by Susan King
Michael walked toward him, smiling, and turned her face up to his. He glanced away from the shining brilliance in her eyes. If he returned the gaze, shared the smile, some part of him would be lost into her keeping forever. Desiring that, he saw that it was dangerous to both of them.
Magic indeed, he thought. She possessed it in every fiber of her being, and did not even know it.
She lifted a hand to touch Brigit’s arm where he still held his niece, her thumb brushing over his, stirring a rapid beat in his heart. “That was a lovely dance, Brigit,” she said. “None of the fair folk could have danced more gracefully than you did, sweet.”
“I told you Uncle Diarmid was the king,” Brigit said, smiling. “Even Uncle Gilchrist knows it.”
“Ah, then Gilchrist must be a prince, for they are brothers,” Michael said. Gilchrist chuckled behind her as he adjusted the harp strings, and Lilias rang out a hearty laugh. Diarmid, listening as he held the child, did not even smile. The profoundness of what he had just realized stunned him. He needed to consider all the aspects of his feelings for Michael when he had time and privacy to think them through.
“You look so somber now, Dunsheen,” Michael said, her voice lightly teasing, still amused. “What thoughts could set the king of all the fair folk into such a dark mood?”
He looked at her then, into eyes so blue. “I was thinking of magic.” He turned to set Brigit back in the chair.
Hearing soft cries from Iona and Lilias, he turned, as did Michael and Gilchrist. Mungo entered the hall bearing a large wooden chest on his shoulders.
“Here you are, Mistress Physician,” Mungo grunted, as he set the chest down heavily. “Your books and belongings, just as you asked. Hey!” He grinned then, and opened his arms to his children, who ran toward him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mungo took an object from a fold of his wrapped plaid and laid it on the table. “Here is your cairngorm brooch, Dunsheen, which the laird of Perth Castle knew well, and so gave me the use of two fine horses. After that, I went back to the hospital and told them I was in need of a bed. I stayed there and groaned and complained for a few days. And I had to share the bed with a grousing old man,” he added, grimacing.
Michael wanted to laugh, but stifled it. She could hardly imagine this strong, gaunt, tenacious man sharing a bed with an elderly patient. She handed him a cup of claret and pushed a plate of oatcakes close to him. “What illness did you claim?”
“Backache.” He stretched his shoulders. “Told the prioress I could not walk for back strain.”
“You have a back like an ox,” Diarmid remarked.
He grinned. “They did not know that, for I moaned loudly. The food was adequate and the pillows were soft, and I wanted a rest after months spent running with you and the king.” His small sons, Donald and Fingal, sidled close to him, and he ruffled their shining brown-haired heads. “I think the prioress was loathe to let me go, and kept me,” he added, wiggling a brow.
Diarmid chuckled. “And why was that?”
”Ach, the woman found me fascinating,” he replied. “I told her she had soft hands and a fine face—though she has the face of a mule, and the cold, wet hands of a fishwife.” He shrugged. “But she seemed to like my compliments. She rubbed my back with ointments, and I told her what a sacred effect she was having upon me. I even confessed to the priest to earn her good will. That got me extra portions of meat, and cups of good wine from the prioress’s own hands.” He smiled beatifically. “I always knew there was a use for prayer.”
Diarmid shook his head, smiling. “But how did you get into Michael’s chamber in the women’s quarters to get the chest?”
“Well, I knew if I even mentioned the lady’s name I would lose my privileges quick enough. I heard the prioress and the priest arguing about Lady Michael’s disappearance, so I kept close about it. They seemed greatly concerned about what your brother would do when he found you missing, my lady,” he added soberly. Michael nodded, wondering if Gavin yet knew that she was gone from the hospital.
“On the third night,” Mungo continued, “I had had enough of rest and bed companions, and so I stole out of bed in the middle of the night and went to the women’s dormitory. No one had yet taken Lady Michael’s chamber. Slipping inside to carry out the chest was easy enough. But the two young novices saw me as I was climbing over the wall.”
“Marjorie and Alice?” Michael asked.
