Healing

Alice placed her hands on my forehead. ‘First I’ll try to heal you,’ she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

I don’t know what I expected to happen. With a healer like Agnes Sowerbutts, the use of herbs and plant extracts was as important as the words and ritual. I knew that Alice administered such medicines herself and carried them in a leather pouch, but now she was using nothing more than her hands on my head. She didn’t even chant a spell.

‘It’s really difficult,’ she said after a while. ‘The poison lies deep within. It’s oozed into every part of your body. In places the damage is subtle; in others obvious and severe. I’m going to have to use more magic, but I’m scared of hurting you. There’s even a risk that the process could kill you,’ she warned.

‘Don’t let that concern you,’ I answered. ‘I would rather be dead than less than what I was.’

‘That’s your choice. But if you’re dead, who’ll retrieve the Fiend’s head?’

‘I cannot retrieve it in my present state, so what’s the difference?’ I said. ‘If I die, go and get Thomas Ward. Work together. Only you two will stand any chance against our enemies.’

I felt a slight tremor in Alice’s fingers, and then she pressed them into my skull and the world spun about me. My breathing gradually became faster, as did my heartbeat. I began to tremble all over. There were sharp pains in my stomach and chest, as if some invisible being were plunging a needle into my flesh over and over again.

Quickly the process reached a crisis. My heart was now beating so fast that the individual pulses of blood merged and it seemed to be vibrating continuously. I felt as if I were dying, but then a surge of warmth flowed out of Alice’s fingertips and I fell forward onto my face and momentarily lost consciousness.

I felt myself being pulled back up into a kneeling position, and opened my eyes.

‘How do you feel?’ Alice asked.

‘Weak,’ I said, aware that my heart was now beating slowly and steadily again. ‘Did you succeed?’

‘Yes, I’m certain of it.’ Alice gave a proud smile. ‘The last traces of the poison and its effects upon your body are gone.’

B9 C22