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  “What about when I destroy that one?” Then, he forged on. “Aren’t you afraid?"

  That got her standing, and brushing her hands off on her apron. “You haven’t hurt anyone yet.” It sounded stubborn, more than anything. “Do you think you’ll hurt me?”

  Roland had no idea how to answer that. “I wouldn’t want to. But I don’t know that I won’t.”

  Of all things, that made her laugh. “Well. Let’s see what we can do, then, about hiding the chair.”

  “And the pitcher.”

  “The pitcher will fit in my bag, that’s easy. The chair...” She worked on getting the window open, then leaned out to look around, before she slipped half the chair through. He couldn’t see all of what she did, but she must have lowered it down somehow, he didn’t hear a thud or a scrape. “There. I’ll go rescue it when I go home, and drop it on the refuse pile.”

  “Isn’t this... shouldn’t you report this?”

  She turned back to him, looking fiercely resolute. “They don’t tell me anything about your case. I am beginning to think I should return the compliment. If they want to know, they can ask.”

  Chapter 12

  Monday, April 12th, the garden

  The next day, Elen could not find time to talk further with Roland before his bath. After leaving his room, she had barely been able to sneak the broken chair out of the way, piece by piece, back to the rubbish, and bury it under other items to be taken away.

  Explaining where a chair that had been halved had come from would be very tricky, but she’d managed to pull the legs out - they’d been screwed in, not glued, thankfully. It meant the individual pieces could be strewn through the compost and rubbish piles.

  She’d barely made it back to her rooming house for the late curfew, scooting in under the entirely disapproving nose of her landlady. Then she’d been scolded over an early breakfast for coming in so late. The fact she’d been with her patient had saved her from worse, but only barely. The other nurses in the house had cordially ignored her, as if her disgrace were contagious. After that brief flash of companionship from Sister Pomona it felt all the worse.

  Then the next two days had been one thing after another. There was a new nurse on the ward, tending to someone two doors down, who kept having questions about where things were stored. Half of them Elen knew, but the other half were things she’d not used here, such as the dressings for burn wounds.

  The new nurse just kept asking for things, every few minutes. Elen finally excused herself and went and showed her the things someone more senior should have done, even if it meant leaving Roland alone. She certainly hadn’t been able to talk privately with him.

  And now here she was, exiled out of his room for another forty minutes, so he could have a haircut as well as the bath, they were bringing a barber round. She knew without being told that meant he was going to be trotted out on stage again, and sooner than later. Not tomorrow, probably, but by the end of the week, if she was guessing right.

  Elen had curled up, settled sideways, on the bench in the grotto, and she looked up as she heard people come along the path. They likely couldn’t see her, as she was well back in the shadows and the uniform tended to blend in. She’d left the apron for the laundry, to be cleaned, along with her sleeve covers, since she’d planned to put a clean one on when she went back on duty.

  “I don’t know, there’s something not quite right.” The woman who had spoken had a Welsh lilt to her words. It reminded Elen of her favourite aunt Margred, and she had the same dark hair with strands of silver, pinned up high on her head.

  They walked by without noticing her, then must have turned into the next alcove, because a moment later, she could still hear them, remarkably clearly. “In the figures?”

  They were speaking quietly, but rather urgently, the kind of conversation that made one want to listen more closely. They were both wearing the plain dresses of sensible dark fabric worn by the female staff who weren’t nurses.

  It was not quite a uniform, and yet effectively one, since visitors dressed quite differently. Not upper level administrators, she thought. Those usually had more obvious lockets or watch fobs or other adornments, or something like a cape. Something to set them off. No, these were likely mid-grade administrative staff.

  “The figures, but also how people talk about the figures. You know how I notice that, Clarice.”

  “In any department in particular? Oh, let’s pause here, Berth, the view is fine.” Clarice had a precision to her voice, a sharpness. Elen wasn’t entirely sure what it meant here.

  “Long-term care, in particular. Several of Healer Cole’s patients, but not just his. But then, the war injuries are all rather badly documented, on our end. Paperwork still catching up, they say, but they’ve said that for months.” Berth sounded decidedly disapproving. Definitely from south Wales, though, with a name like that, and that kind of accent.

  “Do you know anything about Cole? He’s newly back here, isn’t he? Been out somewhere in the Empire.”

  “Tilly, you know, she does the typing for the Healers, she said he’s had letters from South Africa, and somewhere in India. Several of them. But he must have been there quite a long time, he doesn’t spend much time with the Healers here. Even Healer Denby, you know how kind he is about including people who’ve moved back. And Healer Tipson usually has people around, wanting to know what they learned overseas. Even if what we do is best, of course.” Berth sounded thoughtful, and as if she didn’t know a lot of the healers directly.

  “You’re right, usually, we’d hear about suppers and such. But then, Cole’s on the long-term care cases, quite a few of them, and I suppose that keeps him busy.”

  Berth snorted. “That’s what he says, anyway. But have you noticed he’s always sending his juniors out? He’s in his office, usually, doing important work I’m sure, but not the sort anyone sees the results of.”

