Isobel

by Chloe Garner

  The hole in Drude’s calf was clean-edged, and the flesh under it had closed the way it should have, except that now it was swollen, his lower leg now the diameter of his thigh, and the skin strained and purple, as if his leg were exploding in slow motion. A slick of greenish-white rolled down his leg as Allie pulled the bandaging away, riding on an oily sheen that seemed to cover his calf and shin.

  Isobel was standing behind Allie, now.

  “Tell the women to boil more water,” she said. “I’m going to have to drain that and clean it. You don’t have to stay, if you choose.”

  “No,” Allie said. “I’m not leaving him.”

  “It’s much easier to make level-headed decisions about men you don’t know,” Isobel said. Allie looked at Isobel with steady eyes.

  “Then you be level-headed. I’ll just help.”

  Isobel nodded, dropping her head while keeping her eyes on Allie.

  “Go quickly. We have a lot of work to do to bring his fever down. If we don’t, he won’t survive the night.”

  Allie nodded and, taking one last look at the slack face that only hinted at Drude’s features, dashed down the stairs to warn the women in the kitchen that it was going to be another long night.

  There were herbs, there were poultices, there were compresses, there were potions. Allie had seen most of them before, but knowing what they did made Drude’s injury seem much more real, now, than it had for the other men. They told her what Isobel saw, what they were fighting on Drude’s behalf. Allie stood by with cloths as Isobel cut Drude’s leg open, pressing the swelling of fluid and ooze out until the blood there flowed clean again.

  “Will you close it?” Allie asked. Isobel shook her head as she washed out the wound and re-bandaged it.

  “No. They will have cleaned it this morning, and that much built up just today. We’ll have to tend it every few hours to keep him from losing his leg.”

  “That’s possible?” Allie asked.

  “Look at his toes,” Isobel told her. Feet were such a strange thing to begin with, Allie hadn’t noticed, but comparing one foot to the other, she saw how swollen and discolored Drude’s right foot was.

  “Why is it like that?” Allie asked.

  “Fluid building up in his leg, probably,” Isobel said. “He has too much sickness everywhere to just absorb it.”

  Isobel finished with her work and stood.

  “Keep water on his face and neck and keep track of his heart beat. If anything changes, let me know.”

  Allie nodded, sitting on the floor next to Drude’s head and putting her hand across his forehead. His skin was frighteningly hot, like it had been near a fire, and his face was such a dark red that his freckles had vanished. Despite that, his body shook with shivering tremors. Allie dripped water across his face then brushed it away with her hand when it got warm, leaving her hand under his chin for a moment to feel the quick beats his heart was putting out. A few hours later, Isobel returned and pulled off the bandages, revealing another pool of white in the gash her knife had left. He bled more quickly this time, but his fever was worse. Isobel gave him more of the herbs and returned to the other men, leaving Allie to watch over Drude again.

  As the night turned to deep dark, Isobel returned again, putting her hand on Drude’s forehead and feeling his heart. She shook her head.

  “We’re going to have to risk it,” she said. Allie looked up at her, but Isobel didn’t offer an explanation, turning to leave. A few minutes later, the men from downstairs came and carried Drude down the stairs and out of the house, laying him on a large skin stretched between four posts. Allie stood, hugging her exposed arms against the night chill, as they poured bucket after bucket of cold well water over Drude, leaving him in a bath of it. Isobel stood with Allie, watching.

  “Is he going to make it?” Allie asked after a while.

  “I don’t know,” Isobel answered.

  They waited.

  Around dawn, Isobel cleaned Drude’s wound again and put her hand across his forehead. Allie kept her thoughts to herself, hardly daring to hope.

  “Good,” Isobel said after a moment. The woman’s eyes warned her, but she nodded as she stood. “He’s doing better. You should go get something to eat.”

  Drude’s color had returned to normal, and Allie had covered him in a thick sheepskin blanket when he had started shivering harder. His temperature was normal, or low, and while he was still sweaty, he didn’t stink of death any more.

  Allie went downstairs feeling drained and light-headed and ate a light meal of vegetable broth and wadded up bits of bread by herself, sitting on the floor next to the fire. The women in the kitchen had offered her scraps of smoked meat and ale, but she thought either of them would have made her sick.

  It was like walking in a dream. The previous night couldn’t have possibly been real. Drude was out fighting the Romans with Aedan, not upstairs fighting for each breath. Not like one of the nameless men who came here to die.

  But he had made it through the night. Isobel had said that that would be a big step, and he had made it. His leg was still hard to recognize, but that was just a wound. It would heal and he would be better. They would send him back to go kill Romans again.

  Gwen touching her shoulder made her jump, sloshing her broth all over the hearth.

  “Did you sleep?” her mother asked. Allie shook her head.

  “Go,” Gwen said.

  “No,” Allie answered. “It’s Drude.”

  “I heard,” Gwen said. “You need sleep.”

  Allie shook her head again.

  “I’ve held wake for men I’ve loved,” Gwen said, her voice growing stern. “Watched over them as they died. You can only help them if you stay healthy. You need to sleep.”

