Further digging on the same shelf failed to turn up anything else useful, but Aliya decided she had enough for now. The book would teach her things she couldn’t find out from her nanny’s stories. She would make this new brain of hers work harder than it ever had before. After spending so much time in close study of Lilian Earton’s lazy, half-empty mind, Aliya decided that she couldn’t really blame the woman’s husband for staying away.
There was no sign that the woman had ever read anything—books, newspapers, or even letters. She knew some prayers by heart, but that was it. I wonder how her husband stays awake when she talks to him.
She stopped. The unfairness of the situation was obvious. Lilian never had a chance to get even a basic education. Family and custom kept her at home working on her embroidery, so it was no surprise if people found her boring. From her nanny’s conversation, Aliya knew that the Earl felt that way; he stayed well away from his ancestral home and his wife. Aliya felt her hands clench into fists. She didn’t care if that Earl husband of hers held all the titles in the kingdom; he’d need a dentist after she got in a room with him. And then she’d divorce him.
But for the time being, she had work to do.
The stove in Aliya’s room was always fired up, keeping the room hot as a greenhouse. She decided that pieces of coal would make better writing tools than feathers that always needed sharpening. Note to self: invent pencil.
***
Aliya lived like that for two weeks. The book she had found turned out to be a treasure chest of information. Good old Kalerius gave a thorough run-down of all the countries in her new world and described the people who lived in them. Some of it was probably lies, but she was grateful to at least have the geography under her belt.
It became clear that her fears were justified; this world was stuck in the Middle Ages. They hadn’t even invented gunpowder. Aliya knew that gunpowder was made of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate. She also knew how to prepare nitroglycerine, but she decided to keep that information to herself. A little less civilization would mean a much healthier planet; that’s a fact. In her previous life, Aliya had read somewhere that technology should never be allowed to outrun morality. Otherwise, the clock will strike Armageddon, and both God and the Devil will turn tail and run.
Reading further in her new geography book, Aliya realized that glass was so expensive that no one had ever tried making mirrors out of it. They didn’t even have tools for cutting glass properly. She smiled to herself. Not all progress led to war and destruction, and not all inventions could be used for murder. She would have to be careful what she shared with this world. She couldn’t do everything for them, but she did have medicine on her side. They didn’t have surgeons in her new world, and without her help, it might be another five hundred (or more) years before they learned how to operate on the human body.
She read on. Wars were fought the old-fashioned way, with bows and arrows and catapults. Soldiers were wounded by the cartload, and most of them died, even if their wounds could have been treated easily on Earth. That was sad, but it meant that a good doctor would always be popular. Aliya didn’t plan to stick with the Earl of Earton long, so it was nice to know that she could earn money treating patients.
Industry was non-existent, and most people were subsistence farmers. She liked that because it meant that there were no factories or pollution. When people traveled by sea, they used sailboats. When they traveled by land, they rode horses. They had wagons and carriages, judging by the drawings in her book, but Aliya thought they looked like coffins on wheels. Shock absorbers? Not invented yet. There wasn’t much she could do about that. Medical school was great for learning how to stitch people up, but Aliya wasn’t even sure what shock absorbers should look like.
Backwardness wasn’t always a good thing. There were no factories, but there were also no schools. Most people were illiterate. Aliya decided to work on opening schools for the children of Earton—or at least preschools that would teach them to read and count. Her schools would run in the winter since the farm families would need their children to help in the fields in the summer. Those same farm families, she read, had to spend two out of every ten days working in their lord’s fields.
House servants were a different caste. Aliya’s castle had eight of them. Martha was both her nanny and her servant, and apparently, she had served Lilian since she was born. Martha loved her like a daughter, and Aliya appreciated her for it. The three housemaids, Mary, Sara, and Ilona, bustled around cleaning all day, but the castle never seemed to get any cleaner. There were three manservants, Jean, Peter, and Alex, and three grooms who lived in the stables. One of them—Jacques—was a brother of Jean. The other two were Claus and Rene.
Then, there was the cook, Tara. She was the estate Comptroller’s wife, and she made awful food. Her husband’s name was Etor. It seemed like a small crew for such a big castle and estate. Aliya would reform how the estate was run once she got her bearings. For the time being, she stuck to her reading.
Kalerius, the geographer, hadn’t thought to put a map in his book, but Aliya was able to deduce some important facts from the text. The mainland (of which there was only one because this particular world was flat) was made up of eight nations.
Ativerna was where Aliya now lived. She felt almost patriotic about it. Her nearest neighbors were Wellster and Ivernea. Avesterra was next to Ivernea, and Elvana shared borders with Wellster and Avesterra. There were no elves in Elvana, as far as she could tell. Darcom bordered on Avesterra and Elvana. Not far from the shores of Ativerna, was the island nation of Virma. Aliya thought the people of Virma sounded like Vikings from back home. The local climate was interesting. Virma bore the brunt of the cold, but even in Ativerna, they had a long, four-month winter and a short summer. Wellster and Ivernea had slightly better weather. Elvana and Avesterra were the warmest countries. Aliya wondered why. The weather left the soil poor.
