Invocation

by Nicole Warner

  “You can’t walk on it yet,” I told him, leading him to the bed. “I want you to stay off it for the rest of the day.”

  “Easy for you to say. I have a haul to catch.” I ignored his grumbling and deposited him on the pallet, my expression warning him not to try it again.

  A professor arrived for a scheduled visit. I’d just finished showing him the redness ringing the fisherman’s stitches when Lilliana sent an assistant to find me. After a brief conversation with the teacher, transferring responsibility for the ward to him temporarily, I followed the woman to the birthing suites in the adjoining building.

  I returned in a pensive mood and tried to shake it off by getting back to work. Soon after, Abbot William came by the central ward to observe, standing in the middle of the long room, arms folded across his rounded stomach.

  I straightened from listening to the chest of a young woman. She stared with eyes that reflected renewed health. The growth in her lungs had diminished with pleasing quickness once I had begun my course of treatment: a tea of oregano, fenugreek and honey. All useless against such a fatal canker, but essential cover for the actual healing I performed.

  “I’m feeling much better,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Two more days should see you home.” The patient smiled and closed her eyes, yielding to the fatigue caused by her illness. I checked her pulse, then tucked her hand under the blanket, giving it a gentle pat. I stared into space for a second before collecting myself.

  The abbot didn’t miss it. “Lord Eadred, you seem distracted.”

  We walked to the end of the ward. He watched as I cleaned my hands with the soap. Not sure of the wisdom in repeating my concerns, I hesitated.

  “What’s on your mind?” he gently prompted.

  “I was thinking about the midwives. Do you know they too wash after every examination?”

  He shook his head, the lines on his face deepening as he wondered where I was going with this.

  Emboldened by his silence, I continued, “When I asked Lilliana about it, she said they long before discovered a benefit to mother and baby as a result, reducing the high mortality rate of childbirth.”

  He folded his fingers over the red sash across his stomach and considered me. “Did she also tell you she’s gifted?” Abbot William noted my swift breath. “That takes you by surprise, I see. Just as you’ve demonstrated in your ward, someone with such a gift will always get better results than a person without.”

  “She specifically said it was because of their cleanliness.”

  “While the midwives will no doubt tell you that’s the cause, it’s the mothers and their offspring under Lilliana’s care who have the highest survival rate. Those under the care of the other midwives are as likely to die from blood loss as they ever were. And the babies sicken or stop breathing for reasons we don’t yet understand.”

  “But Lilliana said …”

  “Like you, she’s learning what to say to hide her abilities.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Treating our patients with cleaner hands and equipment works!” I lowered my voice when two patients stirred. “I don’t know why you have such faith in Ludlow, especially when your other senses tell you of the fallacy he espouses.”

  “In Birne, they follow the evidence.”

  “There’s no evidence but chance only, I can assure you.”

  His thin lips flattened, unhappy with my response. “They get results, ones that support their innovations.”

  “And if they consider the evidence of their experience, then why not examine what the midwives have to say? There can be no harm in strengthening our cleaning procedures. Especially when I tell you unequivocally that it’ll improve outcomes.”

  “It won’t.”

  I studied him for a moment, seeing the stubborn set of his mouth but also the worried lines on his forehead, and changed tact. “When I told you of my suspicions that Ludlow paid a good portion of those men for the right to cut off their limbs, you didn’t seem shocked or even surprised. I was too angry then to think what that meant. Who is Ludlow? Why are you letting him get away with this?”

  He turned, walking by the rows of beds to leave the ward. I followed, with a quick glance around to make sure my patients were all quiet and resting. At the doorway I grabbed his arm, but he only said, “Not here.”

  We strode through the interconnected halls, past the other wards, and then crossed the courtyard to the university building used by the physic faculty. There was an entry in the back that led, via a short staircase, up to the second level. It took us to his office, a compact room with a single window, plain table and chairs.

  Stacked books lay in the corners collecting dust. Four were open on his desk. Two looked to be religious works, but the others contained detailed pictures of human musculature. I recognised them from my work with the cadavers.

  I sat at Abbot William’s wave. He wasted no time. “What do you suspect?”

  Forced to gather my thoughts, not expecting his question, I only said, “That you need something from him. Or from Birne. Why else allow Ludlow such free rein? Especially when you know full well he’s incorrect in his assumptions. Who is he?”

  “Only, as he says, a professor of what they call medicine in Birne. What I told you, the promise of all we can learn from them, isn’t wrong. They’ve expanded on our understanding of the human body in ways we never considered, achieving a lot of good.” My steely gaze forced his next, grudging words. “And deaths that might have been avoided.”

  I crossed my arms. “Why gamble with the lives of our people in this way? What do you hope to gain by allowing this?”

  He countered with his own question. “What do you know of Birne?”

  “Only what Tergen has told me, which is little enough.”

  “And of their religion?”

  “That’s what this is about? You want to convert them?”

  “No, conversion isn’t our aim. They simply have something we require. One day it will be essential to our survival.”

  “What will?”

  “I can’t tell you.” He held up a hand when I opened my mouth. “No need to get offended, Lord Eadred. I only meant I can’t tell you because we don’t yet know what it is.”

