Inversions

11. THE DOCTOR

The Guard Commander of Yvenir palace held a scented kerchief to his nose. Before him was a stone slab fitted with iron manacles, leg-irons and hide straps. None of these was required to restrain the current occupant of the slab, for spread upon it lay the limp body of the King’s chief torturer, Nolieti, naked save for a small cloth draped over his genitals. Beside Guard Commander Polchiek stood Ralinge, chief torturer to Duke Quettil, and a young, grey-faced and sweating scribe sent by Guard Commander Adlain, who had taken personal command of the hunting party seeking the apprentice Unoure. These three were faced on the other side of the slab by Doctor Vosill, her assistant (that is, myself) and Doctor Skelim, personal physician to Duke Quettil.

The questioning chamber underneath the palace of Yvenir was relatively small and low-ceilinged. It smelled of a variety of unpleasant things, including Nolieti himself. It was not that the body had started to decay — the murder had happened only a couple of hours ago — but from the dirt and grime visible on the otherwise pale skin of the dead chief torturer it was obvious that he had not been the most personally hygienic of men. Guard Commander Polchiek watched a flea crawl out from beneath the cloth over the man’s groin and start to travel up the slack curve of his stomach.

“Look,” Doctor Skelim said, pointing at the tiny black shape moving over the mottled grey skin of the corpse. “Somebody’s leaving the sinking ship.”

“Looking for warmth,” Doctor Vosill said, reaching quickly out to the insect. It disappeared an instant before her hand got there, jumping away. Polchiek looked amused, and I too wondered at the Doctor’s naïveté. What was that proverb about there being only so many ways to catch a flea? But then the Doctor’s fingers snapped closed in mid air, she inspected what she had there, nipped their tips more tightly together and then brushed the remains off on her hip. She looked up at Polchiek, whose face wore a surprised expression. “It might have jumped on one of us,” she said.

A light-well above the slab had been opened for what was — to judge from the amount of dust and debris that rained down upon the unfortunate scribe sent to do the opening by Doctor Vosill — the first time in a long time. A brace of floor-standing candelabra added their own light to the gruesome scene.

“May we proceed?” the Guard Commander of Yvenir asked in a rumbling voice. Polchiek was a big, tall man with a single great scar from grey hair line to chin. A fall while hunting the previous year had left him with a knee that could not bend. It was for this reason that Adlain and not he was in charge of the search for Unoure. “I have never enjoyed attending any sort of event down here.”

“I don’t imagine the subjects of those events did either,” Doctor Vosill observed.

“Nor did they deserve to,” Doctor Skelim said, one of his small hands playing nervously with his collar ruff as his gaze flicked round the barrel-vaulted walls and ceiling. “It is a cramped, oppressive sort of place, isn’t it?” He glanced at the Guard Commander.

Polchiek nodded. “Nolieti used to complain that there was barely room to swing a whip,” he said. The grey-faced scribe began to make notes in a small slate-book. The fine point of the chalk made a scratching, squeaking noise on the stone.

Skelim snorted. “Well, he will swing no more of those. Is there any word on Unoure, Guard Commander?”

“We know which way he went,” Polchiek said. “The hunting party should pick him up before dark.”

“Do you think he will be in one piece?” asked Doctor Vosill.

“Adlain is not unused to hunting in these woods, and my hounds are well trained. The youth may suffer a bite or two, but he’ll be alive when he is delivered to Master Ralinge here,” Polchiek said, glancing at the wide little barrel of a man standing at his side and staring with a sort of greedy fascination at the wound that had gone most of the way towards separating Nolieti’s head from his shoulders. Ralinge looked slowly up at Polchiek when he heard his name mentioned, and smiled, showing a full set of teeth which he was proud to have removed from his victims and which he had used to replace his own diseased items. Polchiek made a rumbling, disapproving noise.

“Yes. Well, Unoure’s fate is what concerns me here, gentlemen,” Doctor Vosill said.

