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and a linctus to take every three
hours. But that I must mix. A few minutes only. Sit by the brazier, it grows
cold here in the evening.”
    She
thanked him, but did not sit. The array of mysterious containers fascinated
her. She continued to prowl and gaze, restless but silent, a feline presence at
his back as he selected from among his flasks cinquefoil and horehound, mint
and a trace of poppy, and measured them into a green glass bottle. Her hand, slender
and long-fingered, stroked along the jars with their Latin inscriptions.
    “You
need nothing for yourself?” he asked. “To ward off his infection?”
    “I
never take cold,” she said, with scorn for the weaknesses of Rémy of Pertuis
and all his kind.
    “Is
he a good master?” Cadfael asked directly.
    “He
feeds and clothes me,” she said promptly, proof against surprise.
    “No
more than that? He would owe that to his groom or his scullion. You, I hear,
are the prop of his reputation.”
    She
turned to face him as he filled his bottle to the neck with a honeyed syrup,
and stoppered it. Thus eye to eye she showed as experienced and illusionless,
not bruised but wary of bruises, and prepared to evade or return them at need;
and yet even younger than he had taken her to be, surely no more than eighteen.
    “He
is a very good poet and minstrel, never think other wise. What I know, he
taught me. What I had from God, yes, that is mine; but he showed me its use. If
there ever was a debt, that and food and clothing would still have paid it, but
there is none. He owes me nothing. The price for me he paid when he bought me.”
    He
turned to stare her in the face, and judge how literally she meant the words
she had chosen; and she smiled at him. “Bought, not hired. I am Rémy’s slave,
and better his by far than tied to the one he bought me from. Did you not know
it still goes on?”
    “Bishop
Wulstan preached against it years back,” said Cadfael, “and did his best to
shame it out of England, if not out of the world. But though he drove the
dealers into cover, yes, I know it still goes on. They trade out of Bristol.
Very quietly, but yes, it’s known. But that’s mainly a matter of shipping Welsh
slaves into Ireland, money seldom passes for humankind here.”
    “My
mother,” said the girl, “goes to prove the traffic is both ways. In a bad
season, with food short, her father sold her, one daughter too many to feed, to
a Bristol trader, who sold her again to the lord of a half-waste manor near
Gloucester. He used her as his bedmate till she died, but it was not in his bed
I was got. She knew how to keep the one by a man she liked, and how to be rid
of her master’s brood,” said the girl with ruthless simplicity. “But I was born
a slave. There’s no appeal.”
    “There
could be escape,” said Cadfael, though admitting difficulties.
    “Escape
to what? Another worse bondage? With Rémy at least I am not mauled, I am valued
after a fashion, I can sing, and play, if it’s another who calls the tune. I
own nothing, not even what I wear on my body. Where should I go? What should I
do? In whom should I trust? No, I am not a fool. Go I would, if I could see a
place for me anywhere, as I am. But risk being brought back, once having fled
him? That would be quite another servitude, harder by far than now. He would
want me chained. No, I can wait. Things can change,” she said, and shrugged
thin, straight shoulders, a litle wide and bony for a girl. “Rémy is not a bad
man, as men go. I have known worse. I can wait.”
    There
was good sense in that, considering her present circumstances. Her Provençal
master, apparently, made no demands on her body, and the use he made of her
voice provided her considerable pleasure. It is essentially pleasure to
exercise the gifts of God. He clothed, warmed and fed her. If she had no love
for him, she had no hate, either, she even conceded, very fairly, that his
teaching