  He stood, crossing the small room to stare out the window, at the green hills behind the university. Still gazing at the view, he explained, “They worship what they call the Mother Earth. It’s why the message of the Three Times Blessed never took hold in their country. Birne was the lone exception, but even in this we suspected the Divine had cause.”

  Abbot William moved from the window and looked at me, blue eyes expressing his sincerity. “Those who have the gift of prophecy have foretold we’ll need to understand the great secret at the heart of the Mother Earth. Without it, all our futures become uncertain. It’s why we hope to one day open the border between our countries.”

  “For this mysterious secret?” He inclined his head. “Why Ludlow of all people?” It burst out of me from a deep wellspring of bitter resentment. “I’ll never understand why you allowed him, of all the physicians in Birne, to come here.”

  He pushed the two books with diagrams of the human body towards me. “Ludlow drew these and all the others in this book. Yes, he’s worked out a way to make money from what he does, by catering to the curiosity of the nobility and higher classes. What you have to understand is that he doesn’t do it for the glory, but for what he calls the science. That’s his first love.”

  Now I was even more disgusted. “He profited from cutting off those men’s limbs. How?”

  “The King gave him patronage. Enough to fund his research for many more years. But I think you’re missing the point.” His finger tapped on the page. “This is all new to us. We never considered carving up a corpse to study the inner workings of a human body. You can’t see it because of your contempt,
but we have a lot to learn from him.”

  I pulled the book over and studied the images, forced to admire their accuracy. There were notes around the edges, explaining the diagram, and I read the words without really taking them in.

  “It’s excellent work,” I conceded. My gaze lifted to the abbot. “But you can’t allow him to dictate to you. Not when your power gives reason to doubt his methods. This is a university of Tellenel, not Birne! Trust in those of us who have these gifts. Initiate hand washing, at the very least. Force him to concede that, as much as we need his innovations, in some things he’s just plain wrong.”

  “There’s no good way of explaining it to him.”

  “We don’t have to explain it to him, only provide the evidence.” I glanced down at the meticulous drawing. “It’s the only thing he’ll understand.”

  On my return to the ward, an assistant, one I hadn’t seen before, informed me there was a new patient. A young, unconscious boy lay on the grey sheets. “Who brought him in? Did they say why he hasn’t woken?” The man shrugged his shoulders at my questions and hurried off to find out.

  I rubbed at the scar high on my thigh, trying to ease the growing ache, and examined the youth. He looked to be about fourteen years of age, with short brown hair and freckles across his small nose. There was something strange about his features, an unusual softness to cheek and jaw.

  I lifted an eyelid, but he remained unresponsive. There were no obvious wounds to his head. No injury that my searching fingers or gift could find. I pulled the tunic from his pants to examine his torso for bruising or abrasions. Any sign of a struggle.

  The muscles on his stomach didn’t look right. Concave and lithe where they should be delineated and firm. I lifted the material higher, discovering the edge of red underneath, and hesitated.

  My eyes flashed up to find her watching me.

  Hands reached for a weapon that wasn’t there, the ache of my scar burning with a warning I’d been too stupid to heed.

  The assassin’s blade, hidden under her leg, arced towards my upper thigh. Alarmed, I reared away. The knife skimmed across the top of my leg, stinging as the poison began its quick work. I grabbed her wrist with a crushing hold and slammed it against the side table. My other hand pushed down on her face, fingers splayed over her forehead, nose and mouth. She bit my palm, legs lifting as she kicked at my stomach, trying to break my grip. I grunted at the pain but held on. Two more slams and the weapon slipped from her fingers.

  I pressed down, attempting to quell her thrashing, and shifted to smother her, but her teeth sank in harder, all the way through the flesh on my palm. I let go with a gasp. It was all she needed. She flipped her body, clambering across my back to wrap an arm around my throat and both legs over my torso.

  I dug in my chin, preventing her from strangling me. Hoarse breaths and gasps came from us both as we struggled. She reached over with her spare hand, trying to snap my neck, but wasn’t strong enough or the angle was all wrong. I countered, slamming my head into hers, and the pressure on my throat eased. With a shoulder buried in her chest, fingers reaching around to get a crushing hold of her upper arms, I flipped her onto the pallet.

  Her legs flailed and crashed into the metal tools on the table, sending them clanging to the floor. She arched her body, somehow twisting into the movement to land on her feet, crouched on the bed and facing me. Flattened fingers stabbed into my throat, so fast I didn’t see it coming. My neck seized at the sudden pain and I gave a choking cough to ease it.

  She thrust out the heel of her palm, aiming for my nose. I dodged just in time, and the blow glanced across my ear. With a hard pull, I grabbed her outstretched limb and slammed her against me, wrapping an arm over her chest. I then succeeded at what she’d attempted, grabbing the side of her face and giving a sharp twist. The neck bone snapped, killing her instantly.

  The other patients were sitting up in their beds, those who could, mouths agape in fear and astonishment. I wanted to reassure them that everything would be fine, but the poison worked its way even further in my veins. My heart thumped in erratic beats as my vision blurred, the fog of death creeping across it with hungry, grasping fingers.

