‘It’ll pass, dear.’
‘That’s what Arell tells me. You remember her, don’t you?’
‘She was the lady who supervised all that dressmaking, wasn’t
she?’
Beldaran nodded. ‘She’s also a very good midwife. She’s been
telling me all about labor, and I’m not really looking forward to it.’
‘Are you sorry?’
‘About being pregnant? Of course not. I just wish it didn’t take
so long, is all. What have you been doing?’
‘Getting educated. Father taught me how to read, and I’m reading
my way through his library. You wouldn’t believe how much
nonsense has accumulated over the years. I sometimes think the
Tolnedrans and the Melcenes were running some kind of a race with
absolute idiocy as the prize. Right now I’m reading “The Book of
Torak”. The Master’s brother seems to have some problems.’
She shuddered. ‘How awful! How can you bear to read something
like that?’
‘It’s not the sort of thing you’d choose for light entertaimnent. It’s
written in old Angarak, and even the language is ugly. The notion
of an insane God’s more than a little frightening.’
,Insane?’
‘Totally. Mother says that he always has been.’
‘Does mother visit you often?’
‘Every day. Father tends to sleep late, so I go down to the Tree
and spend that part of the day with mother. She’s teaching me, too,
so I’m getting what you might call a well-rounded education.’
Beldaran sighed. ‘We’re getting further and further apart, aren’t
we, Pol?’
‘It happens, beldaran,’ I told her. ‘It’s called growing up.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘Neither do I, but there’s not much we can do about it, is there?’
It was rainy and blustery the following morning, but I put on my
cloak and went down into the city anyway. I wanted to have a talk
with Arell. I found her dress shop in a little cul-de-sac not far from
the harbor. It was a tiny, cluttered place littered with bolts of cloth,
spools of lace, and twisted hanks of yarn.
The bell on the door to Arell’s shop jingled as I entered, and she
looked up from her needlework. ‘Polgara!’ she exclaimed, leaping
to her feet and sweeping me up in a motherly embrace. ‘You’re
looking well,’ she said.
‘So are you, Arell.’
‘Do you need a new dress? Is that why you came?’
‘No. Actually I’d like some information about Beldaran’s
condition.’
‘She’s pregnant. I’m sure you noticed that.’
Very funny, Arell. What’s involved in giving birth?’
It’s painful, it’s messy, and it’s exhausting. You don’t want all
the details, do you?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do.’
are you thinking of setting up in business as midwife?’
‘Probably not. My interest is a little more general. Things happen
to people – “things that need to be fixed. I want to learn how to fix
them.’
,Women don’t become physicians, Pol. The men-folk don’t
approve.,
‘That’s too bad, isn’t it? You can’t possibly imagine just how
indifferent I am about the approval or disapproval of men.’
‘You’ll get yourself in trouble,’ she warned. ‘All we’re supposed
to do is cook, clean house, and have babies.’
‘I already know about all that. I think I’d like to expand my
knowledge just a bit.’
Arell pursed her lips. ‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I think I am.’
‘I can teach you what you’ll need to know about childbirth, but
she broke off. ‘Can you keep a secret?’
‘Lots of secrets, Arell. I know about things my father hasn’t even
dreamed of yet, and I’ve been keeping them from him for years now.’
‘There’s a herbalist here in Riva. He’s grouchy, and he doesn’t
smell very nice, but he knows which herbs to use to cure certain
ailments. And then there’s a bone-setter over on the other side of
town as well. He’s got hands the size of hams, but he’s got the right
touch. He can twist and wrench a broken bone back into place with
no trouble at all. Did you want to learn surgery as well?’
‘What’s surgery?’
‘Cutting people open so that you can fix their insides. I’m fairly
good at that myself, though I don’t talk about it too often. There’s
a surgeon here on the Isle as well as the herbalist and the bone-setter.
He’s sort of fond of me because I taught him how to sew.’
