Carry On

by Celia Lake

  Elen smiled a little. “That’s also clever.” She inhaled. “So. Healer Cole. The file did say he’d been overruled, about your evening potion, us changing the dose. Not just by the administrator I talked to, who gave me permission, but he apparently appealed it to the Archiater.” He must have looked blank at the title, because she continued. “That’s the administrator for the entire Temple of Healing. Like the First Minister, for all of the things going on here.”

  “Huh.” Roland had to think about it. “Cole’s not an uncommon name. I suppose it could be someone with a grudge against me or my parents or something. But it doesn’t make sense.”

  “There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense. Surely they don’t need you in specific for recruiting, or strategy, or whatever else they want to talk to you about. There are plenty of other people.”

  That made Roland grimace. As his mind was clearing, day by day, he had to admit she was right. A lot of things didn’t quite add up. “And they haven’t sent me off to some quiet country hospital, either. Which, if what I needed was rest and potions, you’d think would be easier than my taking up space here.”

  Elen nodded. “Your file mentioned some of the things with your magic. Like the pitcher and the chair. You’ve done it several times, but there wasn’t any explanation for why they thought it was happening. I got the impression it was why the other nurses had left, but why wouldn’t they warn us?” She sounded quite offended at that.

  “That part bothers you?” He shifted slightly, then risked reaching out to touch her hand, on the arm of the bench. Elen looked down at that, where his hand was resting on hers, then up at his face, meeting his eyes again.

  “Nurses do all sorts of unpleasant things. We put ourselves at risk all the time. Patients lash out, with their bodies, with their words, when they’re in pain, or so out of their minds they can’t choose how they act. But we should have the information available about what’s going on, what risks we’re walking into, what precautions are possible. If they don’t tell us, how can we figure out how to do our job properly?”

  Her voice rose a little, at the end, in her annoyance. It struck him, suddenly, that that passion, that insistence on doing the thing right, that might be what was saving him. He hadn’t expected it from her, not from any nurse he’d met, they’d seemed so fixed in their routines and patterns. But if the patterns let them make those choices, maybe that was something he hadn’t understood.

  Then, suddenly, he coughed. “Two nurses, coming this way. You’re telling me about some of the herbs and medicinal plants that are about to show.”

  “The purple, there, just starting to come in? That’s red clover, it makes a lovely tea. Useful for women’s needs, but also good for the blood. Doesn’t have a lot of flavour, though, not like mint or coriander or fennel.” She picked up smoothly, continuing on. To Roland’s annoyance, the nurses ended up standing in a shady corner of the garden too nearby to risk further conversation.

  Chapter 24

  Thursday, April 29th, the garden shrine

  Five days later, Elen could tell Roland was working himself up to saying something. They’d had limited chance to talk privately. It had rained every afternoon, when they might have gone outside. Instead, she had prodded him into first walking around the room, then down the hallway. Then she had lured him with the chance to peer into the nurse’s lounge by the entrance. That was good for his recovery, but not for figuring anything out.

  When the rain cleared after lunch, she immediately set things in motion. “Let’s get outside for a bit, before it decides to be changeable again. Give you somewhere new to walk to, if it isn’t too slick.”

  Something in that amused Roland, but he was obliging about the necessary fuss of dressing gown and shoes rather than slippers, this time. Elen pushed him out carefully, back to their usual spot. She eyed the bench before carefully placing her hands over it and chanting a short tune to dry off the remaining damp.

  Roland was watching her when she turned around again. “That’s handy, isn’t it. I don’t think I’ve seen you do that before.”

  She shrugged. “My best skills are making light, and a few things like that. Comfort and ease. Cool hands for a fever, for example.”

  “Lighting candles? Like the baths?” His voice had a different note to it, suddenly. A little hesitant, but also with a depth that she hadn’t heard from him much before.

  Elen looked up. “What was Healer Rhoe like for you?” She didn’t have a more elegant way to ask him, this would have to do.

