First lessons

by Lina J. Potter

  “What else was I supposed to do with her?”

  “You could have sent her to us!”

  “You have enough on your hands already. And you’ll be confined soon.”

  “Even so, do you really think Lilian will take better care of her than I would?”

  Jess snorted. “Of course not. But have you forgotten that Miranda does not get along with your brood?”

  “Sissy and Jess didn’t mean to hurt her!” Amalia’s face turned red. “You know that perfectly well. How many times did I box your ears when you were little?”

  “Every other day. But I gave as good as I got.”

  “You were awful. I still remember the time you filled my favorite shoes with earthworms.”

  “Do you? Well, who put a laxative in my porridge?”

  The two grinned at each other and broke out laughing. Then Jess became serious again. “Miranda didn’t want to go to your house. She chose Earton, and I didn’t dare cross her.”

  “But are you sure Lilian won’t upset her?” Amalia had a poor opinion of her brother’s wife. Jess shook his head.

  “Lilian won’t pay her a bit of attention. She is happy as long as the storerooms are full of food and the priest comes around to preach.”

  Amalia frowned. “Brother, your indifference surprises me. Have you ever tried to interest your wife in anything? Have you ever actually talked to her?”

  Jess wrinkled his nose. “No. And I don’t want to.” He didn’t like Lilian. He just didn’t like her! His father had been straightforward with him: they needed August’s shipyards. Jess was invested in the family business, so he went along with the marriage. He just hadn’t expected Lilian to be so narrow-minded and boring. Yes, she was one of the largest women he had ever seen, but it was her completely empty mind that disappointed him. They had nothing in common. Lilian’s prayers and hysterics distracted him from his business, so he sent her to live at Earton. The family estate was just sitting empty, anyway. It was sad and a little shameful, and he didn’t want to talk about it, so he changed the subject.

  “Would you like a glass of wine? Something not too strong?”

  “Golden mean,” Amalia said. “Pete knows I’m here, so I can stay a while.”

  “All night?”

  “Maybe. Could you find room for me? We could sit up late like we did as kids.”

  Jess smiled. “I’ll order the mead. And you want honey cakes to go with it, right?”

  His sister’s loving smile was his reward. “Little brother, you are a wonder.”

  ***

  Neither of them gave a thought to Adelaide. She sat up all night waiting for her lover, who never came. In a fit of early-morning anger, she broke three vases, slapped her maid, and tore a pair of gloves to shreds.

  Chapter 7

  Plans and Needles

  Lilian woke up feeling blue. Why? She tried to remember. The evening before, she had sat up drinking wine with Leif and Ingrid. The three of them had finished two pitchers. That was nothing to Leif, but the drink sat heavily in Lilian’s head. She knew how to drink, but she hadn’t eaten enough the previous evening because she was still trying to lose weight. Her method was simple: eat less and run more.

  Running more was the easy part. Eating less was hard. Lily gave it her best. She avoided bread, sweets, and fatty meats, especially after six in the evening. She packed her plate with steamed vegetables and rarely put butter on anything. She could already see results. She was down to two chins (from three), and her dresses were growing looser. Lily suspected that she would never be thin, but she could at least be healthy.

  She noticed that her new world had different ideals about beauty anyway. Women were expected to be plump, with wide hips for giving birth to lots and lots of babies. Lily, however, was aiming to get back to 150-pounds. Since she was five-feet-six-inches-tall, that would put her right in the range of normal—not anorexic and not an opera singer.

  From the point of view of a doctor (or of a final year medical student), the problem with extra weight was not how it made her look, but how it made her feel physically. Lily was exhausted by her extra pounds, and she knew that as the years went by, it would just get worse. She didn’t want to spend her life dragging around the equivalent of a large sack of potatoes. So, she was trying to lose weight the best way she knew how: walking, horseback riding, and eating healthier food. Her willpower was holding out for now. That being said… I should have at least eaten some cheese with that wine last night.

