Anne knew they would not give an inch on this, not now at least. She glanced at Sanderson, who had been searching the encampment while she spoke to the mother and the other gypsies. He shook his head.
    “Accompany me to see my brother, Sanderson. There has been so much to do that I have only visited him once since my return, and wish to go see him now.”
    “Aye, milady,” the coachman said, with a glowering look back at the gypsies.
    She and Sanderson walked out of the shadowy glade into the sunshine, then set off down the dusty lane and through a meadow, the long grass glowing green in the mid-June sunshine. Twenty minutes later they approached Farfield Farm, a single-story cottage with mellow red brick and ragstone walls covered in climbing roses and ivy. It was encroached by several trees overgrowing it, and a low stone wall surrounded its garden and several fruit trees.
    Anne felt the familiar tug of anxiety mingled with sadness as they drew near. She always had mixed feelings about visiting her brother, Jamey. Though she cherished her only sibling, she still felt an awful weight of guilt, for she was the reason he had been banished from Harecross Hall many years before. She paused at the top of the rise overlooking the farm.
    From that vantage point she could see the oast houses of Wroth Farm in the distance, where most of the work was done after the hops harvest. An oast house was essentially the kiln for drying the freshly picked hops, a square tall building that was the actual kiln, with a long low addition for cooling and bagging the dried hops. Harecross and Wroth Farm had, combined, five oast houses built in the last several years to handle the burgeoning hops-growing industry. No, actually there were six oast houses, she recalled. The first one, built long before she was born, was a shoddy affair and poorly placed, so it was abandoned.
    But her mind returned to Jamey as they approached Farfield Farm. The cottage appeared small but was larger than it looked from the outside, because of modifications that had been done to fit it up for Jamey. There was an old coach house, unused for anything but storage nowadays, and a long, low stable beyond, where the horses and a carriage were kept. The stable ended in a lean-to where a couple of goats and several sheep were housed in bad weather.
    A large henhouse and vegetable garden made the farm almost self-sufficient. The gardens were mostly tended by Jamey, for he was a dedicated student of the natural world, with an understanding that equaled in depth most of the practitioners of the new specialty of agricultural science. His “servants”—the couple employed to keep Jamey happy and healthy, as well as busy and