by Celia Lake
Amet, whose family had emigrated when she was only a baby, nodded slightly. “I might ask Papa.” She slid the volume closed. “Rather powerful family. They can’t do anything?”
“None of them have been to see him since I was there. And I don’t think they’ve written, though I suppose it’s possible I missed that.” Elen tapped the pestle once. “Master Dixon thought it was odd, I think. I think he expected they’d at least have sent packages.”
“What does one normally send to a hospital?”
Elen waved a hand. “Books. Magazines. Ro - Roland could have sweets or biscuits, in moderation, if he wanted. Or better tea than we have. Flowers, or some cheerful plant.”
“You have sweepings, is what you have. Remind me to send you off with some decent stuff.” Amet’s mother was from a merchant family, and she had the strongest opinions about tea of anyone Elen had ever met. Which was saying rather a lot in Albion. “Something is wrong there.”
“With his family?”
“Maybe. Or maybe what his family has been told. Would that be a thing? Families like that, they’d see to the customary sort of thing. A weekly letter, a package, even if no one visited. And your Roland isn’t contagious or anything, is he? He’s able to have a conversation.”
Elen could not avoid a slight flinch at ‘your Roland’. She knew as soon as she reacted that Amet would catch it, no matter how quickly she repressed it.
Amet seemed about to say something else, then she set the mortar and pestle aside, leaning her elbows on the table. “Oh, like that, is it then?”
Elen couldn’t look at her, but she nodded, very slightly. “I - I might have feelings for him. Beyond what I’m permitted. Reason enough to turn me out, for that alone. If they figure it out, which they probably will.”
“You do realise that your profession and vocation is horribly manipulative and controlling, don’t you? And don’t you argue with me, I remember your apprenticeship stories, the ones you try not to remember these days.”
Elen opened her mouth, then snapped it closed. Arguing wouldn’t help.
“Right. Start at the beginning, tell me everything. Who you’ve talked to, who’s been remotely helpful, this friend of his you mentioned. No, wait. Let me clear this up, and put the kettle on, we can go out in the garden for a break. I’m ahead of things today, thanks to your help.”
When Amet took charge like that, there was no arguing. Not that Elen wanted to, it would be good to talk it out, all of it, without ducking around the uncomfortable feelings she knew she had for Roland.
Chapter 30
Monday, May 17th, Roland’s room
Roland had been feeling increasingly irritable all day. All of his clothing felt wrong. The sheets and blankets were too heavy, too itchy, too stiff, too flimsy, too cold, and too hot, sometimes second to second. His skin itched too, a dry feeling like sandpaper, only when he tried to scratch it didn’t help. It didn’t help even before Nurse Eglinton glared at him.
He had been shuffled off to a small meeting, today, in preparation for the one in the Ministry now scheduled for the following week. They had permitted him to be wheeled in the chair. It made him feel entirely put upon and it left him with a sense of pent-up energy, like a river building up behind a dam. He didn’t like that feeling, one bit.
The discussion itself hadn’t been horrible, not the way some of them were. No one asked him terribly difficult questions. It was more about telling him who would be there, and why they were important. He’d recognised a few names from house parties with his family, all before the War, but no one he knew well. That was probably a blessing. Roland still wasn’t clear why they wanted to haul him, in particular, out.
One of the aides there had made a comment about how brilliantly he’d spoken at an earlier event, how inspiring his message was. How it evoked a desire to go forth and do likewise, in the men who listened. Roland had trouble believing that. Oh, he knew how to put things, well enough. And he did, truly, want the best for King and Council and Land. He just was sure, now, that this war wasn’t the way to do that. At least not as it was currently being fought.
Of course, none of them ever asked him that. He had his script, near enough, the points he was supposed to make. Roland’s job was to let his voice do the work, the way his accent, his bearing, his training as an officer made them sit up and take notice. Perhaps made them strive to be better. He was certain he wasn’t the only person who could do it. Though he supposed, in his clearer moments, that having him do it might make more of an impression than someone who’d never been to the Front.
