“My grandfather Lord Frink was always the true liege lord and heir to the throne,” stated Kallivan coldly, but he is aged now, and has not the energy to ride north, let alone take the throne. I, on the other hand, am not his eldest grandson. I might claim the throne in place of my uncle Borg or my father Ross, but both might clearly present a higher claim. I am heir to both. At twenty years of age, however, and a Knight of the Realm, I demand a suite at court.”
“Since, as I am sure you are aware, my lord,” said the steward, “his majesty King Ram of Eden is recently most sadly deceased, the council is busy examining all claims in order to decide on the new monarch. In the meantime, my lord, you are welcome to one of the higher situations at court. I shall send for a page to show you the way, and another to help your lordship settle into the allotted rooms.”
Without bothering to waste his breath on a thank you, Lord Kallivan followed the page, and was ushered into a three chamber suite which he considered highly inferior, but spoke no complaint and after an exhausting journey, lay on the bed and fell deeply asleep. The dinner bell awoke him, and he discovered that food at court was about as pathetic as his new quarters seemed to be.
On the high level and further towards the vast open balconies were the rooms occupied by Lord Jak, son of Lord Lydiard, and a far inferior lord of the realm, considering that he was simply heir to the fat lord of a small town as far north as Eden permitted its citizens, and what was more, a place of hills and mountains leaving little space for grand houses, sumptuous gatherings, or anything more notable than a few semi-extinct lacines.
Lord Kallivan regarded Lord Jak with contempt when they met in the great dining hall. “Where did you say, my lord?”
“Lydiard.” Jak grinned. “I doubt you’ve ever heard of it, my lord.”
“Are you suggesting, sir, that since I come from the south, I must be ignorant of the country’s lords?”
“Gods and demons, not at all,” Jak said, trying not to laugh. “What I meant, my lord, is that Lydiard is a small and insignificant area in the far north. There are many who’ve never heard of it. I’m probably lucky to have a place at court, but I came some years ago when King Ram and I became friends of a sort and was invited to stay on the upper level. You’ll be welcome to come to the balcony room whenever you wish, and we can take a cup together.”
It was after a brief visit and a single cup of excellent wine that Lord Kallivan realised Jak had far better quarters than he’d been presented himself and loathed him immediately. He protested to the steward.
“My birth-right is far stronger, sir,” Kallivan said. “I am not only a true Knight but stand third in line to the throne. This Jak Lydiard has no claim to anything, yet he occupies the best rooms in the damned palace.”
“Not quite, sir,” said the steward with a haughty sniff. “There are six more magisterial suites, but they are all occupied, as is the balcony suite, by his lordship Jak Lydiard. That suite was given on the word of our king himself, and the present lord will certainly not be asked to vacate. Your position is one of high prominence, sir, but I have allotted the only superior quarters which are free at this time.”
Stalking off in considerable anger, Kallivan kicked every step on the stair back up to his bedchamber and lit the candles he had demanded.
The next day he approached the High Steward once again. “Sir, not having yet become familiar with the current situation in the north, I wish you to tell me how I may approach the great Council Hall and demand my place on the High Table.”
High-Steward Pentaggo stroked his chin. “That is not possible, sir,” he said, not admitting that he had a seat on the council himself. “The High Council stands on the great central island and can be approached and entered only by those who wear a specific badge of entitlement.” His own badge was hidden, being worn within the middle pocket of his coat. “No one has a natural right to sit there. Amongst the Ten, there are knights, lords, and those without a title of any kind. These councillors have been elected within the council itself, and that is the only way in which any man may come to the High Table.”
As furious as usual, perhaps more so, Lord Kallivan once again returned to his rather small bedchamber.
He had not journeyed all this way for a more comfortable bed, a better climate, better food, or a bedchamber of sunshine with a commode instead of a chamber pot. He had come for power. The king, whose ungraceful slouch upon the throne had denied his family their heritage, was now dead. He had come here to make a claim and needed to discover the best way to do this. He could kill and had killed many in his young life so far. But a king usually claims the throne not through menace, but through his rights, his eloquence, and his justice.
