She really was as wild as he’d thought when they’d first met, hardly able to stay stationary, knowing barely any English, and having no social sen...e, whatsoever. Every day, when the porthos root meant to keep her quiet and docile left her system- and it did so at an unusually and irritatingly fast pace- she was up and about, demanding ‘hunt’ and trying to find the route out of the healing houses. Mary surmised rather loudly that it seemed to be only the King’s Bard’s presence that kept her in. And I kind of thought it might be the odor it gave off just as much as how soft my hands were. Some of those women hardly touched my hands.Loving Hands, eh! Well, maybe that name meant more than I thought. Maybe there was something in that goop that was causing women to get all friendly like. Tomorrow, I was going to do a little investigating.Over the next couple of days, I carefully talked to a bunch of the guys who were using the goop to clean up after work. Every one of them said the same. Detective Bentley grabbed the hair of the deceased person and raised the head, ‘Do you recognise this person?’ ‘Bloody Hell!’ I was looking at what was left of the face of my wife, my dead wife. ‘That’s my wife.’ I sat down in a chair that was in the corner. ‘Mister Challiner, what was your wife doing here?’ ‘I don’t know. She said that she had a meeting.’ ‘Did you know with whom, or what this meeting was about?’ ‘No. I assumed that it was some sort of committee that she belonged to, at least. . but for a just a brief moment as he first sat down there it was in fact the most enjoyable beer he had ever drunk. With a brief toast to his old mentor, Rowan and Gorge sat and finished most of their first blackjack of ale in altogether silence. It was an odd moment for both of them as the old master-pupil relationship was finished and now the two men looked at each other to see if instead they could become now just old friends.In silence, the older smith delved into his purse and withdrew a.