Alys Clare - Music of the Distant Stars

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.

We 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.’