“Really, madam?” Polchiek said, keeping his kerchief at his mouth and nose. “What concern of yours is his fate?” He turned to Ralinge. “I believe his destiny now lies in the hands of those of us on this side of the table, Doctor. Or does the lad have a medical condition that may rob us of the chance to question him on the matter?”

“Unoure is unlikely to have been the murderer,” the Doctor said.

Doctor Skelim made a derisory snorting noise. Polchiek looked up at the ceiling, which for him was not far away. Ralinge did not take his gaze off the wound.

“Really, Doctor?” Polchiek said, sounding bored. “And what brings you to that strange conclusion?”

“The man is dead,” Skelim said angrily, waving one thin hand at the corpse. “Murdered in his own chamber. His assistant was seen running into the woods while the body was still oozing blood. His master used to beat him, and worse. Everybody knows that. Only a woman would not see the obvious in this.”

“Oh, let the good lady doctor have her say,” Polchiek said. “I for one am already quite fascinated.”

“Doctor, indeed,” muttered Skelim, looking away to one side.

The Doctor ignored her colleague and bent over to grip the ragged flaps of skin that had been Nolieti’s neck. I found myself swallowing hard. “The wound was caused by a serrated instrument, probably a large knife,” she said.

“Astonishing,” Skelim said sarcastically.

“There was a single cut, from left to right,” the Doctor said, teasing apart the flaps of skin near the corpse’s left ear. I confess that her assistant was feeling a little queasy at this juncture, though — like the torturer Ralinge — I could not tear my gaze from the wound. “It severed all the major blood vessels, the larynx—”

“The what?” Skelim said.

“The larynx,” the Doctor said patiently, pointing to the roughly slashed pipe inside Nolieti’s neck. “The upper part of the wind-pipe.”

“We call it the upper part of the wind-pipe here,” Doctor Skelim told her with a sneer. “We have no need for foreign words. Quacks and the like tend to use them when they’re trying to impress people with their spurious wisdom.”

“But if we look deeper,” the Doctor said, levering the corpse’s head right back and lifting its shoulders partly off the surface of the slab. “Oelph. Would you put that block underneath the shoulders here?”

I picked a piece of wood shaped like a miniature executioner’s block up off the floor and stuck it under the dead man’s shoulders. I was feeling sick. “Hold his hair, would you, Oelph?” the Doctor said, forcing Nolieti’s head back still further. There was a glutinous sucking noise as the wound opened further. I took hold of Nolieti’s sparse brown hair and looked away as I pulled on it.

“Looking deeper,” the Doctor repeated, seemingly quite unaffected as she bent close over the tangle of multicoloured tissues and tubes that had been Nolieti’s throat, “we can see that the murder weapon cut so deep it nicked the victim’s upper spinal column, here, at the third cervical vertebra.”

Doctor Skelim snorted derisively again, but from the corner of my eye I saw him leaning closer to the opened wound. A sudden retching sound came from the far side of the table as Guard Commander Adlain’s scribe turned quickly away and doubled over by a drain, his slate-book clattering to the ground. I felt my own bile rising and tried to swallow it back.

“Here. Do you see? Lodged in the cartilage of the voice box. A splinter of the vertebra, deposited there as the weapon was withdrawn.”

“Very interesting, I’m sure,” Polchiek said. “What is your point?”

“The direction of the cut would indicate the murderer was right-handed. Almost certainly the right hand was used, in any event. The depth and penetration points to a person of considerable strength, and incidentally reinforces the likelihood that the murderer was using his favoured hand, for people are rarely able to apply so much power so accurately and so certainly with their non-favoured hand. Also the angle of the cut — the way the wound slopes upward relative to the victim’s throat — implies that the murderer was a good head or so taller than the victim.”

“Oh, Providence!” Doctor Skelim said loudly. “Why not rip out his innards and read them like the priests of old to find the murderer’s name? I guarantee they will say ‘Unoure’ in any event, or whatever his name is.”

Doctor Vosill turned to Skelim. “Don’t you see? Unoure is shorter than Nolieti, and left-handed. I imagine he is of average strength, perhaps a little more, but he does not have the look of a particularly powerful man.”