Roland grimaced to himself, liking the implications less and less. He didn’t want to be convincing young men, or older men, for that matter, to go and throw their lives away. Something in him twinged, every time he thought about it.
It was one thing to be telling majors and colonels and generals what the conditions were like. Or doing his best to explain how this war was different than what they’d known in the Sudan, or fighting the Boers, or in all the other points in the Empire where fighting flared up. But encouraging ordinary men and women to fight, to go into the jaws of that fatal serpent? That was something different.
No one had asked him, though. He’d gotten his orders, and he could see no way to appeal them, or even to adjust them. No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t bring himself to mutiny.
It wasn’t death he feared, exactly. But he would bring shame on his family, on his fellows, anyone they thought he’d influenced. And he’d never get a chance to do anything meaningful, ever again. When it wasn’t the fearful shame that stopped him from refusing, flat out, it was something else. He could never do anything good with his life, if they put him up in a court-martial and found him guilty.
Instead of being able to do anything useful, he had been brought briskly back to his room. Roland had been tucked back in bed, with the kind of brutal distant efficiency only an annoyed nurse and a cowed orderly could manage, afterwards. Harry had brought a mug of beef broth, which helped, and now he was here, waiting for it to be time for dinner. And then time for his potion. Not that he wanted his potion, he would much rather not have his potion, but no one had asked his opinion. Or given him space to share it.
There wasn’t much to remember about his evening, but somewhere after his potion, he knew he had to have drifted off. Nurse Eglinton refused to read to him, so he was doomed to his own thoughts until the potion’s effects overcame him.
The next thing he knew, there was screaming. Truly terrified screaming, this time, not Elen’s startled yelp. It hadn’t made sense to him at the time but now, some distant and analytical portion of his mind was measuring out the differences. Pitch, timbre, length. Then something shook the end of his bed, rattling his head and shoulders, and he drew a breath and managed to get his eyes open.
Someone flung the door open, with the bright light of the hallway pouring in and making him squint. He couldn’t work out what was going on, at all, but there was someone bustling in, ignoring him utterly, and asking “What happened?”
There was a babble of sound, from the corner, and Roland could only make out bits of it. “He.” Then a “Exploded. Just exploded,” and the rattling of something.
Roland became rather sure he’d had one of his attacks, and a stronger one than usual. Certainly, Nurse Eglinton was making decidedly more objection to it than Elen had. He pushed himself a little more upright, then suddenly regretted it, as his head began to throb.
He was too far gone himself to make sense out of what happened after that. Someone bustled Nurse Eglinton out of the room eventually, he could hear her sobs receding into the distance. Someone propped his door open, somewhat cautiously. One of the night orderlies, he couldn’t see which, perched in a chair outside. He eventually drifted back to sleep, without anyone ever bothering to check if he was all right.
If he had more energy, he’d be horribly offended. And throw a more productive fit.
He woke the next morning, t
o find Healer Rhoe sitting at the end of the bed. She was shaped entirely differently than Elen, and she was sewing something, rather than knitting, with quick neat little stitches. She glanced up, smiled at him, and slipped the needle into a fold of cloth. “Well, then. How do you feel?”
Roland blinked at her several times. She had the curtains drawn, so the light didn’t attack him, just the lamp. Like Elen. He’d been sure she was a tremendously busy woman, from what he’d seen in the baths. Yet here she was, waiting for him to wake up.
“Um.” It was not his most coherent. At all.
She set the sewing down, onto the top of something by her feet. “Water? Could you stomach something for breakfast?”
Roland could only blink at her again, trying to marshal his wits and failing utterly. “Healer Rhoe?”
She beamed at him. “Exactly. Tea? Let’s start with tea.”
Tea was generally a safe guess, he supposed, and he nodded. Then he regretted the movement immediately. She must have caught the flinch, because she said, “I have a pastille for you, it should help the headache.”
