The village of Sevenoaks, England
Late summer
The Year of Our Lord 1348
Chapter One
Elias moved slowly around the vine-covered wall of a small shed and looked toward the apothecary shop at the end of the market village of Sevenoaks. He set his steady gaze on the beautiful lass inside the shop, busy with a customer. The sight of her made him want to smile. He didn’t know her. He’d never met her before, but just looking at her made him feel good, refreshed, hopeful.
“Let us just go inside and speak to her, Eli!” his closest friend, Brother Simon of the Carmelite order, urged quietly. “I’m weary and the sun is hot on my head. I want to go to the inn and eat and rest. You did not say anything about visiting here, or about this lass when you asked me to come on this pilgrimage with you.”
Elias had stopped listening soon after the brother started speaking. Which was often.
“She is not divine, Eli.”
“How can ye be so sure, Simon?” Elias whispered without taking his eyes off her. “Does she not remind ye of an angel? Look at the kindness in her eyes, the genuine concern she shows to that woman. Look at her elegant hands, her graceful movements.”
Instead of going in and asking her for what he needed, Elias watched her from outside like a fool,Eli theLion Heartafraid to go talk to a lass. But she was unlike any woman he’d ever seen before.
In the midst of a forest of plants hanging all around her, she was slight of frame, not terribly tall, and a bit too thin. Her bosom was humble and her flaxen hair was straight, falling around her heart-shaped face. He wasn’t sure if it was her sapphire blue eyes, kind and compassionate toward her customer, or her smile, genuine and beguiling, tempting him to join her from his hiding place.
His eyes followed the course of her fingers to the customer’s shoulder where she gave a little squeeze.
“Can I help you, my lord?” A male’s voice shattered his thoughts of her. Elias looked toward the doorway of the shed and faced an old man carrying an armful of plants in their pots. His dark brown eyes looked around Elias to Simon. “Father?”
“Brother,” the bald brother corrected with a friendly smile on his scarred face. The longest scar went from his right ear to the top of his mouth and turned a bit pink when he smiled. Another, on the other side, was a bit deeper from his left temple to under the middle of his left eye. The last was smaller beneath his lower lip. “My companion here is—”
“I…” Elias stepped forward, finishing for himself. “I was just…ehm…d’ye need aid with those plants?” He reached for the pots and the old man let him take them.
“What is it you need?”
Many things. Elias wasn’t truly sure. When he had returned home from fighting in King David II’s army two years ago, he sought peace and quiet and became one of the seven shepherds of the MacPherson’s sheep. Each herded their flock and kept to themselves. Which was exactly what he wanted. His days were good but, in the night, he’d suffered many afflictions of war: nightmares, battles replaying over and over in his head, darkness, and gloom. Terrible things that he had faced head on and without fear now made him tremble and cry out in the night. Many mornings found him sprawled out on the floor because he couldn’t fit under the bed.
“I have trouble sleepin’,” Elias told him.
“Terrible trouble,” Simon added.
Elias shrugged one shoulder and turned to give Simon a little glare. He didn’t need all of England knowing that darkness and his dreams stripped him of his courage, and starved him of sleep.
“Go on, then.” The man pointed toward the apothecary shop. “Lily, will get you what you need.”
Lily.Elias almost repeated it out loud. It sounded beautiful in his head. He gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to go in yet. But he needed help. And this was the only village for fifty leagues with a market with an apothecary shop.
Presently though, he’d prefer fighting rather than walking intothisshop, to talk tothislass. What the hell was the matter with him? He’d spoken to lasses before. Many of them were more beautiful than this one. But Lily appeared as a soothing balm for his troubled, weary soul.
She’d stopped his heart when he first saw her just a little while ago. He’d been mesmerized by her grace and beauty. And the more he looked, the more stricken he became. He had seen much in the wars with France and England; violent, ugly things he tried to forget.
But he hadn’t seen much compassion, or any genuinely kind gazes. Not like hers. It drew him.
He stepped inside the shop behind Simon and looked around…at everything but her. It was a cozy place with hundreds of different sized, variously painted clay jars set up on dozens of shelves. Candles hung from chains and sat bunched together on small tables. Boxes and sacks were pushed up against walls and plants grew everywhere.
“Set the pots down at your feet,” the man directed from outside, busy with something else. “I will be there in a moment.” Was he her father?
Elias did as instructed, and then straightened once again. He was ready to leave. He would go and never look back—if he could just go now. His eyes found her standing behind a long table staring back at him.
“What can I do for you today?”
It felt as if he were swallowing his heart when she smiled up at him. Her voice was like satin against his ears. Looking into her eyes close up made him a little lightheaded. He counted three different shades of blue when the candlelight hit at a certain angle.