by Iain Banks
"After you, sir."
"Yes of course after me, Vosill. I am the King, dammit!"
It has always struck me how well our glorious King resembles the portraits one sees displayed of him in paintings and in the profiles which grace our coins. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study those magnificent features that mid-Xamis, in the King's private apartments, while the Doctor treated the duelling wound and the King stood, clad in a long gown with one sleeve rolled up, in silhouette against the luminous expanse of an ancient plaster window, face raised and jaw set, as the Doctor worked at his out-held arm.
What a noble visage! What a regal demeanour! A mane of majestically curling blond hair, a brow of intelligence and stern wisdom, clear, flashing eyes the colour of the summer sky, a sharply defined, heroic nose, a broad, gracefully cultured mouth and a proud, brave chin, all set on the frame both strong and lithe which would be the envy of an athlete in his prime (and the King is in his most magnificent middleage, when most men have started to go to fat). They do say that King Quience is excelled in his appearance and physique only by his late father, Drasine (whom they are already calling Drasine the Great, I am happy to report. And rightly so).
"Oh, Sir! Oh dear! Oh my goodness! Oh, help! Oh, what a calamity! Oh!"
"Leave us, Wiester," the King said, sighing.
"Sir! Yes, Sir. Immediately, Sir." The fat chamberlain, still alternately waving and kneading his hands, left the apartments, muttering and moaning.
"I thought you had armour to stop this sort of thing happening, sir," the Doctor said. She wiped the last of the blood away with a swab which she then handed to me for disposal. I handed her the alcohol in exchange. She soaked another swab and applied it to the gash on the King's bicep. The wound was a couple of fingers long and a couple of pinches deep.
"Ouch!"
"I'm sorry, sir."
"Aow! Aow! Are you sure this isn't some quackery of your own, Vosill?"
"The alcohol kills the ill humours which can infect a wound," the Doctor said frostily. "Sir."
"As does, you claim, mouldy bread," the King snorted. "It has that effect."
"And sugar."
"That too, sir, in an emergency."
"Sugar," the King said, shaking his head.
"Don't you, sir?"
"What?"
"Have armour?"
"Of course we have armour, you imbecile- Aow! Of course we have armour, but you don't wear it in the duelling chamber. In the name of Providence, if you were going to wear armour you might as well not duel at all!"
"But I thought it was a practice, sir. For real fighting." "Well, of course it's a practice, Vosill. If it wasn't a practice the fellow who cut me wouldn't have stopped and damn near fainted, he'd have leapt in for the kill, if it was that sort of duel. Anyway, yes, it was a practice." The King shook his magnificent head and stamped one foot. `Damn me, Vosill, you ask the most stupid questions."
"I beg your pardon, sir."
"It's only a scratch, anyway." The King looked around, then gestured at a footman standing by the main doors, who quickly went to a table and drew his majesty a glass of wine.
"How much less than a scratch is an insect bite," the Doctor said. "And yet people die from those, sir."
"They do?" the King said, accepting the wine goblet.
"So I've been taught. A poisonous humour transmitted from the insect to the bloodstream."
"Hmm," the King said, looking sceptical. He glanced at the wound. "Still just a scratch. Adlain wasn't very impressed." He drank.
"I imagine it would take a great deal to impress Guard Commander Adlain," the Doctor said, though not I think unkindly.
The King gave a small smile. "You don't like Adlain, do you, Vosill?"
The Doctor flexed her brows. "I don't regard him as a friend, sir, but equally I don't regard him as an enemy, either. We both seek to serve you in our appointed ways according to the skills at our command."
The King's eyes narrowed as he considered this. "Spoken like a politician, Vosill," he said quietly. "Expressed like a courtier."
"I shall take that as a compliment, sir."
He watched her clean out the wound for a while. "Still, perhaps you ought to be wary of him, eh?"
The Doctor looked up. I believe she might have been surprised. "If your majesty says so."
"And Duke Wen," the King said with a grunt. "Your ears should burn when he talks about women being doctors, or for that matter women being anything other than whores, wives and mothers."
