“I need a clean cloth,” she said, waving in the general direction of the work table.
Without a word, he retrieved it and handed it to her.
“I missed some of the dirt. It’s become infected,” Bethany explained, her voice sounding frantic even to her ears.
What would happen to them if she wasn’t able to heal him properly?
“I thought the herbs would keep that from happening,” said Sir Caldry.
“They’re herbs, not magic,” she said, quoting a saying her mother had often used.
Her mother had frequently reminded her that healing was an art form that didn’t always work out the way the healer intended. Now was a perfect example of what her mother meant.
An hour later, she stepped back from the open wound and stretched her sore back. She couldn’t find any more dirt in it and had cleaned away all the puss.
“Shall we re-bandage it?” the knight asked from her side.
She flinched, taken by surprise at his silent steps. He was simply too quiet.
Bethany shook her head. “No. Let’s leave it open for the night. The fresh air will help with the infection. We’ll have to keep a very close watch on him tonight,” she added as she stepped forward and changed the cold compress draped over the back of his neck.
It proved to be a very long night. Though they tried to trade places, it often took both of them to keep the prince calm and quiet—one replacing the cold compresses on his neck and hurt ankle, and the other to fetch fresh water, prepare new herbs, or brew more tea. When morning came, they both had dark circles under their eyes and were too tired to even talk. Thankfully though, due to their diligence, the prince no longer burned with a fever and the wound remained clear of puss.
Bethany and the knight were slouched near the fire, more asleep than awake, when the door burst open. The king entered with a very tired-looking elderly man. Bethany recognized Fenrir, the castle’s healer, though she had never spoken with him. His once tall stature, though now slightly stooped, was striking and hard to forget. The flesh of his expressive face sagged and his hair came in white wisps. Bethany couldn’t imagine how many years of experience this healer possessed. She gulped, trying to swallow the fear rising up from her gut. If she had made a mistake, Fenrir wouldn’t miss it.
She stepped back into the shadows to await the verdict. Would she live to see the sunrise? The healer trundled up to the bed, his legs moving stiffly from hard riding. Dacfield was over a hundred miles from Tolad and most of those miles up hill. The healer must have been riding hard since the moment he received word of the prince’s accident.
“You say a slave had the care of him?” asked Fenrir, his voice grave and deep.
He sounded as though he had spent his life yelling at inept apprentices. After all, in this field, an apprentice’s mistake could cost a man his life.
“Yes, sir,” said the king, giving the healer all courtesy.
Nearly every culture throughout the peninsula considered healers beyond the structure of hierarchy. They held life in their hands. They would always hold a certain power over even the wealthiest king.
“We seemed out of options. And the girl had already proven herself capable.”
Fenrir nodded. “Indeed, indeed. Where is the slave?”
“Here,” announced Sir Caldry as he pushed Bethany out of their corner.
Bethany clasped her hands in front of her to keep from fidgeting and stared at the healer’s feet.
“Well, come here, girl.”
Bethany obeyed.
“Why did you leave this wound open?”
Bethany hesitated until she was sure she could speak without stuttering.
“Because the wound was infected. He was running a fever and there was puss. I cleaned the wound a second time, kept it open, and tried to cool his body.”
Bethany forced herself to stop. She had given him more information than he had asked for, but it was important.
The old man stared at her for a moment before nodding slowly. “And who taught you to do that?”
“My mother and the local healer.”
“Your mother?”
Bethany nodded. “In Tokë, women often learn the basics from a healer.”
This was only a partial lie. It was usually just the higher ranking women who learned how to heal. Farm wives and the like didn’t have time to take lessons. They learned through trial and error. Bethany hoped no one present knew enough about the Tokë culture to shine light on her lie.
“My lord,” said the healer, turning to the king. “Due to the fact I have no apprentice of my own, I would like to borrow your slave until we can get the prince back on his feet, so to speak.”
“She belongs to Féderic, so it seems only natural that she should aid you in his recovery,” responded the king. “You think she did well then?”
“Oh, yes. I have no doubt that she would pull him through without me, though it is still good I came. Lord Tuathail will not suffer from my absence. I left him with enough pain killing herbs to last him until the end and instructions for his serving man to tend to him. Now, let’s see what we can do for the prince.”
With this final statement, the healer dismissed the king and moved closer to the bed.
The next couple hours were spent examining the patient and answering the healer’s detailed questions. He often challenged her decisions. At first, Bethany wondered whether she had made a horrible mess of the whole situation. Eventually, though, she realized the healer was questioning her decisions as a test: Did she really trust her own judgment, and could she defend her reasoning? Bethany tried to make a game of it, as her older brother had taught her to do with her mathematics lessons. This would have been easier if the scarred knight hadn’t hovered over their shoulders, asking his own questions on occasion.
“Oh, Cal,” chuckled Fenrir, after his first spattering of questions. “Always thirsty for more information.”
Bethany stared at the knight. She had never thought of him as a learned man, nor a man eager for knowledge. He seemed too brutal for that. Before she could make up her mind on the subject, Fenrir called her back to the issue at hand.
