Bitter Blossoms – May 1419

Esmeralda held back angry tears, but her eyes shone darkly in the afternoon’s light.  Her nephew moaned under the healer’s hands where he lay, in the grass between the fallen apple trees whose blossoms filled the air with their heady scent.  She stood in bitter silence until the ruffians left with their axes and their bloody hands, unwilling to let them from her sight, lest they damage more than the fair grove her son had so well loved, and which had been the latest victim of an envious and greedy soul.  For trees felled and eyes plucked, Lotho would pay.