He nodded. “They were about to call the priest, but I told them I was a friend to you and told them you were safe. And I asked them to send a message to Gavin Faulkener with the king’s troops in the borderlands, to tell them that you were fine and would contact him later. They let me go with good wishes.”
“Thank you, Mungo,” Michael said. “I owe you a great debt.”
He smiled. “You have paid it,” he said. “My kin have all told me how you tended their aches and pains. And my father told me how you pulled his bad tooth the other night.”
“Dunsheen did that,” Michael said quickly.
“Did he?” Mungo looked at Diarmid. “Pulled a tooth like a barber-surgeon, did you?”
Diarmid shrugged. “I did. Take a day of rest, Mungo. Then you and I will ride out to make some visits around Argyll.”
Mungo nodded as he sipped the claret. “Have you had any news of Glas Eilean?” he asked. “News of Sorcha? How is she?”
“She is well enough,” Diarmid answered. “Ranald and Arthur were here a few days past.” He leaned sideways to murmur quietly with Mungo.
Michael took advantage of the change in the conversation to rise from the table and walk toward her wooden chest. She sank down on her knees beside it and freed the three strong latches, then opened the heavy lid and propped it against the wall.
Within moments she was surrounded by curious children. Eva, Donald, and Fingal fell on their knees beside her, thrusting their heads curiously into the chest to see its contents. Iona appeared too, holding Brigit’s hand while Brigit gripped Padraig’s leather collar and awkwardly crossed the room.
”Dhia!” Mungo said. “Look at her!” He laughed, a burst of disbelief and joy. Michael smiled across the room at him, and heard Diarmid explain what Brigit had begun to achieve with Michael’s treatments.
She turned back toward the chest. Eva had removed a pale blue silk veil trimmed in golden braid, and was admiring it. Michael smiled. “I wore that in Italy,” she said. “The days are so hot there that all we wore was silk and cotton. Try it on.” She helped Eva cover her dark hair.
“May I try it too?” Brigit asked.
Michael withdrew another veil of white silk threaded with silver. “This will be lovely on you,” she said, and settled it over Brigit’s wild golden curls.
Michael soon found herself seated in the midst of happy pandemonium. The children were determined to examine every item in the chest. They looked with avid curiosity at the clothing and the few jewels she owned. Small hands picked up a belt of golden chain links, rings, neck chains with pendants, and swirled delicate veils with enthusiasm. The boys unfolded her two spare black gowns and two black surcoats of wool and samite and tossed them aside. Other gowns and surcoats, brightly colored, were examined by Eva and Iona, while Brigit draped herself in embroidered silk chemises in white and in rich blue.
Fingal and Donald were fascinated by her instruments, handling each one in turn. She showed them probes, depressors, golden needles, scissors, steel-bladed knives, and pincers of various sizes; a gold tube used for tracheotomy, sealed ceramic jars holding rare medicines, empty glass vials, and three small folding charts of symptoms and astrological information meant to be worn on the belt.
Donald pulled a gray and red robe out of the bottom of the chest and thrust his sleeves into it. “Is this your night-robe?” he cried, splaying his arms wide. “It’s very large.”
“That is a physician’s robe,” she explained. “The gray color and the red lining identify those who wear it as academically trained physicians
.”
“And this one is yours?” Donald asked. She nodded. “I like it. I want one too, when I am grown.”
“Me too,” Brigit said, fingering the red silk lining.
“You will have to earn robes like these,” she said, sitting back on her heels. The two children looked at each other and nodded as if that task was easily accomplished.
“Ah, books!” Iona said in delight, and sank to her knees. She reached inside to touch a leather cover. “May I?”
Michael nodded, and Iona lifted out a heavy volume. As she turned its stiff parchment pages, the children gathered around her, as motley and comical as Yuletide guisers, clothed in the a rainbow of veils, gowns, and jewelry. Michael smiled to see them cluster around Iona, all of them quietly looking.
“What is this?” Iona asked. “I’ve never seen such pictures!”
