'A cage?' said Holger. 'For you?' He shifted his feet and rearranged the fire's ember with the end of a stick. Birgitta pushed her knuckles into her mouth and sobbed quietly. Julian placed his hand over hers. There was no mistake. A pattern like the scales of a snake had formed on the back of his hand.
'Julian,' she said, lifting his hand up to her lips. 'You are our son.'
'Make me a cage. Soon I won't be able to ask. And find something. Some berries, leaves or root - some mixture to help me keep these impulses under control. The pictures in my head, the iron in my muscles and bones, the serpent in my heart.'
They trailed through the night across the red earth of the Luberon, and, in the little French town of Cucurun, Holger found a blacksmith. Curiosity accompanied every clang of his hammer. 'Do you have a dancing bear, Monsieur? This would contain a very strong animal. Yes? Or perhaps contain some valuable treasure? Lots of treasure. A prisoner perhaps?' Holger gave nothing away, though none of his questions were far from the truth.
In a different part of the town, Birgitta was directed to Mistress Rimbaud, who made her own medicines for women in childbirth, old men who couldn't sit comfortably on their backsides, and children whose cough foretold imminent death. She was paid well for her potions. Advice, on the other hand, was handed out freely in exchange for gossip. When Birgitta eventually found the bolted door down a dark, narrow alleyway, she was invited in by a suspicious old creature, bent almost double, shrouded in long, silver hair that touched the hardened-earth floor.
'You are one of the troop who arrived before dawn,' she said, removing from her mouth some vine leaves she had been chewing. She didn't spit them out; instead, she wrapped them in a fig leaf, added a drop of pale yellow liquid, tied it with grass, and placed the parcel carefully among the myriads of bottles, ramikins and packages on a round, marble table.
'Yes, Mistress, I've come...'
'I know why you've come, Birgitta of Durnstein.'
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