  Then Clarice forged on. “Well, there’s something a little off about anyone in long-term care, without the obvious sort of injury. Takes a sharp healer to spot that kind of problem and prevent malingering.” That annoyed Elen, to be judging people on how they recovered from something awful.

  “And we’re getting more of those. The cases they won’t talk about. I’m not sure what to think.” Berth, at least, sounded a little more open.

  “Well. It’s hard to get any of them to say anything. I tried to ask Sister Almeda something the other day, and she almost took my head off.” Clarice apparently thought that wasn’t anything unusual. Elen was glad she wasn’t the only one with difficulties there. That it wasn’t solely her failing, anyway.

  “You know Almeda’s territorial. She always has been. Merlin and Nimue, I shared a house with her at school, and you couldn’t leave a thing out in spaces she thought she had charge of without a ten minute telling off.” Berth sounded deeply amused.

  It made Elen wonder if they were talking about Alethorpe or about Schola. Most healers and nurses and midwives went to Alethorpe, but there were exceptions or people who came to their vocation later on.

  “Even that young? My.” That had an amused drawl to it. “Well. I suppose having different people here must have her on edge. She never has liked anyone coming near her authority. Why’s she still only ward supervisor, that’s what I want to know.”

  “You know the progression’s slower on long-term care.”

  “Bah.” Clarice snorted “That’s no excuse. You know how their hierarchy works as well as I do. And she’s been here near forty years. You think she’d want to finish her career a bit higher up the ladder.”

  “Not our hierarchy, dearheart.” They were close, then, to have that kind of affection with each other. “Ours is sensible.” Then Berth returned to her initial topic. “The figures, though.”

  “Oh, do tell me about it, Berth. If it’s nagging at you.”

  “Clarice.” She fell suddenly silent, as if she were looking around. Elen drew back against the edge of the bench, pressi
ng herself out of the way even more. “There’s half a dozen cases, now, that they don’t talk about. Nurses assigned, outside the usual protocols.”

  “Anyone we know?”

  “No.” Bertha considered, as if she were ticking off on her fingers. “Someone who’d been at the children’s home. Two women who’d been in France, sent home for compassionate reasons, elderly parents or some such. Two who’d been village nurses.”

  “Any trained here?”

  “That’s the thing. I can’t get a look at the files. I can make some guesses, from the names, but no one who’d been here recently.” Berth sounded utterly frustrated, as if normally it would be routine to check. It was the sound of a woman whose domain had been trampled on.

  “The Temple of Youth, don’t we know a few people there?” That was Clarice, now sounding thoughtful, her voice getting a bit softer.

  “We do. I could write, but I’d have to tuck it in with some other questions.”

  “Perhaps ask about the knitting, swap some patterns? Or a few ideas for cakes, you had that carrot cake recipe, didn’t you?”

  There was a long interval, the sort of tutting murmur of a woman sorting through lists in her head. “I’ve enough to make a tin and send it along, I think. And that new pattern I’ve been working on. Easier heel than the one she’d sent me.”

  “Well, then. We might ask. And I sometimes run into Mallery, who’s got one of the rooming houses.”

  Not Elen’s, she knew that, but one of the ones nearby. “She might hear something, that’s true. Or at least know where the new girls are being put.”

  “Do you think - is it the kind of thing we should report?”

  That made Berth laugh, suddenly, a barking sound, unladylike. “Who to, Clarice? Who would we report it to? We can’t send it up our chain, it’s not like anyone listens to us. We just fill out the paperwork and the forms and the account slips. You know what happened last time we had to reconcile something larger than petty cash.”

  “Don’t remind me. Half a dozen interviews from above, and with the Guard, and all because someone didn’t file their own copies correctly. Discourages a person from pointing out the necessary, doesn’t it?”

  “Quite.” Berth was clipped. “We’d need more than my vague feelings, certainly. And it’s not as if we can get at patient records.”

  “No one’s going to let us in the wards, or the sister’s office. And it’s not like you can lure Almeda out with any of the usual things. Or that Healer Cole would listen to the likes of us.” Clarice’s voice turned wry. “Even me. I’m not nearly posh enough for him.”

  “A devotion to duty is an admirable thing, but very tedious, yes. Well. Devotion to control, in her case. Less admirable, certainly more annoying. And Cole, well, I’m sure he’s busy doing something, but he’s awful about turning his paperwork in, so I’ve no idea what, or who to ask about him.”

  “Write your letter, I’ll ask around, and we can see what happens, then.” With that, they settled into rather less dangerous gossip.

  Elen realised with a start that she would have to get back some other way, to avoid making obvious she had been listening, and so she waited until they had settled into far more routine gossip about a newspaper serial story and some bit of business about the Council and a recent proclamation. That wasn’t anything she ever worried about. She ended up standing, slowly, to avoid the bench creaking, and then taking a sharp right out of the grotto, walking up the side of the main temple building.

  The path was in deep shadow, between the height of the temple itself and the tall wall that divided the Healing Temple spaces from the rest of Trellech. She could barely hear the city beyond, carts and carriages on the street, people calling out, as if they were muffled by a great curtain.

