by Celia Lake
That at least made some sense to him. “And there are little shrines like these all over the place, then? If people swear their oaths by different ones?”
Nurse Morris nodded. “There’s a chapel inside with shrines, and ones in the gardens, here, and then special rooms in the temple. There are healing springs, a whole set of rooms, different shrines, to soak in.”
The thought of that sounded almost interesting, but he had no idea how you asked to go to them. His baths in the large bathtub were one of the only things he looked forward to right now. But he had no idea if one could take the healing waters, or how it was arranged.
She reached out, before she drew her hand back, as if it were overstepping. “Perhaps in a few weeks, if you’d like. You’ll need to be able to get yourself down into it, and I’d have to find someone to help you. Male.”
He didn’t think he’d been nearly so transparent at all that, and he blinked up at her for a moment, trying to gather his composure. Instead, he went back to the earlier question. “Your name? Names?”
“No one can overhear us out here. We can see anyone coming.” He realised, with a start, she was right. They had an excellent view of the path, and the grotto walls were solid. “I am Elen Morris. My da’s a supervisor at the Dolacauthi Mines. My ma runs the household, teaches a bit of village school.”
“Roland, as I said. If you can bring yourself to it.” He felt himself leaning into the charm, and wondered why. In his life before, he might have admired a pretty woman of her background, but not offered so much as his name.
She let out a breath. “Roland.” Hearing his first name made him feel somehow seen. For far too long, he’d been sir and major and someone distant and foreign. He’d spent far too many weeks being held at arm’s length. It felt like a tremendous gift, but the next heartbeat later, he realised he’d erred. When she left, when Elen left, he’d be missing someone in particular, not a nameless nurse in uniform.
He shied away from thinking about that further, it felt entirely too raw. Instead, Roland tried to figure out what to offer her in turn. “You still haven’t had a chance at my records, have you?” She shook her head silently. “My family are, plenty of them, military. Even my mother serves, in her way, she is a defensive magics specialist. She was posted in Egypt for a while, and India. Fortifications and protections, for people going out to war.” Talking about his family like that felt safe enough. Distant and busy, which they must be, they always were.
Nurse Morris - Elen - cocked her head. “She must be very good, then.”
He laughed. “Mother is utterly terrifying, and utterly unyielding in pursuit of her goals. I am quite sure the idea that someone might want to stop her never entered her mind.” He waved a hand. “Father and grandfather, that tradition I at least understood a bit. I went to tutoring school, went to Schola, served in the Army a few places, and when this mess happened, I knew I’d be going.”
Elen nodded. “May I ask how you were injured?”
He shrugged, slightly. “Cavalry. A small unit of magicians, assigned to accompany the 2nd Dragoons. The King’s Bays.”
She frowned at that. “A regular army unit? May I ask how that works?”
“Officers, the usual sorts of duties, they assumed we existed for messages. And looking handsome when needed. We did - oh, shoring things up, protection cantrips, a dozen different things.” He hesitated and took a breath. “Half of my specific lot, they’re still fighting. The other half, besides me... still in France, six feet under.” He’d been the only one to take a serious injury and survive it, and it made him feel even more alone.
“I’m sorry for your losses.” She said it softly, simply, but it didn’t seem to be a pat response. “And your family?”
“I’ve cousins fighting a dozen places, but I’m the only child to make it to adulthood in the direct line.” He shrugged, not wanting to mention his younger sister, who’d died of a sudden illness when he was six and she was two. “I was engaged, when the War started. When I came back, she made it clear she had no interest. I don’t remember what all she said, I was in and out, but I remember that much. That she thought I was done for.” He looked up, deliberately, and saw half a dozen expressions slide across her face. She was no card player, he was sure.
“I am sure you’ll prove her wrong.”
He shrugged. He wasn’t paralysed, but he’d had no glimmerings of interest of any kind since he’d been injured. He tried not to think on it, because dwelling on it made him particularly grumpy, and to absolutely no useful purpose at all.
She considered, then visibly made a choice. “They won’t tell me about your case. I’ve written to ask a friend, in confidence, about your evening potion, and about other things, but...” She shrugged. “Without a sample, I don’t know if she can do much. And it’s hard to get a sample. there are protections on the vials to ensure it’s all drunk.”
Roland considered that, the implications of it. “But we can come out here?”
“This is therapeutic. Traditionally therapeutic. They’d have to argue against a millenia or two of good healing practice to deny it.” He heard a hint of humour, there, and something like pride. Perhaps she was pleased she’d come up with an argument they couldn’t argue with.
Roland considered this. He was used to thinking of things in terms of hierarchy, all his family did. She was, by observation, quite low in it, unable to pull rank she didn’t have. And yet, like the best of the privates he’d known, she had the gift for using whatever she was permitted as well as she could. Making do.
“And you think it might help?”
That made her snort. “Look at you. Tea and biscuits and enough privacy for a conversation that’s about more than your adventure books. I thought it might do something.”
Roland had to admit she had a point, then he asked. “Do you mind the reading?”
