by Roger Taylor
'There's more,’ Leck said quietly.
'Don't just stand there, man. Help!'
Immersed in his inner conversation with Leck, the voice made Privv start violently. Absently he had walked down the steps of the PlasHein and was standing in the gateway. The person addressing him was a weary-looking Keeper who was just gently laying an injured woman down on the grassy slope. Privv pulled himself together quickly and bent down to help him. ‘I'm sorry, Keeper,’ he said. ‘I'm having some difficulty in believing what I'm seeing.'
The Keeper nodded and gave him a look full of grim understanding, then turned and walked back into the crowded square.
Privv returned to his silent conversation. ‘Go on,’ he said, abandoning the woman and moving away from the gate.
'When the panic began, the men who started it walked quietly away.'
Untypically, Privv was lost for words. Leck's observations had added layer upon layer to what was already, beyond doubt, the best story he had ever had. He needed to think about everything carefully and at his leisure to see how he might best profit from it. In the meantime, he realized there were yet more opportunities for him here.
Looking round, he saw a woman kneeling on the ground, her arms wrapped around a child. There was blood on the child's face and it was very still. The woman was sobbing.
True Sheeter that he was, Privv put a compassionate hand on her shoulder, bent forward and said, ‘What do you feel about all this, then?'
* * *
Chapter 24
Vredech looked at the child in his arms. He was holding it tightly to prevent the trembling that was threatening to overwhelm him.
'Come on, young man, we'd better look for your parents,’ he said as comfortingly as he could.
'I'm a girl and I was with my brother,’ the child exclaimed, and burst into tears.
Vredech resorted to a vague, ‘There, there,’ and an affectionate pat. ‘Let's find your brother, then,’ he said.
But there were other demands being made upon him. Hands clutched at him. All around, wide, shocked eyes appealed to him. He was used to dealing with bereaved relatives and people suffering all manner of personal distress, but this had always been in circumstances of domestic intimacy, secure and sheltering. Here, the very familiarity of the surroundings and the blue summer sky overhead merely intensified the bewildered pain that was turning to him for solace.
Despair filled him, acrid and choking. How could he do anything here? He had no experience of such...
He did not complete the thought, for immediately in its wake came the answer: nor has anyone else here.
Ishryth had said, ‘I shall burden no soul with more than it can bear.’ It was one of the anchors of his faith. But...
A hand seized his arm. ‘Brother, my husband is hurt. Please ...'
There is no crowd here, just many individuals, he forced himself to think. Those that I can help, I will. Until things change. He turned to the woman and held out the child to her. ‘Show me your husband,’ he said quietly but firmly, looking into her eyes. ‘And look after this little girl, she's lost her brother.'
The woman faltered briefly, then released his arm and took the child. Vredech followed her to a small circle of people, relatively stationary amid the general confusion. The watchers parted as he reached them. Lying on the rough cobbles was a middle-aged man. He was resting on his elbows, as if fearful of lying down, and one leg was twisted under the other in a manner that needed no medical training on Vredech's part for him to know that it was badly broken. Where are you, Morem? he thought. Nertha? He dashed the thought aside almost in panic. He must concentrate totally on what was in front of him. He shivered.
'Are you all right, Brother?’ the injured man asked, grimacing with pain.
'A little disturbed,’ Vredech replied, formal politeness containing the surge of conflicting emotions that the injured man's unexpected concern released.
'What happened?’ the man asked as Vredech knelt down beside him.
'I've no idea,’ Vredech replied. ‘I'm going to try to make you comfortable until I can get a physician to help you properly. Lie still, don't try to move. Be patient.’ He put his arm around the man's shoulder to support him and laid a hand on his forehead. The watching circle was closing about him again. Glancing around he saw that people, anxious to help, were emerging from the houses and shops that lined the street. He looked at one of the spectators. ‘Go to one of those people from the houses and ask for blankets and cushions to support and cover this man.’ He turned to another. ‘You keep hold of him until your friend gets back. Don't move him.’ And to another. ‘Go down to the square. I imagine there'll be Keepers there by now. Find out what's happening and come back to me.’ Then to the wife of the injured man. ‘Be patient. Look after the child for me. I'll not be far away.'