  “She was...” Roland stopped, visibly trying to find the right words. “She was something else. So confident, so sure of what she was doing? She did a chant, a prayer, I don’t even know the language, never mind the words.” Then his voice got so quiet Elen had to lean close to hear. “She told me not to fight it. Whatever was going to happen.”

  Elen nodded, then ventured to reach a hand out for his, resting her fingers on top of his hand. After a moment, he shifted, so her palm was against his, his fingers curled around the side of her hand. “That’s good advice. Healing is like water. Letting it flow is better.”

  He let out a puff of breath. “Someone could have told me that months ago. Would have helped.” Then he shrugged. “I didn’t fight it. I listened,” He stopped again. There was a long silence, nearly a minute, before he spoke again. “I felt safe, there. Like I haven’t since I was a child. Before tutoring school.”

  “When you were young.”

  “When I was young. When I wasn’t responsible for anything. When I hadn’t done things wrong.”

  Elen looked up at that. “Do you think you’ve done things wrong? I mean, recently?”

  Roland snorted. “Oh, all the time. I’m sure. Not just the petty things, like not recovering fast enough. But, whether I’m getting Cadwell in trouble. Or you. Whether I’m doing something else I shouldn’t be doing. Or not be doing something I should.”

  “Sins of omission and sins of commission.” Elen’s voice turned dry.

  “Not your sort of thing?” Roland leaned forward a little.

  She shook her head. “The old gods, they didn’t go in for that. Hubris, foolishness, bragging when you didn’t have cause for your pride, oh yes. Those were problems. Still are, as far as I can tell. Certainly it’s good to try to be a better person, not a worse one, however you define that. But the rigidity of omission and commission? Those have never appealed. There are too many times when it isn’t that simple.”

  “Healing.” Roland’s voice had turned thoughtful, and she looked at him again to find his eye half-closed, his head cocked to one side. “The pool. I don’t know if it was that.”

  “Tell me?” She kept her voice even. Even asking about this could be seen as rude, if not outright unethical.

  “It’s all right to?” He was looking back at her now.

  Elen nodded. “If you choose. If it feels all right to you. If you weren’t told not to. Not by a human person, by - something beyond us.”

  Roland smiled a little at that. Then he shifted his hand a bit more securely around hers. “It wasn’t like anything I’ve felt before. Darkness and quiet and safety, like I said. Nothing obvious. Not like, I don’t know. Some stories are burning bushes, or swans, or thunder, or lightning bolts from the sky, or earthquakes. None of that.”

  “I always thought those things must be awfully annoying to clean up after.” It was certainly why Elen preferred Sirona, who wasn’t inclined to anything so destructive.

  Roland laughed. “I’m fairly sure gods don’t clean up after things like that. But you have a point. You’re a god, you appear like that. Well, people are so busy reacting to the earthquake or the giant serpents or the waves of light. They don’t pay proper attention to what you’re saying.”

  “There must be a line, between being impressive and being too much.” Elen agreed, with the gesture at Sirona’s shrine. “Maybe that’s why I’ve always liked Sirona. Little touches that make it clear this isn’t just someon
e wandering along, but nothing, well, earthshaking.”

  “This was, Nodens has things to do with the sea, yes?”

  “The sea. Dogs. Hunting, the kind meant for food and need, not, you know, pure sport.” Elen shifted a little, not letting his hand go. He went still for a moment.

  “I think I heard the ocean. The way the waves go, the sound of it, even though the pool was quite still.” There was a little hitch in his breath. “Is it normal to think of someone? A friend? I didn’t even remember it until just now, but I must have thought of him then, or had it knocked loose.” He hesitated, then softer, as if this were far more fragile, he added, “That night, I dreamed of horses and hounds and the ocean.” As if that had mattered a great deal.

  “There’s nothing normal or not normal. Just what you felt and saw and knew.” The automatic response came out without her thinking about it, it was what they said so often. There was no one way to heal or be healed. People came with their own needs, their own ways they put faces and labels on their experiences.

