The Caller (29 page)

‘Thank you. That’s kind of you.’
Just don’t give me anything that was worn by Queen Varda herself
,
I thought. The queen was of a similar height to me, though considerably more shapely. The thought of touching any garment of hers, even something as small as a ribbon, repulsed me.

Scia gave me a warm smile. Now that we were well away from the hall and Brydian’s watchful eye, her cheeks had more colour. ‘It’s a pleasure, Ellida. Here are the sleeping quarters. You can claim any bed that doesn’t have someone’s possessions stored under it. There’s a little yard with a privy out the door there, and a pump for washing. I won’t see you again until the morning – Brand and I have our own quarters. As for idle gossip,’ she looked over her shoulder, as if Brydian might have followed us like a dark shadow all the way from the hall, ‘you won’t find much of it here. Everyone knows the penalty if they break the rules. Besides, by the time the women finish their work for the day, they’re too tired to want anything but sleep.’

There were only four other women sharing the long sleeping chamber, and Scia was right; when they came in some time after she had left me, they greeted me without a great deal of interest, told me their names, then rolled into their beds and fell asleep.

For me, sleep came less readily, and when it did, my dreams were full of all I feared most. In the morning I woke still weary. I washed and dressed; most of the other women were already gone to kitchen duties, but a girl who looked after the household mending walked to the hall with me. The keep was large, the steps and hallways and outbuildings many and confusing. I must learn my way about quickly.

After breakfast, Scia took me to meet the healer, Toleg. He had not come to eat in the hall, but Scia said that was nothing unusual. Toleg was most content in his own domain, and often had someone bring him a meal of bread and cheese rather than bothering with formal dining. So I met him in the infirmary, which consisted of a roomy chamber with several pallets and a well-stocked stillroom.

I had plaited my hair tightly, not a wisp astray, and over it I wore a neat cloth that one of the other women had found for me. A clean apron covered my gown. I’d made sure my hands were well scrubbed.

Toleg was a small person, not much taller than me, and quite old, his hair and beard grey, his face marked with deep lines around the brow. He wore a long robe something like Brydian’s, but of brown homespun, and over it an apron similar to mine. The sleeves of the robe were rolled up.

Scia introduced us. ‘This is Ellida from Glenfalloch, wife of the new Enforcer in training. You’ll have had Brand’s message about her. Another assistant for us. Ellida, this is Master Toleg, who taught me most of what I know about healing.’

‘Did I say we had need of an unskilled helper, Scia?’ Toleg’s brows went up.

‘Master Toleg,’ I ventured, ‘I am not unskilled. I’ve been working in the household of –’

‘Yes, yes, I’ve been told all that,’ Toleg said dismissively, reaching for a cloth to wipe his hands. He had, it appeared, already started work for the day. A tray with an untouched platter of bread and cold meat stood at one end of the work bench. On a board were orderly heaps of finely chopped herbs, and on the small hearth a kettle steamed. There were no patients in the infirmary, but tools of surgery were laid out in meticulous order on a side table. ‘How can you be skilled? You’re not much more than a child.’

‘I’m sixteen, Master Toleg.’ This was not like talking to Brydian. Here, I could prove myself if he gave me a chance. ‘I’m a married woman. My grandmother taught me herb craft from an early age. For the last two years I have been assisting the healers in Gormal of Glenfalloch’s household. A large household with many men-at-arms. I can perform most of the everyday duties you must require here.’

He said nothing, only went back to chopping his herbs. The scent was powerful, spreading through the warm air of the chamber.

Scia had put on her own apron, which was hanging from a peg, and was tending the fire.

‘Everyday duties,’ Toleg echoed with his back to me. ‘Can you deal with a suppurating wound? Set a broken bone? Deliver a child from a dead mother?’

I swallowed. This was somewhat more testing than Rohan’s inquisition. ‘Ill humours in a wound? That would probably require surgery, Master Toleg, and I would be lying if I claimed I could do that, though I am very keen to learn. I would be able to assist you without fainting away. In a less severe case the problem might be solved, at least in part, by the use of maggots to eat away dying flesh. I cannot set a bone on my own, but I have assisted with it several times and, given a helper with strong arms, I can ensure the process is carried out correctly. The delivery of a child after the mother’s death would also be a matter of surgery. I hope I never have to help with such an event, but if I had to do it, I would. The child would have to be cut from the womb. Its chances of survival would be slim at best.’

‘What am I making?’ He shot the question at me, arrow-quick.

My sense of smell was good; I hoped my memory was as good. ‘I would guess someone has a skin condition, a severe rash, an itch, and that you are making a curative wash. Or you may be preparing a poultice for a tumour of the skin.’

‘And the components are?’

‘Figwort; mandrake; speedwell. Perhaps other herbs in quantities too small for me to identify.’

‘What other possibilities might one investigate for such a tumour, assuming this is a poultice?’

I thought fast. ‘All parts of slippery elm, Master Toleg. Heather twigs and flowers. But I understand mandrake root, if it can be found, is the most effective.’

‘Mm-hm. Scia, show Ellida where we keep everything.’ He turned. ‘It’s a trial only, understand? Anyone can spout theory. Show me you can stay calm when there’s a man screaming under the knife, and I might consider keeping you.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll work hard.’

