Dry A Highlander by Rebecca Preston

Author:Rebecca Preston [Preston, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Delphine took her time walking back through the quiet town. The night was clear and cool, with stars winking down at her from the patchy but ever-present cloud cover, and she took the opportunity to walk with meditative purpose, clearing and calming her mind before she let herself reflect on what she’d learned that evening. Not a great deal, overall. A little about how the illness had taken effect, and its varying severity — some patients bedbound, some merely unwell — but a frustrating lack of concrete information about what it was. It certainly didn’t follow the patterns of any disease she could remember from her own time.

Well, she’d only had one evening to investigate. There would be days to come, she reminded herself firmly, plenty of time to learn more. For now, Father Bran was right. Rest would serve her better than a lot of pointless fretting about the disease, about Brother Kieran and the suspicions of witchcraft that were being whispered about among the sick villagers as well… she’d done her best, in her passing conversations with them, not to add any fuel to that fire, but she had her doubts about how effective that had been. The thing about fear was that outright denial was no remedy — if she was too strident in her claims that a witch wasn’t to blame, they’d simply suspect she had some reason to be in league with the witch. Paranoia was like that — irrational, frightening, hard to handle, and capable of spreading like wildfire under the right conditions.

She’d spoken with the publican, at least, a huge man who was as tall as he was round, who was already chafing about all his lost earnings from the outbreak. He’d been one of the patients who were faring better under the effects of the illness — he’d had fewer of the psychological symptoms, too, simply feeling shaky and nauseous for several days until a fit had seen him sent up to the church to recover. He’d given her his blessing to reside in the inn, telling her where the key to the front door was hidden and even to help herself to a drink if she wanted it.

It felt strange, reaching over the bar to fill a tankard with ale, but Delphine was thirsty, and the alcohol might go some way to calm her nerves. But a single swig made her wrinkle her nose with dismay. It had the same bitter, chalky taste that the ale up at the church had had. Was it the same batch, perhaps? Or was this simply the recipe favored here in the village? She’d had ale at the Keep that hadn’t been half so bitter, and she found herself longing for a trip back as she made her way up the dark stairs to claim a room for herself for the evening. She took one with a good-sized bed and settled in, pulling the blankets tight around her chin and shivering as she missed the cheerful fire that was usually set in her room for her back at Dunscaith.

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