"Yes, Ludmilla Borisevna, I can," he told her gently.
"Then day after tomorrow, in the evening, you will teach me more?" There was an element of command in her question.
"If that is what you want, it is what I will do, but two nights after that I must attend the salon the Ksiezna is sponsoring with Abigail Carruther; you have declined the invitation, I know, but I have little
option: not only is my wife a hostess, but I have been asked to play the clavichord for the guests. If you would be willing to postpone that lesson until the night after, I would be honored to continue our instruction," he promised her, and went to open the door for her, bowing slightly. "I have a few books in Dutch that in time you will want to read. I will set them aside for you."
"Not until I'm able to read them," she said. "They would only vex me if I had them selected for me and couldn't read them." She laid her hand on his. "But you give me something to hope for." With a quick nod in his direction, she went out of his quarters and into the surgery-room, her exercise-book and the two sheets of foolscap carried as if they were fragile treasures.
Saint-Germain went back toward the trestle-table and began to put away the writing supplies, all the while thinking how best to continue with Ludmilla's lessons. The experience of learning had sparked something in her that she was deeply pleased with; he could hear it in her voice as she spoke, and see it in the animation that possessed her as she strove to learn. He rubbed his forehead where his attackers had left a bad bruise in May and stared at the hanging oil-lamps contemplatively.
"My master?" Hroger called from beyond the door.
"Come in," Saint-Germain called out, abandoning his rumination for the time being. "What is it, old friend?"
Hroger made a complicated gesture. "Gavril Valentinovich is having trouble again. The remaining part of his foot is swelling and he is feverish. I couldn't get him to eat just now."
"Is he delirious?" Saint-Germain asked, hoping the man was not.
"Not completely so, but not wholly in his right mind, either; I would call it drifting--you know, the way the centurion was at Diva Nis?"
"That was a long time ago," said Saint-Germain. "Yet you remember."
"I remember." Hroger stared at the far wall. "He is failing, isn't he?"
"I fear so," said Saint-Germain; the pleasant sense of satisfaction that had filled him only ten minutes ago had now vanished, to be replaced by keen assessment and a kind of sorrow that had been with
him for over three thousand years. "If you would inform Heer van Hoek for me when I have finished my evaluation of Gavril Valentinovich, I will go and see him now. If only we had better access to more medicaments." This last revealed to Hroger how truly helpless Saint-Germain felt.
"I will report to van Hoek. But I think you should consider moving the patient," said Hroger.
"For what reason?"
"We may need to get him out of the opposite room because he is beginning to bother the other patients. He frets and sometimes he curses for no reason, except that he feels his end approaching. That troubles the rest of the patients in the room." Hroger looked toward the second chamber of their quarters. "We could put a pallet in there, couldn't we? On the opposite side of the room from my bunk."
"I suppose so," said Saint-Germain.
"Then I'll arrange it," said Hroger. "I can keep watch on him for as long as necessary."
"That is very good of you," said Saint-Germain.
"And when you're done with the patient, Saari would like to see you. He'll wait at the rear of this building for another three hours for you." He added this last as if it were a minor consideration.
"About what?" Saint-Germain paused in the act of reaching for his smock.
"He has been watching Lajos Rakoczi--"
"Whoever he may be," Saint-Germain interjected.
"Just so. And he may have found out something of interest," said Hroger as he picked up Saint-Germain's small leather case of medical equipment. "I told him to come around after nine tonight."
"A good hour. Thank you." Saint-Germain donned his smock and went out the door and across to the far side of the surgery-room where the injured were kept, separated from the ill on the first floor. He went along to the ninth bed, where Gavril Valentinovich Pretishkin lay, his blankets wadded into a lump behind his knees, his hair matted, his breathing noisy and strained, and his skin unhealthfully mottled; Saint-Germain bent over him, touching his neck to evaluate his pulse;
he felt the movement of blood through its vessels. "Fast and weak," he said to Hroger in a low voice. "He has most certainly developed a secondary poison within him."
