Page 1 of Leila’s Legacy

1

January 1349

Brampton, England

The great pestilence had come.

Lady Leila Barrington, youngest daughter to the Earl of Werrick, had seen it in her visions for as long as she could remember. Lingering on the horizon like a patient beast stalking its prey, growing hungrier, stronger, and more desperate.

She’d told no one of the things she’d seen in her mind. Not when the visions were so horrible, not when she’d hoped so fervently that time might cause them to change.

But the future had not altered. It had pressed upon Leila throughout her life until the visions came daily, and she knew the beast was about to pounce upon the unsuspecting people of Christendom.

And it did.

Leila tied the handkerchief filled with herbs around her face. The sage, lavender and mint crinkled as she secured the handkerchief, the dried bits of leaves and stems poking at her cheeks. Once the combination of such scents had reminded her of all things clean; now, the scent recalled illness and death. Isla, the healer at Werrick Castle, had wanted to soak it all in heifer’s piss for good measure, but Leila had refused.

The older woman waited for her presently by the entrance to the castle with a similar handkerchief tied to her withered face, and a basket slung over either arm. She handed one to Leila as she approached, her sharp amber eyes narrowing from over the top of her makeshift mask.

“Are ye certain ye want to venture out today?” Isla asked.

It was the same question she asked every day.

Leila took the basket and replied as she always did. “There are people in need.”

The basket tipped precariously, but Leila quickly steadied it. The flagon of water weighted one side more heavily, but it was by far the most important of the items they carried with them. Through all of Isla’s and Leila’s knowledge of healing, neither had found a way to heal the illness. No one had.

There was no cure for the great pestilence.

Outside of the people who sustained a random injury or non-pestilence illness, Isla and Leila had become little more than easers of suffering, bringing water and comfort to the dying.

“Ye shouldna be going out there.” Even as she offered the protest, Isla turned toward the doorway to lead the way to the village. “Ye’re lady of the castle.”

“All the more reason to be there for my people.” Leila followed her outside where the otherwise sunny sky was hazy with brown-gray smoke. It stung at her eyes and its acrid odor penetrated the sweetness of the herbs about her face. Ash floated in the air like light snow and sifted silently around them.

The ground was sodden, the dirt churned into a sludge that was as slippery as it was thick. Even with conditions such as these, they left the horses safe in their stalls. It was more than the fear of them falling ill that encouraged the ladies to keep them stabled. It was the very real concern that a villager so eager to try to escape the grasp of the pestilence would steal their lord’s horse.

Sadly, a large number of people left their families. Wives were abandoned by husbands, aging parents were deserted by their grown children, mothers fled their sick children. The latter was the most difficult to happen upon. Dirty-faced children whose eyes were bright with fever, screaming in pain and fear, with no one to care for them. Those were the ones that most broke Leila’s heart.

Such was the terror of the great pestilence: it overtook even a mother’s love for her children. Extreme measures of escape, however, had been for naught, for the great mortality lay its shroud over the whole of Christendom.

There was no escape.

They neared the village with smoke rising from within, where pyres had been lit to burn the dead and their belongings.

“I dinna like ye doing this,” Isla muttered from beneath her mask of herbs.

Many did not like Leila going out into the danger of the pestilence to aid others. They did not understand what it meant to her, how it helped heal the hurt within.

For all of her life, she had felt very much outside her family. It was not only her looks that set her apart from her sisters, her dark hair or the narrowness of her face. The sense of not belonging even went beyond her visions.

She had never felt as though she was worthy of the love her family offered. How could she, when she knew the truth? She was not a child of Lord Werrick’s loins, but that of a marauding Graham reiver. The attack had nearly killed Lady Werrick, but it was Leila’s birth that finally snuffed out her life.

It was why Leila had turned to healing. In giving others life, she was repaying the one she had taken. It gave her purpose; an action she could perform in a situation she was otherwise helpless to change. As though her support for others might put the violence of her making to peace.

“You put yourself at risk every day too,” Leila reminded the old healer.

Isla snorted. “Death wants nothing to do with me, or I’d have been dead several dozen times over.”