There and back again - The end of the Journey

CHAPTER 10 - THE WITCH HEALER.

               

Guy had been screaming with pain when he arrived at the cottage, whilst also raging at the loss of his sight. Cecile was able to calm him, telling him that she could alleviate his pain immediately, and that his blindness would doubtless be temporary.

    She said these things merely to placate him, but she was at least able to give him a calming potion so that he could sleep, and bandage his battered head. When she had taken over the workshop for her personal use, she had fashioned blinds for the windows and she had drawn them all upon his arrival, reasoning that if he quickly regained his sight, then the sunlight pouring through the windows would be too much for him after the dark world he now inhabited.

    When he opened his eyes, on the third morning of what he would later call, 'the darkness' it was to hear Cecile or the witch healer as she was known, moving quietly around him.

    The smell of gardenias was in the air, and Guy knew that this was the perfumed oil that she used every day. She bathed every morning or so it seemed to him, in his strange concept of time during his blindness.

    The tub she used was about two feet away from where he was lying in her bed and she did this he thought, not out of immodesty, but because she knew that he could not see her, though he knew that people of magic had very few inhibitions in their day to day lives.

    He knew that she would soon help him from the bed and wash his body, before drying him gently and dropping a clean linen nightshirt over his head. He had soon lost his sense of embarrassment at her actions in the nursing of him, because she was gentle and caring, speaking softly to him as she carried out the task.

    Her voice was melodious and soothing and her hands gentle throughout. When he requested it she would walk him slowly to the privy, waiting a distance away, until he called out to her to help him return to his bed. The evening  before, she had asked if she might massage him with soothing oils, to ease the pain of the red weals which now covered most of his body.

    This she did very slowly, after first presenting him with a drying cloth that he might cover his modesty before she removed his nightshirt. She started at his brow, moving slowly downwards until she reached his feet, then she said, "I shall look away as you turn over and cover yourself."

    Then she continued her gentle but firm massaging. He felt the great length of her hair as she leaned over him and her breath on his back.

    The fact that he could not see her meant that she was a complete enigma to him, and he took to pondering on her appearance, merely for something to do, and to remove from his thoughts the throbbing agony in his temples, though she seemed to know instinctively when his pain was great, coming instantly to his bedside with soothing balms and potions. He became so curious about her that he asked one morning if he might touch her, so that he could picture her in his mind, and she agreed, sitting close to him on the bed, lifting his hands to her face. He touched her hair first, feeling the great length of it and weighing it in his hands.

    "You have beautiful soft hair,"he said, "tell me the colour of it."

    "I am fair" she said, "and my eyes are green."

    She sat quietly as he touched her brows, eyelids and long lashes, running his forefinger along the ridge of her nose to her lips, which were soft and full. Then he placed his fingers on her ears, tracing around them and then along her jaw.

    "I can almost picture you," he said, "and it is of comfort to me, thank you."

    As she went about the task of discovering which particular poison was in his body, she spoke constantly to him, as she seemed to sense his feeling of isolation and was grieved for him.