Theus bit his lip, wondering what words to use to dampen any inflated expectations the girl might have about her betrothed.
“The first day isn’t that critical,” he said. “I think we need to expect to have to wait a bit more.”
“Still, it can’t hurt to go see,” she said. “Come this way,” she reached out and grabbed his hand, jerking him unexpectedly down a dim corridor to the right.
“This will take us straight to our dorm. You can take a quick shower and change,” she explained, as they exited through a small service door, and emerged within sight of the north hall.
They climbed the stairs in the virtually empty building. “You go up to shower. I’ll bring your towel and fresh clothes up to you,” she urged him to hurry.
He did as told, and found pleasure as he stripped away the perspiration-soaked tunic he wore, and the pants, then stepped under the lukewarm shower water and scrubbed himself clean.
“Your clothes and towel are out here,” he heard Torella’s voice call.
Satisfied that he had improved his suitability to be in company, Theus turned the water off, stepped out and was soon back in company with Torella. The pair then hurried on their way back to the kitchen, and were immediately set upon by Letta.
“Where have you two been?” she demanded. “We’ve got to go! Theus gather up your things. Why is your hair wet?”
“We delivered breakfast to the armory,” Torella began to explain.
“You left here almost an hour ago,” Letta pointed out. “And you have a delivery to make to the invalid’s quarters anyway – you go take care of that. I’ll get Theus moving and find out what all the dawdling is about. I may have to split you two up if this continues.” She threatened.
“I’ll explain,” Theus promised Torella as the girl looked at him beseechingly. “And I’ll check on Ruune for you as soon as I can,” he affirmed.
She gave him a grateful smile, curtsied to Letta, then left the pair alone.
“Let’s go! Go get your cure,” Letta urged. “We can talk along the way. Is that the best you have to wear?” she was in her frantically driven mode once again.
“These are my best clothes,” Theus answered. “What cure, which, my lady?” he asked in confusion.
“Have you completely forgotten? The cure for gout? Your shopping trip yesterday? We are going to treat High Lady Citrice, close friend to Princess Maurferg, sister to the king,” Letta explained impatiently.
Understanding dawned on Theus. “I did prepare that treatment; it’s on the counter back there,” he motioned.
“Go get it! We’re expected to administer it any moment now. The High Lady is waiting in her chambers,” Letta sounded relieved to know that the treatment was prepared.
“I need just five minutes more,” Theus requested. “It’s supposed to be warm when it’s administered.”
“Go!” Letta urged.
Theus ran across the kitchen, grabbed together his jars of ointment, then rushed over to the stove top and appropriated a saucepan, with Letta looking over his shoulder as he warmed the contents of one jar, and then another, and returned them to their containers.
“Are you ready? We have to reach the far side of the palace – we have to go,” Letta urged impatiently.
The pair started walking. “Now, what did you two do? Tell me honest, and there’ll be no punishment,” Letta demanded.
“We took the breakfasts to the officers, and they expected me to fence with them,” Theus said. “So I did, and it took a while. They’re good. I was against Alamice today, and I couldn’t get a score on him, but I wasn’t really prepared either,” he confided. “If I had known we were going to do that, and been in a different frame of mind, I think I could have started better, and maybe done better.
“But after that, Torella said I was sweaty and smelly, and she made me go to the hall to take a shower. You wouldn’t want me smelling and looking sweaty for this noble lady, would you?” he tried to press a point defensively.
“Well no, of course not. I’d have scrubbed you clean myself if you’d shown up in my kitchen filthy, let alone before having to make a visit like this! I’d have bathed you right there in the kitchen, along with the pots and pans!” she smiled at her own humor.
“Oh, you and those officers! Boys playing games, if you ask me,” she harrumphed, as they turned a corner in the palace and entered a hall filled with gilded furnishings. “Still, it’s better to keep them happy than not.”