At the far end of the large continent, was the Vari Desert, which was governed by the Vari Khanganat. The Vari people were nomads since nothing grew in the desert.
Kalerius had never visited the eighth nation, which was on the other side of a steep mountain range. He simply stated that Elvana was bordered to its west by high mountains. There were rumors, he wrote, of people living beyond the mountains, but most rumors were lies Kalerius would know. He also hinted that there might be a large island somewhere past the Vari Desert, but the details were sketchy. Aliya longed for some satellite images.
***
Once she finished the book on geography, Aliya visited the library again and chose some religious literature. I need to know what these people believe. The huge book, bound in a red velvet cover and entitled, The Book of Radiance, turned out to be very much like the Bible. Aliya wondered at that for a while but then decided that people who don’t want to believe that their fate is in their own hands come up with tales of a kind, heavenly father who hands out candy and spankings, depending on what you’ve done. That’s no surprise. Nobody wants to admit to their own mistakes, so they say that they’ve been punished by God for their sins. The tales in the Book of Radiance reminded Aliya of the Old Testament, with an avenging God and his eternal antagonist. The god was called Aldonai, and his opponent was Maldonaya. Maldonaya happened to be female. Of course. Women are always the source of evil, right?
In this world, women held a position somewhere between horses and cows. Aristocratic women were slightly better off. They were still treated like property, but they were allowed to handle their own lands and servants. That suited Aliya just fine.
There were just four things a woman could be (five at most): daughter, wife, mother, widow, and slut. That was it. There were no other roles for them—no free and independent women, no feminism, no self-sufficiency. If you didn’t like it, you could be branded a witch and executed. Witches existed, but they weren’t respected. Aliya ran across a couple of stories about how people dealt with witches, who were thought to be servants of Maldonaya
and were summarily drowned or burned at the stake.
She particularly enjoyed the story about how women were ruled to be humans. One prophet was having a trouble with his wife, so he complained to Aldonai about her stupidity and evil temper. He asked Aldonai if it would be possible to categorize women as animals. Rats, perhaps? Aldonai thought for a while and answered, “Have patience, my son. If we categorize women as animals, then you and all the other men will be guilty of bestiality. You would be born from animals and live in sin with animals, and there would be chaos and disorder in the world.” The prophet shut his mouth, and women were allowed to remain human. Aliya rolled her eyes. What a mental asylum.[7]
Aliya felt she had mastered the fundamentals of their religion. She now knew not to make the sign of the cross, but to trace a circle—the sign of the Sun—in front of her face and then touch her lips and forehead. She memorized the local prayers and read all the biographies of saints that she could find in the library.
Knowledge was the best weapon in any fight, Aliya knew, and she knew herself. There was no way she would sit at home and work on embroidery. She wanted to bring new inventions to this world, if only for her own convenience. Doing so would put her on the wrong side of accepted female behavior, so she had to be prepared.
If the priest said, “My child, women do not do these things. Are you perchance a witch?” she could reply, “Father, have you forgotten that Saint Marilda healed people with laying on of hands? Saint Yevgrastia traveled. Saint Ridalina preached in brothels. So, refrain from your rebukes, for I have been touched by the Holy Spirit. If you don’t believe me, I can call down the heaviest of the spirits to fall on your head. Then you’ll really see radiance!”
There was one other thing Aliya loved about the stories of the saints’ lives—they were written on weighty parchment scrolls. She could easily use the reverse side to practice writing. She knew that it would be a while before she was ready to go out into the world, and she wanted to copy down what she already knew about medicine before she began forgetting things.
She didn’t want to start writing yet—there was a lot of other more pressing work to do—but she made note of where the scrolls were. She would rather have a good text on pharmacology than the life of Saint Ridalina. Her new world had saintly fools on every corner, but it would be a long while before they discovered anticholinergics.
She would write out all the muscles and nerves and make a detailed drawing of the human skeleton. Anatomy alone will take up so much paper. Aliya sighed. We know so much, and yet so little.
She also knew—and could probably copy out from memory—all of the classic novels, from Gogol to Dostoyevsky, but there was no paper for her to do it on. She would have given anything for a piece of paper—even toilet paper or maybe some leaves. Aliya was grateful for her profession as never before. All those lawyers, economists, and sales managers do well for themselves in our world, but how would they like it here, where half the people can’t even read? More than half! I bet ninety percent of them sign their name with an X. Fights are decided by who has the heavier fist or the sharper knife. They probably think that double-entry bookkeeping means that your estate Comptroller is a thief.
Now that she thought about it, her estate Comptroller probably was a thief.
Aliya continued studying the castle at night. She stayed inside for practical reasons. I don’t want to run into a guard dog in the yard. She needed to lose some weight, but getting bitten by the castle guard dog was not how she planned to do it.
In her nocturnal walks through the castle, she decided that all the servants were on the take. Everything was too old and run-down. True, there was little reason for Lily to use large sections of the castle—she never had guests, so she only used six of the many rooms—but according to Martha’s stories…
I’ll deal with the crooked servants later.
