Music of the Distant Stars (29 page)

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Authors: Alys Clare

BOOK: Music of the Distant Stars
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The priest had arrived, and he turned to stare at me as I emerged from the crypt. He is wary of Edild and, by association, of me too, for like many men, especially men of the church, he does not approve of a woman who lives by her own wits, independent of any man. However, like most of the village, he has had occasion to ask for her help, and she always responds with her usual generosity and competence. He is, I suppose you could say, carefully neutral regarding my aunt and me.
‘Good morning, Father Augustine,’ I said, making a respectful bow. Edild always says that it is best to treat potential enemies with courtesy, thus giving them no excuse for releasing whatever malice they may have towards you.
He returned the greeting. ‘You have been tending the body?’ He jerked his head towards the crypt door.
‘Yes.’
‘Does it – er, is it all right?’
The morning was already warm, with the promise of a hot day. I knew what he meant. ‘So far, yes. If I might suggest, you should not delay in putting him in the ground.’
‘No, indeed.’ He frowned. ‘I have told his sister that he will be buried this morning.’ Looking up, briefly he met my eyes, and I was surprised to read emotion in his. ‘There will be few other mourners, I fear,’ he said.
‘People are afraid of what they do not understand,’ I said softly. ‘Derman was not like the rest of us.’
‘No,’ Father Augustine said. Then, abruptly: ‘There was much talk concerning the dead young woman. They would have it that Derman had some hopeless love for her and killed her when she turned him down. I do not believe it is true,’ he said fervently.
‘No, neither do I.’
He seemed surprised; perhaps I was the only villager to freely admit seeing it the way he did. ‘I would not bury a murderer in sacred ground,’ he said.
‘Of course not.’ I was suddenly filled with relief for Father Augustine’s conviction of Derman’s innocence. I was quite sure Zarina would have been devastated if Derman had been refused a proper burial. Perhaps the priest might even have been reluctant to marry her to my brother had he believed she was sister to a murderer.
Zarina. Not, perhaps, sister to a murderer. But what of she herself?
As if he, too, were thinking of Zarina, Father Augustine said, ‘Derman’s sister is now free to marry your brother Haward and, indeed, Haward has already spoken to me of his hopes.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It would make Haward very happy.’
My words were automatic, the natural, polite response to what the priest had said. My thoughts, however, were far away.
I was on my way across the churchyard when I glanced across at Ida’s grave.
There was something wrong with it; the humped earth that covered her was higher than it ought to have been. My satchel banging against my side, I raced across to look more closely.
He lay face down. The back of the skull had borne the same savage attack as poor Derman’s. There was blood; a lot of blood. On the left, where the head curved out above the neck, there was a huge swelling about the size of my clenched fist. Crouching beside him, I put my fingers to it, feeling for the same devastating crushing of the bones that I had witnessed in Derman.
The swelling made it impossible to tell. I reached in my satchel for a piece of clean cloth and wiped away the blood, my eyes straining for fragments of bone. Instantly, the blood welled up again, lots of it, and impatiently I mopped it up, still searching for what I was almost sure I would find.
Then I gave myself a mental kicking for being so stupid; I could only think that the shock had affected me. The blood was flowing;
he was still alive
.
I took another pad of cloth and, swiftly finding the source of the bleeding, pressed it to the wound. I began to tuck his cloak around him – he felt terribly cold – but then I thought that I’d only be keeping the cold
in
, so I dragged it off him and lay down beside him, pressing my warm body against his cold one and pulling the cloak over us both. I dared not leave him. All my training told me that his life hung by a thread.
I opened my mouth, drew in the deepest breath I could manage and yelled at the top of my voice for Father Augustine.
EIGHTEEN
 
