But Frau Geruscha’s brows lowered even more, telling her she didn’t believe her.
“It’s probably the weather, so cloudy of late…” Rose stopped, not wishing to tell a lie. How could she explain that her future looked as bleak as it ever had? Even bleaker, now that the whole region thought of her as the spurned former mistress of Lord Rupert. At least Lord Hamlin knew the truth. But she tried hard not to think about Lord Hamlin—and failed constantly.
Rose shrugged and turned to throw some more wood on the fire. She tried again. “Hildy rarely visits me anymore.” Gunther had been given the job as the duke’s illuminator that he’d been promised, his murder sentence having been forgiven and forgotten, apparently. “She spends her time making sure the house and meals are perfect for him. As she should.”
Now she sounded self-pitying. Rose grabbed the fire poker and viciously jabbed it into the red hot embers in the fireplace, sending up a torrent of sparks.
Frau Geruscha stepped closer. She placed her hand on Rose’s shoulder. “Some day you’ll be married too.”
Rose whirled around, dislodging her mistress’s hand. The surprised look on Frau Geruscha’s face only increased Rose’s wrung-out feeling. “How can you say that? How do you know? No one would marry me. I’m your apprentice. Who wants to marry the next town healer?”
Why had she said that?
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” Thank goodness Frau Geruscha didn’t seem offended. “I suppose I’m only dreading winter. People get sick and die when it starts to get cold.” The thought of winter was a heavy weight in her chest. Winter meant sickness and death, bad smells, groans, and the tolling of cathedral bells for someone else who had succumbed to cold weather’s cruelty. She would be by Frau Geruscha’s side, witnessing the diseases that would steal the life from the human victims of Hagenheim. Always she and the rest of the world feared the Great Pestilence that had decimated towns and countryside alike a few years before Rose was born. Hardly a family had been spared, and only God knew how many would die if it came again. A milder outbreak had happened when Rose was a child. She shuddered, remembering the hideous black buboes under the sick people’s arms—the sign that death was imminent.
Rose’s stomach twisted at being only a whisper away from admitting…she wasn’t sure she would ever be a good healer.
“I pray I will become like you, Frau Geruscha.”
“You don’t have to be like me, Rose. God makes us all different, with our own talents.”
“Then what’s my talent?” I don’t have one. Rose bit her lip. Why couldn’t she just be quiet? The last thing she wanted was for her mistress to send her away.
“You have many talents. I know winter can be hard, especially when people die, but God will bring our town through another year. He always does.”
Frau Geruscha was mature and unaffected by her own pity for the victims. Rose wanted to believe she could shrug off the deaths she would face this winter, but she dreaded her own compassion, the way it tightened around her insides like a giant hand, squeezing and paralyzing her.
Her mistress patted her on the back. “You’ll feel better when you have more confidence in your abilities.”
Rose tried to smile back. She nodded, hoping Frau Geruscha would believe she had been placated. Then Rose went into the storeroom to sort some dried herbs. Anything to keep busy.
It wasn’t only winter and her lack of confidence that had been weighing on Rose, of course. Lord Hamlin’s wedding was coming soon, just before Christmas, to Lady Salomea. What was she like? Was she warm or haughty? Kind or ruthless? Would their personalities be well-suited to each other, or would she make him miserable? Lord Hamlin would have to marry her no matter what she was like. It was his duty, and he would never shirk it. The people of the region respected him for that, even were dependent on it. After all, the marriage would go far toward assuring their safety.
Now instead of seeing Lord Rupert nearly every morning in the chapel at prime, she saw Lord Hamlin. She found herself living for the sight of him, packing all her memories of him carefully away to be revisited later. He knelt near the altar at the front of the chapel, the stained-glass window painting him in reds and blues and golden yellows. Often she stayed after everyone had left to ask forgiveness for having her attention on Lord Hamlin rather than the Lord of heaven.