The Shining City

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Nay, I’m fine, thank ye,’ Johanna answered, sipping her tea.

  Nina regarded her closely. Was it her imagination or were Johanna’s pupils far too small? Certainly the healer had a dazed, dreamy expression on her face, as if she had just woken up. Nina pressed her hands together, a nagging worm of anxiety wriggling in her stomach.

  ‘Now what can I do for ye?’ Johanna asked, holding up her cup so Dedrie could refill it. ‘Ye are looking rather white, Nina. Is all well with ye?’

  Nina looked from her to Dedrie, and back again. ‘No, it is no’,’ she said bluntly. ‘Johanna, do ye no’ ken … do ye no’ ken who this is? She’s the laird o’ Fettercairn’s skeelie.’

  ‘Aye, o’ course I ken,’ Johanna said comfortably, smiling at Dedrie. ‘And a fine skeelie she is too.’

  Nina tried to choose her words with care. ‘Ye do ken, do ye no’, that she has been accused o’ murder? And necromancy?’

  ‘Aye, and stuff and rubbish it is too,’ Johanna replied. ‘As if Dedrie could possibly be guilty o’ such dreadful deeds! Why, she is the kindest, most thoughtful …’

  ‘Och, please, ma’am, ye’ll put me to the blush!’

  ‘How I ever managed without Dedrie is beyond me,’ Johanna continued. ‘I’m so glad she came to me for help. Why, if it were no’ for her …’

  ‘Now, ma’am, that’s enough, please,’ Dedrie said firmly, bringing the plate of cakes and offering it to Johanna, who took one and ate it absent-mindedly.

  Nina was dismayed to find she was near tears. It had wearied her, rushing through the crowded city in the heat, only to find someone she thought of as an enemy where she had expected to get help. She took a deep breath and managed to swallow her distress.

  ‘Aye, I need your help,’ she said to Johanna, who was gazing at her with a look of mild enquiry, her head lolling back against a cushion. ‘I need a healer.’

  ‘Why, what is wrong?’

  Nina took a deep breath. ‘There’s fever … in the prison. I am no’ a healer, as ye ken. I do no’ ken the best thing to do …’

  ‘Fever! In the prison! Och, my poor laird!’ Dedrie stood stock-still, her hands clasped before her breast, then turned to look at Johanna pleadingly. ‘Oh, ma’am, may I go? My laird is elderly now, and much weakened by his weeks imprisoned. A bout o’ gaol fever would kill him.’

  ‘O’ course ye must go,’ Johanna said. ‘Take whatever ye need from the simples room. Ask Annie and Mirabelle to go with ye, to assist ye. And Dedrie, take a plague mask. I do no’ want ye catching the fever.’ She smiled at the skeelie fondly.

  Nina swallowed her distaste. ‘I do no’ ken if the laird is ill too, or any o’ his men, but it would be wise to check him,’ she said. She found she had difficulty framing her next words, knowing how Johanna must feel about Rhiannon, her brother’s killer. She forced herself to speak. ‘It is Rhiannon o’ Dubhslain who is ill, though, very ill. May I take one o’ your healers to her? Perhaps this Annie … or Mirabelle?’

  Johanna sat bolt upright, her cup tumbling from her hands to crash and break on the floor. ‘Ye dare … ye dare ask me …’ she began, in a high shrill voice. ‘Ye want me to succour that … murderess … that foul …’ Her voice failed. She flung up her arm to cover her face, beginning to weep in great heaving breaths. ‘Get out!’ she rasped. ‘Get out!’

  ‘But Johanna …’

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘But she is ill, very ill …’

  ‘I hope she dies,’ Johanna spat, staring at Nina with blazing hatred in her eyes. ‘I hope she suffers terribly first.’ Then the healer turned and pressed her head into Dedrie’s lap, the skeelie bending to embrace her.

  Dedrie looked over Johanna’s distraught form at Nina, and this time she made no attempt to hide the malice in her smile. ‘I would beg ye to leave now, my lady,’ she said in a treacle-sweet voice. ‘I do no’ wish ye to upset Mistress Johanna any more. I mean no disrespect, but it was cruel o’ ye, cruel and thoughtless, to ask her to do such a thing.’

  ‘Aye! Cruel!’ Johanna cried out, her voice muffled by Dedrie’s embrace.

  Nina stood up. ‘I’m sorry, I did no’ mean to distress ye,’ she said. ‘But ye are a healer, sworn to help and heal all those in need. I thought …’

  ‘Get out!’ Johanna screamed.

