Clash of Kings (35 page)

Cadoc was still issuing orders to volunteers to beg, borrow or steal woollen blankets when Annwynn instructed him to strip to the waist so she could make an assessment of his own burns. His undershirt had stuck to the burned tissue, so with the gentleness of a mother she soaked his garments to ease them away from his ruined flesh as painlessly as possible.

The burns, while not overlarge, were over a week old, and lack of treatment, other than application of cold water in the stream, had resulted in infection, especially on the shoulder and on the shoulder blade where movement of his arm had caused the charred flesh to split, tear and ulcerate. The burns that stretched from his cheekbone to his jaw and parts of his throat were cleaner and, although angry and red, were already showing signs of healing.

‘You are a strong young man, Cadoc, to still be on your feet with these injuries.’

‘It’s that bad, is it, Lady Annwynn? I’m not going to croak, am I?’

Despite his wry grin, Annwynn could tell that Cadoc was frightened, and that he was in considerable pain.

‘Not if we can help it, lad, but I’m afraid we will hurt you. I’ll prepare you a small drink, and you’ll become drowsy. But then I’ll need to remove some of the dead flesh. I’ll not lie to you, Cadoc, and I must tell you that you’ll not be very pretty when I finish with you. I will say, however, that you are lucky that your arm is mostly untouched.’

‘Hey ho! I wasn’t too pretty to start with, Lady Annwynn, so do your best.’

‘One more thing before I forget, Cadoc. Myrddion and I are healers, and I am not a lady. You should call me Annwynn.’

‘Yes, Lady Annwynn!’

Cadoc’s treatment was messy, but relatively minor compared with that of many of the wounded warriors who were beginning to make their slow way to the makeshift healing tents. He was soon lying on his stomach on a clean pallet, his wounds thickly smeared with salve and the seaweed preparation in those places where Annwynn had been forced to dig deeply into the flesh and muscle. Henbane had put him to sleep, for she intended to have him return to his feet relatively quickly, for pallets would soon be in short supply as the number of wounded presenting for treatment increasing. Leaving the warrior with one of the women with instructions to keep away the flies and to ensure he kept drinking clean water and broth once he wakened, Annwynn moved on to the next patient.

Myrddion had been unable to save the warrior who had been left to die by Balbas. A little poppy juice had assisted him to dream his way into death, before his body had been carried away for burial.

Volunteers were sent to find rags that were taken from anywhere and everywhere. These scraps were then placed in sand-scrubbed cooking pots and boiled over a fire. At first, the warriors found the emphasis on cleanliness very odd, but even a blind man could tell that these healers knew what they were doing, so the volunteers set to work at seemingly crazy tasks with good will. Within a few hours, several chickens and cleansing root vegetables were boiling over a fire to make a healthy broth; body waste and ruined clothing were burned some distance from the tent, and even women with babies in slings round their necks were working constantly to cleanse the probes, bone saws, drills, scalpels and forceps that the healers used to remove arrowheads deeply buried in flesh, clean suppurating sword cuts and even amputate limbs allowed to rot from neglect.

Myrddion worked like a butcher, his long hair plaited around his head and his tunic protected by a makeshift apron of leather that covered most of his body. Annwynn would have willingly assisted her apprentice, but she lacked the requisite strength to saw through bone speedily, retain a flap of skin to cover the stump and stitch with quick, sharp eyes. The whole weight of removing infected legs, feet and arms fell on the still-narrow shoulders of her apprentice, assisted by several very large cavalrymen who immobilised the flailing limbs of his patients.

At first, Myrddion’s assistants had been appalled by his actions, but the young healer had taken the time to point out the greenish flesh, the red streaks that extended up towards the groin or the underarm, and the reek of rotting flesh that no amount of incense could disguise. Without realising their new skills, these soldiers quickly became expert assistants, often able to offer their own observations to the healers and save valuable diagnostic time.

Balbas, Crispus and Lupus, or the Three Shit-heads, as the soldier-nurses called them, came once to observe the treatments that were cutting into their prestige and their profits. Lupus had discovered Myrddion’s background and trumpeted his findings to the patients, as if the young man’s past was a curse on everyone who met him.

‘He’s the Demon Seed, the son of an inhuman creature of chaos that lives in the cracks between this world and the next,’ he shrieked. ‘Every touch of his fingers can kill.’