As he stood up, he could see that the small crowd around him had grown. Half a dozen hands reached out to him immediately, and voices became clamorous. He held up his arms. ‘Be quiet,’ he said sternly and with an authority that he did not feel. ‘And be calm. If you're walking, then you've no hurt that won't wait awhile. You must help those less fortunate. Do as I've just done. Make them comfortable. Talk to them, quieten them, until we can find out what's happened and arrange for some proper help.’ As he had before, he singled out individuals. ‘If you see anyone wandering about lost or obviously distressed and not in control of themselves, bring them ...’ He looked around. ‘... there.’ He pointed to the doorway into which he had been pushed. A woman was wandering about helplessly, carrying a chair. From one of the houses, he presumed. He took her arm and pointed her to the same doorway. ‘Put it over there,’ he said gently. ‘And have your neighbours do the same.'
For some time, Vredech was able to use his unexpected healing ministry to keep at bay his fear for Nertha, but eventually it burst through and would not be restrained. With a final delegation of tasks he broke away from his following and started moving back up the street, searching anxiously amongst both the standing and the fallen. He resisted the temptation to add to the noise by calling out her name, but his search was no less frantic than all the others going on around him. He passed a small carriage that was lying on its side, the horse still between its shafts. Its eyes were wide and white, but apart from its heaving flanks, it was motionless, obviously having given up any attempt to right itself. The sight added further to Vredech's anxiety. If the struggling crowd had turned a horse and carriage over, what chance had Nertha had on her mount?
'Nertha, Nertha, where are you?’ he whispered softly to himself over and over, like a litany. Terrible reproaches filled him.
If only, if only...
His mind was instantly full of both the future and the past. Of her funeral and what could be said of her there. Of raucous argumentative mealtimes under the tolerant stewardship of their parents.
If only, if only...
Endless causes and effects.
And darkness.
'Allyn! Allyn!'
It was the tone of the voice rather than the calling of his name that eventually broke through into his crowding thoughts. He looked around, startled. The dreadful images vanished and his life began to reform itself again.
'Here! Over here!'
At first he did not recognize her. Her long hair had been hastily snatched back and bound with a kerchief, her sleeves were rolled up and her face was streaked with blood. The manner however, was unmistakable; she was beckoning him urgently and her face was angry. He smiled.
'Allyn, get over here, will you,’ she shouted.
Vredech pushed his way through the crowd. ‘Thank Ishryth you're all right,’ he said, kneeling down beside her.
She looked at him briefly, reached out and touched his face, as if for reassurance, then said, ‘There's a green bottle in my saddlebag, Allyn. Get it, this one's in a bad way.'
Only then did Vredech notice that she was kneeling by an injured man. Badly injured, as she had remarked, for a jagged b
one was sticking out of his arm. Vredech felt the blood draining from his face.
'Damn you, Allyn,’ Nertha hissed furiously. ‘Don't you dare faint on me. Get that bottle—now!'
Vredech nodded, not daring to open his mouth to reply for fear of what he might release. He looked round. Nertha's horse was standing patiently nearby, tethered to a metal grille that both decorated and guarded a basement window. Surreptitiously he steadied himself against the animal as he stood up, then, after some fumbling with the straps, he was rooting through the contents of the saddle-bag. It was full of bottles and small boxes and mysterious instruments, held snugly in several rows of robustly-made pockets.
He could feel Nertha willing him on to hurry, her silence being, as usual, more potent than her commands. Just as he sensed her about to rise to complete the task herself, he found a green bottle.
'Here,’ he said, handing it down to her.
She had opened it and was sprinkling the contents on to a kerchief by the time he had knelt down again. A sweet, pungent smell struck him. It did little to improve his stomach, but his relief at finding Nertha steadied him. ‘How did you manage to stay on your horse?’ he asked.
But she was talking to her patient. ‘This will help the pain. Breathe deeply and count to ten.’ She placed the kerchief deftly but very firmly over the man's face. He mumbled something, raised his good arm weakly as if to protest, and then went limp. Vredech watched as Nertha's hands moved surely to the man's throat and then to his eyelids. She nodded to herself. ‘Watch this and learn,’ she said, adding as an afterthought, ‘But if you're going to be sick, face the other way.'