  Nina bowed her head and left the room.

  She stood for a long moment on the landing outside, staring out the tall windows at the green branches swaying in the breeze. She had to repress her own misery in order to think through what had just happened in the healer’s room. Nina had not seen Johanna in such distress since the death of Tòmas some twenty years earlier. Johanna was renowned for her composure and strength in times of trouble. All through war and rebellion and plague, Johanna had alleviated pain and suffering and fear with her calm good sense and steadfast courage.

  Nina tried to think how she would feel if it had been Dide shot in the back by a wild satyricorn. Would she have felt such savage hatred towards the archer? Would she have wished her brother’s murderer dead, even without a trial to establish the truth of the shooting? Nina would like to think she would not, but in truth she could not tell. She sighed, and went down the stairs, crossing the garth towards the Royal College of Sorcerers.

  She found Isabeau at last in the library, reading a great heavy book with the title Ghosts and Ghouls and Ghasts picked out in gold. The Keybearer looked up as she came in, and smiled warmly, putting her book down and coming forward to embrace her. ‘Nina! How lovely to see ye. But what is wrong?’

  Nina told her about Rhiannon, and how Johanna had refused to send anyone to tend her.

  ‘I’ll come at once,’ Isabeau said. ‘I was only just worrying about Rhiannon. See this book I am reading? I’ve been brushing up on my knowledge o’ ghosts and hauntings, and very troubling reading it makes, too. It’s sorry I am indeed that I have no’ found the time to visit her again. Come, I just need to get my healer’s bag from my rooms. Walk with me and tell me more. Ye say Johanna was very distressed?’

  Nina told her everything, including how the lord of Fettercairn’s skeelie had somehow wormed her way into Johanna’s confidence. She described the healer’s lassitude, her dreamy expression and her contracted pupils, and wondered aloud if Dedrie had somehow drugged Johanna, having had a bad experience with the skeelie’s basket of potions and poisons before. This reminded her of Elfrida and her visit to the healer, and how edgy and nervous she had seemed. Isabeau listened to all she had to say with great interest, as she retrieved her healer’s bag from her suite of rooms at the very top of the tower, and sent one of her maids running to the stables to order horses.

  As they made their way back to the prison, a passage through the crowds cleared for them by four tall guards, Nina told the Keybearer how troubled she was about the conditions at Sorrowgate Prison. She told Isabeau about the mysterious disappearance of Bess Balfour, after she had been strung up for the rats to gnaw on by the warder of Murderers’ Gallery, and described, with some exasperation, how much it was costing her to keep Rhiannon in a cell of her own, with two meals a day and clean sheets and blankets once a week. By the time they rode under the cruel portcullis, Isabeau was frowning and Nina was feeling much easier in her heart.

  ‘It must no’ be allowed,’ Isabeau said tersely. ‘Lachlan must be told! Why have ye no’ told him yourself?’

  ‘I canna get near him,’ Nina said. ‘The court is like a hive o’ hornets, all buzzing round. There’s this new unrest in Tìrsoilleir, and all the scandal over Bronwen and this Yeoman that Prionnsa Donncan killed. No’ to mention the upcoming wedding!’

  ‘Aye, I must admit it’s been mad,’ Isabeau said. ‘I have had a lot on my plate too.’

  ‘Aye, I’m sorry. I dinna ken who else to come to.’

  ‘Ye did right,’ Isabeau answered. ‘Lachlan will see me!’

  ‘Once he would’ve seen me too, at any time,’ Nina said unsteadily. She dashed her hand across her eyes. ‘But I
am no’ in favour right now, given that I keep importuning him on Rhiannon’s behalf.’

  ‘Och, well. He loved Connor dearly, and misses his wise counsel. We all do. He had an uncanny knack o’ getting to the truth o’ a matter.’

  Having left their horses in the care of Isabeau’s guards, they climbed up the twisting stairs to Rhiannon’s cell. The satyricorn was gravely ill, Nina could tell at once. She lay in a tangle of hot, damp sheets, her eyes unseeing, her face flushed as red as if she had been eating scorch-spice. Isabeau wasted no time in forcing her to drink a bitter cordial made of powdered willowbark, feverfew, wormwood and borage, easily evading Rhiannon’s wild struggles, then stripped her and bathed her in cool water. She sent Corey running out into the city streets to purchase a cup of snow from the icemongers, and squeezed lemon over it and fed it to Rhiannon with a spoon. Hamish, the other guard, rather sulkily brought soup which Isabeau sniffed suspiciously and then poured into the stinking chamber-pot.