Cadoc was now well enough for light duties at the fireplaces, and he rounded on Lupus with a sneer of withering contempt.

‘Yes, the Demon Seed brought death to King Vortigern’s magicians, didn’t he? But you’re forgetting, Lupus, that they were liars; greedy charlatans who attempted to cheat the High King and blame innocents for the fall of the tower at Dinas Emrys. We’ve all heard the tale, haven’t we, lads?’

Those nurses and patients who were listening gave murmurs of agreement, although they still watched Myrddion out of narrowed eyes.

‘The magicians had good reason to try to kill our healer. Vortigern discovered how they cheated and robbed him, and snickety-snick – they lost their equipment. Are you afraid of the same fate, Lupus? How many of your patients die? How much gold and valuables are stored in your strongbox? Snickety-snick!’

Lupus paled visibly, and as he fled from the tents it was to the cries of ‘snickety-snick’ that followed him like a portent of the future. By dawn, he had taken his strongbox, his goods and his wagon, and gone.

Annwynn and Myrddion slept in shifts. In the first week, many men died horribly, for their wounds had been neglected for too long. The healers used their precious stores of poppy tincture to ease the passage of suffering men who were doomed to undertake the journey to the Otherworld. Annwynn instructed her team of women how to comfort the dying in their last delirium, insisting that comfort, as well as relief from pain, eased the minds of the helpless.

Crispus was the next to depart, hot on the heels of Lupus, after he was threatened by the common-law wife of a man who had been left untreated when he ran out of coin. With a face streaked with tears, the woman had attacked Crispus with murderous intent and only the intervention of his bodyguard had saved his life. Like the scavenger he was, he took everything in the large tent that was of any use or value, and left his patients to their own devices.

Annwynn ordered Crispus’s tent to be struck and raised close to her own makeshift hospice. She decided that the larger tent should house the seriously ill patients, while those bearing minor wounds could manage within the open shelter that had a tendency to leak in the late spring showers. Even then, Annwynn insisted that the door flaps of Crispus’s tent be pinned open to allow for the free, cleansing passage of air.

As for Crispus’s patients, Myrddion wished ardently that he possessed in truth the powers that were accorded to him. Skeletal men, the flesh melting from their bodies with fever, had been starved once they had spent their coin on useless charms and prayers.

‘How we’ve avoided a serious outbreak of plague is a small miracle,’ Annwynn murmured as she moved between the seriously ill, cleaning wounds, changing bandages and preparing her salves for treatment of a slew of injuries. Myrddion had sent the women to find radishes from nearby farmers and used the pounded paste on the most infected wounds with some success, as the Egyptian scrolls had promised, so Annwynn had added this ancient remedy to her armoury of treatments. To every woman, foul-mouthed and coarse or not, she gave unstinting praise for their tireless efforts as, inch by inch, the healers began to win the long battle to save as many of Vortigern’s warriors as possible.

One woman in particular earned unreserved commendation from Annwynn and Myrddion. Annwynn had discovered her as she wailed over the body of her man in Lupus’s tent, manic with grief. All Annwynn could see of the fierce-looking creature, when she had been lifted bodily off the corpse, was a bush of red hair that curled in a bird’s nest of disorder. The healer had held the angry, cursing vixen and then had rocked her like a heartbroken child when she had dissolved into a storm of weeping. Her name was Tegwen, but Myrddion doubted this bedraggled creature could ever match her name, which meant
beautiful
in the Celtic tongue.

Once Tegwen had recovered sufficiently to speak, Annwynn had promised her that her man, Gartnait, would be buried properly and not tossed unceremoniously into a communal grave. Tegwen hadn’t trusted the healers, so she had insisted on digging the grave for herself. Then, with a fierce determination, she had sought out a failed Christian priest who now served as a foot soldier in Vortigern’s army.

The poor man had protested that he wasn’t fit to bury anyone, but nothing stopped Tegwen when she had made up her mind. Unlike most of Vortigern’s warriors, Gartnait had been a Christian, and he would be buried as a Christian.

‘But I cannot do this thing, woman. I cannot! I forsook the church of Jesus years ago, and these lips aren’t clean enough to pronounce the holy words or speed your man’s journey to heaven.’