"Indeed, sir," the Doctor said through gritted teeth. She looked to me to ask for something, then saw that I already held the appropriate jar in my hand. I was rewarded with a smile and a nod of appreciation. I took the alcohol-soaked swab and dropped it in the rubbish bag.
"What's that?" the King said, brows furrowed in suspicion.
"It's an ointment, sir."
"I can see it's an ointment, Vosill. What does it- Oh." "As you feel, sir, it dulls the pain. Also it fights the particles of ill humour which infest the air, and aids the healing process."
"Is that like the stuff you put on my leg that time, on the abscess?"
"It is, sir. What an excellent memory your majesty has. That was the first time I treated you, I believe."
The King caught sight of his reflection in one of the great mirrors which adorned his private resting chambers and drew himself up straighter. He looked at the footman by the door, who came over and took the wine goblet from him, then the King lifted up his chin and pushed his hand through his hair, shaking his head so that his locks, which had been flattened by the sweat under his duelling half-mask, fell bouncing free again.
"That's right," he said, inspecting his noble outline in the looking glass. "I was in a poor state, from what I can recall. All the saw-bones thought I was going to die."
"I was very glad your majesty sent for me," the Doctor said quietly, binding the wound.
"It was an abscess that killed my father, you know," the King told the Doctor.
"So I have heard, sir." She smiled up at him. "But it did not kill you."
The King smiled and looked ahead. "No. Indeed." Then he grimaced. "But then he did not suffer from my twisted guts, or my aching back, or my other aches."
"He is not recorded as mentioning such things, sir," the Doctor said, rolling the dressing round and round the King's mightily muscled arm.
He looked at her sharply. "Are you suggesting I'm a whiner, Doctor?"
Vosill looked up, surprised. "Why, no, sir. You bear your many unfortunate ills with great fortitude." She kept on unwinding the bandage. (The Doctor has bandages specially made for her by the court tailor, and insists
upon the cleanliness of the conditions of their manufacture. Even so, before she will use then she boils them in already-boiled water which she has treated with the bleaching powder she also has specially made for her, by the palace apothecary.) "Indeed your majesty is to be extolled for his willingness to talk of his ailments," the Doctor told him. "Some people — taking stoicism, manly pride or simple reticence beyond its fit limit — suffer in silence until they are at death's door, and then promptly pass over that threshold, when a word, a single complaint at a much earlier stage in their illness would have let a doctor diagnose the problem, treat it and cause them to live. Pain, or even just discomfort, is like the warning sent by a frontier guard, sir. You are free to choose to ignore it, but you should not be unduly surprised if you are subsequently over-run by invaders."
The King gave a small laugh and looked on the Doctor with a tolerant, kindly expression. "Your cautionary military metaphor is duly appreciated, Doctor."
"Thank you, sir." The Doctor adjusted the bandage so that it would sit properly on the King's arm. "There was a note on my door which said you wanted to see me, sir. I assume whatever that was about must have predated your fencing injury."
"Oh," the King said. "Yes." He put one hand up to the back of his neck. "My neck. That stiffness again.
You might look at it later."
"Of course, sir."
The King sighed, and I could not help noticing that his stance altered, so that he was less upright, less regal, even. "Father had the constitution of a haul. They say he once took on a yoke and pulled one of the poor beasts backwards through a paddy."
"I heard it was a calf, sir."
"So? A haul calf weighs more than most men," the King said sharply. "And besides, were you there, Doctor?"
"I was not, sir."
"No. You weren't." The King stared into the distance, a look of sadness on his face. "But, you're right, I think it was a calf." He sighed again. "The old stories talk of the kings of old lifting hauls — adult hauls, Doctor — lifting hauls above their heads and then throwing them at their enemies. Ziphygr of Anlios ripped a wild ertheter in half with his bare hands, Scolf the Strong tore off the head of the monster Gruissens with one hand, Mimarstis the Sompolian-"
"Might these not be simply legends, sir?"