The river had begun to surge, and the winter sky hid behind clouds of purpled black like huge hanging bruises. It was mid-morning, but little light heralded the day, and Freia continued working by candlelight, pounding cranberries with wild mint. The door was shut hard against the wind.
There had been customers. Not so many. Women from the back streets whispered of tonics to remove all risk of conception, or to remove what had already been conceived. These were easily mixed, boiled, and then pounded into a little blue powder. Freia sold cheap. There were old men who begged a cure for gout, busy women who pleaded for a cure to the ague, families who wished for increasing fertility, and encouragement in health and energy. Freia gave prices which matched each customer’s clothes and appearance, but she suggested no price when Bembitt, King Ram’s valet, appeared.
“So! The washer-trollop,” he said, shutting the door behind him and leaning back against it. “They told me you’d been seen here. Now how did you manage to pay your rent after running from the palace without a rag to your name, unless you’d already stolen the king’s purse from beneath his pillow?”
“How I do what I do isn’t your business,” Freia glared at him. “And as far as I know, it was you who stole the royal purse. I suppose you might have killed him too Either you or that vile doctor.”
“Or you, dirty little poison-mixer,” Bembitt spat. He walked over towards her but kept clear of the fire where she was still mixing medicines.
Freia turned, wild-eyed. “Get out,” she told him. “You know nothing about me, and in case you intend telling the palace officials that I killed the good king, let me assure you that I didn’t. He was a good man, we’d become almost friends, and I liked him. My cure was working, and his majesty knew it, and so did the High-Steward.”
“So why run?”
“I didn’t.” She thought a moment. “When I knew my medicines were working – even for the Black Plague – I knew I could do better with my own shop. I had money from my mother, and some from a man when I cured his injured dog. And the dear king was dead. That’s all I’m telling you. Now go away.”
“I'll do you a favour, brat,” Bembitt said. “I won’t tell the authorities where you are, and I won’t tell the council where you ran to after stealing the royal purse, if you make me part lease-owner here. I should own half the lease and half the business, so that means half the profits.”
She stared at him. “How dare you?” She had stolen no purse, but the gift from the king could now never be proved, and she had run, and she didn’t want to be found. Besides, she owned the building, not the lease. And if the slime-ball discovered she actually owned the whole thing and didn’t just rent it, then he was bound to believe more concerning the stolen money. As the king’s valet, he might be believed more readily than herself. “I’ll give you half the leasehold,” since there wasn’t one, “and a quarter of the business, but just an eighth of my profits as long as you keep out of my way and don’t try and control anything or tell me what to do.”
“I could threaten you with rape and slaughter,” Bembitt sniggered. “I could collect six, perhaps seven of my friends and ride up here to strip you out on the riverbank, me and my friends ready to rape you back and front. We’d attract a fair crowd, I’d imagine – give them quite a spectacl
e. An entertainment they’d remember a mighty fine time, I reckon. Then I’d kick your bleeding naked arse straight into the river.” He paused, saliva wet on his lips and his eyes bright. “You want to risk such an end? So you make a decent agreement with me, and I’ll keep my word with you. No attacks in the night, and no queue for the fucking. Half the lease and half the business. A fair quarter of the profits, and no charges, But I’m no medicine-mixer, and I’ll not interfere in any way.”
Freia held her breath and then swallowed hard. She had almost vomited. Bembitt made her sick, and she believed his threats. The slime on his lips, the weak flab of the lower lip which hung always limp, disgusted her. His loose skin and his greedy eyes disgusted her too. Frightened of Bembitt, of both the council and palace authorities, she knew she had neither choice nor the courage to deny the man she disliked so horribly. She had to agree. “I’ll keep a note of profits, expenses and so on. You will get one quarter whenever you turn up, but don’t come more than once a ten-day. But the lease costs a hundred pence a ten-day, so you have to pay a quarter of that too.”
