“He takes after my wife, as Aveece did.”

  Except for the cleft chin, I didn’t see much likeness to the king, either, whose face was stamped on our KIs, our coins.

  A resemblance to the master was evident in other ways, however. Prince Jerrold had pulled his shoulders back for the portrait, and his hands hid behind him as the master’s did right now. The young man gazed out of the painting as frankly as his grandfather now regarded me.

  I thought of Wormy, whose gaze was more confiding than pointed. “How does he come to be at court if his mother wanted him to live away from it?”

  “Because he wished to go, and I wouldn’t stop him. Aveece hadn’t foreseen that. Mistress Evie, he was made to be king. His judgment has always been careful, unlike his parents’. He has all their virtues and none of their faults. He may be a bit overserious.”

  An excellent trait in a monarch. And his face would look well on a coin.

  My stomach rumbled. I wanted the meat sticks in my shirt. “He isn’t headstrong, like his parents?”

  “He’s brave. There’s a difference.”

  An enormous difference, so why did he bring up brave when I said headstrong? Was the master less willing to recognize his grandson’s faults than he had been to see his daughter’s and son-in-law’s?

  “He’s athletic, sits a horse well . . .” The master recited all the virtues a paragon of a king would have. “He has shot birds that my old eyes couldn’t even see, but there they were, falling out of the sky.”

  My neck ached from nodding. Perhaps Prince Jerrold could be the man to dethrone Master Peter in my heart.

  But he’d be unlikely to see beyond the ogre, as my love had.

  Maybe he would. His grandfather had.

  Alas, the distance from not fearing someone to loving that person was long.

  The master said, “Whether he’s ever acknowledged as royal, I’d like him to be happier in marriage than his parents were.”

  I wasn’t stubborn, except about how to treat my patients. I’d be perfect!

  “He’s hoping to win a knighthood, unaware he’s already a baronet through me.” The master explained that he’d left his history, his title (Lord), and his name (Niall) behind when he’d moved here. “This close to the Fens,” he said, “people welcome new neighbors and don’t ask questions.”

  “What does Prince Jerrold believe about his parents?”

  The master put a finger over his lips. “Squire Jerrold. No one here knows.” He went on. “I told him the truth about his mother’s death—that she fell off her horse—and said his father died in a hunting accident. He thinks they were both magistrates who judged disputes with Ayortha.” The master’s smile was mischievous. “Imbert does judge when the disputes are serious.”

  I noticed he never said King Imbert.

  “Come! Follow me.”

  I thought the master the source of his daughter’s imperiousness. He led me back to the dining room and on to the kitchen, where I found out that the man whose gauntness had alarmed me was the master’s cook. In the two weeks since I’d seen him he had noticeably gained weight—and had become tempting.

  He stirred a smelly porridge in a clay pot on a brick stove—a new invention that even Wormy’s family didn’t have. What a wonder it would be in an apothecary. He smiled at me and bobbed a bow. “Thank you, Master Ogre. They called me Twig until you came. Now I’m making them call me Trunk.”

  I congratulated him. “Please call me Mistress Evie.”

  “Ah. I’m sorry for not guessing. Mistress Evie it is, Mistress Ogre.”

  The master had no guests but me at dinner. Mistress Dosia served me a quarter of a roast mutton and a slice for him, with a mucky mess of broad beans and onions. Though I could have eaten twice as much meat, my belly was comfortable when I finished. The master was comfortable, too, his melancholy barely there.

  “How does Squire Jerrold fare at court?” I asked.

  The master’s irritation reawakened. “He was doing well—made friends, won a tournament. He’s a squire because a young knight, Sir Stephan, took him on.”

  “But he’s no longer doing well?”

  “In his last letter he spoke of a new arrival at court, a hero who’d killed several ogres and had their heads to prove it, which are now displayed on pikes.”

  “Do you know how they died and how many were killed?”

  “Jerro didn’t mention how. He said half a dozen heads.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I TOLD MY RACING HEART it couldn’t be Master Peter. A skilled and lucky archer could pick off several ogres. Probably such a one was the hero.

