First lessons

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First lessons Page 7

by Lina J. Potter


  What else do I know? Chemistry. She knew plenty about chemistry, including its various applications. She wouldn’t have made it in medical school without organic, inorganic and general chemistry. Aliya could draw Mendeleev’s periodic table from memory. The problem was that she didn’t have any real-life experience with chemistry. Her medical school’s lab didn’t have many samples, and as a result, she couldn’t tell sulfur from old bird droppings. No big deal. I’ll figure that out as I go along.

  Aliya knew almost nothing about farm animals. She could ride a horse, milk a cow or a goat and even shear a sheep, but she had no idea how to actually take care of animals. She had “helped” her grandmother with farm chores during summer vacation, but medicine had always interested her more than agriculture.

  Aliya had dreamed of becoming a doctor her whole life. She devoured the books her mother gave her on the topic, including books on folk healing using herbs. All of it was interesting. Aliya and her mother re-read those books on folk healing in later years, when pharmacy shelves were empty, and it was hard to obtain actual medications. In those years, her mother expressed a lot of anger at the government. She was a nurse and people were sick, but there were no drugs to treat them with. I’ll treat people here with whatever I can find!

  Raspberry could be used to reduce a fever, and coffee raised blood pressure, especially if it was strong. Aloe juice could clear up a runny nose and reduce inflammation in the throat, making it a great cold remedy instead of store-bought nasal spray. Aloe wouldn’t dry the nasal passages or have any other side effects. Sage and Iceland moss were both good for a cough. Aliya’s mother had known plenty about medicinal herbs. She could prepare cough syrups, mustard plasters and lots of other useful things. Aliya could, too. As a child, her favorite game was to go to work with her mother and watch her examine patients while paging through thick medical reference books and asking questions. It was a game she and her mother had never tired of.

  Studying pharmacology in medical school had expanded her knowledge, but Aliya never forgot those folk remedies. When she was at home, she and her mother always collected bark, herbs, and berries in the woods. And Aliya helped out in the family garden.

  She took stock of what she could do: she was a decent surgeon and knew pharmacology better than anyone in her class, and she had a good head on her shoulders and golden hands. What else?

  When she was in her own body, Aliya was an excellent athlete. She could also shoot straight and drive anything with wheels. Neither of those skills would help her now. She’d never handled a bow and arrow, and the only vehicles in her new world were pulled by horses and oxen.

  There were two physical skills that might be useful. Like all children, Aliya had enjoyed playing with knives. She could throw them with decent accuracy and had other knife skills, as well. She was a surgeon, after all. It was a terrifying profession, cutting into living people every day.

  Her second advantage was her army training. Hand-to-hand combat was a dangerous skill if used properly by a person in peak physical fitness. But what if your body isn’t in shape at all? She felt more like a sofa cushion at the moment.

  Aliya could have screamed in frustration, but she had no choice. All she could do was up the intensity of her exercise routine, knowing it would take a while before her new body started to show any changes. She could hurt herself if she rushed things.

  On the seat next to her, Martha was still mumbling about something. Aliya leaned over to listen. The old woman was relieved that Earton was an out-of-the-way estate. It was a twenty-day trip to the nearest city, and over fifty days to the capital.

  Aliya hoped that meant she wouldn’t see much of her dear husband. The less he came nosing around, the better. She had no love for a man she’d never seen, and in fact, she would have been happy to arrange an “accident” for him—something along the lines of “I was minding my own business peeling potatoes with an antique dagger when my husband slipped and fell on it fifteen times.” How else could I feel about him? He had married an unhappy, overweight girl just so he could get ahead in the world and then sent her away to live on an estate that was literally in the middle of nowhere.

  If that wasn’t enough, the “inseminator” just turned up once a year to spend three nights with his wife (when she was most likely to conceive) and then raced back to the capital. What a prick! But they’re all like that in these times.

  Aliya pricked up her ears as Martha griped quietly about the area. She hadn’t found a map in the library, and she wanted to know where exactly she lived in this world. She knew Earton was in the sticks, bordered on the north by the Earta River, which was wide but not used much by boats. From what she could tell from Martha’s grumblings, the Baron of Donter had his lands on the other side of the river, and the lands around Earton weren’t very hospitable—cliffs and swamps to the south and east and, on the west, a pine forest that ran down to the sea. Even the sea had few boats—it was too shallow, and there were dangerous reefs. The family seat didn’t have much going for it.

  Aliya had no idea how she was supposed to live there. It was also a mystery to her why no one went down to the sea. They could at least have had a few fishing villages on the shore. She just didn’t know enough about her new home yet.

  She needed a business plan, and, for the first time ever, Aliya was sorry she hadn’t studied economics. She could be sitting on a gold mine for all she knew. Okay, I can figure this all out.

  She suspected that she could do what she wanted in Earton as long as she didn’t go too far; there was basically no one there to stop her. She was the wife of the Earl of Earton—or an extension of him. Women weren’t supposed to have their own ideas, so her will was his will. She would just have to know when to stop, and she had learned that lesson well in medical school. A doctor who doesn’t know when to stop can kill a patient.

