Forbidden Gifts (closed)

She'd been roused from her midday meditations by her great aunt Marigold's voice, "Rowena, purify the medium sized cauldron and begin preparations for a pain stilling tea brew! I've been scrying, a visitor this way comes soon and he'll be needing some...hurry, it's important you do it this time, Treasure, it requires your touch!"

"Yes, Zia, right away!" She called back, removing her vestments and heading to the washbasin to cleanse herself with collected rainwater blessed by moonlight as she'd been taught to do before beginning a spell, potion, or magical ritual, reciting The Witch's Rede as she moved in careful rehearsed movements. She'd been taught her family and coven's ways well and would not disappoint when one day the torch of serving those mundane folk who required magic would be passed down to her. Already, she did most of the work herself now and the older women merely nodded in approval or instructed when a tip would help.

As Marigold had predicted a visitor was at their door within the hour. Rowena was caught up in mixing the potion with the tea leaves as the old women let him inside out of the rain. His voice sounded kind but proud. His accent, not local.

Still focused on the task at hand, she finished the last step, singing the necessary chant, before turning to redress in her soft purple robe and join the others with an apologetic smile. " Hello, my apologies for tardiness. I was working on your brew." She explained.

Nonna smiled and spoke up, bringing Rowena closer to meet the visitor. "My granddaughter, Rowena. She's learning the craft from us, been a disciple at our ankles since she was but three, this one. A grand student, a fantastic young witch. Rowena, and your name is?" The old woman watched their handsome guest with expectation. Rowena' s green eyes met his with keen curiosity. What was it this one required of the reclusive witches?

Many came to them for healing and advice but usually it was familiar folk, the same dozen or so families trusted with their hidden locations for generations. This man was unknown to them. Rowena could feel her grandmother's nervousness...After all, she'd lost her daughter, and an older sister, and mother to witch burning in her lifetime. She had every reason to be cautious but she couldn't be ungenerous, that wasn't in her nature.

Cesere di Gamba, the Marchese di Gamba y Gianni, entered the deep woods bower, and bowed low at the waist, his left sweeping his leather wide brimmed hat topped with a green pheasant feather low to the floor, his right hand resting on the ornate hilt of the long, straight bladed sabre on his left hip. His outfit, mostly of dark suede and black leather, spoke of wealth, very old wealth. There was a silk patch, embroidered with a black griffin rampant on a field of crimson, that occupied a space over his heart. Two matching long barreled pistols, bearing the stamp of one of the finest gunsmiths of Venice, were holstered securely to his wide waist and sword belt. A long bladed, needle pointed dirk at the small of his back, hidden by the heavy fur trimmed traveler's cape completed his outfit. Damp mud speckled his knee high leather boots, and he smelled of musky horse sweat from his mount that pawed the loamy dirt outside the door of the bower.

"Signoras," he began formally after rising, both his hands clutching his hat to his chest. "Thank you for...allowing me entry." Like many nobles of the time his head was clean shaven, but his face carried a goatee, flecked with grey, and dark stubble. The circles under his eyes spoke of many recent sleepless nights.

"My mother, the dowager Marchesa di Gamba, has sent me to appeal to you on behalf of my father. The past year has found him ill, an illness in his bowels that causes him pain night and day. This flux causes him to pass blood in almost all his ... toilets," the man paused, the subject clearly uncomfortable to him. "The finest physicians in all of Italy have attended him. Even his Holiness has sent his own Doctore, to no avail. They say he has a growth, a malignancy in his guts that will kill him before the year is finished."

The man paused again, his green eyes finally coming up to look around the bower, pausing briefly on Rowana and her vestments. "I know of the arrangement in the past, of the protections that my family in ancient times extended to you and your blood. I am deeply sorry that we have allowed that arrangement to lapse, and that you are not beholding to me or my family in the least, or might even bear my family a grudge." He reached into his leather and suede tunic and proffered a pouch that had the heavy chinking sound of gold, "This is five hundred weighed ducats of gold. I offer this to you...and," he bowed again, "a renewal of my families promise of protection for you and yours. My father," he choked on the words, "his pain. I know you occasionally help the women of villages with their births, and other...illnesses. My father's pain is such that he howls at night, his torments are...unbearable. I humbly ask you to help him ease his pain."

