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him closely, like everyone in the market.”
    This was natural. Lives and livelihoods depended solely on the lord. A good lord dispensed justice without favor. He ensured predictability and comfort for all, from the coarsest of peasants and farm workers to the reeve, marshal, and chancellor. On the other hand, anill-tempered lord meant misery. Constant fighting with neighboring lords took its toll on the resources of food and weapons and caused disruptions in daily life.
    Katherine followed Hawkwood’s advice, leaning on the cane as she surveyed his approach.
    It wasn’t just that he was handsome—for he certainly was—but there was something dignified in his manner, a quiet confidence that spoke far louder than any boisterous swagger. The people of Magnus had begun to fully trust in this new lord, and they treated him with respect as he walked through the crowd, stepping aside and bowing in deference, not fear.
    Katherine, too, trusted in the inherent goodness of Thomas; she often revisited the memory of when he had angrily stepped in to protect her from Geoffrey, the candle maker she had once served as if a slave. To Thomas, a stranger, she could have been seen as nothing more than a chattel with a face bound in bandages. Worthless to the rest of the world. But he had defended her as if she were a lady of the court.
    A friendship had grown from there, and she’d helped him in conquering Magnus. But Hawkwood had given instructions that she must disappear from his life, so she had, hoping someday it might be different between them.
    As Thomas reached the stall with the wood frame of herbs behind them, his guards stepped away, leaving him privacy to address Katherine and Hawkwood.
    “I would like yarrow,” Thomas said, pointing at the bunches of dried stalks with small clusters of yellow at the top. He spoke with a coldness that seemed at odds with the Thomas she had spent hours with in conversation. Had power changed him already? “All that you have.”
    Yarrow. To heal wounds and cure infections. Thomas must be looking ahead to the needs that would follow battle against the Scots.
    Hawkwood turned to take the bunches of dried yarrow from the wood frame, but Thomas stopped him with another question.
    “And seeds of henbane. Your poppy and mandrake, as well.”
    Hawkwood turned back and spoke to Thomas, hardly above a quiet whisper. “Is there someone you intend to bewitch?”

I s there someone you intend to bewitch?”
    Thomas didn’t answer, as something scratched at his side.
    He reached beneath his cloak for a tiny cage hanging from a loop of leather belted around his waist.
    With practiced movements of his fingers, he unlatched the cage without looking at it.
    The fact that he had a small cage on his body was not unusual. Fleas were a common nuisance. Women often wore a patch of fur near the neck to attract the fleas and keep them off their skin and out of their hair. Others resorted to a small cage with a piece of suet where roaming fleas would get stuck.
    A few days earlier, a local craftsman had built a slightly larger cage, and for Thomas, it held not suet, but a tame blind white mouse.
    He opened the cage door, and the mouse scooted onto his palm. Thomas lifted the mouse into the open and stroked its head with his index finger. He used his other hand to find grain in a side pocket.
    He gave a seed to the mouse. It perched and nibbled at the seed as Thomas answered the old man’s question.
    “My intentions are no concern of yours,” Thomas said. He kept his voice cold. For all he knew, an enemy stood in front of him. “I am not here to answer your questions, but you will answer mine.”
    “Of course, my lord,” the old man said, bowing and stepping slightly back.
    “First,” Thomas said, “have you seeds of henbane?”
    Henbane. Grind the seeds into powder, apply the powder with an ointment rubbed onto a man’s forearm. Hallucinations and visions would follow.
    Thomas knew this not because he was