“Perhaps he was in a rage,” Polchiek suggested. “People can gather an inhuman strength in certain circumstances. I have heard they do so particularly in a place like this.”

“And Nolieti might have been kneeling down at the time,” Doctor Skelim pointed out.

“Or Unoure was standing on a stool,” Ralinge said in a voice that was surprisingly soft and sibilant. He smiled.

The Doctor glanced towards a nearby wall. “Nolieti was standing at that workbench when he was attacked from behind. Arterial blood sprayed the ceiling and venous blood fell directly on the bench itself. He was not kneeling.”

The scribe completed his retching, picked up his fallen slatebook and stood again, returning to his place by the table with an apologetic look at Polchiek, who ignored him.

“Mistress?” I ventured.

“Yes, Oelph?”

“Might I let go his hair now?”

“Yes, of course, Oelph. I beg your pardon.”

“What does it matter exactly how Unoure did it?” Doctor Skelim said. “He must have been here when it happened. He ran away after it had happened. Of course he did it.” Doctor Skelim looked disgustedly at Doctor Vosill.

“The doors to the chamber were neither locked nor guarded,” the Doctor pointed out. “Unoure may have been on any sort of errand and come back to find his master killed. As for—”

Doctor Skelim shook his head and held up one hand towards the Doctor. “These womanly fancies and this unhealthy attraction to mutilation may represent a form of sickness in the mind on your part, madam, but they have little to do with the business of apprehending the culprit and getting the truth out of him.”

“The doctor is right,” Polchiek told the Doctor. “It is clear that you know your way around a corpse, madam, but you must accept that I know mine around an act of villainy. Running is invariably a sign of guilt, I have found.”

“Unoure may simply have been frightened,” the Doctor said. “He did not appear to be possessed of a great amount of wit. He may simply have panicked, not thinking that running away was the most suspicious thing he could have done.”

“Well, we shall shortly apprehend him,” Polchiek said with an air of finality. “And Ralinge here will find out the truth.”

When the Doctor spoke it was with a degree of venom I think all of us found surprising. “Will he, indeed,” she said.

Ralinge smiled broadly at the Doctor. Polchiek’s scarred face took on a look of some grimness. “Yes, madam, he will,” he told her. He flapped one hand at the corpse still lying between us. “This has all been most diverting, I’m sure, but on the next occasion you wish to impress some of your betters with your macabre knowledge of human anatomy I would ask you not to include those of us with better things to do, and certainly not me. Good day.”

Polchiek turned and left, ducking under the doorway and acknowledging the salute of a guard. The scribe who had been sick looked up hesitantly from his incomplete notes and appeared uncertain what to do next.

“I agree,” Doctor Skelim said with a note of relish in his voice as he brought his small face up towards the Doctor’s. “You might have bewitched our good King for now, madam, but you do not deceive me. If you have any regard for your own safety, you will request leave to depart from us as quickly as possible and return to whatever decadent regime raised you. Good day.”

The grey-faced scribe hesitated again, watching the Doctor’s impassive face as Skelim swept smartly out of the chamber, head held high. Then the scribe muttered something to the still smiling Ralinge, closed his slatebook with a snap and followed the small doctor.

“They don’t like you,” Duke Quettil’s chief torturer said to the Doctor. His smile broadened still further. “I like you.”

The Doctor looked across the slab at him for a few moments, then held up her hands and said, “Oelph. A wet towel, if you please.”

I ran and fetched a pitcher of water from a bench, picked a towel from the Doctor’s bag and soaked it, then watched her as she washed her hands, not taking her gaze off the small, round man across the slab from her. I handed her a dry towel. She dried her hands.

Ralinge kept on smiling. “You might think you hate what I am, lady doctor,” he said softly. His voice sounded distorted by his grisly collection of teeth. “But I know how to give pleasure as well as pain.”

The Doctor handed me the towel and said, “Let us go, Oelph.” She nodded at Ralinge and then we walked towards the door.

“And pain can be pleasure, too,” Ralinge called after us. I felt my scalp crawl and the urge to be sick returned. The Doctor did not react at all.