  “I killed two of my band of six, and the rest are dead, too. That’s when I saved Udaak, the giant you heard about.” I told the master what had happened. “I stole the meat sticks for the band. Master Peter must have been eaten. I should have prevented it.”

  “A healer yet again.”

  That brought on my anger. “Healers don’t kill.”

  “Could Master Peter have survived somehow and taken the heads?”

  “He’d have had to sever them from the bodies, slow work with only a rapier. Then he’d have had to take them out of the Fens. He’d have been eaten himself.” I hated imagining it all. “Did Squire Jerrold mention the name of the hero?”

  The master frowned. “No, though he didn’t trust the fellow. He wrote, ‘My doubts will seem to arise out of envy, so I’ll keep them to myself.’ But in the next paragraph he added, ‘Grandfather, I am envious. I would emulate the deed if I knew how it had been accomplished.’” The master blushed. “After a day or two, I know each letter by heart. He’ll tell us more when he comes.”

  “May I stay until then?” Please don’t cast me out.

  “You can live here as long as you like. After sharing my secret, I feel lighter than I have in years, and I have you to thank. What’s more, the closest healer is thirty miles away.”

  I hugged his words. A home. And being a healer again. I really could send for Mother. Soon we could set up our own household. “How long will Squire Jerrold stay?”

  “His knight is kind enough to spare him for a month.” The master chuckled. “I’ll take an hour of the time to accustom him to the idea of you. Then I’m sure he’ll be happy to meet you.”

  He’d be extraordinary if he were happy.

  I didn’t have a full month left, but if we were often in each other’s company . . . If we esteemed each other . . . If I tingled with more than hunger and could tell the difference . . . If . . . If . . . Perhaps.

  Following dinner, the master and I talked all afternoon and late into the night. We ranged over many subjects: the monarchy, healing, farming, my childhood, and even his. I doubt he would have conversed so long with a girl my age, but my shape hid my youth.

  Afterward, I retired to the pigsty, where I wasted sleep time in wishing that Wormy had stayed longer. He’d hardly told me anything of home or Mother or himself.

  In the morning, I set up an apothecary in the master’s kitchen, with my dried herbs and a vial of purpline on a small table between the shiny copper sink and the marvelous stove, where I kept a kettle of ginger tea simmering.

  My first patient was Mistress Winnet, the kitchen wench, who consulted me at Trunk’s urging. She was the young girl who’d come to the drying shed on the night I’d taken the master hostage, and she suffered from a wart on the bottom of her foot. “I thought it was a stone in my shoe, but it’s a stone in my foot, Mistress Ogre.”

  “Mistress Evie.”

  “Mistress, if you don’t mind, what is your price for one foot?”

  As I spoke, I scrubbed my hands in the sink. “This foot is free. If the other gets a wart, too, we’ll decide between us.” I spread a paste of corn-cockle seeds and warm water on the spot and covered it with a thin bandage. “The wart will collapse in a few days.”

  “Thank you, Mistress Ogre.”

  I swallowed my anger.

  Trunk brought me the master’s weasel terrier. “Moozy has a desperate cough.” Trunk, holding the dog in his arms, looked desperate himself. “He’s stopped eating. He can’t stand up. Look at his ribs, Mistress Ogre.”

  “Mistress Evie.”

  The entire dog rattled with each cough. I put my hand on his chest and felt his laboring heart.

  “He isn’t afraid of you! Brave puppy!”

  “Beasts are smarter than that.”

  My elecampane would take a week to work, but Moozy could be dead by then. I shook a drop of purpline into a tablespoon of cream. Trunk opened the dog’s mouth and I poured in the concoction. Moozy breathed deeply.

  “Look at that!” Trunk brought meat scraps.

  The dog gobbled them, and my stomach rumbled so loud that Trunk fetched me some, too.

  The master’s groom suffered from dizziness, a serious affliction in someone often on a horse. I gave him a packet of hartshorn powder and told him to inhale it when he felt unsteady. He asked, and I told him, too, that there would be no charge.