  I grabbed at the wound on my thigh, collapsing onto the dead woman. The last of my strength was funnelled into ridding my body of the substance killing me, not knowing if I was too late to stop it.

  Seconds later, I passed out.

  Strong hands shook me awake as I blinked my way into consciousness. The assassin was still underneath me, cheek smeared with my blood. I reared from her in disgust.

  “You killed him.” The old fisherman gave an uneasy frown. I lifted a hand to rub at my face, only to wince as I realised it was the one she’d bitten. “Someone’s gone for help.” The man was calmer than the rest, who stared as if I’d grown horns.

  “Not him. Her. She was a dahlia assassin,” I told them. And, just in case they didn’t believe me, I raised the black tunic. Underneath, her chest was wrapped in red rags, bound over her breasts.

  Red rags such as these were known to stain the skin beneath, hence their name. The dye coloured the ribcage and breasts of the assassins in a hue similar to dahlias and, like those flowers, in deepening layers. The longer the assassins served, the darker the streaks of maroon.

  “If she was a dahlia assassin, how are you still alive?” The fisherman pointed at the shallow cut on my upper thigh. “She got you, didn’t she?”

  A bandage lay on the floor. I picked it up and wrapped it firmly around my hand to staunch the blood from her vicious bite. “Perhaps the blade wasn’t poisoned.” The old man didn’t appear convinced and, truthfully, I couldn’t blame him. Dahlia assassins maintained a fearful reputation.

  I pulled Anais’s tria beads out from under my tunic and kissed the interwoven petals of the triquetra, thanking God for my survival. Few people ever lived through one of their attacks. The poison on their blades was too fast acting. Even if an antidote was available, there usually wasn’t time enough to administer it.

  The pain of my scar was gone, overtaken by the stinging in palm and thigh. I suppressed the thought of it to examine the body before anyone else arrived in the ward. The old man watched as I searched the pockets of her pants, feeling down her legs. Underneath her left arm, tucked inside the red rags binding her chest, I discovered a narrow bump.

  Unwinding the bandages, wedging up her dead weight with my hand, I peeled all the layers away, revealing the light stain, almost a pink. She’d been new to her path. There were rumours of dahlia assassins with chests such a deep maroon they were close to black.

  A tiny roll of paper was wedged against her skin. I picked it off, dropping the rag onto the bed and pulling the tunic down to cover her exposed breasts. The tightly bound scrap was difficult to unroll, but I managed it, revealing torn edges and four words. My world narrowed as I tried to comprehend them.

  kill my cousin, Eadred

  I recognised his handwriting and closed my eyes in disbelief.

  Secrets in the Walls

  With not enough light to get a good view of this secret space between the walls, I stepped in cautiously. Something brushed across my face and I gave a small cry of fright. I rushed back into my bedchamber, brushing my hair and cheeks frantically, then laughed at myself. There were no crawling spiders.

  A knock sounded at the door to my apartment. I heard Adele get up to answer it, giving me scant minutes to work out how to close the opening in the wall. I pushed and then pulled on the panel, but nothing happened. By chance, I pressed it further into the recess. With another click, it bounced into my hand and from there kept sliding until it closed.

  “Your Majesty,” Adele said.

  I gave a startled jump and turned, a bit short of breath, to say, “Yes, Adele?”

  “The King requires your presence tonight in his royal apartment.”

  “When?”
<
br />   “After dinner.”

  At my nod, Adele dipped down into a curtsy and left. Aware his demand had little to do with my earlier desire to speak to him, I sighed. Not wanting to give in to depressed thoughts, I stepped out to the roof-top garden. I pulled a tiny mass of moss from the topsoil of a potted plant and returned to stuff it into the spying hole in the door, seeking to block anyone from looking in. With a small frown for my paranoia, I retreated to the study.

  After a solitary dinner in my room, a delicious lentil bouligion courtesy of Mistress Towers, I left to join Edmund in his apartment.

  As I walked along the plush, red floor of the royal walkway, my muscles were already seizing in dread. I tried to relax them, holding onto Eadred’s prayer beads and saying the Trinity Prayer in my head, but even that did not help.

  Two King’s Guards came to attention as I drew closer. Past the open guardroom door, I saw four more playing a game of cards at a table. The next doorway along the royal walkway led into Edmund’s royal closet. Three times the size of mine, most of his clothing and belongings were kept there. It was full of doublets, pants and heeled shoes. And wigs. At least five on faceless heads. Little wonder then that I never beheld him without one.

  At my knock, his servant bowed and let me in. Edmund’s apartment was both similar and different to mine. There was a door to the right of the entrance that led into his library and dining room. Gold was heavily featured in both ornamentation and wall decorations. Marble as well. A pedestal with a bust of his face was beside the main entry, and smaller statues of half-naked women were scattered about the rooms.

  Straight ahead was his parlour, decorated with soft cushions of the kind he so favoured. They were placed on the floor and lounges, facing the ornate marble fireplace. A large mural of a hunt in the royal forest hung across the long wall. Edmund stood in the centre of the scene, killing a boar. The red of the pig’s blood, and the victorious expression on his face, never failed to send a shudder of distaste through me.