The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [37]
When the lad began to sob, Nevyn caught him and pulled him into his lap. After a brief struggle, Nevyn took the lad’s jaws the way you’d take a horse’s and pried them open. Anno moaned and pissed all over himself and the old man. Nevyn barely seemed to notice.
‘Thank the gods, it’s just a bad tooth. I was afraid you had the clotted fever in your throat, lad, but it’s just this nasty tooth. You’ll be all better once we have it out.’
‘Don’t!’ Anno screamed. ‘Mam!’
‘You’ve got to!’ Ligga said. ‘You listen to your elders! Forgive us, Nevyn, I—’
‘Hush, hush! It’s not his fault. The gum’s gone so pussy that he’s fevered and half out of his mind. The tooth’s loose, anyway, so it won’t be a hard thing to do. Then we’ll work on the fever. All of his humours are out of balance, you see, with a superfluity of the hot and moist.’
This sonorous explanation seemed to comfort Ligga, even though Gwairyc doubted if she knew what it meant. When Nevyn started to let Anno go, the lad tried to slither off the bed. Nevyn caught him and hauled him back.
‘Gwarro, come sit down. Take him and hold him still while I get the things I need.’
Choking on revulsion, Gwairyc took the skinny little lad in his arms. He sat down on the edge of the bed and wondered if it had bugs. Anno squirmed, tried to bite his wrist, then began to cry. The urine and the pus both reeked. I promised the king, Gwairyc reminded himself. I swore a vow to the king—he made himself repeat the thought over and over. It seemed to take Nevyn forever to get out a pair of forceps, a bottle of spicy-scented oil, and some scraps of cloth. For the operation itself, Gwairyc pressed the lad’s shoulders down on the bed; he was forced to watch while Nevyn deftly pulled a broken stump of tooth from his jaw. An ooze of green pus came with it.
‘You see the green material, oh apprentice of mine?’ Nevyn said. ‘It’s the perturbed hot humour combined with an excess of the moist. Teeth are of course ruled by the cold earth humour in crystalline form, and their natural enemy is the moist.’
Gwairyc tried to speak, but he could only swallow—hard, and several times.
‘You look pale, lad,’ Nevyn said to Gwairyc.
Gwairyc bit his lip and looked away. In the doorway, Ligga was quietly sobbing to herself. She must love the stinking little brat, he thought. Well, cows watch over their calves, too.
‘We’ll stay here tonight, Ligga,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’ll tend that fever with herbs.’
‘My thanks.’ She pulled up the hem of her skirt and blew her nose on the frayed and stained brown cloth. ‘Ah ye gods, my thanks.’
Gwairyc silently cursed him. He’d been hoping they’d get free of the farm straightaway and camp somewhere clean.
After several doses of herbs, Nevyn finally got Anno to fall asleep. The old man changed into a fresh pair of brigga, handed the soaked ones to Gwairyc, and told him wash them out.
‘And you’d best do yours while you’re at it,’ Nevyn said. ‘You’ve got a spare pair, haven’t you?’
‘I have.’
‘There’s a stream out back,’ Ligga said. ‘Here, I’ll get you some soap.’
A scrap of soap in one hand, the dirty clothes in the other, Gwairyc strode out of the house into the relatively clean air of the farmyard. Ligga followed him out and pointed. ‘Go straight out the back gate. You’ll see my pounding rocks on the stream bank.’
‘Pounding rocks?’
‘Now, here, haven’t you washed clothes before?’ She gave him her half-toothless grin. ‘Get them wet first. You work the soap in good, then put them on the flat rock and beat the soiled bits with the round rock.’
Cursing under his breath, Gwairyc took the brigga down to a tiny streamlet, meandering through wild grass. He found the rocks, knelt down, and tried to follow her instructions. His rage built and flamed until he could barely see what he was doing. How could he be here, him, the hero of the Cerrgonney wars, washing some farm-brat’s piss out of a pair of old brigga? He considered waiting till dark and running away, but a bitter truth stopped