  Just one person—Mistress Dosia—had anything I wanted, and I worried that she might be healthy, but at dusk she came forward, reeking of cleanliness and confessing to a boil behind her ear. She agreed to my fee. I washed my hands again. Ogre hands, and especially fingernails, seemed to be magnets for dirt and grime.

  While Trunk looked away, I had her remove her voluminous unbleached apron and the faded mulberry gown beneath it. Then I lanced the boil and cleaned the wound. When I finished, I gave her herbs to add to the baths she was to take thrice daily for a month. Finally, I held her gown up, near enough to me to get an idea of the fit but not so close it would absorb my odor.

  Mistress Dosia said, “It should do, Mistress Ogre.”

  “Mistress Evie.” I asked her to fetch the second gown and the shifts she’d agreed to pay me with as well. As soon as she left, I slipped out for another bath.

  The second gown turned out to be faded brown. I put it on and saved the mulberry for the next day, when Squire Jerrold was expected. The gown was tight in the shoulders and loose around the waist and hips, but it declared that I was female.

  When Mistress Dosia served me supper, she said, “It becomes you better than it ever did me, Mistress Ogre.”

  I nodded graciously. Lies infuriated me.

  In the morning, after my bath, I shaved and endured the sight of my face: mottled, pitiless, savage. Afterward, I proceeded to my neck, my ears, and the back of my hands. The ears required the light touch of a healer. I managed without gushing blood.

  Temporarily clean and temporarily shaved, I donned Mistress Dosia’s mulberry dress. Then, hoping that Squire Jerrold might not arrive until I was ready, I boiled rose hips and rosemary in water and let the brew cool while I mashed bergamot rind and added walnut oil. Everything mixed together gave me a perfume, which I dabbed behind my ears and in the hollow of my throat. I struggled not to gag.

  Trunk said, “You smell as sweet as a maiden, Mistress Ogre. Fancy that!”

  Half the morning was over by the time I joined the master in his library, which looked out on the road.

  He raised his eyebrows at the sight and smell of me but said nothing. I went to his shelves. The books about gardening didn’t interest me, but I was drawn to a novel, Daniel the Foe.

  The master said, when I opened the book, “I confess, Mistress Evie, the sight of you reading is no less fantastic than if my oak trees began to waltz.”

  I swallowed my irritation and wondered if I already needed another shave. My nose announced that my ogre smell had begun to encroach on the perfume. My stomach rumbled. I read:

  In childhood I was called Daniel the Friend, but, after the murder of my beloved, rage possessed me. I hungered for revenge.

  Promising.

  The master peered out the window. I continued reading. An hour later, I bathed again.

  Soapy—naked!—I heard hooves.

  I stifled my alarm. The visitor might not be Squire Jerrold, but if it was he, he’d go in the manor, not around it, and the master wanted time to introduce the idea of me. I massaged soap into my scalp. I’d shave again, too.

  What was that? I heard wood crack and splinter.

  Something heavy—a body?—thudded to the ground.

  “Mistress Evie! Come! Hurry!”

  Chapter Twenty

  I SURGED out of the pond, ran toward the house, reversed. The towel was too small! Back at the pond, I pulled on my shift, which clung wetly.

  The master cried, “Jerro! Wake up!”

  I rounded the building. A riderless horse stood between the house and the smashed gate. I burst through a knot of servants and crouched over the still form. The master had Squire Jerrold’s head in his lap.

  I leaned close. My sharp ogre ears heard life. “He breathes.”

  “He breathes!” the master echoed. Everyone else took up the words.

  Over them, I cried, “Look at his eyes!”

  Delicately, the master raised Squire Jerrold’s right eyelid.

  The brown eyes of his portrait had paled to a faint yellow. His gaze was unseeing. I checked his fingernails and saw the telltale bumps. Barley blight!

  I dashed into the house. In the kitchen, I poured half a cup of the ginger tea from the kettle and added three drops of purpline.

  If Squire Jerrold didn’t die in the next two minutes, I would cure him, and—if I could bury my grief for Master Peter—purpline might be our love potion. Who could resist the (ogre) maiden who’d saved his life?

