At one time or another, all of these remedies and more had been brought to bear in the matter of King Aeldred's fevers, whether they were countenanced by the king and his clergy or not.
None of them were able to reorder the marred world in such a way as to end the fires that still seized him some nights, so many long years after that first one had.
"Why is it dark?"
It was always predictable how the king would emerge, but, more recently, not how long it would take. What was certain was that he would be pale, weak-voiced, lucid, precise, and angry.
Osbert had been dozing on the pallet they always made for him. He woke to the voice.
"It is the middle of the night, my lord. Welcome back."
"I lost a whole day this time? Dear Jad. I haven't got days to lose!" Aeldred was never profane, but the fury was manifest.
"I dealt with the reports as they came. Both new burhs on the coast are on time, nearly complete, fully manned. The shipyard is at work. Be easy."
"What else?" Aeldred was not being easy.
"The taxation officers went out this morning."
"The tribute from Erlond—Svidrirson's? What word?"
"Not yet, but… promised." It was never wise to be less than direct with the king when he returned from wherever the fever took him.
"Promised? How?"
"A messenger rode in after midday. The young one, Ingemar's son."
Aeldred scowled. "He only sends the boy when the tribute's late. Where is he?"
"Housed properly, asleep, I'd imagine. It is late. Be at ease, my lord. Athelbert received him formally in your stead, with his brother."
"On what excuse for my not being there?"
Osbert hesitated. "Your fevers are… known, my lord."
The king scowled again. "And where was Burgred, come to think of it?"
Osbert cleared his throat. "We had rumour of a ship sighted. He went with some of the fyrd to find out more."
"A ship? Erling?"
Osbert nodded. "Or ships."
Aeldred closed his eyes. "That makes little sense." There was a silence. "You have been beside me all the time, of course."
"And others. Your daughters were here tonight. Your lady wife sat with you before going to chapel to pray for your health. She will be relieved to hear you are well again."
"Of course she will."
That had nuances. Most of what Aeldred said had layers, and Osbert knew a great deal about the royal marriage.
The king lay still on his pillow, eyes shut. After a moment, he said, "But you never left, did you?"
"I… went to the audience chamber to take the reports."
Aeldred opened his eyes, turned his head slightly to look at the other man. After a silence, he said, "Would you have had a better life had I driven you away, do you think?"
"I find that hard to imagine, my lord. The better life and being driven away."
Aeldred shook his head a little. "You might walk properly, at least."
Osbert brought a hand down to his marred leg. "A small price. We live a life of battles."
Aeldred was looking at him. "I shall answer for you before the god one day," he said.
"And I shall speak in your defence. You were right, my lord, Burgred and I were wrong. Today is proof, the boy coming, the tribute promised again. Ingemar has kept his oath. It let us do what needed to be done."
"And here you are, unmarried, without kin or heir, on one leg, awake all night by the side of the man who—"
"Who is king of the Anglcyn under Jad, and has kept us alive and together as a people. We make our choices, my lord. And marriage is not for every man. I have not lacked for companionship."
"And heirs?"
Osbert shrugged. "I'll leave my own name, linked—if the god allows—with yours, in the shaping of this land. I have nephews for my own properties." They had had this conversation before.
Aeldred shook his head again. There was more grey in his beard of late, Osbert saw. It showed in the lamplight, as did the circles under his eyes, which were always there after fever. "And I am, as ever when this passes, speaking to you as a servant."
"I am a servant, my lord."
Aeldred smiled wanly. "Shall I say something profane to that?"
"I would be greatly alarmed." Osbert returned the smile.
The king stretched, rubbed at his face, sat up in the bed. "I surrender. And I believe I will eat. Would you also send for… would you ask my lady wife to come to me?"
"It is the middle of the night, my lord."
"You said that already."
Aeldred's gaze was mild but could not be misconstrued. Osbert cleared his throat. "I will have someone send—" "Ask."
"Ask for her."
"Would you be so good as to do it yourself? It is the middle of the night."
A small, ironic movement of the mouth. The king was back among them, there was no doubting it. Osbert bowed, took his cane, and went out.
He looked at his hands in the lamplight after Osbert left. Steady enough. He flexed his fingers. Could smell his own sweat in the bedsheets. A night and a day and this much of another night. More time than he had to yield, the grave closer every day. These fevers were a kind of dying. He felt light-headed now, as always. That was understandable. Also physically aroused, as always, though there was no easy way to explain that. The body's return to itself?
The body was a gift of Jad, a housing in this world for the mind and immortal soul, therefore to be honoured and attended to—though not, on the other hand, over-loved, because that was also a transgression.
Men were shaped, according to the liturgy, in a distant image of the god's own most-chosen form, of all those infinite ones he could assume. Jad was rendered by artists in his mortal guise—whether golden and glorious as the sun, or dark-bearded and careworn—in wood carving, fresco, ivory, marble, bronze, on parchment, in gold, in mosaic on domes or chapel walls. This truth (Livrenne of Mesangues had argued in his Commentaries) only added to the deference properly due to the physical form of man—opening the door to a clerical debate, acrid at times, as to the implications for the form and status of woman.
There had been a period several hundred years ago when such visual renderings of the god had been interdicted by the High Patriarch in Rhodias, under pressure from Sarantium. That particular heresy was now a thing of the past.
Aeldred thought, often, about the works eradicated during that time. He'd been very young when he'd made the journey over sea and land and mountain pass to Rhodias with his father. He remembered some of the holy art they'd seen but also (having been a particular sort of child) those places in sanctuary and palace where the evidence of smashed or painted-over works could be observed.
Waiting now in the lamplit dark of a late-summer night for his wife to come, that he might undress her and make love, the king found himself musing—not for the first time—on the people of the south: people so ancient, so long established, that they had works of art that had been destroyed hundreds of years before these northlands even had towns or walls worthy of the name, let alone a sanctuary of the god that deserved to be called as much.
And then, tracking that thought, you could walk even further back, to the Rhodians of the era before Jad came, who had walked in these lands too, building their walls and cities and arches and temples to pagan gods. Mostly rubble now, since the long retreat, but still reminders of… unattainable glory. All around them here, in this harsh near-wilderness that he was pleased to call a kingdom under Jad.
You could be a proper child of the god, virtuous and devout, even in a wilderness. This was taught, and he knew it in his heart. Indeed, many of the most pious clerics had deliberately withdrawn from those same jaded southern civilizations in Batiara, in Sarantium, to seek the essence of Jad in passionate solitude.