‘What’s sewing got to do with cutting people open?’
She rolled her eyes upward and sighed. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘What
do you do with a tunic after your father’s ripped it?’
‘Sew it up, of course.’
‘Exactly. You do the same thing to people, Pol. If you don’t, their
insides are likely to fall out.’
I choked on that a little bit.
‘Let’s start out with childbirth,’ Arell suggested. ‘If that doesn’t
make you sick to your stomach, we can move on to other specialties.’
I learned about ‘labor pains’, the ‘breaking of water’, and
‘afterbirth’. I also learned that there’s bleeding involved, but that it’s
nothing to be alarmed about.
Then Arell took me around to introduce me to her three
.colleagues, passing me off as her pupil. Argak the herbalist had a
tiny shop filled to the rafters with shelf after shelf of glass jars that
contained his wares. The place was none too clean, but then neither
was Argak. He reminded me a great deal of uncle Beldin in that
regard. He was at least as grumpy and bad-smelling as Arell had
told me he was, but I was there to learn from him, not to enjoy his
company. A bit of flattery was about all it took to unlock his secrets,
and I learned a great deal about alleviating pain and suffering and
how to control disease with various leaves, roots, and dried berries.
Salheim the bone-setter was actually a blacksmith, huge, bearded
and very blunt. He was not above re-breaking an arm that had set
wrong usually by laying it across the anvil in front of his glowing
forge and rapping it smartly with his hammer. Salheim fixed things
that were broken – chairs, people’s legs and arms, wheels, and
farm implements. Usually he didn’t even bother to take off his
burn-spotted leather apron when he set a bone. He was, like all
smiths, enormously strong. I once saw him literally pull a broken
leg back into its proper position by bracing his foot against his anvil,
taking hold of the offending limb and hauling on it. ‘Tie that board
to his leg to hold it in place, Pol,’ he told me, straining to keep the
twisted leg of his screaming patient in place.
‘You’re hurting him,’ I protested.
‘Not as much as having that broken bone jabbing up into his leg
muscles will,’ he replied. ‘They always scream when I set a bone.
It’s not important. Learn to ignore it.’
Balten the surgeon was actually a barber, and he had slim, delicate
hands and a slightly furtive look on his face. Cutting people open
– except for fun – was illegal in most alorn societies in those days,
so Balten had to practice his art in secret – usually on the
cuttingboard in his wife’s kitchen. Since he needed to know where things
were located inside the human body, he also needed to open a fair
number of the recently deceased so that he could make maps for
reference purposes. I think he used a shovel in the local graveyard
almost as often as he used his surgical knives’in the kitchen. His
anatomical studies were usually a bit hurried, since he had to return
his subjects to their graves before the sun came up. As his student,
I was frequently invited to participate in his ghoulish entertainment.
I’ll admit that I didn’t care much for that part of my medical
studies. I rather like gardening, but the crops Balten and I dug up
on those midnight excursions weren’t very appealing, if you want
to know the truth.
There’s another of my ‘talents’, father. Did you know that your
daughter’s quite a proficient grave-robber? Next time you come by,
I,ll dig somebody up for you, just to show you how it’s done.
,It’s best to get them drunk before you start cutting them open, Pol,’
Balten told me one evening as he filled a tankard with strong ale
for our latest patient.
,Is that to avoid the pain?’ I asked.
‘No. it’s to keep them from flopping around while you’re slicing
them open, and when you get your knife into a man’s entrails, you
want him to stay perfectly still. Otherwise, you’ll cut things you
shouldn’t be cutting.’ He took hold of my wrist rather firmly as I
reached out for one of his curved knives. ‘Be careful, Pol!’ he warned.
‘Those knives are very sharp. A sharp knife is the key to good
surgery. Dull ones always make a mess of things.’
And that was my introduction to the study of medicine. Alorns
are a blunt, practical people, and my four teachers – Arell, Argak,