The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [87]
"My servant comes from a more blessed corner of the earth than this. They breed salamanders in Sicily."
"More blessed, you call it? I'd die in an hour."
"I'll have him bring the things out into my chamber," I offered.
"No need, for me. I'll not stay. I only came to present you my assistant, who will care for the King. Aye, you may well look surprised. You'll hardly believe me, but this child here is skilled already with drugs. Seems she had a nurse in Brittany, one of their wise women, who taught her the gathering and drying and preparing, and since she came over here she's been eager to learn more. But an army medical unit didn't seem quite the place for her."
"You surprise me," I said dryly. The girl Morgause had moved near the table where Stilicho was working, and bent her graceful little head towards him. A tress of the rose-gold hair brushed his hand. He labelled two jars at random, both wrongly, before he recovered himself and reached for a knife to melt the seals again.
"So," said Gandar, "when she heard the King needed drugs, she asked to look after them. She's practised enough, no fear of that, and the King has consented. For all she's young, she knows how to keep her counsel, and who better to care for him and keep his secrets than his own daughter?"
It was a good idea, and I said so. Gandar himself, though nominally the King's chief physician, had charge of the army medical teams. Until this recent wounding the King had hardly needed his personal care, and in any action or threat of it Gandar's place would be with the army. In Uther's present predicament his own daughter, so fortunately skilled, would answer very well.
"She's more than welcome to learn all she can here." I turned to the girl. "Morgause, I've distilled a drug which I think will help the King. I've copied out the formula for you here -- can you make it out? Good. Stilicho has the ingredients, if he'll take time to label them correctly...Now, I'll leave him to show you how to compound the medicine. If you give him half an hour to get his apparatus out of this steam bath -- "
"No need, for me," she said in a demure echo of Gandar. "I like the heat."
"Then I'll leave you," said Gandar with relief. "Merlin, will you come and sup with me tonight, or are you with the King?"
I followed him out into the cool airiness of my own room. From beyond the curtain came the murmur, hesitant with shyness, of the servant's voice, and an occasional soft question from the girl.
"It'll be all right, you'll see," said Gandar. "No need to look so doubtful."
"Was I? Not about the medicine, at any rate, and I'll take your word for the girl's skill."
"In any case, you'll surely stay a little while, and see how she does?"
"Certainly. I don't want to be too long in London, but I can give it a few days. You'll be here yourself?"
"Yes. But there's been such a marked change in him even in these last three days since you came, that I can't see he'll need me in attendance much longer."
"Let's hope it continues," I said. "To tell you the truth, I'm not much troubled...Certainly not for his general health. And for the impotence -- if he gets ease and sleep, his mind may stop tormenting his body, and the condition may right itself. This seems to be happening already. You know how these things go."
"Oh, aye, he'll mend" -- he glanced towards the curtained door and dropped his voice -- "as far as need be. As to whether we can get the stallion back to the stand again, I can't see that it matters, now that we know there's a prince safe, and growing, and likely for the crown. We'll get him out of his distemper, and if by God's grace and the drugs you brought he lives to fight...and stays king of the pack -- "
"He'll do that."
"Well..." he said, and let it go. I may say here that the King did in fact mend rapidly. The limp disappeared, he slept well and put on flesh, and I learned some time later from one of his chamberers that, although the King