Elen shook her head. “You enjoy it. And they’re better than some things I’ve had to read. I’ve had more than my fill of the moralistic improving literature of our grandparents. Mind, I’m not sure they actually liked it either, they just thought it was improving.”
“Who were you reading to that asked for that?” He wasn’t sure why someone would.
“I was at the Temple of Youth, remember? Children, recovering from long-term illness. Some tuberculosis, some poliomyelitis. Some who’d had a run of other contagious diseases. There was one poor boy who’d gotten over mumps. He’d gone out for the first time in weeks and weeks, and picked up whooping cough. He was six months building his strength up again.” Then she added, much more quietly, “Not all of them recovered, of course.”
It hit him then, that she was not new to the kind of losses he’d been facing. It made him wonder what she thought of him, of being assigned to him. “And you were - the War?”
“Western front. There was an explosion, it knocked me out, a concussion. The others I was with, they bounced back, but I started getting awful headaches, migraines, if you know them.” Her voice had become clipped, the kind of squashing of emotion that he recognised in himself.
“And so you had to come back here?” She nodded, looking somehow relieved that she hadn’t had to say it. “And you’re here for - how long?”
She shrugged slightly. “I don’t know, honestly. But seeing to you, that’s where I was assigned.”
“And the headaches?”
Another shrug. “I’m making sure they are not a problem.”
Roland tried to figure out how to make sense of that, but had not gotten anywhere with it before she said, “I shouldn’t keep you out here long. If I overtire you, we can’t do this again. Finish the tea, and we’ll go back.” Whatever passing openness had been there had slammed shut, and he had no idea why.
Chapter 9
Friday, April 9th, Roland’s room
Roland found himself annoyingly restless. Someone, not a Sister he knew, had come and pulled Nurse Morris away, unexpectedly. It had happened while he was still groggy from his
potion, fumbling his way through the tail end of breakfast. Nurse Morris had made an apologetic face at him, but she had gone.
He expected people to leave, that wasn't precisely the problem. Or rather, it was a problem, but one that had become endemic in his life. His parents were both admirable people, but they were tremendously busy. They popped in and out of his life, over and over, between their other duties, important ones, leaving him with Nanny.
It was curious he’d not heard anything from them, mind. They might not be present, but they were usually regular correspondents. Surely by now they’d have had word of where he’d ended up, even if the letters had taken a while to catch up with him from the Front.
On the other hand, he hadn’t written either. It wasn’t only that he didn’t trust himself to hold a pen steady, but he had no idea what he could possibly say. He had no idea if he’d be good for anything, ever again, and it wasn’t as if anyone had given him any hope he might be. In a family anchored by duty and service, what good was he if he couldn’t serve in some form? Perhaps that was why they never visited, or wrote. He must be a tremendous disappointment, to be sidelined like this.
His fiancee, Admantine, had come to see him early on, and then she had left after fifteen minutes. Three days later, a letter had shown up, with her ridiculous rose-pink shimmering wax, smelling faintly of lilies. He thought it was lily, anyway, something creamy, and with a hint of clove. Not carnation.
The letter had been brief, cold, and he had not been able to shake the few words from his mind. She thought it better that he were free to focus on his recovery, she was not suited for the care he would need, she hoped he wished her well. He did not wish her ill, exactly. But he could not wish her well.
He could not wish himself well, never mind anyone else. It had sent him spiralling down into the depths of his mind, unwilling to engage with the next nurse assigned to him. A nurse who had been there one day, and gone the next, after only a few weeks. Or the one after that.
Perhaps Nurse Morris was gone, too. Would be gone. Perhaps in a day or two, there would be some other chipper woman with an implausibly white pinafore. He had stopped caring. Except that Nurse Morris had done something he did not expect, taking him out to that little grotto in the garden. She’d told him her full name.
She was devout, in her way, he'd realised that as soon as she explained where they were. But unlike some of the nurses, she wasn't showy about it. It was in what she did, how she did it, what she did with her time, rather than in the public gestures.
His family weren't religious, not more than any military family were. Which is to say, every man he'd known prayed in the trenches, whatever their belief was, and he was sure it had been the same in South Africa, and the Sudan, and India, and hundreds of other places around the globe. As it was the same for people who were on the other side.
Roland was mired deep in thought, since he was not up for holding a book, never mind focusing on it, when there was a knock on his door. "Sir, a gentleman to see you, sir. May I help you into your dressing gown?"
Roland couldn't decide if that was better or worse, really. There was no dignity in talking to someone in a dressing gown, when they were in sharply tailored clothes.
With his mother, or his father, it made him feel as if he were about six. He had memories of having tea in the nursery when he hadn’t been well, some childhood fever. His mother had come and peered from the door, and gone away again. Twenty minutes later, his father had done the same. They were not, as a family, particularly good with illness.
"Who is it?"
"A military gentleman, sir. A Brigadier Campbell."
