“I hope you have not taken cold, my boy.”
Romilly muttered, eyes averted, that the vai dom should not concern himself.
“Let us have one thing clearly understood,” Dom Carlo said, frowning, “The welfare of any of my followers is as important to me as that of the birds to you – my men are in my charge as the birds are in yours, and I neglect no man who follows me! Come here,” he said, and laid a concerned hand against her forehead. “You have fever; can you ride? I would not ask it of you, but tonight you shall be warm in the monastery guest-house, and if you are sick, the good brothers there will see to you.”
“I am all right,” Romilly protested, genuinely alarmed now. She dared not be sick! If she was taken to the monks’ infirmary, certainly, in caring for her sickness they would discover that she was a girl!
”Have you warm clothing enough? Orain, you are nearer his size than I – find the lad something warm,” said Dom Carlo, and then, as he stood still touching her forehead, his face changed; he looked down at Romilly sharply, and for a moment she was sure – she did not know how; laran? – that he knew. She froze with dread, shivering; but he moved away and said quietly, “Orain has brought you a warm vest and stockings – I saw your blistered feet in your boots. Put them on at once; if you are too proud to take them, we shall have it from your wages, but I’ll have noone riding with me who is not warm and dry and comfortable. Go round the fire and change into them, this minute.”
Romilly bowed her head in acquiescence, went behind the line of horses and stag-beasts, and pulled on the warm stockings – heavenly relief to her sore feet – and the heavy undervest. They were somewhat too big, but all the warmer for that. She sneezed again, and Orain gestured to the pot still hanging over the fire, not yet emptied. He dipped up a ladleful of the hot brew and took some leaves from his pouch.
“An old wives’ remedy for the cough that’s better than any healer’s brew. Drink it,” he said, and watched while she gulped at the foul-tasting stuff. “Aye, it’s bitter as lost love, but it drives out the fever.”
Romilly grimaced at the acrid, musty-tasting stuff; it made her flush with inner heat, and left her mouth puckered with its intense astringency, but, later that morning, she realized that she had not sneezed again, and that the dripping of her nose had abated. Riding briefly at his side, she said, “That remedy would make you a fortune in the cities, Master Orain.”
He laughed. “My mother was a leronis and studied healing,” he said, “and went among the country-folk to learn their knowledge of herbs. But the healers in the cities laugh at these country remedies.”
And, she thought, he had been the king’s own foster-brother; and now served the king’s man in exile, Carlo of Blue Lake. What the men had said was true, though she had not noticed it before; talking to the men, he spoke the dialect of the countryside, while, speaking to Dom Carlo, and, increasingly, to her, his accents were those of an educated man. Contrasted to the other men, she felt as safe and comfortable near him as if she were in the presence of her own brothers or her father.
After a time she asked him, “The king -Carolin – he awaits us in Nevarsin? I thought the monks were sworn to take no part in the strife of wordly men? How is it that they take King Carolin’s side in this war? I-I know so little about what is going on in the lowlands.” She remembered what Darren and Alderic had said; it only whetted her appetite to know more.
Orain said, “The brothers of Nevarsin care nothing for the throne of the Hasturs; nor should they. They give shelter to Carolin because, as they say, he has harmed none, and his cousin – the great bastard, Rakhal, who sits on the throne – would kill him for his own ambition. They will not join in his cause, but they will not surrender him to his enemies while he shelters there, either.”