  She heard him snort again. “Would you go see him? The person I remembered? For me? I’m fairly sure he’s in Trellech.”

  “Not serving somewhere else?”

  Roland shook his head. “He has a weak heart, has since we were younger. He has some sort of fiddly desk job, research, for the Ministry. Something about the banks, but he’s not from a banking family.”

  Elen considered. “Would he see me? I’m a stranger. Someone like that, he’s not going to see a strange nurse.”

  Roland waved his free hand. “I can send a note around, if you’ll drop it in the message box. Could you get the time?”

  She ran through her calendar for the next week or two in her head. “I have a half-day next week. Wednesday. The morning, not the afternoon.”

  Roland began to say something, then he stopped. “You must have something you had planned for it.”

  “Sleeping in, mostly. I am inclined to sloth, given a chance. And a few errands, things I need from the shops.”

  “More yarn? Needles?”

  That made her laugh. “More hair pins, some more thread for my mending kit. Maybe a new book, if I have time.”

  Roland ducked his chin. “I shouldn’t ask you to give up the book shop.”

  That amused her. “All right. I’ll make your call for you, if you set it up, and he’s free next Wednesday morning.”

  “I’ll make it clear your availability is limited.”

  “Won’t he want to come talk to you himself?” Elen was sure that was the more ordinary sort of thing.

  “Merlin and Nimue, no. He hates healers. I mean, as a class, the collected number of them. Heart trouble, remember? He’s been poked and prodded so many times. He won’t come near. And besides, as I said, busy man. He can make time to talk to you on his morning tea break. But coming all the way over here, waiting for someone to sign him in, to be escorted here? He won’t do all of that.”

  “And you assume he has a morning tea break?”

  “My dear Elen, we do try to be civilised people.” He said it in a remarkably dry deadpan, and managed to hold his expression steady for a good thirty seconds before it cracked and he started laughing. The sound was delightful, and seeing him relax like that made her increasingly sure the bath had been a good idea. “No, he usually takes a tea break. Quite strict with himself about keeping to a schedule.”

  “All right. I’m willing to try it.”

  “When we get back to the room I’ll write a note, if you can drop it on your way back to your, your.” He stopped. “Where do you live, anyway?”

  “A lodging house for nurses. I have my own bedroom up in the attic, because of my headaches. And these days, because I keep odd hours, you’re not on the standard shift schedule. Share the loo and the bath with five others.” Elen tried not to make it sound horrible. It certainly wasn’t the worst place she’d lived in, even if it wasn’t the best.

  “That seems a bit dire.”

  “Oh, better than some places. We’ve got plenty of hot water, I have a window that doesn’t look out on a brick wall. I can see two trees. Well, parts of two trees.”

  Roland shook his head. “Well. Better than my view, I suppose. I envy whoever’s got the view of the gardens, there.” He pointed at the end of the ward.

  “Nurse’s offices, mostly. Sorry to disappoint. Well, one of those rooms is a particularly nice room, I think. But only one.”

  “Huh.” Roland peered at them, thoughtfully. “So it’s nurses, watching us stagger about out here?”

  “It would be if the nurses weren’t so busy the view’s wasted on us. The light’s good, though, and when there are lots of reports, that’s a big help.”

  He let out a long breath. “I’m learning a lot more about how this place works from you than anyone else, I must say. You said there were laundry and cooking facilities?”

  “And storehouses, for all sorts of different supplies, yes.” Elen gestured toward them with her chin.

  “And they don’t have the sorts of things nurses need? Hairpins? Thread?”

  “I suppose they could stock something like that, like a school shop. Did you have one of those?”

  “The chatelaine had something like that. We all queued up to get our inks and pens and all that. In the upper years, we could go down into the village, and there were shops there. Mostly designed for the teachers, and the people on the island who weren’t students, though there was a sweet shop. A rather stuffy bookshop, the sort of tea shop with too many flourishes for boys, three pubs. Two friendly to students, one for people who didn’t want to see them.”