“It is a book of physiognomy,” Michael said. “See, this illustration explains how the zodiac signs rule different parts of the body—Aries the ram for the head, Taurus the bull for the neck, Leo the lion for the heart, and so on.” While she spoke, the children exclaimed over the detailed, colorful painting. Iona turned more folios, and stopped at a full-page illumination of a man in a loincloth, covered with open wounds, from which protruded spears, knives, arrows, axes, and a mace.
”Ach!” Donald cried. “What happened to him?”
“That is the Wound Man,” Michael said. “Many medical texts use him to teach physicians how different weapons do damage. The text explains how to best repair the wounds.”
“I like this!” Fingal crowed, bending close. Donald sat beside him, still clothed in Michael’s physician’s robe, making clownish faces and clutching invisible wounds until Michael finally burst out laughing.
She heard a low chuckle, and glanced up to see Diarmid coming toward them. He squatted down on his haunches to look at the book, while the children showed him the gruesome details of the Wound Man. They exclaimed over the Vein Man, the Skeleton Man, and other illustrations, and then went on to admire paintings of the zodiac signs included in a book of astrology.
Diarmid drew a very large volume from the chest, glancing at Michael for permission. She nodded, watching his powerful hands handle its weight as if it were a book of hours. He opened the tooled leather cover and found the first page.
”Commentaries on the works of Galen the Ancient Physician and Philosopher, as written by Ibrahim Ibn Kateb, Physician and Surgeon of Bologna,” he read, translating the Latin title lines. He glanced at her.
“Ibrahim’s expansion of Galen is well-known,” Michael said. “He commissioned this copy for me when I won my degree.”
“A handsome book,” he said, turning the pages steadily. She watched him read passages here and there, his long fingers tracing down the neatly arranged columns, occasionally pausing beside notes in brown ink that Michael had scribbled in the margins. “You have read it thoroughly. Mullinch Priory owned one of Galen’s works, and some of the writings of Hippocrates and an Arabic scholar, Razi. I read those, though it was long ago.”
“Then you are familiar with the core works of academic medical knowledge. Most other writers merely interpret and elaborate on the classic works done centuries ago by Greeks and Arabics.”
Diarmid flipped through Ibrahim’s Commentaries, then replaced it in the chest and chose another volume from among several there. The next bookcover was made from painted wooden boards, the book itself not very large.
”The Booke of Cyrurgia,” he said aloud, reading the title page. “A treatise on surgery. This is written in English,” he added, sounding surprised.
“That was another gift from Ibrahim, a translation of the recent work of Lanfranchi of Milan, a surgeon whom Ibrahim greatly admired,” Michael explained. “My husband added his own comments and drawings in the margins.” Diarmid turned the pages, pausing at several illustrations, absorbed.
“Ibrahim had a large library,” Michael told him. “Medicine, philosophy, mathematics and astrology—over a hundred volumes. He donated them in his will to the university in Bologna. I kept only my personal books, and a few of his, which he willed to me.”
Diarmid nodded, turning the crackling vellum pages, looking avidly through the book. “This explains procedures I have never even heard of,” he murmured. “The drawings are incredibly detailed. Look at this method of cautery.” He leaned close to study it himself.
“I hope you will look at the books whenever you wish,” she said, watching him.
He closed the surgery volume briskly and set it in the bottom of the chest without replying. He stood, and Michael stood too, looking up at him, noticing a rosy stain in his cheeks and a new tightness in his jaw.
They stood silently amid a chattering gaggle of brightly clad, occupied children. Eva, Brigit and Iona were still looking at the astrological book. Donald traded the gray and red physician’s robe for a gauzy veil which Fingal was trying to look through. Fingal struggled into the heavy robe, while Donald draped the translucent cloth on his own head and began to mince around until the other children tittered with glee.
“Have this silly crew divest themselves of your finery,” Diarmid said. His tone was stern, but Michael saw the fleeting smile that he smothered. “They act as if it were Yuletide. Their play cannot be good for your things.”
“They will do no harm,” she said. “And I wear only my widow’s pleated veil and black now.”