  Lily forced herself up out of bed. She opened the door to the hallway and called out for a servant to bring her hot water. Then she sat down to comb her hair. While I’m at it, why not invent the hairbrush?

  She remembered hearing somewhere that people used to use boar bristles for brushes. She would have to take a close look at the pigs in the market.

  ***

  Before the sun was much higher in the sky, Lily, Leif, Ingrid, and four other Virmans (she didn’t know their names yet) were on their way to the market. Lily and Ingrid rode horses, and the Virman men walked alongside. When they got closer to the market, the women got down. One of the Virmans stayed behind to hold the horses, and the others entered the crowd. The four men boxed in the two women so that no one could shove them. Leif strode along in front of the group and called out in a commanding voice, “Make way for the Countess of Earton!”

  Ingrid was wearing a fur wrap. Lily looked at it closely. The cut was very primitive. She wondered if people in her new world knew how to dye furs. She made a note to herself to find out and to suggest more flattering cuts.

  And while I’m at it, I’ll hire someone to make some plain old underwear. I’m sick of wearing pantaloons and nightshirts.

  The market was pandemonium, as always, with animals bleating and people yelling, but Lily was no longer bothered by the noise. Ingrid stopped at every pen to look at the cows. She felt their horns and udders and asked about milk yield and pregnancies. Lily discovered that a cow with a proven track record of delivering healthy calves cost twice as much as other cows.

  But what if we get them home and they stop getting pregnant? Or what if they do get pregnant and they have complications? So much to know… Lily was no veterinarian, but she had done a rotation in obstetrics and had seen her share of breech presentations. She wondered if cows gave birth like humans. It has to be similar, right?

  They made their way down the entire length of the livestock pens and stepped to the side to talk about what they had seen. Ingrid was serious. “My Lady, I saw several good cows and bulls. I believe we can buy the animals we need for two gold coins. Maybe a little less.”

  Lily nodded. She was thinking that maybe she should have shaken Etor a little harder before letting him go. There was no knowing who had his money now, but she sure could have used it—not for herself, but for Earton.

  “We’ll spend the money. Good animals are worth it. But how do we get them back?”

  Leif answered, “We will have to reach an agreement with some of the traveling merchants. I saw several scows in the harbor. If they take on the stock, we will provide security.”

  “What about while we are still here?”

  “That is easy enough. I will speak to the innkeeper. If he doesn’t have a stable, he will know someone who does, and who won’t mind earning a few copper coins.”

  “Then let’s go buy some animals. Will they at least drive them back to the inn for us?”

  Leif shook his head. “No, but we will manage. Don’t you have dogs in Earton, My Lady?”

  “Of course we do.”

  “Are they trained to work cattle?”

  “No…”

  “Then we should buy some young pups while we’re here. Sheepdogs. They are a large breed with long hair, and they are smart enough to earn their keep with the shepherds. That’s how they got the name.”

  Lily nodded. “We’ll see.”

  “Let’s buy a few cows now. We can come back several times.”

  “S
ounds good. I will leave the bargaining to you, Ingrid.”

  Ingrid gave a shy smile. “I can try. I know a little bit about cows.”

  “I didn’t think you kept cows on Virma!” Lily burst out. After their talk the evening before, she went away thinking of Virma as a heap of rocks in the middle of the ocean. It didn’t sound like a place a nice cow would want to live.

  “Some people do keep them. You have to have a certain degree of wealth to have a cow because they are expensive to feed. We don’t buy anything but the best—except for meat. And I learned a lot from my mother. She prepared me to handle a farm on my own while my husband was away at sea.”

  Leif glowed as he watched his wife speak. Lily sighed with envy. Alex never looked at her that way, even when she told him she’d been accepted to medical school. He was proud of her, for sure, but he was also annoyed with her for going to school so far away. She’d never seen him express such pure, unadulterated pride in her achievements. She wondered if Ingrid knew how lucky she was.

  The group turned back to the inn. They hadn’t gone very far when they heard a loud commotion.

  What’s with the crowd? Why is everyone screaming? This is insane!

