After Jacqueline filled the bucket, she tended to her original mission. She unfurled the cloutie that had been bound around her ankle and sought a likely branch. There were so many clouties that ’twas hard to find a limb not only empty but sufficiently low that she could reach it. Then she reached up and knotted the rag securely around the branch, then bowed low to the burbling well.
“I thank you, lady of the well, for healing my wound. And in my gratitude, I surrender to you—” Jacqueline’s voice faltered, for she was not certain what to offer this pagan deity. She surveyed herself. She wore no jewels, she had no trinket to cast aside. She had no coin, no steed, naught to sacrifice at all.
Suddenly she realized what she had learned this morning and straightened with the surety of what sh
