Whatever Aleswina’s shortcoming at other endeavors, she was a skilled gardener. She could weed with one hand, set in starts with the other, and have a row banked and watered in the time it would take most people to find their trowels and fill their buckets from the well. And that was on a day when she wasn’t trying to hurry! Now her hands positively flew, and no one looking at the garden later would have any reason to suspect that she’d spent most of her time climbing in and out of Saint Wilfhilda’s shrine, taking care of Caelym.
After emptying his chamber pot, refilling his water jug, and fixing a bowl of whatever she’d managed to sneak off her plate with a portion of the dwindling supplies in Annwr’s basket, she mixed his draught, whispered his name, and reminded him not to cut her throat.
Caelym’s mood darkened after he finished off the wine and poppy juice, and while he didn’t draw his knife again, he grumbled between swallows that Anna’s draught was “a poor excuse for a healing potion,” and that he “might as well be a sick hare gnawing bark off a willow tree.”
Muttering about midwives and their miserable tonics and foul unguents, he’d roll over on his stomach while Aleswina got the pot of salve ready to spread over his wound, but before she could begin, he’d snap at her to tell him what the wound looked like:
The first time he asked, she didn’t know what to say except to stammer, “It—it looks painful.”
After a long silence, he said, in more halting English than usual, “Ah, I am most grateful for your telling me this, for otherwise its being painful might have escaped my noticing.” There was another long pause. Then he said, “Now, Dear Heart, beloved of she who is the most excellent of midwives, I will tell you that I, like Annwr, am a healer, and would greatly wish to have some small part in the curing of my own wound. However, since it is on my back where I cannot see it, I need you to be my eyes. So saying that, I beg, I implore, I entreat you to tell me more exactly what it is you see. How red is the wound? How swollen is it? Is the swelling hard or is it soft?”
Three times a day for next three days, he repeated those same three questions, and each time she gave the same answers: “It’s very red. It’s very swollen. The swelling is very hard.” Whether this was good or bad, he didn’t say; but he would let her spread the salve over it with only an occasional moan of pain.
On the morning of fourth day, she found him shivering and huddled in his dark cloak, groaning at her to go away and let him die in peace. When she returned in the afternoon, he was soaked in sweat, and so weak he could barely lift his head. “Water,” he croaked, and gulped what she gave him, then croaked, “More,” only to fall asleep before she could fill his cup again.
That night, she slipped out to the garden and crept into the underground chamber to find Caelym lying face down, his cloak thrown off to the side. He was burning with a fever that she could feel without touching him and breathing in shallow, rapid breaths. When he didn’t respond to his name or her touch, she knelt next to him, holding the cup in her lap, and wondered if he was dying.
Aleswina had no personal sense of belief that went deeper than memorized prayers but, having nothing else, she started reciting those . . . mostly the Psalms, which she knew best and repeating her favorites more than once. Not knowing what else to do, she put the cup aside, picked up the jar with the last of Annwr’s salve, and reached for the candle. Lifting the candle to shine so she could see the wound, she gasped and gave a strangled cry.
The sharp cry, coming after the soothing stream of poetry, brought Caelym back from fevered and uncomfortable sleep to a fevered and uncomfortable wakefulness. By now he was used to Aleswina being there, so he didn’t jump up or grab his knife. Instead, he took a deep breath to prepare himself for whatever it was about his back that so distressed her before asking, “How red is the wound? How swollen is it? Is the swelling hard or is it soft?”
Instead of answering, she looked at him with tears spilling out of her eyes and sobbed, “I—I think you must find Jesus now.”
Speaking slowly—and as clearly as he could through gritted teeth—he replied, “I do not have the strength to look for anyone now, for I am sick and will not ever get any better if you do not tell me what it is I need to know!”
With that, he finally pried the answer from her that his wound was swollen up to the size of an apple, and that its outer edge was still very red but the center of it was an awful, horrid, dreadful greenish-yellow.
“Ah, this is good!” Feeling hope reborn, he rewarded her with his most charming smile. She, of course, looked as she usually did, blank and bewildered, so he explained, “For long days and nights, the spirits of fevers and festering have coursed through my veins, spreading out and wreaking misery where they may. Now—thinking me beaten and helpless—they have gathered together in a single force, meaning to mount their final assault, not knowing that—with you to wield my weapon—I have the means to defeat them.”
With that he rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow, then he dug into his stained leather bag and pulled out a rolled leather packet tied with a tight knot. After a few fumbling attempts, he managed to untie the cord and unroll the packet, revealing a collection of probes, pincers, and scalpels. He selected a small knife with a sharply pointed blade and held it up so that its point glittered in the candlelight. He ran his finger along the knife handle’s intricately engraved surface, murmuring a weirdly rhythmic string of syllables, then looked straight at Aleswina, his dark eyes glowing.
“You will take this sacred healer’s blade and without hesitation or fear you will stab it into the center of the enemy host, driving them out and scattering their forces into the open air so that it is they and not I who will die!”
After pantomiming what he meant a few times, he put the knife into Aleswina’s hand. Still resting on his elbow, he turned away from her and said, “Now!”
Aleswina thrust the knife downwards. The wound burst open and a flood of thick, foul-smelling pus spewed out, ran down Caelym’s back, and drenched the rug beneath him. Horrified, Aleswina pulled off her wimple and ripped it apart, using half to bandage the gaping wound and half to mop up as much of the gore as she could.
“That is enough,” Caelym snapped.
But it was not enough! Aleswina had been raised by Anna, and Anna always kept things clean. “Move aside,” she said, speaking in a voice that could have been Anna’s own, and she pulled the rug out from under him and rolled it up. Not daring to take it out of the chamber, she used a wooden bowl to scrape a trench in the farthest corner covering the rug and the sodden piece of wimple with as much dirt as she could before handing him the cup of Anna’s draught and leaving the chamber.
The night was crystal clear and the moon, just three days past full, lit the garden almost as if it were day. After the putrid stench of the draining wound, the air outside the chamber was pure and sweet, but Aleswina didn’t dare stop to savor it. Instead, she rushed to the well to wash the residue of the gore off her hands before darting out of the garden, across the courtyard, and up the stairs—murmuring mixed pleas to Jesus and the Goddess that she would find the hall empty.
It was.
As she ran down the corridor, the echoes of her footsteps off the walls around her sounded like four feet instead of two. When she reached her room, blood pulsing in her ears, it seemed like two of the four footsteps kept going off and down the front stairs as she leaned back against the door, gasping for breath.
There was no time to wonder about it. She hurried to the cupboard, pulled out a fresh night habit and night wimple, and was dressed and under her covers in a matter of moments. Thinking to somehow make up for her evening’s disobedience by being especially good now, she adjusted the covers, smoothed her wimple, and settled herself in the exact center of the bed, lying on her back, her hands folded piously above the covers and clasping her cross, the twin of the one she’d given Anna, to her breast.