"Is there anything to be done?" Hroger asked, anticipating the answer.
"We could amputate again, possibly as high as the knee, depending on how far the heat has spread, but if the poison has traveled throughout the body, it would only increase his suffering to subject him to more cutting." He stood up. "He will want syrup of poppies at the least."
"How large a dose, my master?" Hroger asked.
"Half a vial, and mixed with a double dose of the sovereign remedy." He said this almost without emotion. "It will be anodyne, at least."
"I'll do it as soon as I've spoken to Heer van Hoek." He held out the leather case of tools to Saint-Germain. "If you don't need them, shall I put them back?"
"If you would, please," said Saint-Germain and, as Hroger left the room, he went to draw up one of the four stools in the room to the bed of Gavril Valentinovich, in order to study his condition more closely. He could find no ominous lines running up the man's damaged leg, and he could detect no odor of rottenness, but clearly something had gone wrong, and there was poison in him. Had there been atomies in the water that had carried a venom of their own, or had the man already taken ill when his toes blackened, and he would have reached this point no matter what had been done? He could not decide.
Gavril Valentinovich coughed, the sound deep and ropy. He moaned and moved as if trying to find a comfortable place on the bed. His eyes were open but unfocused; he pulled at his nightshirt as if plucking it of feathers.
There were footsteps behind Saint-Germain and he turned to see Heer van Hoek standing a short distance away. He asked in Dutch, "Hroger spoke with you?"
"He did." He regarded their patient. "He is deteriorating."
"Quite rapidly," Saint-Germain agreed. "I think we may have done all that is possible for the man."
Van Hoek took a minute to respond. "If he survives, he won't be
able to be a supervisor here, and he is a long way from his district. With all that has happened to him, would he be able to return to his people?"
"And when he got there, would they care for him?" Saint-Germain asked, expecting no answer.
"Kyril says that many injured men are abandoned to be beggars. There is no provision for them here, and no other city has offered a haven to them. Not even the monks want them." He pulled at the edges of his mustache. "Is there a good reason to remove the whole foot? And a part of the leg?"
"Not that I can think of," said Saint-Germain. "It is unlikely to spare him, and it would mean he would have to endure more pain."
"Then we are agreed," said van Hoek heavily. "Your man will move him into your quarters and he will be carefully tended; you will provide anodynes to ease his misery." He cleared his throat. "We can move the fellow over there"--he pointed to a pallet at the end of the row of beds--"into this bed."
"How is he doing?" Saint-Germain asked, for he had not taken the time to examine their newest patient since his initial assessment, two days ago.
"His work-gang who turned on him broke his shoulder, and it's difficult to get a clean healing in the shoulder. He worries at his bindings, and that doesn't help." He paused. "The Czar ordered that gang out to the fourth levee to help in the rebuilding. With the nights freezing, their tents will do little to keep them from chilblains."
"And the supervisors will not fare much better. The barracks most of them are assigned to are unfinished."
"Winter is going to be hard," said van Hoek.
Saint-Germain nodded as he rose from the stool, and said to Gavril Valentinovich in Russian, "Be of good heart. We are going to make you more comfortable."
Gavril mumbled something that sounded like a curse, then drifted off into a kind of sleep.
Van Hoek motioned to Saint-Germain to come out into the surgery-room. "Three or four days, do you think?"
"Possibly. I have seen men more stricken than he last longer than
that, and some less so go out like a blown candle." He tried not to recall all the ways in which he had seen men and women die, or all the differences he had seen in their determination not to die.
"Do you think he has a family somewhere?"
"He may. We will have to notify the Guards. They are in charge of such lists now." Saint-Germain lowered his head. "Hroger and Kyril will attend to moving him later this evening, and I will see he is relieved of pain."
"Dream himself into eternity, as the Orientals have it?" van Hoek proposed distantly.
"So I hope." Saint-Germain looked about the room.