“Twenty-five fucking pence for this dreary place? You’re being fleeced. Anyway, you live upstairs, that’s obvious. I don’t. So it’s not up to me to pay. Your rent, slut, you pay it.”
Since she had no rent to pay, let alone a hundred pence, she let that go as well. “But no more than once a ten-day. You’re disgusting. I don’t want more of you than that. I don’t want your help to compensate, I only want your absence. Disappearance!”
He turned on his elongated boots, and Freia watched him go with hatred. Paying him anything at all would be infuriating, but at least she could cheat him by giving a lease that didn’t exist, and mark down her takings as very small before she calculated a quarter for Bembitt. He’d receive very little.
She had no idea that he’d also been thrown off castle premises, and would never return to court
Business was growing, and Freia recognised the chief groom from the royal stables. Yet he seemed not to recognise her, did not threaten her, never mention the king, and bought a love potion. She told him, “There’s no such thing as a love potion. They don’t work. Even the ones with a pretty smell.”
“Wot? My girl bin here telling you not ter sell me one, has she? I’m gonna get her, potion or no. So you sell me yer best, lass, and hurry.”
Freia sold one with a purple tinge containing willow bark, which swallowed back pain, a compound of oyster, which was a popular aphrodisiac, a spoonful of strong red wine, and barley powder which made a woman feel weak. “Give the girl some of this, then stand well back but keep visible,” she said, charged very little and felt a strong sense of guilt.
At least Bembitt did not return for a ten-day, and she began to forget that he had blackmailed her, and that she’d been stupid enough to pay what he’d demanded.
The apothecary had been open a month and a half when the door opened, and the boy crept in, she hardly saw him. It was as if one of the smaller clouds had fallen, disintegrated, and come slinking into her shop dragging its little wet trail behind it. He was wrapped in a coarse hessian mantle pulled over his head, and in the sudden flare of the candle as the wind gusted, entering behind him, his face appeared yellow.
“Mistress.” He sank down on the floor at her entrance, not stumbling but without the energy, or the confidence perhaps, to enter further.
Freia did not recognise him. She saw only someone very small and ill. Hurrying over, she put her arm around the boy’s shoulders and helped him to the stool by the fire. “I can’t,” whimpered the boy. “I cannot sit.” He crouched in the warmth and immediately a thin steam rose from the soaked mantle and the drenched clothes and matted hair beneath. Freia knelt beside the child to remove his cloak and then she saw who he was. He fainted in her arms as she began to speak. She locked her door and carried the small body up to her own bed. He weighed little more than a fledgling. She had set a swan’s wing the ten-day before, a huge troublesome thing which spat at her, threatening to break her arm with its other wing. It had weighed much more than the boy.
It was after she had laid him on her bed that she realised she was covered in blood. She had long since untapped the half barrel of old malmsey, though used it for wounds and not for supper. Now she added a pinch of ground spices and, with a bowl of boiled water still warm, brought a cup up to the bedroom. The boy had opened his eyes.
“I’m messing up your nice clean bed,” he mumbled.
“It’s as well you can talk,” said Freia, “because you have to tell me what has happened. Are you wounded? Or is it a flux? Have you somehow walked all the way from the Corn West Bankside? In this condition? I’m surprised they didn’t stop you at Puddlegate.”
“Crept through just after first bell.” The boy gulped at the wine, bringing some tinge of colour back to his cheeks and a glitter to his eyes. “Ain’t no gatekeeper takes no notice o’ them early buggers. Too much bustle and shove. But this shop, well – ‘tis a mighty long walk.” The boy drank again, peering at Freia over the rim of the tin cup. “So you won’t throw me out? I says you wouldn’t.”
She shook her head vehemently. “Certainly not. Why ever should I do such a thing? Drink the rest of the wine and then tell me what has happened to you. I don’t even know your name. And please don’t tell me it doesn’t matter.”