  Aliya decided that when she got back to the castle, she would write out what she knew, summarize it, and draft an action plan for the next few months. With those thoughts in mind, she saw that they had arrived.

  Chapter 4

  Determination and Discovery

  One word described the village: poverty.

  There was a dirty ‘street’ down the middle of the village, where a crowd of skinny children stood around with frightened, hungry faces like stray dogs. Their eyes asked, Is this new person going to kick me? All of them wore gray shirts that came down to their knees more or less, and their dirty hair was cut short on both the boys and the girls. The dogs were as dirty as the children, and their ribs stuck out. The village was surrounded by the forest, and the houses were just huts.

  Aliya started to get angry. People shouldn’t be living like this! But here they were, and they’d been living this way a long time. They were surviving somehow, but their poverty was her fault. Well, it was actually the former Countess’ fault, but the new countess was going to do something about it.

  After looking around, Aliya got back in the carriage. Her eyes shone with such fire that Martha choked on her words mid-sentence.

  “Who do I talk to here? Is there a village elder? Who’s in charge of the village?”

  “They’re all out in the fields,” Martha shrugged. “They won’t be back until evening. If you want to talk to someone, there’s just Old Mattie.”

  “Old Mattie?”

  “I told you. Her husband was the Comptroller before this one. When Irk died, the master sent us Etor. Don’t you remember? Your husband said—”

  Aliya stopped her. “Of course, I remember all of that. I was just thinking of something else. Let’s go.” She wondered how old the woman was if everyone called her Old Mattie.

  Martha stuck her head out the window and told the coachman to turn left while Aliya pondered the social rules that might govern paying of visits. She didn’t think she could just walk in and say, “Hi, I live over that way in the castle. Have some flowers. I need your help.” But if she didn’t come up with anything better, that was exactly what sh
e would do.

  Her musings were interrupted by a child’s cry. Aliya turned to see what had happened, and Martha called for the carriage to stop. Aliya threw open the door and managed to crawl out. Life is ten times harder when you weigh over two hundred and seventy pounds.

  The children had been running around in the street, jostling each other and playing games. A carriage was something new, so they were excited. One of the children climbed up on a fence to get a better look and fell. He would have been fine, but his leg hit a sharp piece of wood that left a jagged wound. His friends saw the blood and started to scream and cry. All of this happened just a few feet away from Aliya.

  Her reflexes kicked in, and she forgot about everything else—her new body, how she ended up in this new world. She knelt in the dirt by the wounded boy not as Countess Lilian Earton, brainless fool, but as Aliya Skorolenok, one of the best students at the Ryazan Medical School. Her ungainly body and the medieval conditions around her meant nothing. She was facing a person who needed help, and that was all that mattered.

  Her voice was soft and calming as she spoke, “Don’t worry, he’s going to be fine. I can see that your friend is a brave boy, and he doesn’t need to cry about a little scrape like this. It will heal over, and the scar will look good on him, won’t it?”

  She kept talking in a soft voice and carefully pulled the boy’s hands away from the wound. At first glance, it was nothing serious. The bone wasn’t broken, and no arteries had been touched. The skin was broken, and a muscle was hurt. She just needed to stitch it up and be sure to disinfect it.

  “My Lady?” It was her faithful Martha. The coachman stood awkwardly nearby.

  Aliya looked up at him. “You there. What’s your name—Jacques?”

  “Jean.”

  “Whatever. Take this child and carry him, let me see…”

  “To my house,” a friendly, deep voice interjected.

  Aliya turned. “Who are you?”

  “Emma Mattie, My Lady.”

  Aliya nodded. “Jean, take the boy to Emma’s house. Hurry up. Emma, I need the finest needle you have and some silk thread. You can rip four or five of them off my dress. I’ll also need strong wine, hot water, and clean rags. Can you get me those things?”

  Emma nodded.

  ***

  Aliya worked fast and confidently. After drinking a cup of strong wine, the boy was almost asleep. She washed his leg, stitched it up, and applied a bandage. It was all done quickly and neatly.

  Her professors would have been proud. Less than an hour after his mishap, the child was asleep on a bench in the corner under a warm blanket. Emma promised to keep an eye on him until his parents returned from the fields. Aliya promised to come back every day to check his leg. She would have preferred to take him back to the castle, but she didn’t know where she would put him, and she wasn’t sure where her rights as Countess ended. Martha was already shocked by what she had seen.

  As was Emma. An attractive woman about fifty years-old with bright, intelligent brown eyes, and streaks of gray in her dark hair, but her posture was straight and youthful. She was dressed as if she had known better times, but even now, her clothes were clean enough, if plain and gray. Aliya watched the woman for a few minutes, unsure how to begin, before deciding to just jump in.

  “I was on my way to see you, Emma.”

  The widow Mattie was obviously taken aback. Aliya gave her friendliest smile. “I know my arrival here was unexpected. Let me explain. Would you rather sit outside in my carriage or here in the house? Please don’t worry. I came because I heard good things about you.”

  “What exactly?”