  “A bull broke loose! A bull!”

  Using all her strength, Lily gripped Ingrid with one hand and one of the Virman men with the other. If either of them were dragged away from her, they would still have her fingers attached.

  The Virmans followed Leif’s barked orders and pulled the women out of the crowd. Lily felt something hard behind her back. They had put her in a sheep pen with Ingrid. The sheep were not happy to see her: they were bleating loudly and butting their heads against her dress, but at least they wouldn’t trample her to death like the crowd on the other side of the fence. Her Virman guards stood along the fence, and for the first time, Lily saw what a true warrior was worth. They never reached for their weapons, but the heaving crowd broke against them like a wave against a rocky beach.

  And then it appeared—the bull. To Lily’s eyes, the bull was enormous. But it was angry. Its eyes were red, and its sharp horns shone in the sun. It seemed to be coming right at her. Shouting and shoving, the people in the crowd pushed to get away. One man tripped and fell to his knees. Before he could get up, the bull was on him. It lifted him on its horns and tossed him like a piece of trash.

  Ingrid screamed and held on to Lilian, who grabbed her hand. Both women thought the bull was looking right at them. The Virman men were not worried in the least by the animal. Leif held his ax lightly as he stepped forward to meet it. The bull snorted and advanced. Leif coolly waited for it. Three yards. Two. One…

  God no! Lily bit her lip until it bled. Can he…

  The Virman stepped lightly out of range of the horns and, almost without effort, brought down the butt of his ax right between the bull’s eyes. It was a direct hit. The bull dropped to its knees as if it had been shot.

  Leif looked it over and said, “If he lives, I might buy him. Nice animal.”

  Lily relaxed her aching fingers from around Ingrid’s arm, and the young woman rushed out of the pen to throw herself on her husband’s neck. Lily sighed and looked around. She saw a man lying still in the dust. She quickly made her way to the injured man. The Virmans made no attempt to stop her, with two of them simply following along behind her. She got down on her knees and took a closer look. One of the man’s legs was sticking out at an odd angle. She felt his neck for a pulse.

  Excellent. His pulse is strong. Now. I need to see what’s broken.

  Her training told her to put him on a backboard and send him for x-rays, but she didn’t have over a thousand years to wait…A superficial examination showed that the leg was broken. The man’s spine seemed to be unharmed. Lily ran her hands over his arms and neck and then looked up at the Virmans. “Help me turn him over. Be careful.”

  They did as she asked. Lily gasped. Game over. The man’s tunic was rapidly filling with blood.

  “Give me a knife!”

  She held out her hand. Her voice was so commanding that Olaf handed over his knife before he even realized what she needed it for. After slicing open the tunic, Lily sighed with relief. She couldn’t have pulled off an operation with a dirty knife in the middle of the street, but it looked like she wouldn’t have to. The man was born under a lucky star; the bull’s horns had just left a flesh wound across his hefty stomach. There was a lot of blood, but it wasn’t dangerous. She just needed to clean it, stitch it, and bandage him up.

  Lily looked around. “Where can we take him? I need to treat his wounds.”

  Leif was still holding up Ingrid. He looked around and then nodded his head. “Over there.”

  His men didn’t wait for orders. One took off his cape. Then they rolled the wounded man onto it and carefully lifted him off the ground. Lily walked alongside taking the man’s pulse.

  ***

  “Over there” turned out to be a nice-looking tavern full of people noisily drinking and talking about their business at the market. The crowd fell silent when the Virmans appeared in the doorway. Leif nodded to his men, and they lowered the wounded man onto one of the tables.

  Using the same knife, Lily cut his pants to the hip. She had been right. It was a closed fracture. This guy is incredibly lucky. The bone could have broken through, but it’s all nice and clean. I can feel it right here, and there aren’t any fragments. I just need to set it and make a splint. The wounded man was still unconscious. Lily made a mental list of what she needed.

  “Hot water. Strong wine. Thread and needles. Hop to it!”