  Elen nodded. “The village near Alethorpe was the same. Anyway, I suppose they could do something like that, but why would they, when they can just send us off into the city to get what we need.”

  “That theory,” Roland pointed out, “Only answers if you’re not working the entire time the shops are open.”

  “I am fairly sure they did not take that into consideration.” Realising she was falling into a quite easy banter with him, she cleared her throat. “We should give your walking a try. Come on, then. It’s not too slick.”

  Chapter 25

  Wednesday, May 5th, at a Ministry office

  “Good morning. I’m here to see Master Treeve Dixon.” Elen tried not to make it sound like a question. She was dressed in one of her few good ordinary outfits, a creamy white blouse and a deep periwinkle blue skirt. It felt quite odd not to be wearing her uniform, she’d not left the rooming house without it for weeks. Her hat was pinned on her hair, a modest straw hat with a periwinkle and green ribbon that went with the skirt. Smart and well-chosen, without pretending to be anything she wasn’t.

  The woman at the desk was in Guard uniform, though without much in the way of insignia. An apprentice, perhaps. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Yes, for half-ten. Therapeutes Morris.” It was twenty past now, she’d expected she’d need a little longer to find her way. This was one of the more curious Ministry buildings, tucked into the back of the quarter, a series of Georgian buildings that weren’t quite like townhomes or houses.

  Her title got a glance up from the Guard, considering her in a different light. “Ah, yes. Here you are. Go along here, take the hallway to the right. There are chairs at the end. His assistant will call you in when it’s time.”

  “Thank you.” Elen wasn’t sure how she’d expected that to go, precisely, or for that matter why there was a Guard stationed here. It must be rather boring work. She went along, as instructed, and thought she caught the Guard glancing at her to make sure she went where she was told. There were only two choices, right and left. Her boots were leather soled, not her usual rubber, and quite audible on the marble floors. That marble seemed rather posh for offices, actually.

  There were two wing back chairs that might have been more at home in one of Trellech’s private clubs. Just the two, though, which suggested there were not too many people waiting for appointments e
ver.

  Precisely nine minutes later, the bells of the Guard tower chimed, and the door nearest her opened. “Therapeutes Morris? Please come in.” The speaker was an older man, well past his fighting years. “Master Dixon will see you now. This way.”

  They walked through the front office, decorated in a way Elen always thought of as the style of the man insisting on civilisation. Wood panelling everywhere, in some dark wood that didn’t draw the eye, oxblood leather chair and fittings, rows of bookshelves. The inner office had a large window and a sepia-toned globe that took up much of the space before it. A large wooden desk faced the window from the far end of the room.

  The man behind it was standing, polite and formal, as she came in. “Therapeutes Morris? Do come in, I have a few minutes. I’m Treeve Dixon. May I offer you tea?” There was a small tea service on a rolling cart. One empty cup was waiting, matching the teacup and saucer with precisely one digestive biscuit centred on Dixon’s desk.

  Dixon himself was slender, dark haired, pale skinned, and sharply featured, putting her in mind of a fox. He wore simple clothing of nearly pure black, with a long row of fussy buttons down the front, and sparkling white cuffs and collar peeping out. It gave him the air of a mediaeval clerk or scholar.

  “Please, if it’s no bother. A smidge of cream if you have it. Thank you for making the time.” Now she was here, she wasn’t sure how to begin. She and Roland had talked about this, in the time between sending the letter and getting his reply. The older man, the aide or personal secretary, whatever his role was, immediately moved to pour her a cup of tea.

  Dixon gestured at the chair facing him, waiting for her to settle herself before he sat down. “I gather your schedule is rather busier, or at least less under your own control. Thank you for your service.” She couldn’t tell if he meant it as the casual phrasing that everyone seemed to come out with, in some variation, or something more sincere.