Outcasts

Chapter 3 - Anything can Make a Difference

Matilda sat under a tree with a mortar in front of her and she kept grinding herbs with rhythmic, skillful movements. While she worked, she looked around: it was the middle of the afternoon in a sunny, warm summer day, and the camp was quiet.
There weren't as many wounded people as there had been just after the siege: some of them had died, others were healed and had gone back to their villages to try to rebuild their lives. Only a few of them were still at the camp, and most of them were still too weak to move from their beds.
Matilda was afraid that some of those persons were going to be crippled for life.
Now, most of them were sleeping, after eating the lunch that Rosa and Djaq gave to them. Matilda felt proud of her daughter: she had to take care of her baby, but still she found the patience and the time to help the wounded, to feed the ones who weren't able to do it on their own, and to chat with those ill, shocked persons.
Matilda glanced at her patients, and she sighed when her eyes stopped on the dark, lonely figure of Guy of Gisborne. The bed of the man was apart from the others and nobody ever stopped to talk to him. The outlaws allowed him to stay there at the camp to heal from his wounds, but they almost completely ignored his presence.
Gisborne, in turn, never made any attempt to interact with the others. He just sat on his bed, staring at the ground or at the trees, uninterested in the surroundings.
Matilda couldn't understand what he thought: he looked to be numb, devoid of any emotion, but she suspected that his behavior was very far from what he was really feeling.
The woman sighed again and stood up. She glanced at the curtain that hid Robin's bed, then she looked back at Gisborne. Robin was out of his mind, expressing all the pain he was feeling, but Matilda suspected that the two men, those two enemies, where equally wounded and they just had different ways to face their wounds.
Now Robin was in a deep drugged sleep, the only way she had to give him some rest, some hours free from his pain.
Matilda picked up the heavy mortar and the herbs, and she walked towards Gisborne.
The knight didn't move, even if Matilda knew that he had heard her approaching, so she cleared her voice.
"Do you mind if I sit here for a moment? This thing is heavy."
Guy glanced at the mortar she was holding and he nodded, so the woman put the stone mortar on the ground between them, then she sat down with a tired sigh.
"The work of an healer never ends, you know? When you finish to treat the sick and the wounded, you have herbs to collect and remedies to prepare. Luckily most of the people wounded in the siege need less cares now. Most of them can move on their own, they are able to eat without help and soon they'll be able to go back to their lives."
"If they have a life to go back to."
"If they don't, they can make a new one."
Guy didn't answer, and Matilda inwardly sighed.
"Do you ever move from this bed, except for attending to your needs or to wash up? You are still weak, but your wounds are almost healed, some exercise would be good for you. You'd heal more quickly."
"Oh, I see."
Matilda frowned.
"What?"
"They are in a hurry to send me away from here."
"That's what you think?"
"Can you deny it? Do you believe that they want me to stay at their camp?"
The woman stared at him for a moment.
"What about you?"
"Me?"
"Do you want to stay here?"
Guy was surprised by her question, he had never really thought about what he wanted to do.
"I've nowhere else to go."
Matilda thought that many of the villagers didn't have a place or a house to go back to, but at least they had hope and the will to build a new life, to find what was left of their family and friends and to help each other. Gisborne really had no one.
It was mainly his fault, of course, but she couldn't help feeling sorry for him.
"Well, nobody is going to send you away, not for now at least, but you could try to make yourself a little more welcome, don't you think?"
Guy looked at her, frowning.
"What do you mean?"
"You are always here, on your own, moping in your own misery and you don't even try to talk to the others."
"Why should they want to talk with me? They all hate me."
"Maybe, but they are helping you anyway. When Rosa or Djaq or any of the others come to bring your meal, you could try to thank them instead of lying on that bed like a dead man. Or you could try to make yourself useful."
Matilda looked at him: Gisborne had a confused expression on his face, but he was actually listening to her.
"How?" He asked, in a whisper, and Matilda smiled.
"It's true that you are still healing and you can't work like the others, but there's a lot you can do even from your bed."
"They wouldn't accept my help."
The woman handed him the pestle.
"Well, I would. So you can help me. Here, I'll show you how to grind and store those herbs. If you can do it, I'll have more time to find more herbs in the forest and I'll be able to treat more people. The fields have been destroyed, and this winter many of the villagers will have to face hunger and poverty. Diseases and contagion often come with famine, I fear that I'll need many remedies when people will begin to get ill."
Guy took the pestle, and he looked at it.
"And do you think that this can make a difference?"
"Anything can make a difference. Look at this wound, for example..." She touched his shirt in a place close to his heart. "If the blade went just a little deeper, you'd be dead for sure. But you are alive and you can be useful. I'd really appreciate your help. Will you try at least?"
Guy nodded.
"I will."
"Very well," Matilda said in a practical tone. "Look, you have to use the pestle like this, see? Now try."