There followed a brief interlude during which Vredech stood by, both horrified and fascinated, while Nertha wrestled with the injured man's arm; pulling, twisting, manipulating. Gradually the exposed bone retreated like a nervous animal into its burrow but Nertha's fingers continued poking and prodding, her tongue protruding slightly and her face rapt in concentration. Vredech was reminded of the Whistler's fingers moving purposefully and independently along his black flute. His own fingers were driving their nails into his palms.
Her hands still working, Nertha glanced up at him and grinned ruefully. ‘You look awful.'
'I'm fine,’ he said defensively.
Nertha's tongue emerged again and her eyes turned skywards as her face contorted in response to the effort being applied by her hands. A sudden click made Vredech start violently. Nertha's face relaxed. ‘Got it,’ she said, quietly triumphant, dragging her forearm across her brow. ‘Let's get him cleaned up and bandaged. He's a lucky man.'
'Lucky?’ Vredech was incredulous.
'Unless that wound becomes badly infected, he'll live and he'll probably get the use of his arm back. That's lucky,’ Nertha said starkly. ‘There's others here with injuries that I can't just shove back into place.’ She waved her bloodstained fingers in front of him. ‘Internal injuries, head injuries. I hope Troidmallos's Sick-House can cope.’ Her voice suddenly became angry. ‘What the devil happened, Allyn?'
Vredech looked at her, head bent again, working steadily on the damaged limb while she was talking. He wanted to put his arms around her and hold her safe. The feeling surprised and unsettled him a little and he made no movement. Besides, he knew that such a gesture would be dangerously inappropriate with Nertha in her present mood.
'I don't know,’ he said. ‘I sent someone to the square to find out and to fetch the Keepers, but ...’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘I just tried to get those who weren't hurt organized a little. Make the injured comfortable until someone came who knew what they were doing.'
Nertha had finished. She stood up and gave her patient to the charge of a woman who had been hovering agitatedly about the scene. ‘He'll be asleep for some time, and he'll be very uncomfortable when he wakes up, but with good fortune he should be all right,’ she said, very gently. ‘Try to keep him still and warm until I can get back.'
She looked at Vredech. ‘There's a man with a broken leg up there,’ was all that he could think of to say.
'Show me,’ she said, unfastening her horse.
'How did you stay mounted through all that?’ Vredech asked again, taking her arm as they began to move back through the crowd. ‘I was always a better rider than you, but my horse went down almost immediately.'
Nertha patted her horse. ‘She's a cavalry mount,’ she said. ‘And I'm a lot better rider than you now.'
Vredech looked at her inquiringly.
'I knew this cavalryman in Tirfelden,’ Nertha said.
Vredech's eyebrows rose. Nertha coloured a little. ‘Where's this broken leg, then?’ she snapped.
* * * *
It was late afternoon before the PlasHein Square and the adjacent streets began to revert to something like their normal state. Vredech and Skynner sat side by side on a decorative ledge that protruded from one of the PlasHein's stone gateposts. Nertha had gone with the last of the injured to the Sick-House, her horse tethered behind one of the wagons that had appeared as the citizens of Troidmallos recovered from their initial shock and began undoing the work wrought by their panic.
Soiled, exhausted and shocked, neither spoke for a long time.
Eventually, Vredech lifted his head and gazed slowly around the sunlit square. It was virtually deserted but it looked as it had always looked. It should be different, he thought. Some mark should remain to proclaim what had happened here today. Some subtle change in the inner quality of the stones, the grass, the walls and watching windows. Something which would lie for ever in the heart of everyone who had been here; a lingering darkness. A rider trotted gently by. Vredech watched him. He was looking about him as though surprised to find the square so empty. It was obviously someone pursuing his ordinary business quite unaware of what had happened. Vredech suddenly wanted to scream and shout at him; to make him feel the same desolate wretchedness that he was feeling. Guilt, he diagnosed as the man passed from view and the clatter of the hooves faded. He had seen it often enough in others. Guilt at being alive and unhurt and sitting in the sun, glad of it, when others had been crushed and broken. Guilt at the seeming abandonment of the dead and injured by failing to stop the great momentum of ordinary events dragging him inexorably back into the present and the prosaic.
