Silas is standing at the table, staring blindly at the vials and mess on it, and I hold the stick out to him, telling him to strip the bark. He startles and begins to do as I’ve asked, and I set about cutting the man’s trousers away, lamenting because the fabric is fine, tightly woven and sewn with small, neat stitches. Whoever this man is, he’s come from somewhere with money. I peel and tear the fabric, stiff with dried blood and muck, away from his skin.
“Can you save him?” Silas asks, so quietly that I have to look at him to be sure he’s spoken.
“I don’t know.” I begin to splint the man’s leg, binding the stick to it with the bandages Silas made.
“Please try. I’ll do anything. Anything.” Silas’s gold eyes fix on mine, too bright, and I nod, once, before turning back to my patient.
I’ve always been good with plants. On our old farm there was a small patch of land that my father gave to me for my thirteenth birthday, good, fertile ground; he marked the plot out with a tiny fence he made himself.
“That’s for our Errin,” he announced to us all as we looked at the bare earth. “So she can grow her herbs and save us a fortune at the apothecary.”
That was a joke; the four of us were rudely healthy. Until the day my father fell we’d never called on the apothecary for any reason other than for me to request an apprenticeship.
The first I knew of his accident was when my brother raced on to the village green. I was sitting with Lirys, half listening to her telling me some story about Kirin when Lief arrived, bone-white and shaking.
“Come,” he said, and terror stabbed at my heart as I lifted my skirts and followed him.
We raced all the way home in silence.
At the farm he ran through the kitchen, leaving a trail of muddy prints across the stone floor. I remember thinking how cross Mama would be when she saw it; how she’d scold us both and make us clean it up. I didn’t know she’d already cleaned it once, washing Papa’s blood away.
I followed the trail through the farmhouse to my mother and father’s room.
“What happened?” I gasped, bracing myself against the door frame. Mama sat beside my father, holding a cloth to his leg. The room smelt of metal and alcohol and fear.
“Bloody bull,” Papa said, trying to raise a smile on his ashen face. “I was moving him from the east paddock and he went for me.”
“He gored you?” I asked.
“No,” Lief said. “Father outran him. But he went over the fence too fast and landed on a pitchfork. It gouged his leg.”
“Show me,” I said, walking towards the bed and gently pulling my mother’s hand away.
The blood didn’t gush out like a fountain, or pulse with the beat of my father’s heart, and relief flooded me. Nothing vital had been ruptured. It pooled in the wound instead, the gash becoming a reservoir.
“We need to clean it.”
Mama nodded and took a deep breath. “What must I do?”
“We need fresh water,” I said. “Lief, boil the kettle, keep it boiling. Wash one of the copper bowls out with boiled water, then fill it, add salt, and bring it here. Mama, if you bring the brandy and clean cloths, and fetch your sewing kit. Clean the wound, clean it thoroughly with the water. Only the saltwater.”
“And the brandy?”
“Give it to Papa. As much as he wants.”
“What will you do?” she asked.
“I’ll be in my garden.”
I’d been learning under the apothecary for two years. Five days a week I entered his fragranced rooms and learned about herbs and plants and cures. More than once I’d argued good-naturedly with him over advice written in the Materia Medica and some of the methods he used to treat patients, but Master Pendie was a kind man, and he’d forgotten more about medicine than anyone else knew.
Papa was so proud of me. “You have my grandmother’s brains,” he’d say. “She was clever enough to get herself out of the castle when the people turned on the nobility. She was clever enough to get herself and my father away and hide and build a life, right here in this farmhouse. Good to know you’re a clever girl too.”
Papa gave me a garden and it was there that I went, running my hands through my plants, cataloguing them and choosing the ones I’d need to help me. Comfrey to stop the bleeding. Guinea pepper would be better but I had not yet managed to make it take in my garden, and I didn’t want to waste time running to the apothecary for some. Agrimony and comfrey should suffice in its place, yarrow as well, to be sure. Lavender, chamomile and prunella to purify the wound.
With my arms full of leaves I ran back to the house. My brother stood in the kitchen, tapping his foot on the floor as he glared at the kettle.
“Is it not done yet?” I asked.
“Mother has some,” he said. “This is the second lot.”
From upstairs we heard a shout of pain and both winced.
“He won’t be able to work for a while, will he?” Lief said.
“No, he’ll need to rest until it’s healed.”
“You’ll need to help me, then.”
“What do you mean by that?” I put the leaves on the table, moving around the kitchen for oats, muslin and more clean bowls.
“I mean no gallivanting off to the village to gossip about boys when there’s work to be done here.”
“My work is in the village, at the apothecary, remember?”
“You’ll need to take some time away, then, won’t you?”
“You’re not my father, Lief.”
“No, I’m not. Our father is upstairs bleeding because you were too lazy to put the tools away.”
I stilled, turning to look at him. “He never asked me to.”
He met my gaze, his eyes glittering with anger. “First, you shouldn’t need to be asked. And second, he tried to ask you this morning but you pretended not to hear.”
“I didn’t hear!” I protested, guilt prickling at me, though technically it was true, I hadn’t heard, because I’d been rushing to get to the village. “Are you saying this is my fault?”
