Guard Commander Adlain was to one side of the King, Duke Walen on the other. Adlain, I will record only for posterity, is a man the nobility and grace of whose features and carriage are matched only by our good King, though the Guard Commander's appearance is swarthy where King Quience's is fair — a faithful, loyal shadow ever at the side of our splendid ruler. But what monarch could wish for a more glorious shadow!
Duke Walen is a short, stooped man with leathery skin and small, deeply recessed eyes which are slightly crossed.
"Sir, are you sure you won't let my physician tend to that wound?" Walen said in his high, grating voice, while Adlain shooed away a couple of the harrying doctors. "Look," the Duke cried, "it's dripping! The royal blood! Oh, my word! Physician! Physician! Really, my lord, this doctor fellow is quite the best. Let me just-"
"No!" the King bellowed. "I want Vosill! Where is she?"
"The lady would appear to have more pressing engagements," Adlain said, not unreasonably. "Lucky it's just a scratch, eh, my lord?" Then he looked up the steps to see the Doctor and myself descending. His expression became a smile.
"Vo-!" the King roared, head down as he bounded up the curve of steps, briefly leaving both Walen and Adlain behind.
"Here, Sir," the Doctor said, stepping down to meet him.
"Vosill! Where in the name of all the skies of hell have you been?"
"I-"
"Never mind that! Let's to my chambers. You." (And the King addressed me!) "See if you can hold off this pack of bloodsucking scavengers. Here's my duelling sword." The King handed me his own sword! "You have full permission to use it on anyone who looks remotely like a physician. Doctor?"
"After you, sir."
"Yes of course after me, Vosill. I am the King, dammit!"
It has always struck me how well our glorious King resembles the portraits one sees displayed of him in paintings and in the profiles which grace our coins. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study those magnificent features that mid-Xamis, in the King's private apartments, while the Doctor treated the duelling wound and the King stood, clad in a long gown with one sleeve rolled up, in silhouette against the luminous expanse of an ancient plaster window, face raised and jaw set, as the Doctor worked at his out-held arm.
What a noble visage! What a regal demeanour! A mane of majestically curling blond hair, a brow of intelligence and stern wisdom, clear, flashing eyes the colour of the summer sky, a sharply defined, heroic nose, a broad, gracefully cultured mouth and a proud, brave chin, all set on the frame both strong and lithe which would be the envy of an athlete in his prime (and the King is in his most magnificent middleage, when most men have started to go to fat). They do say that King Quience is excelled in his appearance and physique only by his late father, Drasine (whom they are already calling Drasine the Great, I am happy to report. And rightly so).
"Oh, Sir! Oh dear! Oh my goodness! Oh, help! Oh, what a calamity! Oh!"
"Leave us, Wiester," the King said, sighing.
"Sir! Yes, Sir. Immediately, Sir." The fat chamberlain, still alternately waving and kneading his hands, left the apartments, muttering and moaning.
"I thought you had armour to stop this sort of thing happening, sir," the Doctor said. She wiped the last of the blood away with a swab which she then handed to me for disposal. I handed her the alcohol in exchange. She soaked another swab and applied it to the gash on the King's bicep. The wound was a couple of fingers long and a couple of pinches deep.
"Ouch!"
"I'm sorry, sir."
"Aow! Aow! Are you sure this isn't some quackery of your own, Vosill?"
"The alcohol kills the ill humours which can infect a wound," the Doctor said frostily. "Sir."
"As does, you claim, mouldy bread," the King snorted. "It has that effect."
"And sugar."
"That too, sir, in an emergency."
"Sugar," the King said, shaking his head.
"Don't you, sir?"
"What?"
"Have armour?"
"Of course we have armour, you imbecile- Aow! Of course we have armour, but you don't wear it in the duelling chamber. In the name of Providence, if you were going to wear armour you might as well not duel at all!"
"But I thought it was a practice, sir. For real fighting." "Well, of course it's a practice, Vosill. If it wasn't a practice the fellow who cut me wouldn't have stopped and damn near fainted, he'd have leapt in for the kill, if it was that sort of duel. Anyway, yes, it was a practice." The King shook his magnificent head and stamped one foot. `Damn me, Vosill, you ask the most stupid questions."
"I beg your pardon, sir."
"It's only a scratch, anyway." The King looked around, then gestured at a footman standing by the main doors, who quickly went to a table and drew his majesty a glass of wine.
"How much less than a scratch is an insect bite," the Doctor said. "And yet people die from those, sir."
"They do?" the King said, accepting the wine goblet.
"So I've been taught. A poisonous humour transmitted from the insect to the bloodstream."
"Hmm," the King said, looking sceptical. He glanced at the wound. "Still just a scratch. Adlain wasn't very impressed." He drank.
"I imagine it would take a great deal to impress Guard Commander Adlain," the Doctor said, though not I think unkindly.
The King gave a small smile. "You don't like Adlain, do you, Vosill?"
The Doctor flexed her brows. "I don't regard him as a friend, sir, but equally I don't regard him as an enemy, either. We both seek to serve you in our appointed ways according to the skills at our command."
The King's eyes narrowed as he considered this. "Spoken like a politician, Vosill," he said quietly. "Expressed like a courtier."
"I shall take that as a compliment, sir."
He watched her clean out the wound for a while. "Still, perhaps you ought to be wary of him, eh?"
The Doctor looked up. I believe she might have been surprised. "If your majesty says so."
"And Duke Wen," the King said with a grunt. "Your ears should burn when he talks about women being doctors, or for that matter women being anything other than whores, wives and mothers."
"Indeed, sir," the Doctor said through gritted teeth. She looked to me to ask for something, then saw that I already held the appropriate jar in my hand. I was rewarded with a smile and a nod of appreciation. I took the alcohol-soaked swab and dropped it in the rubbish bag.
"What's that?" the King said, brows furrowed in suspicion.
"It's an ointment, sir."
"I can see it's an ointment, Vosill. What does it- Oh." "As you feel, sir, it dulls the pain. Also it fights the particles of ill humour which infest the air, and aids the healing process."
"Is that like the stuff you put on my leg that time, on the abscess?"
"It is, sir. What an excellent memory your majesty has. That was the first time I treated you, I believe."
The King caught sight of his reflection in one of the great mirrors which adorned his private resting chambers and drew himself up straighter. He looked at the footman by the door, who came over and took the wine goblet from him, then the King lifted up his chin and pushed his hand through his hair, shaking his head so that his locks, which had been flattened by the sweat under his duelling half-mask, fell bouncing free again.
"That's right," he said, inspecting his noble outline in the looking glass. "I was in a poor state, from what I can recall. All the saw-bones thought I was going to die."