'They're saying that the GardHein charged the crowd with their pikes,’ he said, his voice sounding strange and distant to him.
Skynner started slightly. ‘What? Oh yes.’ He rubbed his eyes and sat up. ‘That's what I thought at first.’ He shook his head as if to clear it. ‘That was what everyone was shouting when it started. I was just over there.’ He pointed. ‘But I'm not so sure now. I've precious little time for that stiff-necked old goat of a Captain of theirs, but he's no liar. He says he only arrived as his men were sealing the gate, and that the men who'd just been thrown out, plus several more already waiting, turned around and charged into the crowd.’ He looked down. His foot moved forward and began idly pushing a large stone. ‘And he said the crowd were throwing stones at his men.’ He picked up the stone. Hefting it, he asked the question that Leck had posed to Privv earlier. ‘And where do you get stones like this from round here, unless you've brought them with you?'
He was not given time to debate the matter, however, as a group of senior Keeper officers emerged from the gate accompanied by the GardHein Captain and several PlasHein officials. Vredech found their smart, clean appearance offensive as he contrasted it with Skynner's and his own—stained, dusty and torn.
'Serjeant,’ one of the officers called out, directing the group towards Skynner.
Muttering something under his breath that Vredech did not catch, Skynner stood up wearily. ‘Sir,’ he responded.
The officer was quite short and he was obliged to bend his head back to look up at Skynner. His expression was unpleasantly officious. Something malevolently angry began to bloom within Vredech.
'Serjeant, the Captain of the GardHein tells me that you've made some extremely serious allegation
s against his men. Perhaps you'd care to ...'
Vredech's anger burst into full flower. He straightened up and stepped forward to confront the officer before Skynner could reply. ‘People have been maimed and killed here today, Captain.’ He tilted his head on one side, affecting to examine the insignia on the officer's uniform. ‘High Captain,’ he corrected, in a voice that unmistakably demeaned the rank. ‘Maimed and killed. Serjeant Skynner was almost totally responsible for bringing order to the chaos that was left immediately after the panic. I've no doubt that many people owe their lives to his prompt action. His immediate superior was knocked unconscious and there has been a marked absence of senior officers throughout. Doubtless there will be an explanation of this when a Special Assize is convened to find out exactly what happened here. In the meantime, I'd suggest, High Captain, that any angry words uttered in the heat of the moment, are not worthy of consideration by men who have more important matters to attend to.’ He took the stone from an unresisting Skynner and thrust it into the stunned High Captain's white-gloved hand, then bent down and picked up another. ‘These were brought here deliberately to be thrown at the GardHein. I understand you have some young men in custody somewhere.’ He turned to Skynner inquiringly.
The GardHein Captain, sensing the direction that events were taking, intervened obsequiously with, ‘We were happy to make the PlasHein cells available, High Captain. They're not really suitable, but in view of the urgency ...’ He concluded by nodding several times. The High Captain nodded in his turn, glad not to appear totally helpless before the quiet force of Vredech's harangue.
'I'm no expert in such affairs, of course,’ Vredech continued. ‘But I think it would be a good idea to ask them why. Don't you?'
Vredech's manner did not invite debate however. The High Captain's mouth opened and moved, but it was quite a time before a coherent sound emerged. ‘I think ... yes ... of course. It ...’ He faltered painfully, but Vredech was not disposed to release him from his black-eyed gaze. Finally his victim resorted to a noisy coughing fit as if to clear his throat. ‘Of course, Brother,’ he managed hoarsely, at last. ‘Due note will be made of Serjeant Skynner's contribution to today's work. He's a greatly valued officer.’ He looked at the rock in his hand and wrinkled his nose at the stains it had made on his glove. ‘And you may rest assured that the young men responsible for this will be most thoroughly examined. The decision about a Special Assize is, of course, not mine to make ... Now ... if you will excuse me, I ...’ He coughed again, then clicked his heels, gave Vredech a salute and Skynner a curt nod, and turned and motioned his following back into the PlasHein.