He tilted his head. “How long will you do that?”
She looked down. “I have not decided. In Italy and France, widows sometimes wear black for the rest of their lives.”
“That is a long time,” he said softly. He tugged gently at the wimple that covered her chin. “This is too solemn for you.” She felt herself blush. “Will you see that the chest is carried up to Brigit’s chamber? There is a table and stool there. I would like to work there, if I may.”
He nodded, and stepped back, narrowly missing Brigit, who sat on the floor jingling the rings and necklaces that ornamented her hands and arms. Fingal and Donald swirled around him in a circle, while Iona set the book aside to pull on a pair of fur gloves, gasping at their softness. Eva was walking around in a pair of delicate shoes of purple leather.
”Ach,” Diarmid muttered. “We’ve had far too much rain.”
Michael read late into the night, although her eyes felt the strain of reading by the light of one candle. Familiar with Ibrahim’s observations in his commentaries on Galen, she sought one passage in particular. Scanning through the book, she finally found the notation, and pulled the candle closer to read.
There is a lame fever prevalent in the Holy Land and other hot lands, Ibrahim had written, which causes not only lameness but often death. The disease is described by the ancients, and begins with fever, aches, chills and can bring on lung fever and stiffening and withering of the limbs. Often one side of the body is affected and the face sags as in apoplexy. Many victims die of the lung fever, and those who by grace of God survive never walk again, but worsen with time. Some advise amputation for these victims, and some advocate sealing them in religious houses and hospitals where their needs can be cared for charitably.
She sighed heavily and rubbed her fingers over her eyes. Brigit had suffered a fever. Michael read on. Ibrahim advised remedies for pain, and the use of heat and rubbing the limbs to bring blood back into them. She skimmed down the page.
I have seen this lame fever strike knights who have gone on Holy Crusade. Those who visit Saracen lands and warm climates bring back the illness to their homelands, and so it affects others, as Galen and others say, through sputum, and I believe through touch as well.
Attention caught, Michael sat up to review the sentence, and read further. Lame fever is a fearsome scourge in the Holy Land, so that some say it is a curse upon the Infidel. But I have seen Christian men, women and little children with the disease, and I believe that this evil goes where it will like a hidden demon, carried from one land to another on the shoulders of
travelers. Ships are unclean, and those who sail to far lands must bathe often, carry garlic on their person, and anoint their skin with aromatic oils....
She closed the heavy volume and set it aside. Still frowning, she walked toward the bed and stared down at Brigit curled like a kitten beneath the covers, her doll held tight. Padraig slept at the foot of the bed as he often did, intent on comfort as much as on guarding his young mistress. Michael did not disturb him.
She smoothed strands of hair from the child’s brow, then sat on the edge of the bed with a long sigh. What she had read in Ibrahim’s book gravely concerned her. If this was indeed the source of Brigit’s condition, then Ibrahim’s notes made recovery seem impossible. The child was strong, for she had survived the initial fever and the lung disease that often followed. But if Ibrahim was right, she would not walk again.
Michael wanted to discuss her discovery with Diarmid, but she was certain he slept now. She pulled at her wimple and veil wearily as she continued to think about the implications of what Ibrahim had written.
Brigit had asked Diarmid for magic, and waited for it with the endless patience and trust that children possessed. But if she had this lame fever, then there was no cure, no treatment. No miracles possible.
The child moved restlessly in her sleep, whimpering as if she was in pain. Michael rubbed her back gently. A deep sense of sadness washed over her. She wished that she could help her with the power that had once flowed within her.
On impulse, she rested her hands on Brigit’s knees and waited. Warmth filled her hands quickly, as it often did when she touched someone. She felt heat pour through her hands, but felt no dazzling, incandescent power shake the roots of her soul.
What Brigit needed was far beyond the scope of what she could do. She bowed her head, certain that her refusal of the gift for so long had finally caused its heaven-guided force to abandon her. With a long, regretful sigh, she stretched out on the bed and took Brigit into the circle of her arms. She drifted to sleep, feeling gentle warmth envelop her as she held the child.