  Aliya saw that the woman was smart. She nodded. “Plenty. You were married to the former Comptroller. When he was in charge, the estate was run properly. Doesn’t it hurt you to see everything your husband worked for going to waste?”

  She saw that she had hit a nerve. With the help of two women, I’m going to make a life for myself in this new world.

  She told Emma Mattie the story she had cooked up: that after she lost her baby, she couldn’t keep living as she had before. For a start, she wanted to bring order to the estate, since she suspected her Comptroller was stealing. Then she would turn her attention to the villages of Earton. What Aliya learned from Emma was worth the long drive.

  There were three types of coin in Ativerna. Gold crowns and silver scepters, which were named for the symbols stamped on them, and simple copper coins. One gold coin was equal to twenty silver coins, and each silver coin was equal to fifty copper coins. A chambermaid was paid twenty copper coins a month. A soldier earned one silver. A bag of turnips cost three coppers. Five coppers would buy a pile of firewood.

  The Comptroller was supposed to make sure that the peasants worked the Earl’s fields, but he went beyond that and charged them ten silver coins per village, to be paid each month. The peasants scrimped and saved to pay the tax, but the Comptroller turned around and cheated the Earl by skimming off the top for himself. He padded all the estate’s bills and put the difference in his own pocket, and he often claimed to have bought something for the estate that could never be found in any of the storerooms.

  Jess Earton might not notice, but Aliya felt bound to do something to help these people now that she was in their world. She might have gone easy on the Comptroller if Emma had not added that he taxed some families by taking their daughters and selling them to the slave traders whose ships sailed down the coast.

  And because the fewer witnesses, the better, he had sent all the castle guards and some of the servants home, despite the fact that the castle was already short-staffed with just ten of each. They were told that they wouldn’t be paid any longer, so they could find other jobs or go sit at home. Whenever the Earl showed up, the Comptroller told him that the guards were patrolling the coast or staking out robbers in the villages. He was a professional liar, and it never entered the Earl’s mind to inspect his villages and talk to people when he could be out hunting.

  Once she had the whole story, Aliya was enraged. If she had been in her own body, she knew what she would have done—make the man cry until he gave all the money back. In this new body, though, she couldn’t do anything at all. Except… An evil smile crossed her lips.

  “How many strong young men are there in the village?” she asked Emma. “Or maybe some of the old castle guards still live around here?”

  Emma frowned and thought for a while. Then she told Aliya that there were about fifty men between the ages of twenty and forty living in the village. Two of them had served as guards at the castle. The entire population of the village numbered about three hundred.

  Aliya couldn’t wait. “How can I find them?”

  “There are three places they’d be: the fields, the forest, or down at the river.”

  “I don’t want to go hunting around in the forest. Should I go out to the fields or send someone to call them in? I need about ten men; the sooner, the better.”

  Emma studied the Countess’ face and gave a slow smile. Has the time really come?

  A minute later, they had found some boys outside and promised them sweets in exchange for an errand. The children ran off in all directions to find their fathers and older brothers. Meanwhile, Aliya sat with Emma and listened to more of her stories. She couldn’t stop clenching her fists in anger.

  The villagers had few animals left. They were forced to sell their crops for next to nothing, and they were worried about making it through the winter. Each winter, the village lost several dozen members. Old people stopped eating so the children would get enough. Instead, they ate bark, acorns, and even grass.

  And all the while Lilian Earton has been eating ten-course dinners! Aliya was ashamed to have Emma’s eyes on her. All that kept her from dying of shame was the knowledge that none of this was actually her fault. It may have been Lilian’s body, but it was Aliya’s mind. Aliya knew she had been given a second chance—both for herself and for the silly Countess.

&nbs
p; ***

  It took at least an hour for the first group of five men to show up. Martha informed her of their arrival.

  Aliya sized them up. They didn’t look ready to set the world on fire. Their dirty gray clothes were patched and darned, and their shoes were wooden clogs. Their beards and hair were trimmed short. Most importantly for Aliya, their eyes telegraphed a message in giant letters: What does this woman want?

  Aliya took the bull by the horns without waiting for them to speak. “Do you want to make some money?”

  It took the men all of twenty seconds to think over her offer. Then the message in their eyes changed: Silver coin!

  Aliya smiled. “As Countess of Earton, I am reassembling the castle’s guard. I guarantee each of you three silver coins a month, as well as clothing and food while you serve. You can take extra food home with you. If you want to join up, take whatever weapons you have and follow me back to Earton Castle. We’ll sign a contract, and you’ll get your first payment.”

  “What do we need weapons for?” asked a young man with suspiciously familiar brown eyes.

  Aliya grinned. “We’re going to convince the Comptroller to let go of some money.”

  “You mean, kill him?”

  “Just convince him.”

  Aliya, Emma, and the young man all had the same fire in their eyes. Sometimes, it takes a sharp blade to convince a man to part with his money.

  “How about an ax?”

  “Let me see it.”

  Aliya examined the weapon and nodded. “This will do for now. We’ll get you a better weapon later. There must be some weapons left in the castle. He can’t have taken them all!”

  Judging by the looks on the men’s faces, they knew exactly what she wanted and didn’t mind doing it.

 

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