Rowena looked to her nonna who nodded and pulled out a chair, "Please, sit a moment. Wait out this nasty storm. Rowena can explain the dosing of the tea she made. I'll put on a pot of normal tea for us to drink together while we visit." She instructed, her practiced, gnarly fingers busy with that very task as she spoke of it.

Marigold sat at the table as well, looking only slightly younger than the old grandmother, her long, wild hair hung loose, past her waist, it was a faded red only at the very ends, the rest was silvery white. None of them had their hair up. They tried to be as natural as possible. Marigold smiled as she added, "Only ours is mixed with rainwater so you'll find the taste much sweeter, purer."

Rowena took her place across the table from the stranger. She opened the sack of potion mixed finely with tea leaves and explained the exact amount necessary per cup of tea. "Exactly this much per cup, fill to the rim with hot water. You may mix a sweetening agent if he finds it bitter but do not pollute too much or the pain will not be stilled. Too much of this and he'll be at risk to die in his sleep. Too little and he'll still be in much pain. Give me your hand. You must feel the exact dosage I'm telling you." She said, reaching for his hand and forcing him to try picking up an exact "pinch" five times before she let him have his hand back.

By then, Nonna had begun pouring normal tea in teacups and serving them. Rowena tied the sack shut, then placed it in a nondescript carved wood box she'd whittled for such packages. Inside the lid were runes of protection. She handed the box to the man, "He should not have more than two cups of this tea per day, so perhaps spread them out, one mid day, one before night sleep. This amount should last about ninety doses, ninety cups of tea. You may return for more next month but no sooner or we'll think you're using our magic for ill gains and unintended purposes. I may change the contents of the tea to something you would not enjoy bearing responsibility for if that were to happen. Do you understand?" She asked, letting his imagination fill in the blanks behind her warning. She handed him the box and took her cup of tea.

"Grazie Nonna." She murmured before raising the carved teacup to her plump, rose coloured lips. As he took his tea and his eyes watched her intently she felt no sense of duty to dismissively look away like so many women in town might do. Her sense of propriety was nothing like the modern Christian values and rules. Her ways were the old ways, the oldest manners, and they did not submit women to lower status than men nor was intelligence seen as unfeminine or undesirable in a young woman of her kind. She spoke to him as an equal because in her world she was, more than that, in her world men did women's bidding since their respect was to a woman's connections to the moon, life giving, and The Goddess at times even more generous to humankind than The God she occasionally joined forces with. Rowena looked their guest in the eyes now, her attractiveness undeniable as she'd read his body language clearly...He seemed to be trying to hide his reactions but she did appear to affect him just by being in his presence and being so much herself.

Cesere accepted the cup of tea and gingerly sipped at it. Every fiber of his being screamed that just being in the presence of these three women was a sin. Father Antonio, the Bishop and chief Prior of the marche's abbey, would be apoplectic, demanding that these women stand trial. That would mean inquisitors, those priest's who dressed in jet black robes. They left the stench of death and burning where ever they went. Cesere had seen women...and men...burned alive for one heresy or another, always maimed and marked by torture before they screamed what was left of their lives away in the consuming flames. The last thing he wanted was inquisitors roaming his land, nosing about, causing uproar, bringing more Papal interference into his families affairs. He looked at the box with the pain relieving ingredients.

"Too much brings death, you say? Perphaps that would be better. He suffers like the damned. Wounded soliders, those beyond help, are given the Colpo di Grazia, the final stroke to end their suffering. But, in this case, because he is ill and not wounded, he is expected to suffer. That is what the priests says, that my father's reward in heaven will be greater due to his suffering now. When a horse breaks a leg, or a bitch dog becomes diseased we do not hesitate, a quick thrust with a sharp blade, the gush of blood, and the animal suffers no more. But my noble father is expected to end his days moaning, screaming, writhing with pain in own bloody dung!" The last was punctuated by slamming his leather clad fist down on the table. Then he blinked, he looked at the three women watching him, then at the tea in his other hand that tasted like mulberries fresh from the picking. "Apologies, Singoras, I seem to have lost my composure." Cesere looked away, embarrassed, and he put the delicate cup of tea down on the table.