“They want me to practice with them every day,” Theus decided he better plant the seed for his continued participation in the fencing rounds. It was an enjoyment he didn’t want to miss, a reminder of the pleasure of physically challenging himself to wield his weapon and his body as effectively as possible.
“This is the hall. We have to be very respectful. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Make your treatment sound very credible and suitable for a high lady,” Letta instructed, leaning up to speak softly in Theus’s ear.
A servant wearing resplendent clothes passed by, examining them disdainfully as he walked across their path.
“I wish we’d gotten better clothes for you,” Letta fretted.
She turned and came to a stop at a door, a large wooden door that was elaborately carved with a scene of flowers and trees. She knocked, and they stood in silence, waiting for a response.
A maid opened the door. “How may I help you?” she asked in a neutral tone.
“We’re here at the request of the High Lady Citrice, to provide medical treatment for her gout,” Letta explained.
“Her Ladyship is in her bath,” the maid answered, as if nothing further needed to be told.
Theus stood silent, next to Letta, waiting to see what would come next. The wait seemed to stretch on into excruciatingly long minutes, as Letta and the maid stood looking at one another.
“So, she should invite us in, right?” Theus said at last, breaking the silly battle for status.
“That’s right Theus. If she’s going to properly serve her mistress, she will invite us in, and inform her ladyship that the treatment she requested has arrived,” Letta spoke slowly and loudly, as if speaking to a child, while keeping her eyes on the maid.
The woman at the door set her jaw in a clench, and reddened.
“Wait here. I’ll go seek instruction,” the maid said after another moment, and she swung the door closed in their face.
“Not a positive start,” Theus sighed. “Maybe we should just leave.”
“No,” Letta said firmly. “We will not. She will come back here and admit us to the suite, or we will,” she paused, “well, we will enter. Her Ladyship expects us.”
A moment later, the maid opened the door again, her face locked into a rigid smile. “My apologies for keeping you waiting. Follow me to the sitting room.” She instructed, without making eye contact, and then turned and disappeared into the interior.
Theus followed Letta, and swung the door closed behind him. They walked through a foyer and entered a sitting room with plushly padded chairs and sofas.
“If you’ll have a seat,” the maid said to Theus. “The doctor is invited in to see her ladyship in her bath,” she motioned to Letta to follow.
“I’m not the doctor; he is,” Letta spoke bluntly.
The maid’s eyes widened. “Oh dear,” she murmured. She closed her eyes and seemed to compose herself. “In that case, please be seated,” she spoke to Letta, “and you shall follow me,” she motioned to Theus.
“Perhaps we should both go,” Letta suggested.
“No, her ladyship only expects one visitor in the bath,” the maid spoke firmly. “You come,” she seemed to have made up her mind as she motioned to Theus.
He looked beseechingly at Letta for advice, but she gave a small twitch of her hand to indicate that he was to follow the maid.
He walked through the doorway, feeling less certain with every step that he really knew what to do. He had expected that he would only have to walk in a
nd apply his medicine to a woman’s foot, then leave. But somehow that seemed to have become an overly simplified expectation.
They entered a second chamber with only a pair of sofas, then entered an elegant bedroom. Theus thought back to the brief visit he had in Coriae’s bedroom, when he had applied his healing lotion to her wounds. He had seen her room, and thought it to be a luxurious display of how the wealthy lived their private lives. The bedroom of Lady Citrice seemed suffocating by comparison, stuffed with pillows and covers and curtains and objets d’art and more.
“Go through that door, and her ladyship is bathing,” the maid informed him, stopping and pointing at a door.
“Just me,” Theus’s voice rose significantly, and he saw a smile almost break across the maid’s face.
She nodded.
He closed his eyes, took a breath, and tried to calm himself, then approached the door in question, and knocked.
“Come in, come in, I’ve been waiting,” a woman’s voice called.
Theus opened the door, then stopped as steamy, moist air hit him in the face. He stepped forward into the room and closed the door behind him, then stopped again and oriented himself.
