Dawnspell. Katharine Kerr
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that showed an almost superhuman ability to keep a sense of humour in the midst of ruin. When he found out that Nevyn was an herbman, Draudd insisted on taking payment for his lodging in trade.
‘Well, after all, I’m as old as you are, so I’ll easily equal the cost in your herbs. Why give me coins only to have me give them right back?’
‘True spoken. Ah, old age! Here I’ve studied the human body all my life, but I swear old age has put pains in joints I never knew existed.’
Nevyn spent that first afternoon in the tavern, dispensing herbs for Draudd’s collection of ailments and hearing in return all the local gossip, which meant royal gossip. In Dun Deverry even the poorest person knew what there was to know about the goings-on at court. Gossip was their bard, and the royalty their only source of pride. Draudd was a particularly rich source, because his youngest daughter, now a woman in her forties, worked in the palace kitchens, where she had plenty of opportunities to overhear the noble-born servitors like the chamberlain and steward at their gossip. From what Draudd repeated that day, the Boars were so firmly in control of the King that it was something of a scandal. Everyone said that Tibryn, the Boar of Cantrae, was close to being the real king himself.
‘And now with the King so ill, our poor liege, and his wife so young, and Tibryn a widower and all …’ Draudd paused for dramatic effect. ‘Well! Can’t you imagine what we folk are wondering?’
‘Indeed I can. But would the priests allow the King’s widow to marry?’
Draudd rubbed his thumb and forefinger together like a merchant gloating over a coin.
‘Ah, by the hells!’ Nevyn snarled. ‘Has it got as bad as all that?’
‘There’s naught left but coin to bribe the priests with. They’ve already got every land grant and legal concession they want.’
At that point Nevyn decided that meeting with Gwergovyn – if indeed he could even get in to see him – was a waste of time.
‘But what ails the King? He’s still a young man.’
‘He took a bad wound in the fighting last summer. I happened to be out on the royal road when they brought him home. I’d been buying eggs at the market when I heard the bustle and the horns coming. And I saw the King, lying in a litter, and he was as pale as snow, he was. But he lived, when here we all thought they’d be putting his little lad on the throne come winter. But he never did heal up right. My daughter tells me that he has to have special food, like. All soft things, and none of them Bardek spices, neither. So they boil the meat soft, and pulp apples and suchlike.’
Nevyn was completely puzzled: the special diet made no sense at all for a man who by all accounts had been wounded in the chest. He began to wonder if someone were deliberately keeping the King weak, perhaps to gain the good favour of Tibryn of the Boar.
The best way to find out, of course, was to talk to the King’s physicians. On the morrow he took his laden mule up to the palace, which lay on the northern hill. Ring after ring of defensive walls, some stone, some earthworks, marched up the slope and cut the hill into defensible slices. At every gate, in every wall, guards stopped Nevyn and asked him his business, but they always let a man with healing herbs to sell pass on through. Finally, at the top, behind one last ring, stood the palace and all its outbuildings and servant quarters. Like a stork among chickens, a six-storey broch, ringed by four lower half-brochs, rose in the centre. If the outer defences fell, the attackers would have to fight their way through a warren of corridors and rooms to get at the King himself. In all the years of war, the palace had never fallen to force, only to starvation.
The last guard called a servant lad, who ran off to the royal infirmary with the news that a herbman waited outside. After a wait of some five minutes, he ran back and led Nevyn to a big round stone building behind the broch complex. There they were met by a burly man with dark eyes that glared under bushy brows as if their owner were in a state of constant fury, but when he introduced himself as Grodyn, the head chirurgeon, he was soft-spoken enough.
‘A herbman’s always welcome. Come spread out your wares, good sir. That table by the window would be best, I think, right in the light and fresh air.’
While Nevyn laid out packets of dried herbs, tree-barks, and sliced dried roots, Grodyn fetched his apprentice, Caudyr, a sandy-haired young man with narrow blue eyes and a jaw so sharply modelled it looked as if it could cut cheese. He also had a club foot, which gave him the rolling walk of a sailor. Between them the two chirurgeons sorted through his wares and for starters set aside his entire stock of valerian, elecampe, and comfrey root.
‘I don’t suppose you ever get down to the sea-coast,’ Grodyn said in a carefully casual tone of voice.
‘Well, this summer I’m thinking of trying to slip through the battle-lines. Usually the armies don’t much care about one old man. Is there somewhat you need from the sea?’
‘Red kelp, if you can get it, and some sea-moss.’
‘They work wonders to soothe an ulcerated stomach or bad bowels.’ Nevyn hesitated briefly. ‘Here, I’ve heard rumours about this peculiar so-called wound of our liege the King.’
‘So-called?’ Grodyn paid busy attention to the packet of beech-bark in his hand.
‘A wound in the chest that requires him to eat only soft food.’
Grodyn looked up with a twisted little smile.
‘It was poison, of course. The wound healed splendidly. While he was still weak, someone put poison into his mead. We saved him after a long fight of it, but his stomach is ulcerated and bleeding, just as you guessed, and there’s blood in his stool, too. But we’re trying to keep the news from the common people.’
‘Oh, I won’t go bruiting it about, I assure you. Do you have any idea of what this poison was?’
‘None. Now here, you know herbs. What do you think this might be? When he vomited, there was a sweetish smell hanging about the basin, rather like roses mixed with vinegar. It was grotesque to find a poison that smelled of perfume, but the strangest thing was this: the King’s page had tasted the mead and suffered not the slightest ill-effect. Yet I know it was in the mead, because the dregs in the goblet had an odd, rosy colour.’
Nevyn thought for a while, running over the long chains of lore in his memory.
‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t name the herbs out, but I’ll wager they came originally from Bardek. I’ve heard that poisoners there often use two different evil essences, each harmless in themselves. The page at table doubtless got a dose of the first one when he tasted the King’s mead, and the page of the chamber got the other. The King, alas, got both, and they combined into venom in his stomach.’
As he nodded his understanding, Grodyn looked half-sick with such an honest rage that Nevyn mentally acquitted him of any part in the crime. Caudyr too looked deeply troubled.
‘I’ve made special studies of the old herbals we have,’ the young chirurgeon said, ‘and never found this beastly poison. If it came from Bardek, that would explain it.’
‘So it would,’ Nevyn said. ‘Well, good sirs, I’ll do my best to get you the red kelp and what other emollients I can, but it’ll be autumn before I return. Will our liege live that long?’
‘If no one poisons him again.’ Grodyn tossed the packet of beech-bark on to the table. ‘Ah ye gods, can you imagine how helpless I feel? Here I am, fighting to undo the effects of one poison while someone is doubtless scheming out a way to slip him a second!’
‘Wasn’t there any inquiry into this poisoning?’
‘Of course.’ Abruptly Grodyn turned guarded. ‘It found out naught, though. We suspect a Cerrmor spy.’
Oh, I’ll just wager you do! Nevyn thought to himself; that is, if there are Boars in Cerrmor, anyway.
Their business over, Nevyn put on a good show of expressing the gossipy interest that any visitor