Page 26 of The Dragon Ring

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“Merlin thinks he can,” he said. He’d picked up his sword belt and was examining the ornate hilt of the sword as though he’d never seen it before.

“Yes, well, Merlin’s wrong.”

He was very good-looking in a dark, earthy fashion, his looks only enhanced by the presence of the scar on his face. It gave him a piratical air. I thought of Nathan with his floppy, sandy brown hair and his kind, intelligent face. There was nothing about Arthur that was remotely like Nathan– and yet his amused smile, long, dark hair and almost black eyes were undeniably attractive.

He pushed his damp hair back from his face. “He says you’re vital to my future. That you’re the key.” He looked into my eyes, puzzled. “Yet you’re just a woman. A stranger. Not some highborn princess whose father I want to make an alliance with. Not someone who brings an enormous dowry or even a kingdom. You’re the girl with no past. The one that bloody prophecy says I have to marry.” He shook his head in frustration. “And yet I can’t see how any woman could be the key to anything.”

Well, there was one thing you could definitely say about Arthur: he wasn’t into girl-power. I didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry. I was saved from either by Merlin coming back.

He was closely followed by Cottia and her two daughters, carrying bowls of hot water. They set everything down on the table, while Arthur moved closer to the fire, his left hand cradled to his chest. It was probably throbbing painfully. I hoped he was going to heed my warnings about keeping it clean.

Luckily, neither Bran nor Tegid proved to be too seriously wounded. They came nervously into the Hall with a crowd of onlookers, all damp with the rain, and directed by Merlin, sat down at the table so I could treat them.

Bran was a young man with mousy hair and a wispy beard. Someone had given him a slice to his upper arm. Having soaked his bandages off, I stitched his wound, rebandaged him, and told him not to use his arm until I said he could. He sat silent throughout, gazing at me out of wide blue eyes like a wounded puppy. I rewarded his stoic attitude to the stitching of his wound with a generous swig of spirits.

Tegid was an older man with a head wound. On removing his horrible dressing, I found a long graze running from up in his hairline right down the side of his face. This wasn’t gaping open, so I doused it with spirits, which made him shout, and then bandaged it up again. He took a much longer swig at the bottle afterwards than young Bran had. Cei had to wrest it from his hands with a word of rebuke. The watching crowd laughed. Tegid seemed to be well known for his predilection for strong alcohol.

I was nervous about doing all this. After all, if they should sicken and die from their wounds, which they well might, I was setting myself up to take the blame. But as someone with the knowledge, scanty as it was, of germs and infections, I owed it to them to at least try to improve their chances. Merlin might fight my corner if things didn’t go as planned– I hoped.

“What’re you all staring at?” Cei asked my audience genially. “Never seen a healer work?”

“Probably not,” Arthur said, as the crowd dispersed with Tegid and Bran, the show over. “How often do we see a real healer here in Din Cadan? How often did we see one in Viroconium, even? My father could do with someone like this.” He looked at Merlin. “You didn’t tell us she was a healer.”

“I’m not a healer,” I said, “I just happen to know a bit about first aid. Only as much as the next person, though.”

They all gave me disbelieving looks. Well, maybe not Cottia, who looked as though she might like it if I turned out not to be as capable as the others thought. I hoped my ministrations were going to work because they were showing a touching faith in me. Still, small as my knowledge was, it was probably a great deal better than theirs. That, at least, gave me comfort.

Arthur stretched. “My hand feels almost better. If you’re not a healer, then you’re the next best thing.” He looked at Cei. “I don’t know about you, but I need a bath. Six days in the saddle in the middle of winter’s left me feeling sore to my very bones. Cottia, can you organize that?”

My mouth fell open. “You’ve got somewhere you can have a bath?”

Why hadn’t they told me? It was two days since I’d had a shower and I felt the dirtiest I’d ever been.

Arthur nodded. “We have a bath house. It’s not like the one in my father’s palace. Not like the old Roman ones, but it’s nearly as good. Would you like a bath too?”

Would I? Was water wet?

I nodded. My hair hadn’t quite reached the stage where it hurt with being dirty, but I thought it soon would.

Cei slapped Arthur on the back. “Me too. Let’s get out of these clothes and into some hot water.”

The very thought was delirious.

The bath house was an oblong thatched building in the courtyard where I’d seen Cottia’s daughter working that morning, divided into one half for men and one for women. Armed with my returned clean underwear and a big rough cloth to serve as a towel, I entered the women’s half in trepidation. I needn’t have worried. Inside, a young girl helped me out of my clothes and took me through a door into a room with a big wooden tub in it, steam rising off its contents in a promising manner.

The only drawback was I couldn’t have my bath by myself. The girl, Maia, insisted on helping me with every step of my ablutions. I hadn’t had my hair washed by anyone else apart from the hairdresser since I was a child, so it was strange to sink back into the tub and let her rub a treatment into it. It didn’t lather like modern shampoo and smelled quite strongly of vinegar, but when she rinsed it off, it left my hair feeling super clean. It was quite a while before I emerged, my skin glowing pink, in my clean underwear and russet gown.

The rain had cleared a bit, but the cloud still hung low as I walked back to the Great Hall. Inside, I found Merlin sitting on a stool by the fire, plucking the strings of a musical instrument a little like a small guitar. It reminded me of the note I’d heard up on the Tor, pure and sweet and high. He stopped when he saw me and set the instrument down.

I came and sat beside him, feeling much better now I was clean. My bath had made me feel more up to coping with the situation, more in control. Maia had even provided me with a twig and some powdered charcoal paste for cleaning my teeth again. This had entailed much rinsing to get rid of the bits of charcoal, which Maia had insisted I did with a cup of beer.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at his instrument.

He plucked a string. “My lyre.”

“I think I heard it when I saw you, back in my world. At least, something that sounded very like it.”

He nodded. “You may well have. I take it everywhere with me.”