“It’s just a cold, sir.”

“Ha. Just a cold. I’ve known people die from colds.”

“Indeed, sir, but you should not. How is your ankle today? Let’s take a look at it, shall we?”

“I believe it is getting better. Will you change the dressing?”

“Of course. Oelph, would you…?”

I took the dressing and a few instruments from the Doctor’s bag and arranged them on a cloth on the King’s huge bed. We were in the King’s private chamber, the day after Nolieti’s murder.

The King’s apartments at Yvenir are arranged within a splendid domed cupola set high at the rear of the palace, upon what is the roof to the main part of the great building. The gold-leaf-covered dome is set back from the terraced edge of the roof and separated from it by a small formal garden. As the roof level is just above the height of the tallest trees on the ridge behind, marking the summit of the hills on this side of the valley, the view from the northfacing windows which bring light into the most spacious and airy apartments is of nothing but sky beyond the clipped geometrical perfections of the gardens and the white tusk balustrade at their edge. This lends the apartments a strange, enchanted air of detachment from the real world. I dare say the clear mountain air contributes to this effect of isolated purity, but there is something most especially about that lack of sight of the mundane disorder of the landscape of men which gives the place its singular spirit.

“Will I be well enough for the ball at the next small moon?” the King asked the Doctor as he watched her prepare the new dressing for his ankle. In truth the old dressing looked spotless, as the King had taken to his bed with a tingly throat and sneezing fits shortly after the news of Nolieti’s demise had been communicated to us in the Hidden Gardens the day before.

“I should imagine you will be able to attend, sir,” the Doctor said. “But do try not to sneeze over everybody.”

“I am the King, Vosill,” the King told her, sniffing into a fresh handkerchief. “I shall sneeze over whom I please.”

“Then you will spread the ill humour to others, they will incubate it while you grow well again, they will perhaps subsequently inadvertently sneeze in your presence and consequently reinfect you, who will play host to it again while they recover, and so on.”

“Don’t lecture me, Doctor. I’m in no mood for it.” The King looked round at the slumped pile of pillows propping him up, opened his mouth to call a servant but then started to sneeze, his blond locks bouncing as his head went back and forth. The Doctor stood up from her chair and, while he was still sneezing, pulled the King upright and rearranged his pillows. The King looked at her in some surprise.

“You are stronger than you look, are you not, Doctor?”

“Yes, sir,” the Doctor said with a modest smile as she went back to undoing the dressing on the King’s ankle. “And yet still weaker than I would be.” She was dressed as she had been the day before. Her long red hair was more carefully prepared than was usual, combed and plaited and hanging down her long dark jacket almost to her slim waist. She looked at me and I became aware that I was staring. I looked down at my feet.

Poking out from under the great bed’s valance was a corner of cream-coloured clothing that looked oddly familiar. I wondered at this for a moment or two until, with a pang of jealousy for the right of Kings, I realised it was part of a shepherdess’s costume. I pushed it further under the valance with my shoe.

The King settled himself back amongst his pillows. “What is the news on that boy who ran away? The one who killed my chief questioner?”

“They caught him this morning,” the Doctor said, busying herself with the old dressing. “However, I do not think he committed the murder.”

“Really?” the King said.

Personally, Master, I did not think he sounded as if he particularly cared one way or the other what the Doctor thought on this matter, but this was the cue for the Doctor to explain in some detail — especially to a man, however exalted, who had a cold and had just eaten a light breakfast — exactly why she had convinced herself that Unoure had not killed Nolieti. I have to say that the consensus amongst the other apprentices, assistants and pages, arrived at in the kitchen parlour of the palace the previous evening, was that the only perplexing aspect about the whole business was how Unoure had been able to put off the dark deed for so long.

“Well,” the King said, “I dare say Quettil’s fellow will get the truth out of him.”

“The truth, sir? Or what is required to satisfy the prejudices of those already convinced they know the truth?”

“What?” the King said, dabbing at his reddened nose.

