Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [62]
“’Morrow, aged sir,” the rider said. “I hear there’s a good herbman in town. Do you know him?”
“I am him, lad. What’s the trouble?”
“I’ve just come from the lodge. Lord Rhodry’s cursed ill.”
Talking all the while, the rider helped Nevyn load his supplies onto his mule. Rhodry had been caught out in the rain and stubbornly gone on hunting even though he was soaking wet. The only people at the lodge with him were a pair of servants and five of his father’s men, none of whom knew the first thing about physick.
“And what’s his lordship doing out here this time of year anyway?” Nevyn said.
“Ah, well, sir, I’m not free to say, but he got into a bit of trouble with his older brother. Naught that was serious.”
Although the gwerbret probably considered his hunting lodge to be charmingly rustic, it was as imposing as many a dun of a lesser lord. In the middle of a cobbled and well-drained ward rose a three-story broch, surrounded by enough outbuildings and stables to house a party of a hundred guests. An aged manservant led Nevyn up to the second floor and Rhodry’s chamber, sparsely furnished with one carved chest, a bed with faded hangings, and his lordship’s shield hanging on the wall. Although there was a brazier heaped with coals glowing in the middle of the room, the damp seeped out of the very walls.
“Ye gods!” Nevyn snapped. “Isn’t there a chamber with a proper hearth?”
“There is, but his lordship won’t let us move him.”
“Indeed? Then I’ll deal with his lordship.”
When Nevyn pulled back the bed curtains, Rhodry looked up at him with gummy eyes. At sixteen, he’d grown into a lanky lad, getting close to six feet tall, and still as handsome as ever—or he would have been handsome if his hair weren’t plastered to his forehead with sweat, his lips not so badly cracked that they were bleeding, and his cheeks not flushed with a hectic glow.
“Who are you?” Rhodry mumbled.
“A herbman. Your men fetched me.”
“Ah, curse them! I don’t need—” He began to cough so violently that his body went rigid. He propped himself up on one elbow and spasmed, choking until Nevyn grabbed him and hauled him upright. Finally he spat out green rheum.
“You don’t need me?” Nevyn said drily. “I may only be a commoner, your lordship, but you’re following my orders.”
Rhodry’s lips twitched in a faint smile as he trembled with fever. Nevyn laid him down again and turned to the frightened manservant.
“Get that chamber with the hearth warm. Then pile extra pillows on the bed, and start heating me a big kettle of water. When you’ve done all that, send a man back to Aberwyn with a message. Gwerbret Tingyr needs to know that his son is ill.”
All that afternoon, Nevyn worked over his patient. He fed Rhodry infusions of coltsfoot and elecampe to bring up the phlegm, hyssop and pennyroyal to make him sweat, and quaking aspen as a general febrifuge. As the medicines cleansed his humors, Rhodry coughed until it made Nevyn’s own sides ache to hear him, but at last he began to breathe freely instead of gasping for every breath. Nevyn let him lie down then, propped up on the mound of pillows. The fever still played on his face like firelight.
“My thanks,” Rhodry whispered. “Owaen? Does he still live?”
For a moment Nevyn was too puzzled to answer him; then the memory came back, of another life when he’d tended battle wounds on the body this soul wore then, and a friend lay dying nearby.
“He does, lad. Just rest.”
Rhodry smiled and fell straight asleep. So, Nevyn thought, he’s reacting to my presence, is he? In his feverish state, Rhodry had somehow come across that long-buried memory.
All the next day, Nevyn