  Leif repeated her orders in a voice that made the oil lamps along the walls shudder.

  “And open the windows. I need more light! Bring me two small boards and some cloth!”

  She leaned over the man’s body and reflected that it was a good thing the fall knocked him out. She didn’t have any anesthesia on hand—except perhaps Leif and his battle ax. One blow and you’re out like a light.

  What do we have here? A man who looks to be about sixty. That means he’s just forty or fifty. People age faster here. He has a short, black beard and dark skin…

  “Khangan,” someone behind her said.

  “Khangan?” That’s right. He must be from the Vari Khanganate. I read about it.

  The man’s clothes seemed strange to Lily: wide pants, a tunic made of fine, colorfully embroidered fabric, and an obviously expensive robe. It was beautiful work. Or, at least, it had been beautiful until it met the bull’s horns and the dusty road.

  “What will you do to him, My Lady?”

  “Heal him,” Lily said, as she removed the last bit of fabric from the broken leg.

  “You shouldn’t do that, My Lady.”

  “What do you mean?” Lily shot the Virman an angry glance.

  “You shouldn’t heal him,” said one of the older Virmans.

  “Why ever not?”

  “He’ll be lame the rest of his life. The Khangans have a custom: when a man’s body is broken they drive him from his home and take his property from him. If you heal him, he will be a pauper for the rest of his days.”

  Lily snorted. “He won’t be lame. If you get me the things I need, and…”

  Someone handed her several needles. Lily reached for one of her petticoats. “Look the other way!” The Virmans stood around her in a circle to shield her from curious eyes as she ripped a piece from her petticoat. It’s clean silk. I just need to pull out some threads and rise them in the wine.

  It was a nice white wine and looked to have all of about ten percent alcohol content. “Don’t you have anything stronger?”

  “Only iced wine, My Lady.”

  “Then bring that.”

  Next, the hot water arrived. Lily ripped off another piece of her skirt, soaked it in the hot water and carefully cleaned the area where she would operate.

  I’ve got to get the ends of the bone together correctly. It shouldn’t be too hard, as long as there aren’t any fragments I can’
t feel. Damn animal! I hope they turn that bull into sausage! It was a clean break, just like in the textbooks. She had practiced this procedure many times.

  But this is right in the middle of the femur. How did this guy manage to fall so hard?

  She reflected that a broken lower leg would have been worse because it would involve two separate bones, and she had no instruments to work with.

  I’ll have to use whatever is on hand!

  The pitcher on the table smelled like cheap rotgut. She liked that because it would have a fairly high alcohol content. Lily wiped the booze all over her hands and the knife, needles, and thread. Then she rinsed a plate, filled it with the remaining rotgut and put the needles and thread in it to let them marinate until she needed them.

  She cleaned the area again and tried to decide what to do first: set the leg bone or stitch up the abdominal flesh wound. She would start with the flesh wound. Bleeding never improved anyone’s mood. At home, she would have had an IV in this patient already. She wondered how much blood he had already lost.

  What if the wound gets infected? I’ll have to start growing penicillin on bread mold. The Virmans watched in awe as the Countess made a strange gesture in front of her face and whispered, “Lord, help me.” It was just a force of habit learned from Aliya’s mother, and she didn’t realize what she had done.

  Then she began to sew up the bloody wound in the Khangan’s side. Leif and Ingrid watched as Lily methodically cleaned the dirt and blood clots from the wound and then started to stitch together muscles and skin. Her movements were confident and calm; she knew what she was doing, that much was obvious in every flash of the needle.

  ***

  Field trip to the morgue to dissect corpses? Aliya Skorolenok did the work for herself and for anyone else who didn’t feel up to it. Surgery rotation at the hospital?

  “Skorolenok, get out of the way! Oh, all right, come here and let me show you how we do it.”

  The third year, same hospital: “Skorolenok! Get into the operating room. We have a nurse out sick. You can take her place.”

  The fourth year: “Someone find Skorolenok! We need her in the operating room!”