⚜️ You Can Call Me Sir Alexander ⚜️ (Alex Turner)

♧ Part 3 ♧

The door opened and Hazel looked right away, hopeful, once again. She had been doing that for the last hour, for that was the time of day Alexander usually arrived.
She started worrying something happened to him on the trip.
They never came back through their village, and the encampment was too far to distinguish if the little ant people she could see from the hill were them or just the rest of the troop left behind guarding the site.

She sighed and went to the well to fill a bucket with water to clean the floors.
Those sots made a mess already and it is only the middle of the day, she grunted.
She went back in, lost in her worries, and when she saw Alexander, by the counter talking to her father, her hand slipped for the surprise and the bucket dropped on the floor with a thud. Thankfully it didn't knock over, spilling water everywhere. He would have poked fun at her without mercy, later, if that happened.

The noise caught his attention, and the attention of everyone else.
"Pardon me," she bit her lip, embarrassed and nervous. Their eyes met for a moment and she noticed a little smile. She returned it and lowered her head, trying to be descreet. Trying not grin like an idiot in front of everybody.
The relief of seeing him alive and well was immense. She didn't think she had ever cleaned those floors with such happiness before.

She listened as he told the events of the past few days. Everyone there did, enthralled, as they rarely received such fresh news around there.
As she correctly assumed, they only went on a quick surveying expedition by the border territories.
They took another route on their way back to avoid rebels in the area, who by then knew their movements.
Hazel gasped when Alexander told about the surprise ambush by the hand of a small group of rebels, and how one of them attacked him. He told all the details of their fight and how he took down the aggressor. "But not before he gave me a taste of his sword. That wretch." He said touching his shoulder and wincing.
Hazel took a hand to her mouth. Alexander looked at her, noticing her worry, and gave her a subtle reassuring smile.
I will take a look at that wound, she made a mental note. She had something which could help him with the pain and the healing.

As the other times, they met alone, later, in the small barn.
"Good day, sweet Hazel."
"Pleasant day, Alexander."
"It will surely be." he replied with a smile.
Hazel could grin now, as much as she wanted.
"Have you confessed your sins to the priest before this morning mass?" That devilish smirk. She was happy to see it again.
"You," she frowned, pointing her index finger at him, "you tempt me like the devil and then you guilt me."
He laughed.
"Fear nothing, lass. If He didn't want us to do such things, He wouldn't have made them so pleasant, would He?"

Hazel shook her head giving him a playful scowl. "Now blasphemy as well? Thou art making me an accomplice of your sins."
What they did was wrong. They were not married and they were not supposed to lay together like husband and wife. But if it was so wrong why did it feel so right? And where was God when she was forced to do those things against her will? How was that right but not this? She would consider the time spent with Alexander as a repayment for those times, and she would not confess it to anyone at all.

She stepped closer and placed a hand on his arm. "I heard that you were hurt! Are you in pain?"
"Nay, do not fret, it is nothing, darling," he waved his hand in a dismissing gesture."
"Let me take a look, I pray."
Alexander removed his top garments. He had a bandage wrapped around the top of his arm to cover the wound on his shoulder. But Hazel noticed that it was soiled and she doubted it was washed or changed since.
She undid it and winced at the sight of that wound. It was quite a deep cut. It must have hurt. It looked like it wasn't bleeding much anymore but it didn't look good: it was starting to swell and it felt warm.
She shook her head. "Wait here. I will go fetch something."

She ran home where she found some clean scraps of cloth, and ran back.
Alexander was sitting on the bench, after he removed his boots.
She took him by the hand. "Come with me."
"Where to?"
"To the river."
She guided him past her house and they followed the little river through the trees for just a little while, until it made a bend. There, she took him down the bank of the river, to a spot where a drop in the riverbed created a small waterfall, just tall enough for a person to go though.