Epic Historial Collection (244 page)

43

S
ister Caris left the nuns' cloisters and walked briskly into the hospital. There were three patients lying in beds. Old Julie was now too infirm to attend services or climb the stairs to the nuns' dormitory. Bella Brewer, the wife of Dick Brewer's son Danny, was recovering from a complicated birth. And Rickie Silvers, aged thirteen, had a broken arm which Matthew Barber had set. Two other people sat on a bench to one side, talking: a novice nun called Nellie, and a priory servant, Bob.

Caris's experienced gaze swept the room. Beside each bed was a dirty dinner plate. The dinner hour was long over. “Bob!” she said. He leaped to his feet. “Take away these plates. This is a monastery, and cleanliness is a virtue. Jump to it!”

“Sorry, Sister,” he said.

“Nellie, have you taken Old Julie to the latrine?”

“Not yet, Sister.”

“She always needs to go after dinner. My mother was the same. Take her quick, before she has an accident.”

Nellie began to get the old nun up.

Caris was trying to develop the quality of patience, but after seven years as a nun she still had not succeeded, and she became frustrated by having to repeat instructions again and again. Bob knew he should clear away as soon as dinner was over—Caris had told him often. Nellie knew Julie's needs. Yet they sat on a bench gossiping until Caris surprised them with a lightning inspection.

She picked up the bowl of water that had been used for hand washing and walked the length of the room to throw it outside. A man she did not know was relieving himself against the outside wall. She guessed he was a traveler hoping for a bed. “Next time, use the latrine behind the stable,” she snapped.

He leered at her, holding his penis in his hand. “And who are you?” he said insolently.

“I'm in charge of this hospital, and if you want to stay here tonight you'll have to improve your manners.”

“Oh!” he said. “The bossy type, eh?” He took his time shaking the drops off.

“Put away your pathetic prick, or you won't be allowed to spend a night in this town, let alone at the priory.” Caris threw the bowl of water at his middle. He jumped back, shocked, his hose soaked.

She went back inside and refilled the bowl at the fountain. There was an underground pipe running through the priory that brought clean water from upstream of the town and fed fountains in the cloisters, the kitchens, and the hospital. A separate branch of the subterranean stream flushed the latrines. One day, Caris wanted to build a new latrine adjacent to the hospital, so that senile patients such as Julie would not have to go so far.

The stranger followed her in. “Wash your hands,” she said, handing him the bowl.

He hesitated, then took the bowl from her.

She looked at him. He was about her own age, twenty-nine. “Who are you?” she said.

“Gilbert of Hereford, a pilgrim,” he said. “I've come to reverence the relics of St. Adolphus.”

“In that case, you'll be welcome to stay a night here at the hospital, provided you speak respectfully to me—and to anyone else here, for that matter.”

“Yes, Sister.”

Caris returned to the cloisters. It was a mild spring day, and the sun shone on the smooth old stones of the courtyard. Along the west walk, Sister Mair was teaching the girls' school a new hymn, and Caris paused to observe. People said that Mair looked like an angel: she had clear skin, bright eyes, and a mouth shaped like a bow. The school was technically one of Caris's responsibilities—she was guest master, in charge of everyone who came into the nunnery from the outside world. She had attended this school herself, almost twenty years ago.

There were ten pupils, aged from nine to fifteen. Some were the daughters of Kingsbridge merchants; others were noblemen's children. The hymn, on the theme that God is good, came to an end, and one of the girls asked: “Sister Mair, if God is good, why did he let my parents die?”

It was the child's personal version of a classic question, one asked by all intelligent youngsters sooner or later: How can bad things happen? Caris had asked it herself. She looked with interest at the questioner. She was Tilly Shiring, twelve-year-old niece of Earl Roland, a girl with an impish look that Caris liked. Tilly's mother had bled to death after giving birth to her, and her father had broken his neck in a hunting accident not long afterward, so she had been brought up in the earl's household.