***
Food was another problem. Aliya wasn’t just hungry, she wanted to eat everything in sight. Her new body had lost weight during its illness and demanded food. During her illness, she had been given chicken broth, red wine and something like toast, which wasn’t bad at all. Once she got out of bed, however, the food seemed to Aliya like something Ivan the Terrible might have had on his table: roasted hare’s kidneys, head of pike with garlic and other modest dishes. On her first day out of bed, her breakfast was brought in on a tray. She counted at least ten eggs that had been hardboiled, chopped and mixed with what looked like wine. There were two types of porridge: oatmeal with mushrooms and wheat porridge with berries. Off to the side, lay a piece of ham that looked like it weighed at least a pound, and a piece of cheese the same size. There was a large loaf of wheat bread, accompanied by at least a half-pound each of butter, honey and jam, all in dishes the size of large plates. She was expected to wash all of this down with beer, wine or cider.
Her stomach grumbled happily. Aliya grumbled not so happily. “What is all of this?”
“Your breakfast, My Lady.”
There’s no way I can eat all of this! Or can I? In her previous life, Aliya would have needed a week to plow through the food on the table, and she would have shared with friends. She wrinkled her nose at the eggs in wine, but her stomach was raring and ready to go.
She felt nauseous just looking at the unsalted sheep’s milk cheese, but her hand reached out with a spoon to scoop out a chunk of it.
The drinks on the table made her teeth clench shut, but her fingers held onto the pitcher of wine. What if I’m an alcoholic in this life? That’s the last thing I need.
Aliya pushed away everything but the two dishes of porridge. “Martha, I only want porridge for breakfast from now on. Nothing else.”
“But Lily, you’ll starve like that.”
“It’s not up for discussion.”
It was obvious Martha heard the steel in Aliya’s voice. She nodded in assent.
Aliya did the same at lunch. Of the twelve dishes offered to her, she kept just two. Soup and a meat of some kind. Nothing heavy and nothing fried. She was just as strict at dinner. She instructed the cook to serve her only vegetables—any kind of vegetable—but no meat, cheese or bread. Wine was off the table, but they could leave the cider.
I’ll teach you to make fruit juice and wash the pots before you use them, but until then, I’ll stick to cider. The alcohol kills bacteria, so there’s less chance of dying of dysentery. Based on what she knew of healers in her new world, Aliya suspected that there was no treatment for something like dysentery.
***
She was fed up with her forced isolation but prevented by irrational fear from going outside. She argued with herself and called herself a coward, but nothing helped. She was afraid that as soon as she left the castle grounds, she’d be recognized for what she was: a woman from another world. The people would cry, “Seize the witch!” or something just as bad. So, she put off going outside. I can study this world perfectly well using books. Then reality crash-landed on her.
Martha scratched timidly at the door, slipped into the room and announced, “Lily, dear, Doctor Craybey is here to see you.”
“So what?” Aliya had told her Nanny never to let him near her again, and she had no intention of getting out of bed, but she decided she couldn’t send him away.
“He can’t examine you like that! You need to get dressed.”
Aliya stayed right where she was. She was comfortable in bed, and she also had a book hidden under her blanket. She couldn’t get up without exposing her source of knowledge.
“Nanny, when I was sick, did I get dressed for doctor visits?”
“No, my dear.”
“So let him in. He’s already seen it all.”
Unable to argue, Martha went out. Aliya quickly hid the book under her bed. Judging by the quantity of dust, it had been twenty years since anyone even looked under the bed, and it would be another twenty before they peeked under there again. It seemed like a safe hiding place.
She was nervous about talking t
o the doctor. He couldn’t know much about real medicine, but he wouldn’t be a complete fool, either. This would be harder than talking to Martha, who was so happy to have her favorite little girl back that she ignored the strange things she said and did.
Aliya pulled the piglet-pink blanket up to her chin. The door flew open. Jerk. Didn’t even knock.
Medicus Craybey presented himself to Aliya-Lilian in an outfit of tight brown pants, a carrot-colored tunic, and a short brown cape. His high boots were made of pale blue leather and were filthy, and he had a large bag strung over one shoulder. Aliya concluded that this was the typical male garb for that world. She glanced at the doctor’s long hair. It was pulled back in a ponytail, tied with an orange ribbon and sprinkled liberally with something that looked like powder. Some of the powder had fallen on the man’s shoulders. So much for local fashion.
“Good day, Countess,” he greeted her.
“Good day,” Aliya nodded.
She did not extend her hand to be kissed; he could stay right where he was. She wondered if he would climb up on her bed in those dirty boots to do the exam.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine.” Aliya wanted to send him packing, but she exercised self-control.
“Do you have any pain? Bleeding? Sharp or burning sensations? Has the fever returned?”
“No, it hasn’t.”
Aliya tried to stay calm and keep her replies brief. This was her first test. If the doctor noticed anything strange about her…
But Craybey (Is that his first name or his last name?) gave a broad grin. “I’m very pleased. I knew your body could defeat the illness. I simply followed my teacher’s instructions by letting out the bad blood and giving you cleansing treatments. You’ll be fine. I always knew that my teacher was a source of wisdom.”
Aliya’s eyes were opened. Under all the power and show of importance, she saw a kid who was just twenty or twenty-five years old—a loser like many of the guys she went to school with.
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