The following two days were the longest of Bethany’s captivity. The healer kept her working throughout the night with only the briefest chances to sleep, and in the end, these exhaustive days only showed her just how little she knew about the healing arts.
Sir Caldry had excused himself from the sick chamber as soon as the healer finished his first barrage of questions. Unlike the healers at home, Fenrir believed in physical punishment when she made a mistake, or maybe the healers back home knew better than to hit a princess. Fenrir often struck her across the shoulders with a thin reed that left welts on her back.
This didn’t stop until Fenrir made the mistake of striking her while the prince was awake. Though the healer was not within the prince’s authority, his use of Féderic’s slave was. The prince insisted he stopped beating his slave. There was a small argument, but the healer was wise enough to concede the point.
This didn’t mean Fenrir didn’t beat her when the prince was asleep. In spite of Féderic’s injunction, she usually received at least one blow a day.
Despite the pain of these beatings, Féderic’s long periods of sleep were the only bright side to the situation. It, along with Fenrir’s constant presence, kept the prince from making further sexual comments. Whenever the healer did leave them alone, he was sure to proposition her. Finally, after three days of bed rest, the prince woke looking more like himself.
Bethany trundled up to the bed with his tea, which she discreetly laced with spirits—something strictly forbidden by the healer. It was her task to get him to drink it, which he refused to do without the addition of alcohol, and she did what she had to to get the job done. He chugged it down as quickly as he could and winked at her as he handed the cup back.
“Where’s the healer? Finally leaving us in peace?” inquired the prince.
“He left l
ast night after you fell asleep.”
“Left me to your tender hands?”
“He checked on you every three hours,” she stated, ignoring the prince’s remarks.
“And you expect him back soon?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Pity. I think I feel up to a little exercise… if you know what I mean.”
Thankfully the healer arrived at that moment, along with a slave bearing the prince’s breakfast. Fenrir gave the prince a quick inspection before instructing Bethany to begin the prince’s leg exercises. Fenrir left to do his rounds. Much to Féderic’s surprise and consternation, there were other hurt and sick people in the castle.
Before she began his exercises, Bethany gave him a sponge bath, which Féderic enjoyed immensely. He came up with a few new comparisons of his body to a work of art and how much better it would be with her on it. Again, Bethany called on all her experience ignoring her brothers as she suffered blush after blush. The prince would have lost a great deal of his enjoyment, had she not looked so uncomfortable.
Finally, the bath and exercises were over, and she was left with the task of keeping him calm and quiet. She had hoped he would go back to sleep, so that she too could rest, but he looked more awake than he had since the accident.
She was at her wits end to entertain him. Finally, out of desperation she said, “I could read to you?”
“You can read?” Féderic asked.
Bethany nodded, knowing it was too late to back track. Besides, at this rate, they would know who she was in no time. She had given away too many precious secrets already to be worried about her identity. After a long, frightening silence, the prince chuckled.
“You should have told me. I would have used your skills quite differently. As you wish. Go fetch a book.”
After a couple of hours of reading, her eyes were beginning to water with strain and fatigue. Thankfully, she was interrupted by a soft knock on the door, quickly followed by the entrance of Sir Caldry. He started at the sight of the prince awake and Bethany sitting with a book.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cal hesitated in the doorway. He had expected the prince to be asleep and wanted to talk with Ann alone. What was more surprising was the book open in the slave girl’s hand. She had clearly been reading, and by the redness of her eyes, she had been reading for some time. Did she really read well enough to entertain the prince? Parsing out a list of herbs and reading a story with feeling and enthusiasm were two very different things.
“Ah, Cal, I was wondering when I would be seeing you!”
Cal bowed to the prince, forcing his gaze off the pretty girl. He took a seat on the other stool next to the prince’s bed and began to talk with Féderic about anything he could think of, all the while watching Ann. After a few minutes, he decided her red eyes were not just due to long reading. She was clearly exhausted. Her shoulders sagged and her eyes had even darker circles under them. The one good thing about her time with the patient was an increase in body fat. They had been feeding her better than most slaves, half her food coming from the prince's own plate. She looked a little softer around her cheekbones.
“Ann, why don’t you go sleep,” suggested the prince when he noticed Cal’s distractedness. “Cal can sit with me for an hour or two.”
She nodded mutely and began to rise.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Ann,” began Cal without even thinking. “What with you knowing so much about the healing arts, why didn’t you deal with your own hand when the snake bit you?”
“Um… It all happened so fast. And my hand really hurt,” she mumbled awkwardly.
Cal didn’t believe it for a minute, but then again he was realizing there was little truth to the façade she had created.
I will figure it out eventually, he swore to himself as he watched her settle on the fur rug near the fire place. She was asleep before he could finish making the resolution.
Five days after the accident, Bethany was no longer needed in constant attention to the prince, and therefore she partially returned to her regular duties. As she headed towards the basement laundry room, where she hoped to retrieve fresh sheets for the prince’s bed, her mind deep in conniving thought, she bumped into a plump chest.