Mair gave a bland answer about God's mysterious ways. Tilly clearly was not satisfied, but was unable to articulate her misgivings, and fell silent. The question would come up again, Caris felt sure.

Mair started them singing the hymn again, then stepped over to speak to Caris.

“A bright girl,” Caris said.

“The best in the class. In a year or two she'll be arguing with me fiercely.”

“She reminds me of someone,” Caris said, frowning. “I'm trying to remember her mother…”

Mair touched Caris's arm lightly. Gestures of affection were prohibited between nuns, but Caris was not strict about such things. “She reminds you of yourself,” Mair said.

Caris laughed. “I was never that pretty.”

But Mair was right: even as a child, Caris had asked skeptical questions. Later, when she became a novice nun, she had started an argument at every theology class. Within a week, Mother Cecilia had been obliged to order her to be silent during lessons. Then Caris had begun breaking the nunnery rules, and responding to correction by questioning the rationale behind convent discipline. Once again she had been enjoined to silence.

Before long, Mother Cecilia had offered her a deal. Caris could spend most of her time in the hospital—a part of the nuns' work she did believe in—and skip services whenever necessary. In exchange, Caris had to stop flouting discipline and keep her theological ideas to herself. Caris had agreed, reluctantly and sulkily, but Cecilia was wise, and the arrangement had worked. It was still working, for Caris now spent most of her time supervising the hospital. She missed more than half the services, and rarely said or did anything openly subversive.

Mair smiled. “You're pretty now,” she said. “Especially when you laugh.”

Caris found herself momentarily spellbound by Mair's blue eyes. Then she heard a child scream.

She turned away. The scream had come not from the group in the cloisters, but from the hospital. She hurried through the little lobby. Christopher Blacksmith was carrying a girl of about eight into the hospital. The child, whom Caris recognized as his daughter Minnie, was screaming in pain.

“Lay her on a mattress,” Caris said.

Christopher put the child down.

“What happened?”

Christopher was a strong man in a panic, and he spoke in a strangely high-pitched voice. “She stumbled in my workshop and fell with her arm against a bar of red-hot iron. Do something for her, quickly, Sister, she's in such agony!”

Caris touched the child's cheek. “There, there, Minnie, we'll ease the pain very soon.” Poppy-seed extract was too strong, she thought: it might kill such a small child. She needed a milder potion. “Nellie, go to my pharmacy and fetch the jar marked ‘Hemp essence.' Walk quickly, but don't run—if you should stumble and break the vial, it will take hours to make up a new batch.” Nellie hurried away.

Caris studied Minnie's arm. She had a nasty burn but, fortunately, it was restricted to the arm, nothing like as dangerous as the all-over burns people got in house fires. There were large angry blisters over most of the girl's forearm, and in the middle the skin was burned away to reveal charred flesh underneath.

Caris looked up for help and saw Mair. “Go to the kitchen and get me half a pint of wine and the same quantity of olive oil, in two separate jugs, please. Both need to be warm but not hot.” Mair left.

Caris spoke to the child. “Minnie, you must try to stop screaming. I know it hurts, but you need to listen to me. I'm getting you some medicine. It will ease the pain.” The screaming abated somewhat, and began to turn into sobbing.

Nellie arrived with the hemp essence. Caris poured some onto a spoon, then thrust the spoon into Minnie's open mouth and held her nose. The child swallowed. She screamed again, but after a minute she began to calm down.

“Give me a clean towel,” Caris said to Nellie. They used a lot of towels in the hospital, and the cupboard behind the altar was always full of clean ones, by Caris's edict.

Mair came back from the kitchen with the oil and wine. Caris put a towel on the floor beside Minnie's mattress and moved the burned arm over the towel. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“It hurts,” Minnie wailed.

Caris nodded in satisfaction. Those were the first coherent words the patient had uttered. The worst was over.

