Healer by Linda Windsor Page B

attention to Caden. “Were there wolf tracks?”
    “Nay, Father. No tracks of any kind. Our own were covered almost as we made them.”
    “Aye, the storm,” Tarlach recalled. “The storm none of us saw coming.”
    “As though hurled by vengeance,” someone observed.
    Tarlach began to rock back and forth, drawing his cloak closer over his round shoulders from the unseen storm pelting his conscience. “Magic. Her kind could do such things in olden days.”
    Caden started at the crackling voice of Rhianon’s maidservant.
    “Be sure, they still do, milord.”
    Keena, she was called—old, wizened, and filled with enough superstition for them all.
    “By all your gods, woman, must you ever lurk about?” he demanded.
    Keena bowed her head till all Caden could see was a wild tangle of salt-shot black hair. “I ever serve milady.” Her humble words sorely lacked backbone. “Where she is, there I be.”
    Caden counted his blessings that it was not always the case.
    “Regardless, old woman, none control the weather save nature itself.” Caden had yet to see a druid who could control the weather, the tales of old be dashed. Predict it, yes. He’d seen pious priests plying God with prayer for favorable weather and studying the heavens for His signs. The same signs that had spoken to the farmer and fisherman since time began. No magic. Just astute observation.
    Like as not, Caden knew Tarlach wrestled more with guilt and shame than fear. Guilt for betraying a foster brother over a woman and shame for attacking in the night like a coward and slaying the chieftain when he was still dazed with sleep. The only magic involved was that of love turned bad. It was Joanna’s rejection of him that had changed the proud Christian warrior Tarlach had once been, one who had fought shoulder to shoulder with his foster brother in battle after battle to unite the Briton kingdoms against the Saxon and Pict.
    As Caden glanced from his father to Rhianon, a glimmer of understanding flashed in Caden’s mind, slaying his disdain. Truly if Rhianon turned against him, if she were taken from him, Caden would lose his mind. His fists clenched against the thought. The burning rage that flashed within him told Caden there was no telling the atrocities he might commit to avenge her loss.
    With a loud moan, Tarlach grabbed his head, rocking. “Even now she stabs at my mind. Oh heartless vixen, be gone. Be gone!”
    “Sshh, Father.” Alyn gently coaxed Tarlach out of his chair and motioned for the steward to help him. “Caden?” the boy called over his shoulder in a plaintive tone.
    Caden understood his brother’s panic. Tarlach was given to violent headaches from time to time. The physician warned that a brain attack might finish the work of the one Tarlach experienced the night of the Witch’s End.
    Rhianon gathered her velvet skirts about her and rose. “Come, Keena,” she said to her nurse. “Let us prepare a headache powder for his lordship … something with a calmative as well.”
    Caden caught her arm. “Nay, milady, let your nurse see to it. Your place is at my side. Vychan,” he said, addressing Glenarden’s steward. Tall and lean with snow creeping into his light brown hair and beard, the man had been in Tarlach’s service for nigh on ten years, succeeding his father before him. “Go with Alyn to help my father to his quarters.”
    No stranger to Tarlach’s fits, Vychan nodded grimly. “Aye, milord. I’ll see to the Glenarden’s needs and his head pain,” he added with an unveiled look of distrust at Keena’s retreating figure. There was no doubt the steward thought the crone a witch. However, any woman stranger to a comb or brush was suspect in Vychan’s fastidious world.
    Caden shoved his end of the bench he shared with his wife away from the table and stood to command attention away from the rush of aid to Tarlach. “Milords and ladies, many of you have seen the O’Byrne like this before. This day he’s suffered