“Here.” He slammed the copper kettle on to the scarred wooden table. “I’m going to check on him. Family first, Errin. Remember that.”
He left me standing there, numb, before I remembered I had a job to do. I ground up the comfrey and the agrimony and the yarrow, mixed it with oats to make a poultice, adding hot water and a little milk to bind it. I wrapped the whole thing in muslin, wringing it out and then racing up the stairs with it.
The room smelt of fresh blood when I returned, and Mama stepped aside for me while I examined the wound. Now clean, it was deeper than I’d thought. He must have fallen with most of his weight on it.
“How much brandy has he had?” I asked Mama, and she nodded to the bottle. A third of it was gone. “Hold this inside the wound. It will be messy but it will stop the bleeding. Once it’s stopped, we can clean it again, then it’ll need stitching.”
Mama nodded and took the poultice. Papa cried out again when she pressed it into the wound and Lief picked up the bottle and held it to his mouth.
“I’ll go and mix the next part,” I said, and Lief nodded tersely.
Back in the kitchen I set the kettle to boil again, adding the lavender, chamomile and prunella to my mortar and grinding it all together. I poured in a little water, and when it became a paste, I added a glob of pig grease to make my salve. Pig grease is best for using on men.
My father had passed out by this point, either from the pain or the brandy or a combination of the two, and it made my job much easier. When Mama pulled the poultice away, the flow of the blood had slowed, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“I need you to help me now,” I said to my mother. “I need you to pull the skin together so I can stitch it.”
Though she turned a faint green colour, she nodded, and I threaded the needle
she had brought me. But no sooner had I pierced the skin for the first stitch than she had run from the room, her hand to her mouth.
“Lief?” I asked, and he came, sitting on the other side of the bed.
Slowly, we stitched our father back together.
As I was smearing the salve on his leg, I looked up to find Papa watching me.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“As though I fell on a pitchfork and then was sewn back together by my daughter. And I believe I might be a little drunk,” he slurred gently.
“Nothing unusual, then?” I said, and he smiled blearily.
I rose and kissed him on the forehead and he gripped my hand.
“You’re such a good girl,” he said. “I’m so proud of you.”
I didn’t feel much like a good girl with Lief’s words still ringing in my ears.
The following morning Papa seemed well. He was sitting up in bed complaining of a sore head, of all things, as I checked the wound and smeared more of my salve on it. I left him in the care of Mama while I reluctantly helped Lief with the chores. One of the cows kicked me, and though it left nothing more than an angry bruise, it put me in a foul mood for the rest of the day. Lief and I ate separately, both of us seething because he’d demanded I make the supper and I had refused.
“But it’s your job.”
“Because I’m a girl?”
“Yes.”
I glared at him. “You’d better not let Papa hear you saying that.”
“I’ve never seen Father cook a meal, have you? That’s Mother’s job.”
“Well, today I was a farmer and that’s a man’s job. Which means today I am a man and I’m cooking nothing for you.”
“Fine. Don’t. I’ll eat bread and dripping.”
“I hope it chokes you,” I hissed, and left him to it. As a rule we got on well, aside from the usual brother and sister spats, but the tension of our father’s injury and a hard, thankless day’s work had left us both in foul temper, and neither of us was willing to back down.
We didn’t speak for four solid days, and each one felt like a week as we worked side by side to milk the cows twice daily, clean up after them, turn them out into the fields, and take the milk to the dairy. I had some revenge forcing Lief to turn dairy maid while Mama stayed with Papa, but it wasn’t much consolation. I checked on my father’s wound twice daily and it seemed to be mending well. He complained of some stiffness in his leg, but that was to be expected, and Mama offered to massage it.
The sixth night after it happened, I couldn’t sleep, despite how exhausted I was. I tossed and turned, too warm in the sweltering summer heat. I was lying atop my sheets, spread out like a star, trying to cool down, when the door opened.
“Errin, something’s wrong,” Mama said softly into the darkness.
When I entered their room it smelt bad, sour with sickness, and I gagged. When I laid my hand on my father’s forehead he was burning up. He was moaning lightly in his sleep; his skin looked waxy in the dim light, damp with a sweat that had nothing to do with the summer. Then he shook, suddenly and horribly, his shoulders spasming and jerking, and my mother ran back to him, trying to hold him still.
I knew then what it was, but I didn’t want to believe it because I didn’t want it to be real and I didn’t want it to be too late.
“How long has he been like this?”
“He said he was too hot at dinner. He couldn’t swallow; he said his jaw hurt. Then this started, in his neck. I could feel the muscles shaking.”
Papa jerked again and I closed my eyes. “We need Master Pendie.”
Mama sent Lief at once. And while he was gone, for the first time ever, Mama and I sunk to our knees and prayed to Gods that we’d never believed in.
Master Pendie did what he could, applying willow bark and more lavender, asking for belts and ropes to hold my father down. Each fit became more violent, and the apothecary told us to pour honey down his throat, to keep giving him sugar and cream and butter. We spent all night ferrying food and water back and forth, trying in-between attacks to make him eat to keep his strength up. By dawn he was exhausted but still shaking, his body impossibly thinner than it had been when the sun set.