  At any other moment in her life, that tone of voice would have overruled anything, but not today. Not now.

  “No,” Allie said, swallowing the last of her cold broth and handing the bowl to her mother. “I’m going back upstairs.”

  She pushed herself up off the ground and steadied herself against the warm stones, then blinked hard and shook her head, trying to swallow around a dry throat. Her feet were moving toward the hallway, but her shoulders and head felt like they weren’t ready yet. She turned to look at Gwen as she reached the doorway, unable to read her mother’s expression.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally, then made her way back down the hallway and up the stairs. She opened the heavy wooden door that separated the infirmary from the rest of the house and closed it quietly, turning to find Drude sitting up, leaned against the wall like a discarded doll.

  “Allie?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  “You need water,” she said, dipping a bowl in the bucket of drinking water and bringing it to him. She knelt next to him and gave it to him, watching his face. He stared.

  “What happened to you?”

  Her hand found her hair self-consciously, and his eyes scanned her body.

  “I hardly recognize you.”

  She realized that she probably wouldn’t have recognized herself, if the last time she had seen herself was most of a year ago. Her figure had changed and she’d put on probably fifteen pounds of muscle. She gave him a small, tired smile.

  “You look exactly the same.”

  He took the bowl from her now, cupping it in two hands and sipping from it carefully. She stayed next to him, hand on his shoulder, holding him upright.

  “What do you remember?” she asked. He grunted.

  “I remember setting out this morning in more pain than a man should know.”

  She nodded and put her hand to his forehead again. He was still sticky with feverish sweat, but his temperature had come down considerably. Isobel would treat him again with herbs sometime; Allie didn’t understand the quantities or frequencies with which Isobel chose to dispense her wares, but she was beginning to recognize them.

  Drude gave her a short, sharp little laugh, more of a cough than real humor, though his eyes were
warm.

  “Go ahead. Ask.”

  “How is he?”

  Drude smiled and reached up to take her hand.

  “He does his people proud. A true warrior. He thinks of you often.”

  Allie suppressed the smile that threatened to overwhelm her. This wasn’t the place, though it was clear that Drude understood. He struggled to sit up further, and she cautioned him against it with her hands.

  “How bad?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “I don’t know. That you’re awake is good…”

  “Is it night out?”

  “It’s morning again,” she answered. He rubbed his face.

  “It’s bad.”

  She nodded. He grunted again and sat up, gently brushing her away. As Isobel noticed what was going on and came to intervene, he stripped the bandaging away from his leg. He fell back against the wall in exhaustion as Isobel stood over him with her fists on her hips.

  “I’ll never walk again, will I?”

  “Not if you keep tearing up my work,” Isobel answered, sitting on the floor with an air of impatience and started to inspect the wound. Drude twisted his head away with a barely-contained groan.

  “Would have waited another hour, but as long as you’ve got it open…” Isobel said.

  “Do what you need to, woman.”

  Isobel glanced at him, but let it go. Allie watched as Isobel bathed the violently red flesh where the skin had hours ago slid off. It smelled like rank meat, but not like it had. The swelling might have even started to abate. Drude grunted louder, twisting his shoulders, and Allie put her knee on his chest.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. He nodded, then rolled his eyes away again.

  “There’s a long road to travel, but there’s hope,” Isobel said, going to get the stone jar where she kept one of her ointments. As she slathered the pale cream all the way around Drude’s leg, the tension in his body drained.

  “You need rest,” Isobel said as she finished re-wrapping everything and stood. “As do you, Allie. And if you stay, neither of you will sleep. So you are to leave. Now.”

  Allie looked up at Isobel for a long moment, genuinely hurt, but Isobel turned away. Drude caught her wrist.

  “Don’t tell Kenna,” he whispered. She frowned at him and he looked away. “Don’t tell them yet.”

  “Okay,” she said hesitantly and stood. His gaze remained far away, but he licked his lips and swallowed to speak again.

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  For three days, Drude fevered on and off. Isobel didn’t banish Allie from the ward again, so she took to sleeping on the pallet next to Drude in short naps, putting the rest of her energy into caring for him and, when he didn’t need her, the rest of the men. Gwen brought her meals, like when she’d worked in the kitchen, sitting with her in silence as she ate and taking her dishes away when she was done. Allie had been afraid that her mother would have been hurt or have become distant, but she found that Gwen treated her more like one of the other women and less like a child. She was still affectionate, but it was as though she had surrendered much of her authority.

  At the end of the third day, Isobel was checking Drude’s wound while Allie spoon-fed him broth. The smell took her attention away from his meal immediately, and she shifted to watch what Isobel was doing. Isobel looked at her with quiet warning, and Allie felt sick.

  “What is it?” Drude asked.

  “Your body was too weak to repair the injury while you were sick,” Isobel said. “Part of your leg has died and I need to cut it away.”

  “No,” he answered.

  “It won’t stop,” Isobel said. “I can do it now, or I can do it later, or it will kill you.”