“Hurry along,” the woman demanded. The room was steamy, and Theus had only a sense of where she was, but he walked that way, then stopped once again, as he realized he had walked right to the edge of a pool of water set into the floor of the room. A woman was in the water, her back to him, her head leaning down and forward, with her blond hair darkened and wet, flung across one shoulder.
Her back was an expanse of undressed flesh, clearly visible to him. From his angle he could see little else of her, but he doubted that she was wearing anything anywhere.
And he was suddenly alone in her bath with her.
He started to breath fast, and his heart started to pound.
“Rub my back for me,” she ordered. “I can’t reach it. Use the sponge on the shelf.”
He knelt down onto the floor and picked up the sponge as ordered, once he placed his jars of medicine carefully down on the floor, off to the side.
“Ah,” she expressed her satisfaction as he began to rub the sponge across her shoulders and neck. “That’s just the right strength, but rub lower,” she commanded.
Theus did as requested. And kept doing it.
“Lower, get the small of my back,” the noblewoman demanded.
Theus slid his hand down, dipping his sleeve into the water of the tub, and rubbed in a circular motion, then lifted his hand again.
“You’re the best masseuse I’ve had yet this month. You’ve got the strength to get into the muscles and loosen them without making me sore,” the bather complemented him.
She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. His head was down low, as he reached to continue to rub her lower back, and so their two faces were only a foot apart when their eyes met.
Her eyes widened, then narrowed into slits, and the lack of fear or shock on her face frightened Theus.
“Ah, not who I was expecting, but such a delicious surprise,” she commented.
“Did someone send you here as a present?” she asked.
Theus hastily removed his hand from her back, and rocked back on his heels, trying to put space between the two without yet rising from the floor.
“My lady, I’m here to offer medical treatment for your gout,” Theus told her, gasping for breath as he spoke.
“Ah, how delightful,” she purred the words as she spun around in the water, offering a flashing kaleidoscope of views of her body as she turned and the surface of the water splashed and flashed reflection of light. Her torso backed away from him, and then her foot emerged from the water and rested itself on the edge of the floor directly in front of him.
“Here is my problem. I’d like to be able to dance in the ball in three days. What can you do for me?” she asked.
Theus shook his head, his jaw hanging limply open as he felt shock and embarrassment from the situation he was trapped in.
“Well, what are you? You’re too young to really be able to cure anything, it’s clear. Are you a delightful new young friend? Will you be climbing in the tub with me?” she lowered her foot and leaned forward.
“No!” Theus nearly shouted the word. “No,” he repeated more softly. “Put your foot back up here,” he said in a panic. “I’m a healer. I’ve learned many ancient remedies. I have a treatment for gout,” he held up one of the jars as proof.
“All I have to do is apply it to your toe and foot and massage it in to the flesh,” he explained. “But then you have to keep your foot dry so the medicine doesn’t wash away.”
“So you want me to get out of the tub?” the woman asked. She lowered her foot once again, and began to rise, ready to reveal the rest of the glistening flesh that had soaked beneath the soapy surface of the perfumed water. “Would you like to use the towel to dry me off?” she asked seductively as she paused to point to the towel hanging on the wall next to the tub.
“No, I’ll go wait outside, to give you privacy,” Theus scrambled to his feet in further panic, and picked up his jars of treatment, then turned and fled, as the woman’s laughter followed him to the doorway. He bolted through the door, threw it shut behind him, then leapt across the room and sat down, breathing heavily.
He was trapped in a nightmare, he was sure. He had to wake up – he had to find that he was back in Great Forks, sleeping in his bed in Lord Warrell’s servants’ quarters, ready to go to work for Falstaff, ready to eat lunch with the other apprentices, ready to practice his staff work with Coriae in the evening. That had to be his reality, not this nightmare of running from an amorous noblewoman while serving as a slave in a palace where evil seemed to live incarnate in a tower.
The bathing room door opened, and Lady Citrice emerged, wearing a short robe and a wicked grin.