The wine, the warmth and the soft comfort of the mattress became the first medicine. The child said, “I told him, if she stitches up your measly bad-tempered hound, then she’ll stitch me too. He says the cur’s worth more ‘n me, but I says you’ll not throw me out, whatever my value. And you hasn’t.”
“You are prevaricating,” said Freia firmly. And then, because the child looked startled, said, “That means you are putting off telling me what is wrong. How can I help if I don’t know? Shall I undress you and see for myself? Have you been attacked?”
“Sort of,” murmured the boy, slurping the dregs of the wine, then sinking back against the propped pillows. “And Feep’s me name. That is, I think me muvver called me sommint like Feep or Fimp or Flimp, but she’s not been around for a long time. They all calls me Feep.”
“Symon didn’t hurt you?” Freia frowned. “Did he? Or the dog?”
“Nar, Toby’s all right,” said the boy. “All patched up now and Symon’s not put him up for a fight since. Only thing he cares for, that mutt. It was a customer dunnit.”
“Dun you?” asked Freia in some confusion.
Feep nodded. “You never did catch on, did you? Me being a molly boy. ‘Cos Symon lives over me Molly House.” Freia paused, still frowning. “It’s me arse,” said the boy, without further explanation. “I’m ripped to buggery. Symon says I won’t never be able to shit again ‘cos of infection or sommint. Then I dies. That’s right, innit? But I says you could stitch it up.”
The child had fainted again by the time Freia had removed his blood soaked braies, badly fitting britches and shirt. She turned him over very gently and began to wash the grime and gore from his protruding bones and fleshless buttocks. He was torn from the back of his crotch almost up to the middle of his pelvis; a gash longer than the length of her hand. Freia poured herself a cup of the same spiced wine she had given the child and would not allow herself to vomit. Clearly, it was a wound not caused merely by penetration, but had been done deliberately, with a knife perhaps, or something more jagged. She did not think the child would live.
When he muttered, returning to consciousness and contorting in pain, Freia turned his head from the pillows and wedged a small rag beneath his nose, dipped in the solution she had mixed of ground poppy, mandrake and a little henbane root in water. The boy slumped again into an uneasy sleep, and Freia continued her sewing.
She used water and then alum to cleanse, closed the dreadful tear in tiny stitches with a needle first held to the fire, and afterwards the skin smeared thick with her own special ointment of cow parsley, ragwort, groundsel and alum. The wound was long, but it had not been as deep as she
had originally supposed, exposing only torn flesh and muscle but not bowel or bladder or other internal organs. Although the anus was ripped, the bleeding was clean scarlet froth. Perhaps, just perhaps, he would live after all. She changed her sheets, wrapped the little naked body in soft woollen blankets, and brought up a brazier of hot charcoals. When the child woke, she gave him more wine and renewed the rag of opium. He slept the night nestled in her bed. Freia curled on the floor at the foot of the bed, hugging her knees up against the cramps in her belly.
She remembered doing just this before on someone else’s floor, watching while a young man raved in pain, and although the circumstances had then been so different, they were also so much the same. This was a child’s body and different in many ways to Jak’s, but at least she had now learned something of men, of their nakedness, and of nursing them. Freia did not open the shop that day, and she cried through the night, but the child did not wake until morning when the wind rattled the shutters, and the melting snow squelched into the thatch of the roof.
For several days, Freia watched and waited. There was no infection, but when the boy raged in fever, Freia wondered if she had given too much opium, or even too much wine. She applied more ointments and dosed the child with potions of willow bark five times each day, made special possets, bought goat’s milk from the market, and mixed it with a spoonful of treacle, which she could now afford.
“You can’t have solid food,” Freia told the boy, “until the wound has quite, quite healed. I shall make you soups, gruel and thin porridge instead.”
“That’s all right,” said the boy, once he could talk again and nod, and even smile a little. “I’d be scared to eat what’d make me crap and burst them teeny stitches.”
“You can’t even see the teeny stitches,” Freia objected.
“I can feel ‘em, and I can touch ‘em. ‘Sides, I never used to eat much anyways. You already gives me more than I used to get.”
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