Tegwen was obdurate. Her green eyes flashed with purpose and the lapsed priest was certain that she would use the knife in her leather belt to force his compliance, if he persisted in his refusal.

‘If not you, then who? Where will I find a priest in these heathen lands? God will forgive us both, as long as my Gartnait has the holy words spoken over his grave. Will you deny my husband the solace of heaven?’

In the face of such determination, the soldier had relented and Myrddion heard the Christian intonation of the prayers for the dead for the first time. Perhaps the ceremony lacked the dignity of cremation, but the sonorous repetition of ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ fitted the mournful occasion so well, and yet contained such a hopeful message of rebirth, that Myrddion was deeply moved.

Once Gartnait was buried and Tegwen had filled in his grave and stamped the earth down over him, she seemed to collapse from within like a pricked bladder. Her determination to ensure that her man was given a Christian burial had consumed and sustained her, and now she was empty and lost.

‘Tegwen, get up and go to the river,’ Annwynn demanded in a voice that would not be denied. ‘Now, Tegwen, for there are other men who need your help. I need you, but only if you are clean and willing. Here is some sheep’s fat, so hurry to the river to scrub yourself clean with it. All your body must be cleansed, and your clothes. Then, when you are dry and dressed, join me in the large tent. On your feet, woman. The time for tears is over.’

Annwynn had slapped a hard lump of fat into Tegwen’s grimy paw and the woman had looked at the healer with a blank expression that registered her shock. Then, slowly, like someone who sleepwalks, she had obeyed. Later, the creature who trudged back from the river looked a little like a half-drowned mop of orange wool, but she was undeniably clean. Her skin was raw where she had abused her flesh with sand to remove layers of grime, while her hair was desperate for the services of a strong wooden comb.

‘Tegwen,’ Myrddion demanded roughly, so that the woman was forced to meet his eyes. ‘How tough and strong are you? Over the past few days I have learned that you are determined, but will you faint at the sight of blood? Can you hold flaps of flesh where once legs used to be, without flinching? Can you help me to save the lives of dying men? If you cannot carry out these tasks, tell me now, else you’ll be of no use to me.’

Tegwen blanched, for Myrddion had been deliberately blunt. Better she should know the truth about her duties now, and therefore not cause added problems by vomiting during an amputation. Myrddion needed an extra pair of hands – deft, woman’s hands – that could help him during bloody and urgent surgery.

Tegwen pulled herself together visibly, then raised her newly cleansed face so that she could assess the young healer. Her voice was rusty and scratched from the tears she had shed.

‘You weren’t here to save Gartnait’s life, but perhaps you will heal other men whose women weep as I did. Yes, I can do whatever you ask of me. I won’t faint or vomit, but you’ll need to explain what you want very carefully, because I’ve got no learning. Gartnait said I was stupid.’

Tegwen’s voice was a deep contralto that had the consistency of warmed honey. Surprisingly, Myrddion discovered that the voice charmed him, and he said as much to the young woman. She laughed ironically.

‘My old da used to swear I could call the birds down out of the trees, which was useful, as I’m a long, awkward sort of woman.’

As Tegwen was nearly as tall as Myrddion, she towered over most of the warriors who made up Vortigern’s army. Myrddion spared a moment of sympathy for a girl whose only beauty was in the promise of seduction in her voice.

Within a surprisingly short period of time, Tegwen proved that she possessed a nimble pair of hands, matched with a strong stomach and an earnest desire to serve with her whole heart. With her calm presence across the table from Myrddion, surgeries were completed faster and seemed less traumatic for the patients. When the early hours of morning came creeping, and Death took more than his share of sufferers for his own, Tegwen sang tunefully of the countryside, of young love or the lambing, so that more than one man survived the dreadful darkness. Her voice had the power to rekindle hope, a skill as potent as her agile fingers and her unflinching stubbornness in the face of terrible wounds.

Ten days of endless toil had passed in a nightmare of death, little sleep and the maintenance of discipline among their volunteer staff. The healers also spent many hours treating the small injuries that occur in any large group of soldiers, such as burned hands from cooking fires and broken limbs from falls, as well as the colds and dysentery that are a warrior’s lot in life. When Vortigern sent for Annwynn and Myrddion, the healers had no reason to fear that any complaint had been levelled against them.