The King stopped talking and looked straight ahead for a moment (I confess I froze), then he turned as far round towards the Doctor as he could with the bandage still being wound. "Doctor Vosill," he said quietly.
"Sir?"
"You do not interrupt the King."
"Did I interrupt you, sir?"
"You did. Do you know nothing?"
"App-"
"Do they teach you naught in this archipelago anarchy of yours? Do they instil no manners whatsoever in their children and their women? Are you so degenerate and impolite that you have no conception of how to behave towards your betters?"
The Doctor looked hesitantly at the King.
"You may answer," he told her.
"The archipelagic republic of Drezen is notorious for its ill manners, sir," the Doctor said, with every appearance of meekness. "I am ashamed to report that I am considered one of the polite ones. I do apologise."
"My father would have had you flogged, Vosill. And that was if he'd decided to take pity on you as a foreigner and therefore unused to our ways."
"I am grateful that in your sympathy and understanding you surpass your noble father, sir. I will try never to interrupt you again."
"Good." The King resumed his proud stance. The Doctor kept on winding the last of the bandage. "Manners were better in the old days too," the King said.
"I'm sure they were," the Doctor said. "Sir."
"The old gods walked amongst our ancestors. The times were heroic. Great deeds could still be done. We had not fallen from our strength then. The men were greater and braver and stronger. And the women were more fair and more graceful."
"I'm sure it was just as you say, sir."
"Everything was better then."
"Just so, sir," the Doctor said, tearing the end of the bandage lengthwise.
"Everything just gets.. worse," the King said with another sigh.
"Hmm," the Doctor said, securing the dressing with a knot. "There, sir, is that better?"
The King flexed his arm and shoulder, inspected his bulging arm, then rolled the gown's sleeve down over the wound. "How long till I can fence again?"
"You can fence tomorrow, gently. Pain will let you know when to stop, sir."
"Good," the King said, and clapped the Doctor on the shoulder. She had to take a step to one side, but looked pleasantly surprised. I thought I saw a blush on her face. "Well done, Vosill." He looked her up and down. "Shame you're not a man. You could learn to fence too, hmm?"
"Indeed, Sir." The Doctor nodded to me and we started to put away the instruments of her profession.
The sick brat's family lived in a pair of filthy, stinking rooms at the top of a cramped and rickety tenement in the Barrows, above a street the storm had turned into a rushing brown sewer.
The concierge was not worthy of the name. She was a fat drunken harridan, a repulsively odoured toll-taker who demanded coin from the Doctor on the pretext that our coming in from the street with such filth on our feet and hose would mean she'd be put to extra work removing it. Judging from the state of the hallway — or as much of it as could be made out in the one-lamp gloom — the city fathers might as well charge her for bringing the muck of its interior out on to the streets of the city, but the Doctor just tutted and dug into her purse. The harridan then demanded and got more coin for letting the crippled child up the stairs with us. I knew better than to attempt to say anything on the Doctor's behalf, and so had to content myself with glaring at the obese nag in the most threatening way I could.
The way up the narrow, creaking, alarmingly pitched staircase led us through a variety of stenches. I experienced in turn sewage, animal ordure, unwashed human bodies, rotting food and some foul form of cooking. This medley was accompanied by an orchestration of noises: the buffeting screech of the wind outside, the wail of babies crying from what seemed like most of the rooms, the shouts, curses, screams and thuds of an argument behind one half-splintered door and the woeful-sounding lowing of beasts shackled in the courtyard.
Raggedly dressed children ran up and down the stairs in front of us, squealing and grunting like animals. People crowded on to the cramped and ill-lit landings on each level to watch us pass and make remarks about the fineness of the Doctor's cloak and the contents of her big dark bag. I kept a handkerchief to my mouth all the way up the stairs, and wished I had soaked it in perfume more recently than I had.
Achieved by a final flight of stairs even more fragilelooking and shaky than those we had encountered on the way up, the top floor of this cess-pile was, I swear, swaying in the wind. Certainly I felt dizzy and sick.