  Allie looked with barely-disguised anguish at her friend. The boisterous attitude had still been there, over the preceding days, but the sincere man underneath had become visible to her in a way that she had never before seen him. Even in pain, he had been gentle with her, and they had never had to summon the men from downstairs to hold him down while Isobel treated him. She had come to see him in a fraction of the light that Aedan had known him, and she was fast falling in love with him as a person.

  “No,” Drude said again, his voice strangled.

  “Drude,” Allie whispered.

  “If I am successful, you may walk again,” Isobel said. “If I wait, you will not.”

  “But I will never be king,” Drude said.

  “You must decide if that was all your life was worth,” Isobel said, standing. Allie came to sit next to Drude’s head again as Isobel left. Tears wound their way down his temples and vanished into his hair.

  “You have to,” Allie whispered.

  “You haven’t told them, have you?” Drude asked. She shook her head quickly. He nodded with a hard swallow.

  “You don’t understand,” he said.

  “No.”

  “The Caledd… our king has to be a warrior. Da is out with the warriors, now, fighting the same as the rest of his men. We take the field and defend our people. We don’t have kings who sit fat up in their hillforts.”

  “Maybe you can be different,” Allie whispered, frightened by the passion in his voice and what it meant. He shook his head, rubbing the sides of his face with the backs of his hands.

  “My father doesn’t have another heir.”

  “Does that mean… Aedan?”

  “No. It means the clans would go to war, every two-bit chieftain trying to take the throne for themselves.”

  “And then…”

  “And then the Romans would come and kill us all,” Drude said. “We can’t survive warring amongst ourselves.”

  “But if we make peace with Rome first…”

  He gave a soft laugh.

  “Both sides are always looking for the first excuse to break the treaties. It would be the end of us.”

  Allie looked away.

  “You still have to.”

  “I know.”

  She found his hand in hers and she squeezed it.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Will you stay?”

  She nodded quickly.

  Isobel returned with a large bowl full of tools and a group of men. One of them handed Drude a potent-smelling draught and Drude drained it. The smell of alcohol was overwhelming, covering the scent of the other things in the drink. After a few minutes, Drude’s head rolled to the side and his mouth started working soundlessly.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Isobel said to Allie. Allie held firm to Drude’s hand.

  “I’m staying,” she answered. Isobel regarded her for a moment, then drew a breath and shrugged.

  “Very well.” She addressed the men needlessly as they took their positions around Drude’s semi-conscious body. “Hold him still.”

  The work had been done cleanly. After it was done, he actually looked better than he had before, though Allie knew that the mass of muscle that Isobel had cut and burned had been critical to Drude’s ability to function as an athlete and a warrior. It may have been crucial to his ability to walk without a crutch. Only time would tell, there.

  Drude had thrashed and screamed as she’d worked, the only saving grace being that he would never remember. He’d come to, hours later, to find her sitting next to him with her arms wrapped around her knees.

  “Is it done?” he’d asked.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded.

  “Nothing else to do,” he’d said. She’d spent much of the afternoon with him, then went outside when he fell asleep again and found herself up in a tree as the sun began to set. It had rained all day, and the air was damp and crisp with the cool fall, smelling of wet moss and dirt. It was a stark relief after the rank smell in the infirmary.

  One of the men had died during the night, and another would leave in the morning. It was likely that, if Drude began to heal properly, the smell would go away, leaving just the scent of unwashed men, but as it was, it was barely tolerable. Allie missed the days outside, even in the ki
tchen, but she felt like Isobel was teaching her something she would never have another opportunity to learn. And she wouldn’t abandon Drude.

  The tree below her rustled, and Allie looked down to find Kenna climbing up to join her.

  “Allie,” the girl called. Allie looked away, not intending to be dismissive, but not having the energy to return the greeting. Kenna settled in a few feet away, tucking her feet in underneath her and watching Allie.

  “The girls say you can smell things,” Kenna said. Allie looked at her, too tired to be bemused. Kenna didn’t appear to be joking. “I’m beginning to think they’re right.”

  Allie let her head roll away again, the prickly ends of her own hair brushing against her neck.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” Kenna asked. Allie nodded. “And you can’t tell me.” Allie sighed, then shook her head. “Will you ever tell me?”

  Allie drew another breath, summoning strength, then turned her attention to Kenna.

  “All of the clans will know, before long,” she said. Kenna drew a hard breath and put her hand over her mouth.

  “It isn’t Aedan, then.”

  “Oh,” Allie said. “Oh, Kenna. I’m sorry. I would tell you the minute I knew anything about Aedan, I promise.”

  Kenna nodded.

  “The other girls, they have kin, too.”

  Allie shook her head.

  “I would tell you if I knew anything about anyone’s brother or father.”

  Kenna leaned back against the sturdy limb of the tree behind her and crossed her legs.

  “We’ve missed you, girlie, these last few days. Not the same, practicing without you.”

  Allie nodded.

  “I’ll be back soon, I think.”

  “You look like you haven’t slept,” Kenna commented. Allie shook her head.

  “Haven’t.”