From Chapter 13 The lady in the Woods
“It’s amazing, your home I mean.”
“Yes, mum always said that this place was once a great king’s hunting lodge after it was a monastery. Our family lived in Butley Priory – that’s the name of our home, when it was in Melton England.”
“It was in England?”
“Yes my great great great or something or other grandparents had it taken down brick by brick rebuilt it here in the middle of nowhere and our family have lived here ever since.”
They did not cross the hall as the stairs where to the left of it, moving up the long grand stairway they headed towards what Bess called the west wing, helping Xela was still a hard task even though Katie had help, both girls were relieved when they finally reached the guest room and laid him on the bed, they undressed him both feeling a bit bashful, but more concerned with the many scars they had uncovered, his entire muscular body seemed to be riddled with old scars.
“Your friend has been through the wars.”
Katie did not know what to say surprised and shocked by what she was seeing she did not answer but stared at Xela’s body, it was as if someone wondered how many times they could cut into him with a very sharp objected without killing him, she could not nor did she want to imagine how much suffering this poor man had been through only to wake up in a world he did not understand. The girls tucked him in bed wiping his brow with a cold damp cloth and waited for Bess’s mother.
After some moments of silence holding back the tears trying not to show how upset she was by her friends’ scars, Katie made conversation.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Francis, Francis Yllehs,”
“Is it just you and her here, I mean don’t you have any brothers or sisters or a father?”
“No not anymore… there was Georgiana, my sister.”
“You have a sister where is she?”
“Well she’s…”
“She is not here anymore” Francis interrupted as she entered the room peering at Bess in an angry manner.
“Go get some boiling water and my medicines and I will speak to you later” She barked.
“Yes mother” Bess left the room like a scorned child.