"Signoras, my father is everything to me. He has guided me, taught me, and even when he beat me for insolence or because I committed some wrong, I knew that he loved me and only wanted the best for me. Now, in his most trying time, how can I deny what is best for him?" He stood, "I most humbly request that one of you women come and minister to my father, and help him through these last moments. I will gladly pay what ever you ask...and you will have my protection."

Marigold was the first to speak. She shook her head and admitted, "I cannot travel, son. I am much too old for far journies or venturing too far from my comfortable routines. My rheumatic limbs would become too much trouble and by the time we arrived at his home I fear I'd be as weakened and sick as your dear papa. My apologies."

Next Nonna spoke, "My eyes grow too weak to do the measuring these days. Mostly, now we instruct young Rowena and she does all the difficult work. She may go with you and do this job if she wishes but the choice is hers. And, if anything befalls my grandchild I will seek you out and curse the next seven generations of your bloodline even after I've taken your beautiful eyes from your skull to keep as my own. I am kind but not foolish. My last of kin shall be your charge to protect with your own life. Is this understandable? I remember your grandmother's whispers and what her downcast eyes meant for the fate of my mother and sister...Your family has a debt to repay ours. A wise woman forgives but never forgets."

Rowena was mortified by her grandmother's harsh words but understood this was very important to her. If anything bad should happen to her it would drive the old woman utterly mad. Nothing is more dangerous than a crazed mad witch seeking vengeance. Rowena considered this matter carefully, taking her time as she drank her tea. "I've not been beyond the farming villages on the fringe of town in well over a decade. I was six years old the last time I saw the town centre...It's both an exciting and frightening prospect. I would not fit in very well...This puts me in grave danger. I'm unaccustomed to the ways of the Christian folk and the wealthy...How can you ensure I'd not be walking into my own grave?"

Cesere di Gamba scowled slightly at the older woman's words. Wise Woman or no he was the Marchese di Gamba, and who was she to question or threaten him in such a way? But then he was the supplicant in their house, asking for their help for his father, and his mother told him that they were to be treated with respect, and not as empty skulled peasants fornicating with sheep. "As you say, Signora, my family owes your blood a debt of honor," he drew the needle pointed dirk from its sheath on at the small of his back, its razor edge tapering to its lethal point. "I know the stories, Signora, they are still whispered late in the night around soldier's fires and sung about by traveling minstrels, and in the village wine houses despite the edicts of the Church. In the festivals marking the seasons if one watches closely the Old Ways are still there. My mother and grandmother whispered of the Strega Women who worshiped old gods in the light of the full moon and ran naked and wild through the deep forest in homage of the 'Horned God'. And they taught me this of those old ways," he slipped the razor honed edge of the knife across the palm of his hand, opening a cut that instantly bled red. He held his lacerated palm up for the women to see before squeezing his fist tight causing the blood to well between his fingers and drip down onto their table. "I, Cesere di Gamba, Marchese di Gamba, swear by my blood that the debt owed by my family will be paid in full. Futher, I swear by my honor, and all the honor of my noble ancestors that your daughter will be safe guarded and kept from harm. So I swear by my blood that is ancient and goes back to before Rome stood on her seven hills." He clenched his fist tighter, causing the large drops of blood to trickle in a steady stream. "Is this vow to your liking, Wise Woman?" his voice tinged with a slight amount of steel.

The two old women looked at each other and nodded solemnly.

Rowena watched the blood flow and mentally calculated what she might need to pack for such a journey. "Perhaps, if we say I'm foreign, a widow...Yes, this would arouse less suspicion. I can pretend I don't know much Italian, that my husband was a doctor and I aided him but that he died in transit and now I am left alone and frightened, having to fend for myself in a foreign land...Perhaps, you saw me robbed and nearly killed at the port and when you understood who I was and my background took pity up on me but also saw an opportunity to hire on a nurse for your father. I can search my mother's belongings for appropriate, albeit, slightly out of fashion, clothing for this endeavour." suggested Rowena.

(Bump)