“Hello healer,” she said, then grimaced momentarily as she limped across the floor on her gouty limb.
Theus immediately stood up. He was sitting on the corner of her bed, he discovered in consternation.
“Please just lie down, ma’am,” he directed her. “I’ll apply this ointment to your sore foot. Would you like for me to call in my supervisor, Letta?” he asked. He prayed that the answer would be affirmative.
“I don’t think we need her just yet,” Citrice purred, as she reached the bed, then swung her legs up and lay back.
“Alrighty doctor, have your way,” she said. Her blond hair was spread across the pillow around her head as she closed her eyes, with a half-smile on her lips.
Theus stayed down by the foot of the bed, and opened the jar of lotion he had created, after following the extensive set of instructions that had been etched in his brain by the memory stone from Falstaff’s shop. The lotion was a complex one, containing many ingredients, and requiring a number of steps to create, but the application to the patient was relatively straight-forward.
He pulled his fingers across the top of the lotion, then spread the goo around the joint that connected her ladyship’s large toe to her foot. The joint was reddened and swollen. And her toenails were painted with intricate designs, he was bemused to discover.
He massaged the lotion into the joint, and then all around the toe.
“It’s sore,” the noblewoman cautioned as his fingers massaged the digit.
“I know. I’m sorry, my lady,” Theus apologized. He tried to massage with more delicacy as he scooped additional lotion and applied it to the other toes and joints of the foot, then rubbed the lotion up the foot, and even into the ankle, determined to give the medicine the maximum exposure to the gouty foot and the maximum opportunity to heal as quickly as possible.
“And my other foot?” Citrice asked, as Theus finished his work and stepped back.
His eyes widened in concern, as he realized he had not prepared enough of his lotion to adequately treat both feet. Nonetheless, he scooped out the remaining amount and lathered it around the joints most likely to suffer, wh
ile he made a mental note to himself that he might need to prepare a larger dose when he returned the following day. He methodically massaged the digits of the foot, and the joints, and the foot itself, up to the ankle.
“This one doesn’t appear to be as swollen and sore as the other foot,” he hesitantly commented to Citrice, as he finished his work.
“Oh, it doesn’t hurt at all!” she exclaimed, then laughed. “I just enjoyed having you give me a foot massage. I may buy you from the king, just to have you available at my service at all times I desire,” she horrified him by suggesting.
“Go fetch in that overseer of yours, Letta, will you? I presume she’s nearby?” Lady Citrice said to Theus, making his heart skip a beat, full of fear that he was going to be sold to the noblewoman. He’d told himself he would try to escape, but if he was placed under the disturbing woman’s’ control, he wouldn’t wait another day to begin his flight, he knew.
“My lady,” he said in a strangled voice when he opened the door of the small salon. “The Lady Citrice requests that you join us.”
“Did you give her the treatment?” Letta stepped up close to Theus and asked in a low voice. “Did it work?”
“It’s too soon to tell. I’ll have to come back tomorrow to give a second application,” he told her, and then she stepped into the bedroom. Her eyes surveyed the room and saw the noblewoman laying upon her bed in her short robe. She grew flushed and studied Theus intently, then composed herself, and walked to the side of the bed.
“Good morning, my lady. I hope my healer slave has given you hope of reducing the pain you suffer,” Letta spoke first.
“He’s been quite an enjoyable visitor in my chambers,” Citrice answered. “I thought I might persuade him to provide even more entertainment, but he seems to hold to some different scruples than I do. It’s been quite amusing!” the woman laughed lightly.
“He has given me his treatment, and I believe I can feel my gout improving already!” she declared. “How long will it take to make the pain go away?” she asked Theus.
“I believe it will be more than halfway treated by tomorrow morning. I have this jar of lotion that may be applied in the morning to help promote any last improvements needed, and you could even put it on a third time the following day. But I don’t think that will be necessary,” Theus answered as he held up the unopened jar.
The Deadly Magician (The Memory Stones Series Book 2) Page 13