“He has the lockjaw,” Master Pendie said when he returned.
“How do we heal it?” Mama asked.
Lief and I looked at each other.
“We can’t,” Master Pendie said wretchedly, turning to me. “I’m sorry. I truly am.”
He left poppy tears for us to administer to my father. Lockjaw is a painful way to go, but even with the sedative his body still trembled.
My mother was catatonic, refusing to accept it. She spent the day in my room, staring at the wall, and muttering old forgotten prayers to old forgotten Gods, with me silently holding her hand, saying my own prayers inside my mind. Lief remained with our father.
I had gone downstairs to fetch myself a glass of milk. It was late, the moon was high and the world was still. I didn’t hear Lief come in behind me; it was only when I saw his reflection in the glass of the window that I realized he was there. When I turned and saw his face, I knew.
“How do I tell her?” he said. “How do I tell her he’s gone?”
Silas works with me for the next hour, painstakingly cleaning the man inch by inch, uncovering multiple lesions and bruises. He doesn’t flinch, or gag, working stoically and silently, helping me wash, treat and then dress the wounds as best we can. Ugly, vicious bruises have turned the skin across the man’s chest and stomach dark purple, and that’s not a good sign. His skin is cold to the touch, and doesn’t get any warmer, no matter how much we pile the fire. When we wash the blood and dirt from his hair I see it’s white like Silas’s, and when I peel back his eyelids to check his pupils, his irises are gold. I look at Silas but he says nothing.
Finally, with nothing left to tend, we stop, covering him with as many blankets as we can.
“Now what?” Silas says, his already husky voice raw with tiredness or pain.
“Nothing. I’ve done all I can. Now it’s up to him. If he’s bruised inside…” I trail off, and Silas nods sharply. “The arnica and the willow bark will hopefully bring down the swelling on the outside. We’ll know more if – when – he wakes up.”
Silas rests his head in his hands.
I stand and check the bucket, using the little water left to make two weak cups of tea. I hold one out to him. He takes it, wrapping both hands around it.
“What happened?” I ask. “Who is he? Is he … is he related to you?”
“Yes. He’s a distant cousin. But I knew him well. He…” Silas stops to sip his tea. “Do you have anything stronger?”
I raise my eyebrows at him.
He takes another sip. “He’s been the go-between. He’s the man you saw me with yesterday. We have a chain, across Lormere. People stationed at various points passing items along from my mother’s temple, until they get over the border to me, and I move them on to safety. He was the border runner, crossing the woods. He was the best. It was him I was supposed to meet earlier, but he didn’t show up. I knew something was wrong and…”
I’m ready to interrupt and ask what kind of items he’s smuggling, but then a chill creeps up my spine. Attacked in the woods … I rip the blankets from his friend and start to examine him again, looking for the long, jagged scratches that had covered my mother’s arms.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing, just … checking.”
“For what?”
I don’t answer, relieved when I can’t find anything. “And there was no sign of what – who – might have done this?”
Silas shakes his head. “I’m sorry to bring this upon you,” he says. “I know you have your own troubles.”
“Where else would you go?”
He shakes his head and h
unches over, his arms resting on his knees. I find myself staring at the top of his head, noticing his hair is double crowned. It makes me think of Lief, whose hair was the same, and I remember when my mother cut it and the whole left side of his hair stuck out for moons until the weight dragged it flat. After that he grew his hair long and never allowed it to be cut. I wonder if Silas knows he has a double crown. I wonder if he cares.
I stand and pick up my cloak, draping it over his shoulders.
He flinches as it drops around him. “I’m not cold,” he says.
“That’s not why,” I whisper back.
Our eyes lock and I forget how to breathe. That’s how it feels; suddenly my chest doesn’t remember how to rise and fall, and my lungs don’t know how to fill themselves. I don’t realize that he’s standing too until I feel his breath on my cheek and it kick-starts my own, shallow and rapid as white-hot heat burns through my skin. I look up at him and want to reach out and smooth away the crease between his eyebrows. There’s a moment when he looks like the Sleeping Prince from the book, with his high cheekbones and his generous mouth. Then he doesn’t look like a prince at all, but a sad, lost man, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to step forward, reach up and wrap my arms around him, linking my hands behind his neck and pulling him against me.
He stiffens briefly, then relaxes, but makes no effort to touch me in return. It’s as though my embrace is nothing to do with him. My skin heats with the familiar flush of shame and I unclasp my fingers and pull away.
Then his long arms fold around me and pull me back towards him. His head nestles into the hollow between my neck and shoulder, his face pressed to the skin. I feel the warmth of his breath on my neck.
It goes on and on, long past the moment we should have let each other go. He clings to me as though I’m the last safe port in a storm and I try to be that for him. My feelings flit between concern and something else, something that makes my heart skip tellingly. I’m dreading the moment this ends, because some instinct tells me that when he’s gone from my arms, something vital will be missing from me.
Sin Eater's Daughter 2 - The Sleeping Prince Page 11