W
e thought he would surely die.
I have rarely seen my aunt fight so hard to save a life. I did not believe him to be a murderer and nor, I think, did my aunt. At the very least, she seemed to be giving him the benefit of the doubt. It was, of course, still possible, still plausible, that he had quietly dispatched Ida so that she did not reveal their secret and prevent his marriage to Lady Claude; that he had been forced to seek out and kill Derman because Derman knew what he had done.
But if that was how it had happened, who had attacked Sir Alain and left him for dead?
To begin with, Edild required two pairs of hands, and I had no choice but to swallow down my squeamishness and do as I was commanded. The swelling on the left side of our patient’s skull had grown alarmingly large now, as fluid of some sort leaked out of his head. Edild applied successive cold compresses, under which she laid a layer of fresh, crushed comfrey leaves and the flowering stems of water pepper, but it was clear she was losing the battle. The bleeding that had so worried me seemed to have lessened, but I could tell from Edild’s grave manner that this was not necessarily a sign that Sir Alain was going to live.
I plucked up my courage and, hoping I was not interrupting some intricate thought process, said, ‘What are you trying to do?’
She wasn’t angry with me; far from it. She turned, gave me a quick smile and said, ‘I am sorry, Lassair. I have been so preoccupied that I had forgotten, for the moment, that a part of my duty is to teach you.’
‘It’s all right, I—’
She ignored the interruption. ‘I have often spoken with Hrype concerning wounds such as this one. It is our conclusion that when someone is hit very hard on the head, there is swelling on the outside of the skull cage, which with luck can be alleviated, but there is also similar swelling inside the head bones.’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘If only we could look and see what causes it! But, of course, that is impossible with a living man . . .’ Her words trailed off. She knelt in silence beside her patient, looking at him with an anxious frown. Then, once again turning to me, she said, ‘There is a procedure called trepanation. Hrype has told me of it; he has seen it done.’
Uneasiness crept up on me. I had never heard the word before and had no idea what it meant, but there was something in her voice that told me she, too, was disturbed. ‘What is it?’ The words were barely a whisper, for my mouth was suddenly too dry to speak.
She took a breath, straightened her back and said, ‘It involves making a hole in the skull to allow whatever is causing the swelling inside the head to escape. According to Hrype, relieving the built-up pressure frequently restores a patient to consciousness and quite often they live.’
Frequently
.
Quite often
. It sounded as if this operation was by no means a certain cure.
I said, horrified as the realization swept over me, ‘You’re not thinking of doing this to
him
?’ I indicated our comatose patient.
Edild, too, looked at him. ‘If there is no other way, I may have to,’ she said gravely. ‘We are healers, Lassair. We have given our solemn oath to save life.’
‘What – how would you do it?’ I asked. I didn’t want to know – the dreaded queasiness was building up, and I was seeing black spots on the periphery of my vision. There was a thundering, drumming sound in my head. But I, too, was a healer; my aunt was an excellent teacher, and it was my duty to learn from her all that I could.
‘Trepanation involves the removal of a piece of the skull,’ she said, her voice eager, as if it was a relief to speak with authority after facing up to her inability to help her patient. ‘You remove the flesh that covers it, then you scrape, saw or bore through the bone and cut away the firm white skin that covers the brains.’
I concentrated on thinking about the healed patient following this dreadful operation. I told myself that the discovery of how to do it was a gift from the spirits to mankind, a gift that allowed lives to be saved.
Some
lives . . .
‘Hrype has seen this done?’ I asked.
‘So he says.’
‘Did the man live?’
‘The patient was a woman, and yes, she did.’ Her eyes looked suddenly unfocused, as if her thoughts had gone far away. ‘She kept the piece of her own skull as an amulet, and now Hrype has it in memory of her,’ she said softly.
I thought about that. I wondered who the woman had been, but I knew I could not ask. Hrype’s secrets were sacrosanct and, even if he had confided in Edild, she would not tell me. ‘Should I go and fetch him?’
It was her turn to consider. She removed the compress on Sir Alain’s head and put her hand on the swelling. ‘I think—’ she began. But then her frown lifted and her expression changed. She shot me a swift glance of triumph and said, ‘No need. The swelling is going down.’ She grabbed my hand and laid it very gently on the lump on Sir Alain’s head. ‘Feel,’ she commanded.
I let my hand rest softly over the area and then, to confirm my initial impression, felt around the lump with my fingertips. Edild was right. I looked up and met her eyes. I felt like cheering, and not only because I had just avoided witnessing – perhaps helping with – an operation that would have seemed more like torture than healing.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘I cannot say. Possibly the cold of the compresses and the power of the healing herbs has done the trick.’ She glanced around and then, lowering her voice, whispered, ‘We should thank them.’
I spun round to look where she had looked. I thought I saw movement, and for the blink of an eye I could see a silver wolf and, right up close behind me, a red fox.
I should have known they were there. They are our spirit guides; my Fox is often with me, and I have almost – but not quite – learned to accept his presence. It was, however, a rare privilege to be allowed to catch a glimpse of Edild’s silver wolf. I have only seen him twice before, and the first time I thought he was a fox. When I told my aunt I had seen him she told me I had been imagining things. I was young then, and I almost believed her. I know better now.
I whispered to Fox, telling him how much I appreciated his presence, especially when I hadn’t been conscious of asking him to come, and for a moment he stood beside me, mouth stretched in what looked very like a grin. Then he faded away.
It was as if the presence of the spirit animals had brought a special, precious mood inside the little room. While they were there, everything had a shine to it; scents were intensified, colours were brighter. With their departure, life returned to normal and, just for a moment, I saw how uninspiring
normal
actually was.
Then Edild commanded me to go outside and fetch fresh water, and I remembered with a jolt that this was no time for meditating on the spirits. We had a job to do.
Some time later, Edild said there was no need for both of us to watch over our patient, because, with any luck, he would wake up soon and in the meantime it was only a matter of keeping him warm and regularly renewing the compress. ‘We have almost used up our supplies of water pepper,’ she said. ‘Go and gather some more.’
I hastened to obey. I would have to walk right down to the fen edge, but I was glad of it. My mind still kept going back to the images of that terrible operation, and I knew that what I needed was a good, hard walk in the sunshine. I fetched my basket and set off.
I was surprised to see by the sun that it was still only mid-morning. It felt as if my aunt and I had been battling for our patient’s life for days. I turned my face up to the sun’s warmth and silently expressed my gratitude to the spirits who had come to help us. Later, I knew, Edild would slip outside and perform her ceremony of thanks, and I would join her. She frequently reminded me that she and I were but the instruments through which the spirits did their healing work. The power came from them.
I made my way along the water’s edge, gathering as I went. I found that my steps had once again led me to the island, which was hardly surprising since it was there, a presence in the back of my mind, all the time. Putting down my basket, I stepped on to the planks of the causeway. I remembered those cuts in Derman’s shins. I recalled my certainty, earlier that morning, that they had not been caused by his falling against the planks.
I stopped above the place where his body had been found. I stared down into the black water, then I looked at the planks on which I stood. Just beside me there was one of the upright posts that supported the causeway. This one was quite thick – about as wide as my palm – and stuck up about a foot or so above the planking. Could it be this that had caused the cuts on Derman’s shins? I bent down and felt its edge. It was not very sharp, and surely it was too narrow to have wounded
both
shins. I straightened up again, puzzled. Something had tripped him; the evidence was there on his body. Unless, of course, the trip had happened some time earlier in the day that he had died . . . But he had fallen into the water, and how else had that happened? Had he been pushed?

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