“This barbaric custom of torture, sir. It produces not the truth but rather whatever those commanding the questioner wish to hear, for the agonies involved are so unbearable that those subject to them will confess to anything — or more precisely, will confess to what they think their tormentors wish them to confess to — in the hope of causing the suffering to cease.”

The King looked at the Doctor with an expression of confusion and disbelief. “People are beasts, Vosill. Lying beasts. The only way to get the truth out of them sometimes is to wring it from them.” The King snorted mightily. “My father taught me that.”

The Doctor looked at the King for a long moment, then started to undo the old dressing. “Indeed. Well, I’m sure he could not possibly have been wrong, sir,” she said. She supported the King’s foot with one hand and unwound the white dressing with the other. She started sniffing too.

The King kept on sniffing and snorting and staring at the Doctor. “Doctor Vosill?” he asked eventually as the last of the dressing floated free from his ankle and the Doctor gave it to me to put away.

“Sir?” she asked, wiping her eyes on her cuff and looking away from Quience.

“Madam, have I upset you?”

“No,” the Doctor said quickly. “No, sir.” She made as though to start applying the new dressing, then put it aside and made an exasperated clicking noise with her mouth. She busied herself with the inspection of the small wound healing on the King’s ankle and then ordered me to fetch water and soap, which I had already provided and set by the bed. She seemed annoyed that I had done this, but quickly ensured the wound was clean, washed and dried the King’s foot and began to secure the new dressing.

The King appeared discomfited during all this. When the Doctor was finished he looked at her and said, “You will be looking forward to the ball yourself, Doctor?”

She smiled briefly at him. “Of course, your majesty.”

We packed our things away. As we were about to take our leave, the King reached out and took the Doctor’s hand. There was a troubled, uncertain look I did not think I had seen before in his eyes. He said, “Women bear pain better than men, they say, Doctor.” His eyes seemed to search hers. “It is ourselves we hurt most when we question.”

The Doctor looked down at her hand, held within the King’s. “Women bear pain better because we must give birth, sir,” she said in a low voice. “Such pain is generally regarded as being unavoidable, but is alleviated to whatever extent it can be by those of my calling.” She looked up into his eyes. “And we only become beasts — we become worse than beasts — when we torment others, sir.”

She took her hand carefully from his, picked up her bag and with a small bow to the King, turned and headed for the doors. I hesitated, half expecting the King to call her back, but he did not. He just sat there in his vast bed, looking hurt, and sniffing. I bowed to the King and followed the Doctor.

Unoure never was put to the question. A few hours after he was captured and brought back to the palace, while the Doctor and I were attending the King and while Ralinge was still preparing the chamber for his inquisition, a guard looked in on the cell where the youth was being held. Somehow, Unoure had slit his own throat with a small knife. His arms and legs were tightly chained behind him and he had been stripped naked before being placed in the cell. The knife had been wedged hilt-first into a crack in the stone walls of the cell at about waist height. Unoure had been able to kneel before it at the extremity of the reach the chains securing him would allow and slice his neck across its blade, before collapsing and bleeding to death.

I understand that the two Guard Commanders were furious. The guards who had been charged with Unoure’s custody were lucky they were neither punished nor put to the question themselves. It was eventually agreed that Unoure must have placed the knife there before his attack on Nolieti, in case he was captured and brought back to the palace.

Our shared station might dictate both that we knew little and that our opinions were worth less, but none of us who had had occasion to experience the full extent of Unoure’s intelligence, forethought and cunning found this explanation even remotely convincing.

Quettil: Good Duke, how very pleasant it is to see you. Is this not a fine view?

Walen: Hmm. I find you well, Quettil?

Q: In most rude health. You?

W: Tolerable.

Q: I thought you might want to sit down. See? I have arranged for chairs.

W: Thank you, no. Let us go over here…

Q: Oh. Well, very well… Well, here we are. And afforded an even finer view. However, I cannot imagine you wished to meet me up here to admire my own estates.

W: Hmm.

Q: Allow me to hazard a guess. You have some misgivings about… what was his name? Nolieti? Nolieti’s death? Or rather about his and his apprentice’s?

