The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [91]
“It does. If the old man doesn’t get himself here soon, I say we ride out and fetch him, priest or not. He didn’t strike me as particularly holy.”
“Me, either, and indeed, fetching him is exactly what we might do, once Voran gets here.” Salamander paused, glancing around the great hall. “Speaking of annoyances, have you seen Neb just now?”
“I have. He was going into one of the side brochs. When I hailed him, he said he wanted to talk with one of the chirurgeons.”
“I hope he’s not unwell. I’ll go look for him.” With a wave Salamander strode off.
Gerran watched him go, then accepted a bowl of porridge from a hovering servant lass. He reminded himself that even though he hated sitting around doing nothing, he had no choice in the matter.
Raddyn, the head chirurgeon of Dun Cengarn, was a stick-thin man with several day’s growth of gray beard and narrow dark eyes. He lived in a chamber high up in one of the slender towers that nestled next to the main broch of Dun Cengarn. Apparently he was unmarried, because a narrow bed, a stool, a square table, and a vast amount of clutter made up its furnishings. Raddyn fished and rummaged among the heaps of dirty clothes, candle ends, and small bags of unrecognizable things until he found the leather-bound book, as long as Neb’s forearm and reeking of mold.
“Here you go.” Raddyn laid it down on the table, which wobbled under the weight.
“My thanks,” Neb said. “I much appreciate this.”
“What I don’t understand is why a scribe wants to look at a book like this. It describes medicaments, not letters.”
“I come from Trev Hael. That plague or somewhat like it is mentioned in here. I’m wondering if it explains how the thing spread so fast.”
“Ah. Well, corrupted humors, as usual, would be my judgment.”
“But how do they get from one person to another? I mean, I can understand if a person with an excess of watery humors becomes ill. But why should the person next door or the wife who’s sharing his bed then become ill in turn?”
Raddyn shrugged with a look of profound regret. “If I knew that,” he said, “I’d be serving down in the king’s court, not moldering up here with our miserly gwerbret.”
“One person’s corrupted humors must corrupt the next one’s. Somehow.”
“No doubt. ’How’ is indeed the question. You know, sometimes I wish I were but a scribe like you.” Raddyn turned away and perched on the stool. “Ye gods, it drives me half mad sometimes, how little we know!”
He leaned over sideways, rummaged in the clutter a bit more, and pulled out a leather bottle. When he unstoppered it, Neb caught the smell of mead.
The scribe who’d copied the book of Bardekian lore had done a splendid job, writing in a clear large hand that could be read easily by candlelight. He’d left wide margins, too, which generations of chirurgeons had filled with notes about their successes or failures with the various herbs. One set of notes, concerning ulcerations of the stomach, struck Neb as oddly familiar, even though they weren’t in Nevyn’s hand. He turned back to the first page and found a list of men who’d owned the book, but none of the names jogged his memory.
Eventually Neb found the passage he’d seen before only to realize that it offered him no answers, merely a brief description of the effects of the plague. The marginal notes remarked only that no herbal remedies had proved efficacious. He shut the book with a sigh.
“My thanks,” he said to Raddyn.
“Welcome,” the chirurgeon said. “If you ever find out how these poisons spread, let me know, eh?”
“Oh, I will, rest assured.”
Neb left the chamber and hurried down the stairs. He was just coming out into the ward when he saw Salamander, heading toward him. He was tempted to duck and run, then decided he was being foolish by avoiding the gerthddyn. Besides, I do need to concentrate on my real work, he told himself. I’ve been wasting too much time worrying about herbcraft. Yet something Raddyn had said—poisons, he called the plagues. He’d doubtless only been describing them in a fancy way, but what if, Neb thought to himself,