The two cramped, crowded rooms we found ourselves in were probably unbearably hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The wind howled through two small windows in the first chamber. They had probably never had any plaster in them, just a frame with material for blinds and perhaps some shutter-planks. The shutters were long gone, probably burned for winter fuel, and the ragged flaps which were all that remained of the blinds did little to keep out the gale's blast, letting wind and rain billow in.
In this room ten or more people, from babes-in-arms to shrunken ancients, huddled on the floor and a single pallet bed. Their hollow eyes watched as we were ushered quickly towards the room beyond by the crippled waif who'd brought us to this midden-rack. We entered this next chamber by pushing through a tattered fabric door-covering. Behind us, the people muttered to each other with a harsh, lisping sound that might have been a native dialect or a foreign language.
This room was darker, its shutters just as absent as in the room before but its windows covered with the bellying forms of coats or jackets pinned across the frames. Rain had collected in the sodden fabric of the garments before flowing in little rivulets from their bottom edges down the stained plaster of the walls to the floor, where it had pooled and spread.
The floor was curiously sloped and ridged. We were in one of those extra storeys that are added to already cheaply built tenements by builders, landlords and residents who value economy above safety. There was a slow groaning noise from the walls and a sharp cracking, snapping noise from overhead. Water leaked from the sagging ceiling in a handful of places, dripping to the grimy, strawcovered floor.
A thick-set, wild-haired woman in a gruesomely filthy dress greeted the Doctor with much wailing and crying and hoarse, foreign-sounding words and led her through a press of dark, foul-smelling bodies to a low bed set against the far end of the room beneath a bowed wall whose lathe showed through straw-hung lumps of plaster. Something scuttled away along the wall and disappeared into a long crack near the ceiling.
"How long has she been like this?" I heard the Doctor ask, kneeling by the lamp-lit bed and opening her bag. I edged forward, to see a thin girl dressed in rags lying on the bed, her face grey, her thin dark hair plastered to her forehead, her eyes bulging behind her tremulous, flickering eyelids while her breath came in quick, shallow gasps. Her whole body shook and quivered on the bed and her head twitched and her neck muscles
spasmed continually.
"Oh, I don't know!" wailed the woman in the dirty gown who had greeted the Doctor. Under the unwashed scent she smelled of something sickly sweet. She sat down heavily on a torn straw cushion by the bed, making it bulge. She elbowed a few of the other people around her out of the way and put her head in her hands while the Doctor felt the sick child's forehead and pulled one of her eyelids open. "All day, maybe, Doctor. I don't know."
"Three days," said a slight child standing near the head of the bed, her arms clamped round the thin frame of the crippled one who'd brought us here.
The Doctor looked at her. "You're…?’
"Anowir," the girl replied. She nodded at the slightly older girl on the bed. "Zea is my sister."
"Oh no, not three days, not my poor dear girl!" the woman on the straw cushion said, rocking back and forth and shaking her head without looking up. "No, no, no."
"We wanted to send for you before now," Anowir said, looking from the wild-haired woman to the stricken face of the crippled girl she was holding and who was holding her, "but-"
"Oh no, no, no," the fat woman wailed from behind her hands. Some of the children whispered to each other, in the same tongue we'd heard in the outer room. The thick-set woman ran her grubby fingers through her unkempt hair.
"Anowir," the Doctor said in a kindly fashion to the girl holding the crippled child, "can you and some of your brothers and sisters go down to the docks as fast as you can and find an ice merchant? Fetch some ice. It doesn't have to be in first-quality blocks, crushed is fine, in fact it's best. Here." The Doctor reached into her purse and counted out some coins. "How many want to go?" she asked, looking round the host of mostly young, tearful faces.
Quickly a number was settled on and she gave them a coin each. This struck me as far too much for ice at this point in the season, but the Doctor is unworldly in these matters. "You may keep any change," she told the suddenly eagerlooking children, "but you must each bring all you can carry. Apart from anything else," she said, smiling, "it'll help weigh you down in that gale outside and stop you blowing away. Now, go!"