By the time they came to a landing and he opened another door, she’d collected her thoughts as much as she thought she was likely to manage. “I’ve never tried to counter a spell before,” she began in the interest of honesty. “Ihaveread one or two passages about it, and some more notes, but I can’t say I ever paid as much attention to that as I did to other things. I’ll see what I can remember, and I have a few books with me. Does the castle have a library?”
“Aye. I can’t swear to all its contents.”
“If you’ll permit it, I’ll see if anything there can aid me.” The MacAlasdairs were a family of dragons, and at least parts of the castle seemed to run on magic. Somebody might have bothered studying it, or even writing it down. “You would have told me if the village had a magician…even a cunning man, or a witch nobody talks about?”
She hadn’t gotten her hopes up and therefore was not too disappointed when Cathal shook his head. “We’ve a midwife who knows a bit of herbs.”
“She might be helpful. I’ll need to talk with her, though that’ll be later. And I’ll need a room…not to sleep, but where I can experiment.”
“We’ve rooms enough. Especially now. The one by Fergus is empty.”
Sophia hesitated, uncertain about asking for too much, but then practicality stepped in. “A more isolated chamber would work better. There are explosions from time to time.”
“Naturally,” Cathal said. “I’ll find you a place. For the present…here,” he said and opened the door from the previous night.
Now the room was light enough for Sophia to see her bags on a table by the hearth. She could see Fergus’s face too, in more detail than she’d been able to before. He didn’t look unusual: brown hair, square jaw, pale skin. He would have blended in very well with the rest of the men in the castle, if he’d been awake and moving. Stillness, even more so than his growing dissolution, distinguished him.
“He’s young,” she said, unthinking.
“They’re all young,” said Cathal.
With nothing to say in response, Sophia turned from Fergus to the table where her supplies lay. Already she was making lists in her head: the necessary tests, the herbs she had and those she might even be able to get in the Scottish winter, and the small vials of ground metal or stone. She’d have to be careful of her resources, she thought, remembering the sense of isolation in the courtyard.
She’d have to be careful of many things.
Four
Cathal had bled men before. Such times had been rare and unskilled: he’d spent his manhood as a knight, not a physician. Yet war was war. The aftermath of battle left more wounded men than hands to heal them, and the days and weeks after led to fever as often as not. He’d cut arrows out of flesh a time or two; he’d opened veins when that was necessary. The process was faintly familiar. He also was covering no new ground. Bleeding had been their first thought for a cure, and the cut on Fergus’s arm was only half healed.
It was still hard, and Cathal was glad of it. In the work of remembering which veins were minor, of tying them off and passing the blade of his knife through the candle flame, of making sure not to overlook any step, he could almost forget the man on whom he was working.
Conscious, Fergus had never been stoic. His profanity when injured had made priests shake their heads and brought pages and squires to listen and further their education. Later he’d go to confession and truly repent, but that never had stopped him the next time he’d taken a wound during battle or had a tooth pulled. Profanity in English, Gaelic, and French had blended, coming from his mouth at a speed and volume that would have been a miracle if not for the subject matter.
Now he lay soundlessly compliant. Picking up Fergus’s wrist, Cathal felt it as boneless as wax, even where the flesh was still solid. He swore himself before making the cut, but only inside his head.
Sophia knelt and held a small vessel—blue pottery, incongruously domestic-looking—under Fergus’s arm, catching the blood. Her hands stayed steady, her eyes focused, and her face showed no sign of distress, only concentration and thought. Men might have been surprised, had they not grown up with Cathal’s sisters—or not seen the field after a battle, when the women who followed an army often did as much to save its men as any of the physicians.
Cathal was not surprised, but still watched her: the brown-wimpled top of her bent head, the faint lines on her forehead, and the way her dark eyebrows slanted inward, then the straightness of her shoulders and her spine, one unbent line down to the floor where she knelt. Although far from angular of body, she still spoke to him of right angles and clear paths, order and calm—the opposite of the way Fergus was fading at the edges.
“Enough,” she said finally, and the sound was almost surprising.
Cathal turned to binding up the wound. He’d send word to Sithaeg that it would need further attention, but the woman should have a chance to eat first, and to sleep as much as she’d ever seemed to since the curse had taken her son. “Will we need to do this again?”
“I fear it’s likely,” Sophia said. She rose to her feet, holding the bowl carefully. “This is only a start. I’ll test it with the metals, see if he lacks any elements, and then…” She shook her head. “But I doubt you want the details. Let me then say that this is for investigation. I may yet need more blood for the healing itself,ifI find a way to carry that out.”
“Very well,” Cathal said. “And I know that this is chancy. You don’t have to keep warning me.”
She had set the bowl down on the table with the rest of her things while Cathal was speaking, and she turned then to look at him, brown eyes wide and grave. “As my lord wishes,” she said, “but I think it worth remembering.”
“Be assured. My memory is very good.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, and dropped a curtsy.
Polite,Cathal thought,careful, and still very dubious.It probably wasn’t worth pressing her. “I’ll find you a laboratory,” he said. “I’ll send word. Go wherever you wish. You might even find an escort to the village if you enjoy the cold.”
He left her with those words. Suddenly, he needed to be in that room no longer, nor torn between watching Fergus decline and looking for reassurance from a woman so clearly reluctant to give it. He sought the western tower instead.
Up there, before Cathal had been born, his father had built a turret that rose some little way above the rest of the stone, opening into a small, round chamber. In bygone days, Cathal and his siblings had played there on rainy days, seeing the world spread out below them in a taste of what flying would be like when they grew old enough to change shape. Now the furnishings were old and dusty, and little light came through the shuttered windows. All of that would be easy enough to change.