  ‘Remove this at once,’ the Keybearer said coldly, ‘and bring us a clean one, then have a messenger sent to the Tower o’ Two Moons, to Gwilym the Ugly. I want fresh cooked soup, and nettle tea, and agrimony water, and an infusion of yarrow and vervain. Tell him I want plenty o’ it, and I want it now. Mistress Rhiannon will no’ be the only one sick in this foul place. Tell Master Gwilym I want a team o’ maids too, to scrub out the cells and strew them with fresh herbs. They had best wear gloves and masks. Oh, and tell him I want another message sent to the kennels. I want all the cairn terriers brought here, and set to catch the rats. Have him search out some ferrets too, to go where the dogs canna. Is that understood?’

  Hamish gaped at her.

  The Keybearer clicked her teeth in exasperation, and sat down to scribble a hasty note, which she then gave to Corey to carry, he being the younger and more willing.

  ‘I wish to speak to the prison warder. Have him attend me here,’ she said then to Hamish, who did not dare deny her, even though it was clear he did not relish carrying that particular message.

  Nina had been sitting quietly by Rhiannon’s bedside, smoothing back her sweaty hair from her brow, and smiling to see how the guards jumped at the Keybearer’s orders.

  Within a few hours, the whole prison was turned upside down with battalions of chamber-maids armed with scrubbing brushes and pails of hot water working methodically through the labyrinthine building, flinging open shutters and throwing down piles of lice-infested bedding to be burnt. Little brindled terriers with shaggy coats and sharply pricked ears rushed about everywhere, barking joyously and chasing the rats, who poured away from them in a dark, scrabbling flood that slowly reduced to a trickle. The long sinuous shapes of ferrets writhed through the drains and the chimneys, dragging out more rats until, by the end of the day, a tall, black, evil pyramid of dead rats was stacked in the courtyard.

  Nina stayed by Rhiannon’s side all night, giving her agrimony water to sip every time she moaned and stirred, and bathing her forehead with lavender water. Through the window slit she could see the dancing flames of the bonfire burning all the filth of the prison, and as the smoke rose high into the night sky, Nina felt her spirits rise also. Three times Isabeau came back, to give Rhiannon another dose of the feverfew potion. By daybreak, Rhiannon knew who she was again, and was wearily allowing Nina to lift her up so she could sip at a cup of hot vegetable broth, and making faces over the bitter green nettle tea.

  ‘Drink it up, it’ll make ye well,’ Nina said.

  ‘What has happened? What is wrong with me?’ Rhiannon’s voice was hoarse and faint.

  ‘Just a touch o’ gaol fever,’ Nina said. ‘Do no’ worry, ye are over the worst o’ it.’

  Rhiannon wrinkled her nose. ‘What is that smell? What is burning?’

  ‘That is just the Keybearer, cleansing this place with fire,’ Nina said, laying Rhiannon down again and tucking her up in a clean, sweet-smelling sheet. ‘I swear there is no’ a rat or a louse left anywhere in Sorrowgate.’

  ‘Me glad,’ Rhiannon said, and wearily closed her eyes.

  None left except for the laird and his skeelie, Nina thought to herself. And I will do what I can to sweep them into the dust-pile too!

  Rhiannon was weak and listless after her bout of gaol fever, and often disinclined to leave her bed. Her only consolations were her growing pile of books, the little bluebird who delighted her with its song and joyous flight, and the visits of her friends, who tried to come at least once a week.

  Nina and Iven had hired an attorney to represent Rhiannon at her trial, which was to take place at the dark of the moon, the day before Midsummer’s Eve. The attorney had a stern eye, a beak of a nose, and deeply engraved lines between his heavy black brows. His eyes were black also, but his hair was silver, and he looked as if he rarely smiled.

  He asked Rhiannon many questions, and all so superciliously that she wanted to grind his face into the rough stone of her walls. She managed to keep her temper, though, and was rewarded with a grunt and a muttered, ‘Very well. Ye’ll do.’

  As the date of her trial came ever closer, he came more often, teaching her about the judicial system, and coaching her in her responses.

  Otherwise, Fèlice continued to be her most faithful visitor, bringing her flowers and wine and copies of the news broadsheets to read, and enlivening the dull hours with her chatter about the court and the Theurgia.

