Page 46 of Heart of Winter
“Why were you sleeping?”
Normally, Oliver found precocious, undeterrable children amusing – he envied their boldness, to be honest – but he was exhausted, and achy, and not in the mood today. “Because I spent half the night on horseback in the bitter cold.”
“Why?”
Oliver sighed. “I was looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“My cousin.”
His already-big eyes widened further. “Oh! Is she the girl with the red hair like me?”
“Not quite as red as yours. More like mine.”
“Is she gonna marry Leif, then? Is that the one?”
He sighed again. His head feltawful. “I don’t know who she’ll marry.”
“But Ivar said–”
The blond boy, presumably Ivar, appeared behind his younger friend and gripped his sleeve. “Bo,” he hissed. “Olaf is going to–”
“Bo Borson!” a deep voice boomed from the doorway. “Leave the poor man alone and return to your studies!”
“Told you,” Ivar said with a huff.
The boys scrambled back to their own table, toward Olaf – the white-bearded gentleman Oliver had seen before. The physician, he realized, remembering what Birger had said that morning.
Their physician back home had often brewed feverfew tea for Oliver when he fell ill, during one of his flare-ups. But this wasn’t a flare-up, he told himself sternly. Only a little cold. A little lingering ache from last night’s adventures. He hadn’t had a flare-up in a long time, and he wouldn’t have one here, so far from home, a guest of foreign royalty.
Please, gods, no, he prayed.
Olaf began a lecture for the boys, and Oliver abandoned his day’s reading – if it was putting him to sleep, it wasn’t that worthwhile anyway – and made his slow, worryingly-unsteady way down to the great hall to see about lunch.
He’d missed it, a fact that dismayed him more than it should have. The trestles were being wiped down, and mugs and plates toted in baskets back toward the kitchen.
Cold fair remained on the sideboard, though. Oliver fixed himself a ham roll without any relish, but knowing he had to eat at this point, and turned to find Magnus sitting alone at the end of one trestle, applying himself to a whole, heaped plate of ham rolls.
Oliver supposed men this large had to eat more than they did in the South. Too tired to worry about his usual nerves, he dropped down opposite the guard, and was greeted warmly.
“Don’t take this as an insult, now,” he said, and Oliver paused with his roll halfway to his mouth. “But you’re looking a bit peaky, there. You didn’t catch cold out there in all that snow last night, now, did you?”
“No.” A hard chill chose that moment to ripple through him, and he couldn’t help but to shudder. “Maybe,” he conceded, and put down his food as his stomach clenched tight. “I’m not – I’m not sick. Just…” He hated the way he felt shamed by the admission, angry, but too tired to even fume properly. “Been a bit off all day.”
Magnus nodded sagely. “Happens to the best of us. I spent four days laid up last winter. Felt like I’d taken an axe to the head.” He polished off his last roll and licked his fingers. “I know just what you need.”
Which was how Oliver found himself following Magnus down the wide, spiral stone staircase that led down into the caves upon which the palace had been built.
He’d always thought of caves as dark and dank, with low ceilings, and unidentifiable slime underfoot. These caves, though…The stairs deposited them in a warm, high-ceilinged space of smooth stone, with cressets mounted to the walls, their soft, flickering glow picking out pale veins in the stone, seams of what looked like silver and gold, warm and gleaming. The air was shockingly fresh, snow-scented. There were vents, Magnus explained, shafts that led to the outdoors, tall enough to walk through, for a whole company of soldiers to march through, and sealed with heavy iron grates locked shut against invaders. There were ways to seal them off, he said, should the need ever arise, but in peace times, the airflow made it rather pleasant down here.
Oliver didn’t disagree.
Tunnels branched off, leading to storerooms, Magnus explained. But the main tunnel, which widened as they traversed floors worn even from the passage of many feet, led to the baths. The scent of water reached them; moisture clung to the walls in droplets that welled and broke, tracking like tears down the stone. The air grew warm, and humid.
They reached a fork. “That’s for the ladies.” He pointed to the right. “And for the lads.” To the left. Then he glanced back over his shoulder and waggled his brows. “But that’s more a generally-accepted suggestion and not arule, per se.”
Oliver found himself chuckling, despite the weight of fatigue. He followed Magnus down the left fork, where they passed first through what was obviously a dressing room, with pegs and shelves along the wall, and benches for sitting, and cubbies full of clean white towels, and cakes of soap, and an assortment of sponges, bristled brushes, and oils. Beyond lay a vast chamber full of sunken pools, all of them steaming like soup kettles. The water was a clear, mineral blue, and he could see where stone benches had been set down in the water, along the edges of each pool. Footpaths wound between them, broken by the occasional stalagmite. The low murmur of voices echoed from deeper in, too distant to make out the words.