He didn’t try to nod or move, just made the sort of non-committal agreement noise. A moment later, she was handing him a solid mug full of tea, warm but not piping hot, which was good. Then the pastille.
“They don’t have any idea why you keep doing that, you know.” Healer Rhoe had settled back down in her chair, with an amiable grunt.
Roland focused on taking a sip of the tea, and when that didn’t upset anything, he tried another. There was a good minute before he attempted to speak. “Do you know, ma’am?”
She beamed at him. “There we are. Such a polite young man, I keep saying so. And you haven’t actually hurt anyone directly, have you? Though I’m afraid Nurse Eglinton might have nightmares for a bit.”
“I, what did I do?”
Healer Rhoe shrugged slightly. “There is a lot we don’t understand about magic. You’re a Schola man, you had many of the same lectures I had, about ritual being the way we shape our magic, give it channels to run in.”
“Professor Lollard, yes.” Roland remembered those lectures reasonably well. Not the specifics, of course. He’d forgotten half of that after his exams. But the earnestness with which Professor Lollard had lectured about it had stuck, about why changing the proven rituals was dangerous. Then he blinked at her. “I thought healers went to Alethorpe?”
She laughed, cheerfully. “Well, there we are, sure your mind is coming back together properly. Not all of us are Alethorpe’s. It’s probably good. Now, how do you feel? Start at your head, tell me whatever you feel.”
He’d done something like this before, though not quite put that way. “Headache, worse if I move my head. Aching, otherwise, a dull ache, like I used all my muscles entirely too much. And, and.” He stopped and swallowed. “I’m starving. Much more than I expected.”
“Right. I’m fairly sure I know some of what’s going on. What I don’t know is how to fix it. And Nurse Morris knew about your moving things around.” It wasn’t a question.
He nodded very slightly, then regretted it. Not just because of the movement, but because it gave things away. “Do you, wait, did she talk to you?” He felt like he was lurching for any hope.
“She sent me a note, I believe the day they sent her away. I wasn’t able to do anything until this morning. It’s very difficult to intrude on another healer’s case, even after your bath. And it was not a very informative note.” Roland bristled, and it must have been visible, because she held up her hands. “She was clearly in a state. Do you know where she went?”
Roland thought back. “She was in a lodging house, for nurses, not far away. She didn’t say which one. Her family’s Welsh, the Dolaucothi mines, but I don’t know if she’d have gone back there. Is she in trouble, do you know? I mean, professionally?”
“Did she actually do anything that would be a problem?”
Roland swallowed hard, and looked away. “She - I was thinking about kissing her.” He kept his voice low, barely audible.
When he looked up, Healer Rhoe was watching him, thoughtfully. “The question, my dear young man, is whether she was inclined to kiss you back.”
There was a knock on the door, then, and she tsked slightly, before shrugging her shoulders. It changed her posture entirely, from a gentle-featured woman, all curves and softness, to something crisp and martial. That was despite the fact she was still wearing the simple unstructured robes he’d first seen her in.
By the time the door opened, he would have sworn she was done up in the equivalent of a full Victorian ballgown. She seemed armoured with stays and a hoop skirt that made everyone keep their distance and give due deference.
Chapter 31
Thursday, May 20th, the Temple of Healing
Elen waited on the front steps of the Temple of Healing as she’d been told to do. She was in her best uniform dress, a deep blue, but without any of the other pieces. Her token of Sirona was prominently pinned where her watch should be. She wanted to fuss with the apron she wasn’t wearing, or the cap that wasn’t pinned into her hair. Having her hair bare here felt utterly wrong, even though it was at least properly put up in a sturdy bun.
Elen had her other things with her, the apron and her watch and her cap. all the other pieces of her uniform. She’d been told to bring them. And she had her knitting, for all her fingers itched to be doing something. The letter had said for her to be here promptly at half-nine with all her things, dressed as she was, and so she was here.
As the bells struck the half-hour, with the distinctive pattern of chimes, Elen saw someone come out of the main doors. It took her a moment to figure out who it was, between the light from behind, and the clothing.
