Her mare, Hickory, nickered softly from the last stall on the left. Maris crooned gently to her, petting the soft black nose that rooted about the folds of her brilliant blue cape for the dried apple hidden therein. She offered the treat to Hickory, then knelt in the stall to look at the injured leg.

Yesterday’s poultice was long dried, and Maris peeled the strips of cloth away. Gingerly feeling the length of the mare’s foreleg, she noted Hickory’s start when she pressed on the muscle that had been strained a week earlier. The swelling from an abrasion against rough stone had eased, but the mare was still in too much pain to walk easily.

Before the warm bruisewort poultice she’d prepared cooled, Maris pressed the cloth that held the herb onto the tender spot on Hickory’s leg. The horse nickered softly and butted her nose against the top of her mistress’s head. Holding the herbal mass firmly in place, she wrapped clean strips of cloth around, binding it firmly to the injured leg.

She was just pulling to her feet when the sound of running footsteps alerted her.

“Lady!”

Maris froze her heart surging into her throat. Papa?

She whirled to see who was dashing into the stables with such haste.

“Milady, you must come at once. Thomas the Cooper’s wife—she’us strainin’ to deliver her babe an’ ’tain’t comin’. I done all I ken,” Widow Maggie pleaded in earnest. She wasn’t nearly as old as the lines on her face made her appear, and today they seemed even deeper and more stark than usual.

“Of course I’ll come.” Relief coursed through her, and Maris, always glad to have something with which to occupy her hands and mind, started out of the stables, brushing past the older woman.

Outside of the keep, a chill wind had kicked up and flurries of snow blew raucously about her cape and Widow Maggie’s three layers of wrap. Maris knew the way to Thomas the Cooper’s home, and trudged along as quickly as she could in the knee-deep snow.