Minnie began to look sleepy as the hemp took effect. Caris said: “I'm going to put something on your arm to make it better. Try to keep still, will you?”

Minnie nodded.

Caris poured a little of the warm wine onto Minnie's wrist, where the burn was least bad. The child flinched, but did not try to snatch her arm away. Encouraged, Caris slowly moved the jug up the arm, pouring the wine over the worst of the burn to cleanse it. Then she did the same with the olive oil, which would soothe the place and protect the flesh from bad influences in the air. Finally she took a fresh towel and wrapped it lightly around the arm to keep the flies off.

Minnie was moaning, but half-asleep. Caris looked anxiously at her complexion. Her face was flushed pink with strain. That was good—if she had been turning pale, it would have been a sign that the dose had been too strong.

Caris was always nervous about drugs. The strength varied from batch to batch, and she had no precise way of measuring it. When weak, the medicine was ineffectual; when strong, dangerous. She was especially frightened of overdosing children, though the parents always pressured her for powerful medicine because they were so distressed by their children's pain.

At that point Brother Joseph came in. He was old now—somewhere in his late fifties—and all his teeth had fallen out, but he was still the priory's best monk-physician. Christopher Blacksmith immediately leaped to his feet. “Oh, Brother Joseph, thank God you're here,” he said. “My little girl has a terrible burn.”

“Let's have a look,” said Joseph.

Caris stood back, hiding her irritation. Everyone believed the monks were powerful doctors, able to work near-miracles, whereas the nuns just fed the patients and cleared up. Caris had long ago stopped fighting that attitude, but it still annoyed her.

Joseph took off the towel and looked at the patient's arm. He prodded the burned flesh with his fingers. Minnie whimpered in her drugged sleep. “A bad burn, but not fatal,” he said. He turned to Caris. “Make up a poultice of three parts chicken fat, three parts goat's dung, and one part white lead, and cover the burn with it. That will bring forth the pus.”

“Yes, Brother.” Caris was doubtful of the value of poultices. She had noticed that many injuries healed well without bringing forth the pus that monks thought such a healthy sign. In her experience, wounds sometimes became corrupt beneath such ointments. But the monks disagreed—except for Brother Thomas, who was convinced he had lost his arm because of the poultice prescribed by Prior Anthony almost twenty years ago. However, this was another battle Caris had given up. The monks' techniques had the authority of Hippocrates and Galen, the ancient writers on medicine, and everyone agreed they must be right.

Joseph left. Caris made sure that Minnie was comfortable and her father was reassured. “When she wakes up, she will be thirsty. Make sure she gets plenty to drink—weak ale or watered wine.”

She was in no hurry to make the poultice. She would give God a few hours to work unaided before she began Joseph's treatment. The likelihood that the monk-physician would come back later to check on his patient was small. She sent Nellie out to collect goat dung from the green to the west of the cathedral; then she went to her pharmacy.

It was next to the monks' library. Unfortunately, she did not have large windows matching those in the library. The room was small and dark. However, it had a workbench, some shelves for her jars and vials, and a small fireplace for heating ingredients.

In a cupboard she kept a small notebook. Parchment was expensive, and a text block of identical sheets would be used only for holy scriptures. However, she had gathered a stack of odd-shaped offcuts and sewn them together. She kept a record of every patient with a serious complaint. She wrote down the date, the patient's name, the symptoms, and the treatment given; then later she added the results, always noting exactly how many hours or days had passed before the patient got better or worse. She often looked back over past cases to refresh her memory on how effective different treatments had been.

When she wrote down Minnie's age, it occurred to her that her own child would have been eight this year, if she had not taken Mattie Wise's potion. For no good reason, she thought her baby would have been a girl. She wondered how she would have reacted if her own daughter had suffered an accident. Would she have been able to deal so coolly with the emergency? Or would she have been almost hysterical with fear, like Christopher Blacksmith?