  She ended up having to go out the main gate, circle around on the street, folding her hands across her stomach and hurrying, since she only had her cap on, to duck into the tunnel at the back of the main grounds, then out into the small ward courtyard, scooting back into the ward just in time to grab a clean apron and slip it on.

  A moment later, the new nurse came out of her room, and had yet another question.

  Chapter 13

  Tuesday, April 13th, the administrative offices

  “Nurse Morris?”

  Elen was sitting on the long hallway again, waiting to be called in to one of the offices. Not the Archiater himself, this time, she gathered, but one of the people the next layer down. She still had not had time to talk to Roland. He had been washed and settled again when she got back, but they had had a constant stream of minor interruptions.

  One had been a junior healer, coming to review his file, but he had refused to talk to Elen about any of it. The new nurse on the ward had been asking questions again. Harry had come by with a bit of broth for teatime. That one, at least, Elen had not disapproved of. She rather thought that a wider range of nourishing food wouldn’t hurt.

  And now she was here, and not at all sure why. She didn’t think she’d messed up badly enough to be sent off to some gods-forsaken country house. She hoped. She stuck her knitting needles in the ball of yarn, nearly done with this set of wristlets. She hadn’t been able to concentrate on shooter’s gloves for a few days.

  She kept thinking wistfully of the shawl she’d started last summer, just before the war started. It was set aside at the bottom of the knitting basket in her room. The pattern had been a gift, one she treasured. But she didn’t dare try lace work right now, even without the guilt of working on something impractical.

  “Coming.” The clerk was waiting ten feet away, not rude enough to tap her toe impatiently, but the impatience was clear. On the other hand, no one could really argue with someone knitting for the troops, when they were waiting, and Elen traded on that.

  She was shown into a smaller office, though still with a view out over the temple gardens, rather than the streets of Trellech. “Nurse Morris. Have a seat.” The administrator, this time, was a somewhat mousy haired woman with her hair in a tight bun, and a severely plain dress of navy blue. A former nurse, possibly, but she thought not a healer. For all their faults, the demands of their training tended to shape them differently. This woman had a certain rigidity to her.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Elen could be just as civil.

  “You have been here for a month now, make your report.”

  A month already? It had scarcely felt like that, but she had been rehearsing what to say when someone asked her. If someone asked her. The trick, of course, was figuring out what they wanted to hear. She had kept a chart, the one that hung on his door, of doses given, but as far as she knew, no one ever checked it.

  That gave her a moment’s reflection. If no one was actually checking it, could she get away with giving him something other than that evening potion he hated so much? If she could get something suitable, anyway.

  “I have been glad to see to Major Gospatrick’s needs. I gather there has been some question about when he might be able to more fully step into recruiting duties?”

  She got a sharp nod in reply. “Precisely, yes. When?”

  That was trickier to navigate. Saying she’d not seen his file could be seen as an abrogation of duty, despite the fact she’d requested to see it, more than once. “Surely his healer would be better able to determine that, ma’am. I have been told I need not see his file.”

  “Ah.” Most uninformative, not just the lack of words, but the neutral tone. “You have had care of other patients. Previously.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She gathered her thoughts. “My previous posting prior to the War was at the Temple of Youth. The conditions there are rather different, the ones treated, and the nurses are given quite a lot of leeway in determining treatments other than surgery or magical interventions. Tuberculosis cases were common, of course, and some cases of poliomyelitis, but the recovery process is different.”

  She considered how to continue. “Without knowing the specifics of the cause of Major Gospatric
k’s injuries, or his previous treatments, I can suggest strengthening routines, such as the visits to the garden. Perhaps some others, with permission, I believe some modest changes to his meals might be of help. I have seen some progress, but not as much as I would prefer.”

  “And his potion regimen?”

  If she said nothing, and changed his potions, there would be a problem. If she spoke up, there could be a problem. In the end she thought about how much he hated the evening potion. “The day time potions he tolerates well, but he has developed something of an aversion to the evening potion, ma’am. Twice I have stayed into the evening, when he has slept for the afternoon, and he - he is obedient, ma’am, to his treatment, but a skilled nurse notices, of course, the reactions.”

  That got the woman leaning back and then saying. “And when he takes the potion?”

  Elen marshalled her thoughts. “There are two aspects to consider, of course, ma’am. How well the potion achieves the desired effect, and his experience of it. The former is important, but in the past, I have found the latter makes a difference to the overall recovery. One can abide a number of unwanted side effects if the overall direction is toward meaningful healing.”

  “And you think this isn’t.”

  “It is hard for me to tell, ma’am, without seeing his chart, at the very least.” Not that that got her an offer of the chart. Elen hadn’t expected it. “He complains of being muzzy-headed, finding it difficult to wake in the morning, or focus. From my observations, his pulse and respiration are slow until about twelve hours after the dose, he is lethargic, unwilling to talk.”

  “Consistently?”

  “Consistently, ma’am. I have not been able to determine what happens if he does not take his evening potion, but I do know that if he’s taken it late - because he slept after an afternoon presentation - the effects linger for half a day from when he takes it.”