“Steady on,” said a chipper voice as two soft hands grabbed her by the arms to keep her from tumbling to the floor.
Bethany looked up to see a trusting face covered in powder that was supposed to make her look youthful, but the effort made her look scary rather than young. The woman’s wrinkles showed through the powder, giving her a rather monster-like appearance. Bethany recognized her as one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting.
“Now there, that’s better,” she said as she released Bethany and wiped imaginary dirt off her long, flowing skirt. “A little lost in thought are we? I say, aren’t you that slave girl helping the healer with the prince?”
Bethany nodded, while trying to keep her eyes from meeting the other woman’s gaze, partly because the sight of the woman’s powdered face was rather frightening, but also because Bethany had found many ladies and lords-in-waiting to be power hungry. Like the guards, they had no real authority and therefore exerted as much as they could over those beneath them.
“Would you be able to suggest something, well, I mean, an herb to put in the queen’s bath to make her skin smooth? The queen has been complaining, that is, commenting about her dry skin.”
“Of course, would you like me to fetch something for you?” Bethany asked out of reflex.
She knew of many plant extracts and pedals that would promote healthy skin and had little doubt that the herbalist would carry some of them.
“Oh, that would be wonderful, that is, I would greatly appreciate it,” beamed the older woman as she clapped her hands together, sending up a delicate cloud of white powder.
“I’ll bring it to the queen’s chambers,” Bethany said as she bowed and trundled off.
With quick steps, Bethany made her way down to the ground level and across the bailey to the small herbalist hut. The herbalist knew her by name now that she had made so many trips for supplies over the past couple days.
“Ah, Ann, what does Fenrir need?”
“A couple things. He needs chamomile, calendula, lavender… and sweet alyssum,” she added as an afterthought.
Sweet alyssum would not promote smooth skin. In fact, for those with sensitive skin, it would cause a horrible rash. Bethany worked to keep her face relaxed as she realized what she was about to do.
“Sweet alyssum?” asked the herbalist as he glanced back at her.
“Yes. I thought it might help Féderic relax if he ate some. I can hide it in his food.”
“That will make it spicy,” said the herbalist in a matter-of-fact tone, as he turned back to his many shelves.
He produced the different ingredients and bound them up for her to carry back to the castle. Bethany took it, careful not to touch the sweet alyssum. Though she had never received a rash from it before, it would be just her luck to do so today.
In the kitchen, she borrowed a small bowl, dumped the herbs, added a few of the sweet alyssum leaves, ground them up with a wooden spoon, and added a few drops of cooking oil. The cooks watched her curiously. Like many other workers, they had heard the rumor of her new duties and stayed out of her way. Once the paste was finished, Bethany took the bowl up to the queen’s chambers.
The queen’s lady-in-waiting answered her knock.
“Is this it?” she asked, looking down at the uninviting paste.
“Yes, just mix that into her bath and have her soak for a long time. The aroma should be pleasant.”
The older woman sniffed the bowl.
“Oh yes. I smell the herbs, I mean, quite lovely. Thank you.”
Bethany nodded and trotted back to the prince’s chambers where she still slept during night in case he took a turn for the worse.
“Where have you been?” asked the knight in a low, quiet voice.
Sir Caldry had begun to sit with the prince to provide entertainment. The prince was awake but just barely.
“The queen’s lady-in-waiting asked me to get something for the queen’s bath.”
Sir Caldry grunted. “And what’s that?” He pointed to the twig she carried.
“An herb that will help the prince relax, should he get restless,” she added, noticing the prince's present stupor.
With that, Bethany curled up beside the fire and fell fast asleep with images of the queen covered in horrible boils flitting through her mind.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bethany woke to a rough nudge from a worn boot. She glanced up to see the knight and two guards standing over her.
“Wake up, the queen wants you,” snapped one of the guards.
Bethany felt her stomach drop into her toes. Had they realized she’d done it on purpose?
The guards bent down and dragged her to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the prince watching the exchange from his bed. Fenrir stood next to the bed with a frown creasing his already wrinkled face. Bethany’s guilt suddenly welled up. Why couldn’t she stop? In contrast with Fenrir’s confusion, Féderic looked annoyed and ready to argue with the guards, but they dragged her away before he could muster up a complaint.
Bethany picked up her feet, trying to keep up with the fast tread of the guards. She heard, rather than saw, Sir Caldry trail behind her. After a few minutes, they reached the queen’s chamber. As she expected, Bethany spotted the queen standing beside her bed with a thin cloak wrapped tightly around her neck. Despite the covering, Bethany spotted the flaming rash lining the edge of her jaw. She had clearly lounged in the water for a long time with nearly her entire body submerged.
Bethany scrambled to her knees and pressed her forehead to the floor.
Next to her, the older lady-in-waiting crouched, her powdered face streaked from crying. Despite the awkward position of trying to hide as much of her body as possible, the queen appeared a formidable force with her head held high and her nostrils flaring.
The Dothan Chronicles: The Complete Trilogy Page 16