The healer was silent as she made her way around the room, collecting her belongings and either cleaning them, if they had been used, or returning them to her bag if they had not. She kept her eyes down, ignoring the couple on the bed, giving them their privacy in this special moment as they got to know their newly born son, while still listening just in case something should go wrong, with either mother or baby.
It was not the first baby for this particular couple. Lady Pankratz had now born five children, all boys, and had never really had much in the way of difficulty birthing them. This new babe had been the longest labour and most difficult birth so far for Lady Pankratz, although at no time had the healer felt that Lady Pankratz was in any immediate danger of dying.
The baby…on the other hand, the healer had been a little concerned about.
He had cried lustily upon being born though, his wails among the loudest the healer had heard in her years of midwifery. The healer had been relived at the loudness of his cries. She hadn't expected Lady Pankratz to deliver for at least another moon turn, and when she had been summoned so early she had been preparing herself for the delivery of a dead baby, or at least one might have been born living, but quickly died, unable to draw breath on its own.
It had taken far longer than the healer would have liked but the baby had eventually been born, and there certainly wasn't anything wrong with his lungs, but he was small. Smaller than any of Lady Pankratz's other sons had been at birth, and the healer had helped guide them all into the world, (albeit she had been assisting her predecessor for the first two.) Lady Pankratz's other sons, however, had all been bigger than most newborns, and their new brother was by no means the smallest babe the healer had brought into the world. The new baby's skin was pink, and healthy looking, and he had a thick head of dark hair, although his body lacked the plumpness of most new-borns, and he seemed to have settled calmly into the blankets he was wrapped in as his parents observed him.
"Are you sure you got your timing right?" Lord Pankratz asked his wife quietly, his voice obviously not intended for the healer's ears, looking down at his newest son, "he looks too…small to be one of them."
"Don't be ridiculous," replied Lady Pankratz, "I made sure of it. My bed was cold for months either side of his coming, just as we planned. I made sure that it was his seed that took. The monster is the one who fathered this child."
"And now we shall have a monster of our own…one that will slay anyone that threatens our home…our property…our wealth." Lord Pankratz sounded pleased.
"He will serve and protect our sons, and ensure that our heirs will continue to prosper for centuries to come," agreed his wife.
"A Witcher of our own. No-one else has their own Witcher to do their bidding. We will be the first, and it is all because of you, my dear…your clever planning when that creature began to steal sheep. You just prepared yourself and let the word spread, knowing that one of those monsters would hear and come by. It was worth the coin that we gave him to deal with it."
The healer continued cleaning and packing things away, not giving any indication that she had heard the nobles' words.
About a year earlier reports started coming in about a mysterious creature stealing sheep. Nothing was done about it initially, until Lord Pankratz issued a bounty, hoping to attract a Witcher into town.
A few months later a Witcher arrived. By that point the creature had not only taken more sheep, but four men as well as its confidence in its new hunting ground had grown. The Witcher had called into the Healer's house, seeking some herbs and other supplies. He had been well spoken and respectful towards the healer and they had spoken a little. The healer had found him not nearly as frightening and imposing as he and his kind were supposed to be.
The next day the Witcher had arrived back in down with the head of the monster that had been causing the fuss. The day after that the Healer had seen him leaving town, not to be seen again. It had been about eight moon turns since then, the healer remembered clearly because her sister had delivered a baby just a week later, and the lad was just starting to crawl around on the floor of her sister's house.
"The old Witcher…he was so easy to tempt into my bed, especially with the potion I slipped into his ale that night…" Lady Pankratz laughed coldly, "I think it had been a long time since had felt the warmth of a woman's flesh."
"He probably had spent the last century fucking his horse," sneered Lord Pankratz, "I've heard that those Witchers get mighty attached to their horses."
"You won't be like that, will you?" Lady Pankratz asked, directing the question at the baby, who seemed to have fallen asleep in his mother's arms, "you won't get attached to mindless beasts…you won't be attached at all. You exist to serve the family, and nothing else."
"And don't you forget it boy," Lord Pankratz growled.
The Healer finished her tasks and directed a curtsy towards the Lord and lady, before letting herself form the room. She was shown out of the estate by a servant, and left instruction that if anything should arise with Lady Pankratz or her son, then she should be summoned immediately. The servant nodded, and the Healer set out for her own cottage in Lettenhove, thinking about the conversation she had overheard.
Lord and Lady Pankratz were not known to be either generous or kind, nor were they considerate or caring towards anything or anyone, other than each other, and their eldest four sons. They were cruel and greedy, with taxes on the land so high that the peasants often going hungry, while the Lord and Lady live in comfort.
If the rumours the Healer had heard were true, the Pankratz boys were shaping up to be as bad as their parents. Spoiled and privileged, there were already stories of the cruelty of the eldest of the boys, a child of thirteen summers. The stories told of a harsh boy who revelled in the misery of others. There were even whispers of him torturing servants, and even the murder of dogs and cats, and the Healer wondered if the other brothers were just as bad. She thought about the newborn baby too, presumably the son of Lady Pankratz and the Witcher, conceived with the full knowledge and support of Lord Pankratz, if the conversation she had heard was truthful. What would he be like as he grew up? What could a boy whose father was a Witcher be like? The Healer had never heard of a Witcher fathering a child before, but Witchers were so rare now that she had only ever met the one.
The Healer stopped at the river the wound its way through Lettenhove on it's way to the sea and said a quiet prayer to the River Gods to watch out for the baby, and for his father, the Witcher who had come to help Lettenhove all those months ago, and hoped that one day they would get to meet.