  One day, a week before her trial, Rhiannon said rather idly, ‘What o’ the other prionnsa, the younger one? I have no’ heard ye speak o’ him for a while.’

  A shadow crossed Fèlice’s face, but she said lightly, ‘Och, it has all been such a whirl that I have scarce laid eyes on Prionnsa Owein! He spends most o’ his time with Lew … with his brother and sister, ye ken, and I do no’ move in such exalted circles.’

  Rhiannon, realising only that Fèlice had sidestepped saying Lewen’s name, did not notice the trace of misery in Fèlice’s voice, being too busy bearing her own pain. Since Fèlice then went on to discuss the much-remarked upon coolness that had grown between the Crown Prionnsa and his betrothed, Rhiannon did not pursue the topic, and all mention of Owein was allowed to lapse.

  The Keybearer came once also, her elf-owl perched sleepily on her shoulder. She questioned Rhiannon again about the ghost that haunted her sleep, and about the night of the spring equinox when Rhiannon had watched Lord Malvern and his circle of necromancers. When she had extracted everything Rhiannon could remember, she sat for a moment, thinking, and then said gently, ‘Nina told me ye had a friend, a lass named Bess Balfour, who was injured your first night in Sorrowgate.’

  ‘Aye, injured,’ Rhiannon said bitterly. ‘That’s one word for it.’

  ‘I’ve made enquiries,’ Isabeau said.

  ‘Good o’ ye,’ Rhiannon answered. ‘Let me guess. There is no record o’ a lass named Bess Balfour.’

  ‘No, there is no’,’ Isabeau answered, ‘though there is a Mistress Balfour making a nuisance o’ herself every day at the front desk, demanding to ken what has happened to her daughter.’

  ‘Bess’s mam?’ Rhiannon sat upright, turning to stare at the Keybearer.

  ‘I would guess so.’

  ‘So I dinna dream it all,’ Rhiannon said.

  ‘Nay, I think your Bess was real enough, as real as the thumbscrews that gave ye your scars.’ Isabeau indicated the faint bloom of discolouration that still encircled Rhiannon’s thumbs and looked as if it would never fade.

  ‘So where is Bess?’

  Isabeau put up her hand to stroke the owl, who hooted softly, almost as if seeking to comfort or reassure.

  ‘The Royal College o’ Healers has difficulty in finding enough bodies for their research and teaching,’ she said. ‘Most people do no’ want their remains to be dissected once they die, yet the healers and their students need to know as much about the human body as possible if they are to learn to heal it. So some years ago the Rìgh passed an act allowing the bodies o’ murderers to be given to the colle
ge instead o’ being buried, as usual.’

  ‘What has this to do with Bess?’

  The Keybearer continued as if she had not spoken. ‘The corpses o’ the destitute and homeless are meant to be buried at the city’s expense, but, sad to say, many sheriffs do no’ want to bear the cost, which often has to come out o’ their own pocket. So, sometimes, if someone dies on the street and their body is no’ claimed by their family, well, the sheriffs give the body to the College o’ Healers.’

  Rhiannon waited.

  ‘The body o’ a young woman was brought in a few days after ye were imprisoned in Sorrowgate Tower,’ Isabeau said. ‘She fits your description o’ Bess Balfour. I was particularly struck by what ye said about her crooked face. This girl had at one time broken her jaw.’

  ‘Or had it broken for her,’ Rhiannon said.

  Isabeau nodded.

  ‘The body was much gnawed by rats. There was some argument among the students as to whether this happened before or after death. No conclusive agreement was reached.’

  ‘So Bess was dumped on the street? Alive or dead?’

  ‘Who is to ken?’ Isabeau answered. ‘No autopsy was performed, just a dissection o’ her major organs.’

  Rhiannon put her hands up to cover her face.

  Isabeau said gently, ‘I am sorry. If it is any consolation, all bodies dissected by the College o’ Healers are given the proper funeral rites afore being cremated.’

  ‘What do I care for your rites?’ Rhiannon said, her voice muffled by her fingers. ‘It is the living that matter.’

  ‘Aye,’ Isabeau said. ‘I do agree. I can only say how very sorry I am. Ye must believe me when I say those responsible will no’ go unpunished.’

  ‘It was Octavia.’ Rhiannon lifted her face from her hands. ‘She did it. She strung Bess up for the rats, and then got rid o’ her, afraid o’ who I would tell.’

  ‘Aye, I think so. Do no’ worry. The city guards have gone already to arrest her.’