  Back outside, the master held up his grandson’s head. I pinched open his mouth and dribbled in the tea, waited for him to swallow, tipped in more, gradually emptying the draft. “Three drops of purpline in the tea should be enough.”

  While we waited for the effects to be known (I was already confident), the master, Trunk, and I carried him into the parlor and laid him on a sofa. By the time we set him down, the wax had left his cheeks and his breathing had strengthened. His faint passed into an easy sleep.

  My stomach woke up. How handsome he was.

  The master said, “Trunk, tell Dosia to paint the double B.”

  Houses with barley blight warned visitors away with a two-letter sign on the door.

  Squire Jerrold’s mouth fell open, revealing a small gap between his front teeth, which were otherwise white and straight. The little imperfection added to his deliciousness. I could hardly catch my breath.

  I rushed into the kitchen and cut three ribs from a side of beef that Trunk had been planning to roast.

  Squire Jerrold may not have realized he was ill. Barley blight was stealthy, beginning mildly with a headache and tiredness. One accustomed to good health, as the master said Squire Jerrold was, might dismiss the first symptoms. The serious ones came in a rush. The squire might have felt merely indisposed until an hour ago and might even then have expected the spell to pass.

  Back in the parlor, a blanket had been tucked around him, and Trunk had returned. I thought of what should have occurred to me instantly. The master and I said the words in unison: “Did he catch it in Frell?”

  Trunk gasped.

  Or he might have been infected at an inn on his way here. If in Frell, many thousands would likely die. There had been a shortage of purpline, and unicorn hairs were rare.

  The master paced back and forth. “Imbert could die, could be dead by now.” He added, “I don’t know if he ever had it.”

  If the king died without naming an heir, Kyrria would be in turmoil.

  You couldn’t catch the blight twice. I’d never had it, and I had no idea if I was susceptible now. Elves and gnomes were immune. Ogres or half-human ogres might be, too. In any event, I had purpline.

  “I have to go to Frell.” I wouldn’t have time to discover if I could love Squire Jerrold and he could love me.

  If he’d caught the disease in Frell, I had to bring my purpline there. If he had contracted it on the way, I had to find the source and the other victims—probably a quicker process—treat them, and hasten back.

  If an arrow didn’t kill me before I had a chance to cure anyone.

  Barley blight varied from person to person. Illness could show itself in two days or in two weeks. Everyone’s fingernails bumped up, but their eyes didn’t always pale. Some lingered; others went quickly. A few survived even without medicine.

  But people who’d never had it always caught it. We didn’t know how—whether by touch or by breath or even by the speech or thoughts of the infected. And we didn’t know what started an epidemic, with everyone healthy on a Monday and people starting to die a few days later.

  “Trunk and I have had it,” the master said. “No one else has.”

  As soon as Squire Jerrold began to stir, I fled. Outside, I bathed yet again.

  When I entered the empty kitchen, I heard from two rooms away, “An ogre? An ogre!”

  “Lie back, Jerro. She saved your life.”

  I packed my things in my satchel, leaving out a vial of purpline for the master’s household. Then I began to shave.

  From the parlor, Trunk said, “Look how plump I’m growing, Master Jerrold. She said to drink sheep’s milk with ginger to keep from wasting away. I call myself Trunk now.”

  “She’s fattening you up!”

  The master spoke in such a quiet voice, even ogre ears couldn’t hear what he said next.

  “I drank what? Dragon urine?”

  I finished my face and moved the razor to an ear.

  From what Squire Jerrold went on to say when he stopped shouting, the blight must have begun in Frell, because he hadn’t stopped at any inns on his way here—had slept the six nights, as Master Peter had, on the road, wrapped in his cloak. “No one was ill when I left—no one I knew of.”

  This was good news. The blight had been in its early stages, so more people would still be alive when I got there. I began shaving my hands.

  I should have set out immediately. Squire Jerrold would recover without me. But I wanted to be presentable when I bid the master farewell and met the grandson.