"My dressing gown, please. And I suppose you'd better open the curtains a bit more." The obligatory fussing took only three or four minutes, but when Harry went to get the door, there were the sudden sounds of leather soles on stone floors. Harry retreated, with a "Call if you need me, sir," that did not specify if he was talking to Roland.
"Gospatrick." No rank, nothing other than his bare name.
He managed a passable salute. "Brigadier, sir. Please, have a seat."
"These presentations of yours. When will you be ready to do at least two a week?" As Roland had expected, the Brigadier remained standing.
That was not the question Roland had expected, though he wasn't sure what it was he'd anticipated. "That would be up to my Healers, sir. I am afraid they take quite a lot out of me."
"You've been taking your time recovering. You're not malingering, are you?"
Roland blessed the fact that Nurse Morris told him things. "I gather I ran a fair fever, after the last one. I would much rather do my part, sir, I assure you." He kept his voice even and brought out the clipped consonants and round vowels that made him this man's social peer, if not his equal in military rank.
"Untidy." It was said, largely to himself, but Roland was certain it was not a mistake. This was not the sort of man to be overheard accidentally. Then Brigadier Campbell peered down at him. "What do you have to say for yourself, then?"
"About what, sir?" Roland kept his voice pleasant.
"Your injuries. Why you are taking so long to recover. What you expect to do."
"I am no Healer, sir." He let out a breath. "They have said mine is a challenging case, but have not told me all of the specifics. I believe they feel I do not have the specialist knowledge to understand.” He considered, for a moment, whether asking the Brigadier might shake loose something Elen could make sense of, but he could not at the moment see an opening that wouldn’t put her at risk.
Roland considered how to put the next bit. “I know that I am weak, some days I can barely walk across the room. I require a great deal of rest, and while I can make a public presentation every fortnight or so, more often than that would leave me entirely incapable. I am told I can have hope of improvement, but at some distant point."
"Hmph." Again, Roland was sure that was meant for his ears. "Don't you wish to return to your unit, son?"
Not your son. He might not be terribly close to his father, but his father would not do this. Or so he hoped. Then he realised with a sudden sickening certainty that his father was pushing other men like this. That his father had to know he was playing dice with other men’s lives. "I'm not sure that will be possible, sir. Certainly not quickly. But I would like to do my part."
The Brigadier peered at him, eyebrows furrowed. Roland was saying all the right things, all the proper platitudes, but this man was sure there was something missing. "What do you see that as being?"
Roland shook his head. "That's impossible to say, sir, without more certainty about how much I might recover. I am quite willing to do presentations, to recruiting staff or recruits. Perhaps some sort of training position, if I recover enough, even if I cannot return to my unit or a similar one."
"You were assigned with the King's Bays, yes?"
"Yes. Messaging, some covert operations that required manoeuverability and charmwork. They did not know we were magical, of course."
"Rider, then?"
Roland nodded. "I was. Might be again, eventually. Quite sure I wouldn't trust my balance soon." He paused, then added, "Not sure the horses are that much use, sir, in this war. I lost two good geldings. One to foundering, one to a bullet."
The Brigadier waved his hand. "That's not your concern."
Roland rather thought that it was, if he might be on a horse in a similar situation again. But saying so would not improve anything. He'd learned well before he was injured that most of the ranking officers had no desire to hear how this war was different than the ones they'd fought and theoretically won.
The thing about growing up in a military family is that he'd not only heard those stories, any son of a man who'd fought might have heard those. But he'd also had the lectures about tactics, demonstrated with lead soldiers and sand tables, or in a pinch by the salt and pepper pots and a trail of crumbs from the tea cake. And he’d heard not just about the victories, but the awful bloody disastrous def
eats.
The silence stretched out, until Roland remembered to say something. That was how a conversation went, and he was supposed to be making an effort. "It would be a help, sir, to know what the goal of the recruitment meetings was. So I could - could prepare properly."
Brigadier Campbell narrowed his eyes. This was not just thought, this was a deadly sort of calculation. Then he said, as if he hadn't done that at all, "Be persuasive about serving king and country, of course. You're well-built, you could be on the cover of any of the magazines for soldiers."
This was not wrong, but it was not at all reassuring to hear. He had not been injured in any of the visibly horrifying ways, so his function in this man’s eyes was to serve as a pretty mannequin. Whatever was wrong with him, broken in him, was far more subtle. Possibly more devastating, but he'd scarcely had the chance to discuss that with anyone with a different kind of injury. They'd kept him well away from other patients. He wondered what Nurse Morris might say, when she returned.
There was a noise outside his room, and then a careful knock, and a "Sir, it's - pardon, Brigadier." That was Nurse Morris, in fact. "It's time for Major Gospatrick's afternoon dose, sir, if you don't mind?"
Roland opened his mouth to ask what afternoon dose she had in mind. Then he realised what she was up to, and nodded slightly.
Brigadier Campbell frowned. "Think about what I said, son, and recover quickly. Your country needs you."
Roland managed a slight nod. "Of course, sir, I take your advice most seriously." He waited until the Brigadier had pushed past Nurse Morris, out the door. She lingered in the doorway, once he'd gone.