"Incidentally," said van Hoek as if it had just occurred to him, "I'm indebted to you for trying to introduce Ludmilla Borisevna to the Dutch language--let alone the Russian one. Reading and writing is such a trial for women."
"Especially since most of them are not permitted to learn either," said Saint-Germain with an ironic tinge to his observation. "This way, in a few months, you and she can exchange notes. Would you like me to teach you Russian?"
"I can speak it, and that's sufficient," said van Hoek with a wave of dismissal.
Realizing there was nothing more to say on that topic, Saint-Germain asked, "Do you anticipate needing this chamber for a few hours? It will take a little while for Hroger to ready a bunk for him, and if you have surgery to do, you will not want to have the other going on."
"Nothing tonight. I am planning to go out for a while." He shrugged in a complex way. "I need a few hours away from here."
"Then we will proceed," said Saint-Germain. "May your evening be a pleasant one."
Van Hoek shrugged again. "Just an opportunity to meet with a few of the Dutch in this city, and to make up a hand or two of cards and enjoy a pipe or two. I miss hearing my own language." He gave Saint-Germain a consoling look. "You have a worse situation than I, with so few speakers of your tongue in Sankt Piterburkh."
Saint-Germain's native language had vanished from all speakers
but him more than three thousand years ago; even its descendant tongue had been gone for more than two millennia. "I understand," he said with feeling.
"Then you will not begrudge me the evening."
"Why should I?" Saint-Germain asked. "I am here on
your
sufferance, not the other way around."
"You're right," said van Hoek as if he had forgotten it. "Well, I will check in on Gavril Valentinovich when I return, which should be about midnight."
"Do you want an escort home? There are still gangs on the streets these nights."
"You would think of that," said van Hoek. "Who can blame you, after all? But from what I've seen, the Guards have driven most of the gangs into hiding, or across the river."
Saint-Germain held up his hand. "You cannot assume that the Guards, useful though they may be, have completely swept all outlaws from the city."
"Between here and the house of Barendt van Zwolle, what risk do I run? There are a few lights over the street, and I will stay on Spasky Street and Tsariana Natalya Street. If the Savior and the Czar's mother can't protect me, what can the Guards do?" Van Hoek chuckled and gave Saint-Germain a negligent wave. "The worst that will happen to me is a hangover."
Although he felt uneasy, Saint-Germain offered no more objections, but gave van Hoek an affable smile and went on to his private quarters to collect his cloak, then went down the stairs to the first floor and out the rear door, stepping out into the gelid fog. He looked about, seeing the heavy mists but nothing more, not even the trunks of trees growing three paces away. "Saari?"
"I am here," he said in Finnish, just above a whisper.
"Would you like to step into the care-house? It is warmer inside."
Saari peered into the hazy dark. "Better out here, I think, where we won't be seen, or heard."
"As you wish." Saint-Germain moved a few steps nearer to him. "What have you found out?"
"I'm not sure. But I thought you should know that your wife's brother has twice been gambling with this Rakoczi at the house of the Prussian Envoy."
"Graf von Altenburg?" Saint-Germain was somewhat startled.
"There are a dozen men who gather there regularly to play games of chance," said Saari. "I thought you must know."
"I knew von Altenburg often entertains, but I was unaware that Rakoczi went there." He frowned, then the frown vanished. "This has happened twice, you said?"
"Yes; twice." He hesitated. "I wouldn't have noticed, but your wife asked her brother whom he had seen at the Prussian Envoy's, and he mentioned that Rakoczi was new to their group."
"And when did they have this exchange?" Saint-Germain asked.
"When they were getting into the larger carriage five days ago; they were going to the English Residence, making plans for the salon. They have done that most nights of late." He stared into the night. "The Ksiezna is preoccupied with the salon."
"I realize that," said Saint-Germain. "Do you know if the Ksiaze Radom has met with this Rakoczi at any other time, beyond diplomatic occasions?"
