I began to worry about Master Capiam immured in the camp when he really ought to remain in his Hall, no matter what he had said to Master Tirone.
"If you go past the perimeter. Master Capiam, you will not be permitted back."
"If there is more than one way into the Hold, is there only one past the perimeter?" he asked me flippantly. "I'll see you later, Lady Nerilka."
I was relieved to think he was right. I was close enough to the dip in the roadway to see the encampment, and the men and women, well back of the guarded zone, waiting patiently for the food.
"Here now. Master Capiam." Theng came up, alarmed to see the resolution in the Masterhealer's stride. "You can't go in there without staying-"
"I don't want this medicine heaved about, Theng. Make sure they understand it's fragile."
I turned to one side, pretending to ease the weight of the demijohn. Theng knew me well enough to raise a commotion if he recognized me.
"I can do that much for you," Theng replied. He placed the demijohn to one side of the bales, then yelled down to the waiting men and women. "This is to be handled carefully, and preferably by a healer. Master Capiam says it's medicine."
I wanted to tell Capiam that I would see that the medicine was given to the appropriate people, but I dared not get too close to Theng, who was now making sure that Master Capiam went back where he belonged. I took the opportunity and walked quickly down the slope to the waiting people.
"Nah, then. Master Capiam," Theng was saying as I made good my escape, "you know I can't allow you close contact with any of your craftsmen."
I was immensely relieved that Theng intervened at that point. It was presumptuous of me, perhaps, but I felt that Master Capiam ought to remain where he was accessible to drum messages and councils with other Masters, particularly when he and the Masterharper had just pulled their Craftsmen from Fort Hold. As devoted a Craftsman as he was, it was not right that Master Capiam put himself at risk in this wretched camp. Perhaps now that the vaccine was being processed, the internment camp would be dispersed in only a matter of days. It would be along time, however, before Hold, Hall, and Weyr could pick up the skein of routine and unravel the tangle in which the plague had left us.
I had a very selfish reason for being glad that Master Capiam had elected to stay above. I wished to change my identity as well as my Hold. One or two harpers or healers might recognize me from their attendance at the Hold, but they wouldn't be looking for Lady Nerilka here in the internment camp, surrounded by infection and vulnerable to discomfort as well as death.
Although she had not said so, Desdra undoubtedly had refused my loners of assistance because she knew that young ladies of Hold Blood did not engage in such activities on a public basis. She probably considered me a feckless, trivial person and perhaps I was: Some of my recent thoughts and decisions could have been considered petty. But I did not consider that I was sacrificing my high rank and position. I thought, rather, that I was putting myself in the way of being useful, instead of immured in a Hold, protected and unproductive, wasting my energy on trivia like sewing for my stepmother. Such a "suitable occupation" for a girl of my rank could so easily be undertaken by the least drudge from the linen rooms.
These thoughts fleeted through my head as I kept up the awkward gait I had assumed-ironic, as Hold girls were taught to take such tiny steps that they appeared to float across the floor. I had never quite mastered that skill. I followed the men and women who had brought the baskets to the perimeter. Now I could see that most of them wore harper knots. One man wore the colors of the River Hold, and another of the Sea Hold. Travelers trapped on their way to seek help from Tolocamp? The path turned off into the copse, where I could now see that rude shelters had been erected. We had been indeed fortunate that the weather had been so clement, for the third month was generally blustery, often blizzardy, and freezing cold. Each open fire in its ring of stones wore either spit or kettle iron. Was this where my restorative soups had gone? Then I realized that those huddled in blankets or hides about each fire had the gray complexions and lackluster expressions of convalescents.
One larger shelter, its sides made of an odd assortment of materials, was set to one edge of the copse, and from it issued a chorus of rasping coughs and groans that labeled it the main infirmary. It was toward this that the demijohn of fellis was being taken. Those carrying the baskets of food were beginning to distribute bread to those at the fires. Three women began to sort the vegetables and meat scraps into kettles. The silence was the worst of the scene.
I hastened to the infirmary and was met at the door by a tall, unshaven healer. "Fellis, herbs-what have you?" he asked eagerly.
"Tussilago. Lady Nerilka made it fresh last night."
He grimaced and took the demijohn from me. "It's heartening to know not everyone there agrees with the Lord Holder."
"He's a hypocritical coward."
The healer raised eyebrows in surprise. "Young woman, it is unwise to speak of your Lord Holder in that fashion, no matter what the provocation."
"He is not my Lord Holder," I replied, meeting his stare unflinchingly. "I have come to help. I have a firm grounding of the properties of herbs and their preparation. I… helped Lady Nerilka brew the tussilago. She taught me all I know, she and her lady mother now dead at Ruatha. I can nurse and I am not afraid of the plague. All I loved is dead now anyway."
He put a comforting hand on my shoulder. No one would dare such a familiarity toward the Lady Nerilka, yet I did not find it offensive to be handled. It proved I was a human being.
"You are not alone in that." He paused for me to fill in my name. "All right. Rill, I'll take any volunteers right now. My best nurse just succumbed…" He nodded to a woman, still and white on a pallet of boughs. "There isn't all that much we can do except relieve the symptoms-" he affectionately patted the container of tussilago "-and hope there are no secondary infections. It is that which causes death, not the plague itself."
"There will soon be enough vaccine." I said it to cheer him, for patently he did not like to be so helpless in the face of this epidemic.
"Where did you hear that, Rill?" He had lowered his voice, and now held my upper arm in a painful grip. All handling is not reassuring.
"It is known. Yesterday the Bloods were inoculated against the disease. More of the serum is being made. You are nearby…"
The man shrugged in bitter acceptance of his situation. "Nearby, but scarcely a priority."
The woman struggled in the grip of the fever and flung herself out of her coverings. I went immediately to her side. And that began my first twenty-hour day as a nurse. There were three of us and Macabir, the journeyman healer, to tend the sixty stricken people in that rude infirmary. I never did know how many more the camp held, for the population shifted. Some had arrived on foot as well as by runner, hoping to claim Hold at Fort or assistance from the Halls or the Hold, and left when they realized that they were not permitted to reach their objective. I often wondered how many people actually had obeyed the full quarantine. But we are more populous here in the west than the eastern half of the continent. And the territory under Fort's jurisdiction suffered nowhere near the casualties that Ruatha did. We heard that only Master Capiam's early attendance at South Boll kept the disease from ravaging that province as well there were those who said that Ratoshigan would have deserved the fate that was dropped on Ruatha and young Lord Alessan.