Healer Rhoe came forward, wearing a full healer’s gown. It was a deeper red than Elen had usually seen, over a brilliant white tunic bordered with deep purple that came down to her ankles. Elen had never seen quite that combination before. She had her dark hair up formally, the kind of hairstyle one would wear to a party with the First Families. It was anchored with some sort of comb in back, and small red jewels pinned into the twists the comb held in place.
It made Elen think of the stories her mother had told her when she was little, about the fierce Celtic warrior women going into battle. Healer Rhoe strode over to her, and nodded once, precisely. “Excellent. Come along, then.”
Elen blinked at her. “Pardon, Healer, where?”
“A small ordeal. Nothing actually dangerous.” Rhoe’s voice had a purring sound to it, something triumphant and even joyous, like she’d managed a particularly fine trick. “Come along.”
Elen had no choice but to follow. Healer Rhoe didn’t actually drag her along by a wrist, that would be undignified. But she cut through the crowds coming and going from the Temple smoothly, like one of the great ocean liners through the waves. Elen trailed along in her wake.
Their course led to the front of the Temple, by the central dais that served as altar and platform for the greater rituals. There was a small semicircle of senior Healers and administrators standing around the altar, formally dressed, dripping with the robes and decorations of their rank. She felt decidedly small and shabby, in comparison.
She recognised the Archiater, and Sister Almeda, and Healer Cole, but there were others she didn’t know, wearing robes that marked them as senior nurses and healers. The Archiater seemed comfortable enough, but Sister Almeda looked strained, and Cole looked entirely ill-at-ease.
Someone came up behind them asking, “Your bag, Therapeutes?” She handed it over without complaint, when Healer Rhoe nodded once. It gave her a chance to glance around at the rest of the temple, and realise that everyone else was giving the main altar plenty of space.
Not all of them were healers, though, or even from the Temple. One woman wore a tunic pinned together at the shoulders, a broad length of light cloth draping around her torso. Her hair was held up with a complex web of ribbons, dotted with the same sort of gild
ed pins that Healer Rhoe wore. She had a snake twining up one arm, a living snake, and she was holding a small goblet in her other hand. Elen glanced down, and found there was a small dog at her feet, and a basket, with things in it hidden by the folds of the woman’s skirt.
Elen realised this must be one of the senior priestesses of Sirona. She instinctively bent her head. Then she made the small gestures of respectful devotion with her hands, as if cupping water and offering it. The woman was older, perhaps sixty, she had strands of white in her dark hair, but she smiled at Elen. It was a broad smile, as if they were sharing a joke no one other than perhaps Healer Rhoe knew about.
No one said anything to Elen, so she looked at the others more closely. One was a man, in his fifties, with senior insignia and a full Guard uniform. There was a woman who might be from the Ministry, she had the right sort of chain of office for someone from the courts.
There was another man, who looked like Healer Rhoe, especially around the eyes and nose, and the same curling dark hair. He was wearing formal robes of a deep purple velvet, that matched the band on Rhoe’s tunic. A compass rose two inches across hung pinned on his chest. That must mean something specific, but Elen had no idea what. All powerful and important people, and she had no idea why they were here.
The Guard coughed. “Therapeutes Morris. Has anyone spoken with you about why you are here?” His voice was steady, a deep bass that rumbled slightly.
“Sir, no, other than the instructions I received by letter. I brought the items requested, nothing else.” It had been a very clear and impersonal letter. She hadn’t been able to read the name on the signature, but the Archiater’s seal had been unmistakably real.
“And you have not spoken to Healer Rhoe, or to anyone else from the Temple of Healing since you were dismissed from service?”
Elen considered. “I was permitted to remain in my lodgings, sir, with the other nurses there. But I kept to myself, I did not talk with anyone there about why I was not serving, or anything else related to my work, only the household necessities.” Also, she’d had a horrible headache for the first several days, the kind that had her head throbbing at the slightest movement or light. She’d barely been able to keep down weak tea and broth.