Mist Over the Water Read Free Page A

that, in the main, nuns have a light-heartedness and an endearing jollity that make them laugh like children.
    I don’t think anyone at home misses me. If they do, I’m only a short walk away. I go back to see them all at least once every week but already they seem to have expanded to fill up the space I left. It makes me sad if I think about it so I try not to.
    Life with Edild is hard work but I enjoy it very much. Well, most of the time I do, although it’s only fair to say that there are moments of extreme discomfort. The worst thing is when I have to perform intimate examinations; when, in order to determine what’s wrong with a patient, I have to inspect bits of the human body – male as well as female – that decent folk normally keep well hidden. Edild is relentless, however, and deaf to my protests.
    ‘There is nothing to be ashamed of in a human body,’ she tells me sternly, ‘and you will never be a healer until you can control yourself sufficiently to look without embarrassment or false modesty at the most secret and private of its parts.’
    So I am compelled to take my turn with my aunt when someone comes creeping in, red in the face and trying to pretend they are anywhere but in a healer’s house. In fact it is the shame and the distress of the patient that usually helps me get over my diffidence. This poor soul is in pain , I tell myself, and the nature of the complaint means they probably haven’t had even the small comfort of talking it over with someone else . Then the compassion takes over and I just want to help them feel better.
    When I managed to tell Edild this, blushing and stammering as badly as my poor brother Haward, she looked at me coolly and said, ‘You may have the makings of a healer after all, Lassair.’
    Edild is not one to overly praise her apprentice.
    The other uncomfortable moments are when my aunt takes me down the strange, dark pathways that lead to the mysteries that lie at the heart of our calling. Only a little way down, for I am still fearful and she respects the fact that I’m doing my best. She builds up a good fire in the circle of hearth stones in the middle of her floor, and we sit cross-legged either side of the leaping flames. She mutters her incantations, inviting the guardian spirits to be present, and I listen intently, forming the words in my mind and trying to commit them to memory, for one day when Edild has gone to the ancestors I shall have to do this alone. Then she puts certain herbs on the fire – I’m only beginning to understand why she uses this herb or that for the immediate purpose – and we sit and breathe in the new aromas that twist and spiral up into the air. Sometimes she asks for guidance; when, for example, she is uncertain how best to help a patient. Sometimes she asks for strength, for herself or for me, if we have been drained by a difficult case. Sometimes she just wants to say thank you, for we both know full well that we could not do our work without help.
    ‘We are but instruments, Lassair,’ she tells me often. ‘The healing gift is bestowed by the spirits and they use us to do their work.’
    If I were ever inclined to get swollen-headed because I’m a healer, Edild is very good at knocking me down to size.
    The scariest times are when Hrype comes to sit around the fire with us. Hrype is my friend Sibert’s uncle, and he lives with Sibert and Sibert’s mother Froya, who was married to Hrype’s dead brother, Edmer. Sibert is a little older than me, and usually we are good friends. Two years ago I saved his life and he saved mine. It has forged a bond between us. Sometimes we like each other, sometimes not. We are not and, I think, could never be indifferent to each other.
    Sibert is a little odd; Hrype is very odd. He has dark blond hair that he wears rather long and his silvery eyes sometimes look as if they’re lit from within. He has high cheekbones and he looks like a king. When the three of us sit around the fire I