‘Work hard and work well,’ said Toleg. ‘Now go and learn where to find things quickly. Would that this might be a place of peace, where there was time to teach a new assistant properly. But it’s quite the opposite, as you’ll soon discover. We must be ready for anything.’

I wanted to act without delay: to talk to the captive Good Folk, to find out if Whisper was all right, to know if Ean and the other young men from the south were safe. I wanted, oh so badly, to talk to Flint again.

Instead, I spent my days between infirmary and stillroom, keeping quiet and making myself useful. Toleg was terse at the best of times, but to the extent that such a man could thaw, he did so day by day, thanks, I guessed, to my ability to work hard, learn quickly and show honest respect. I was far from an expert healer, but Toleg soon realised I knew enough to be genuinely helpful.

There were small milestones of trust: the first time he let me make and apply a poultice unsupervised, the first time he left me in the infirmary alone while he went to tend to one of the Good Folk who had been injured. The first time he sent me, with the key, to his locked cupboard to fetch substances too dangerous to be stored where idle hands could reach them. I brought exactly what he’d asked for and locked the cupboard after me.

As the days passed Toleg began to entrust duties to me that had been Scia’s, and increasingly, when she came to the infirmary to ask if he needed her, he’d tell her to go off and spend time with her children. She didn’t speak of them much; perhaps Brydian’s threat had stopped her tongue. But she and Toleg had worked together a long time, and he would sometimes ask her about them, revealing a softer side of himself that was seldom on show. Scia kept her answers short, but her tone was full of love and pride. She might as well enjoy her time with them now, Toleg said, as once the royal party arrived none of us would have a moment to ourselves.

I did not see Brenn and I did not see Flint. The household guards from Wolf Troop were the only Enforcers who took their meals in the hall. When Stag Troop was afflicted with a vomiting and purging malady, an Enforcer named Tallis came to the infirmary to request a large quantity of the draught Toleg made up for such problems. He needed sufficient to dose everyone, he said. I risked asking after my husband, and was told Morven was as sick as a dog like the rest of them, but otherwise doing well – Owen Swift-Sword had commented recently that his newest recruit hardly needed training.

I had no plausible excuse to go beyond the inner wall that guarded the keep. A large kitchen garden was maintained within that wall, including a herb patch to supply us with the more commonly used plants. Toleg would go out to the woods every so often with a basket over his arm and come back with wild-harvested herbs. He never said anything about what he had seen out there, and neither Scia nor I asked him. I thought escaping the stone walls and enjoying the smells and sounds and sights of the forest would lift a person’s spirits. But when Toleg returned from these trips outside he was more taciturn than ever, his shoulders hunched in a posture that said more plainly than any words,
Leave me alone.
It was blindingly clear that he did not like what was happening at Summerfort. But he, too, obeyed Brydian’s rules.

I had hoped there might be a high vantage point somewhere within the keep, a window, a patch of flat roof, from which I could get at least a partial view of the Good Folk’s encampment by the river mouth. Given the right spot, I should also be able to see down into the practice yard where Stag Troop would be doing their training. But while such places undoubtedly existed – the lookout tower, for instance, where guards from Wolf Troop were stationed on watch – I could not get to them without drawing suspicion.

I did not dream of Flint now. Perhaps his being so close, yet out of reach, had altered the way our minds worked together. He had not told me much about his canny skill of mind-mending. From the first I had shrunk from that, since I had more reason than most folk to loathe and despise what it had become: the vile art of enthralment. But I knew that Flint’s gift, used in the way it should be, would allow him to heal tormented minds, bring comfort to the grieving and peace to the troubled. It had made our dreams of each other especially vivid, often reflecting something of the truth. The dreams could be disturbing, but also useful. It was a dream of me alone out on the windswept skerry that had brought Flint rushing back to the isles and allowed us our only night together, a beautiful night we had spent in each other’s arms. We had not lain together as husband and wife; we would not take that final step until Alban was free, and we could believe in a future spent together.

Seeing Scia’s situation, I was even more glad that we had made that choice. We had made ourselves vulnerable enough by falling in love. To add a child to the picture would make our situation untenable. I understood, better than I ever had before, why soft feelings were forbidden among the rebels of Shadowfell. For Flint and me, those feelings had grown despite our efforts to stop them; they had been like a tenacious plant that sets down roots between the rocks and shoots up high, raising a triumphant flower to defy the autumn frost, the winter gale. A smile came to my face, thinking of it. That plant would be a thistle, strong-stemmed, spiked with defensive prickles, holding aloft its purple bloom. And that was only right, since Regan’s rebels had chosen the thistle as their emblem. A love as strong as Alban itself. A love as enduring as the glens and mountains and silvery lochs of this poor, damaged land of ours.

Chapter Ten

B
arely two moons had passed since Gill had taken over as leader of Wolf Troop, after the unfortunate death of Murad from a wound turned foul with ill humours. Gill was still establishing his authority with his men, and was far more ready than, say, Galany or Abhan would have been to let Flint take the lead in handling the near-impossible job the king had given them. That made things easier.

Then there were his own men. Rohan he trusted with all but the most perilous secrets, and he suspected his second-in-command had an awareness even of those. Tallis could be relied on not to rush off to Brydian every time Flint took a risk or bent a rule. The others still seemed to respect and trust their troop leader, even after what had happened at the last Gathering.