W: No. I believe that matter is closed. I attach no great significance to the death of a pair of torturers. Theirs is a despicable if necessary craft.

Q: Despicable? Oh no. No indeed. Why, I would call it a form of art at its most elevated. My man, Ralinge, is a veritable master. I have only avoided singing his praises to Quience because I’m afraid he might take him from me, and that would be most upsetting. I should feel deprived.

W: No, my concern is with one whose profession is concerned with the alleviation of pain, not the causing of it.

Q: Really? Ah, you mean that woman who calls herself a doctor? Yes, what does the King see in her? Can’t he just fuck her and have done with it?

W: Perhaps he has, more likely he has not. She looks at him in a way that leads me to believe she would like to be tumbled… but I care not either way. The point is that he seems convinced of her efficacy as a physician.

Q: And… what? There is someone you would rather see in her place?

W: Yes. Anybody. I believe she is a spy, or a witch, or something between the two.

Q: I see. Have you told the King?

W: Of course not.

Q: Ah-ha. Well, my own physician is of much the same opinion as yourself, if that is any comfort. Which I warn you it ought not to be, really, given that my physician is a self-important fool and no better than any of the rest of these blood-letters and saw-bones at curing anything.

W: Yes, quite. I am sure, nevertheless, that your physician is as competent a doctor as can be found, and so I am glad that he shares my opinion of the woman Vosill. That may well prove useful if eventually we have to convince the King of her unsuitability. I can tell you that Guard Commander Adlain feels that she is a threat too, though he agrees with me that it is not yet possible to move against her. That is why I wanted to talk to you. May I rely on your discretion? I wish to speak of something that would have to be done without the King’s knowledge, even though it would be done solely to protect him.

Q: Hmm? Yes, of course, good Duke. Go on. Nothing will go beyond these walls. Well, balustrades.

W: I have your word?

Q: Of course, of course.

W: Adlain and I had an agreement with Nolieti that should it prove necessary, the woman could be taken and put to the question… without reference to the King.

Q: Ah, I see.

W: This plan was ready to be put into effect while we travelled from Haspide to here. But now we are here, and Nolieti is dead. I would ask you to be willing and ready to put a similar plan into effect. If your fellow Ralinge is as efficient as you say then he ought to have no difficulty extracting the truth from the woman.

Q: Certainly, to date, I can think of no woman who has been able to resist his advances in that respect.

W: Well then, will you let some part of the Palace Guard arrange for her apprehension, or at least allow it to take place without their interference?

Q:… I see. And what would be my interest in doing so?

W: Your interest? Why, the safety of the King, sir!

Q: Which is of course my first concern, as it is so clearly and creditably yours, dear Duke. Yet without some obviously deleterious action by the woman, it might rather look as though one was acting on no more than your own dislike of her, however well informed.

W: My likes and dislikes are predicated entirely on what is good for the royal house and I would hope that my service over the past many years, indeed decades, has proved that. You care less than nothing for the woman. Are you saying you would object?

Q: You have to see this from my stand-point, dear Walen. While you are all here the responsibility for your safety is formally mine. On this occasion, only a few days after the arrival of the Court at Yvenir, one of its officers was killed unlawfully and his murderer escaped the questioning and punishment that should rightfully have been his. That displeased me greatly, sir, and it was only because the matter was concluded almost as soon as it began, and appeared to be entirely internal to the royal court that I felt no more insulted. Even so, I think Polchiek does not realise how close he came to being brought down a rung or two. And I might add that my Guard Commander still worries that something is being hidden, that the apprentice’s death was somehow arranged by somebody who might have benefited from his silence. But in any event, if, after such a murder and suicide, a favourite of the King were to disappear, then it would mean that I would have no choice but to discipline Polchiek with the utmost severity. My honour could be preserved by nothing less, and arguably would still suffer. I would need the most decidedly persuasive proof that the woman meant the King some harm before I could possibly countenance any such action.

W: Hmm. I fancy the only proof you would accept would be the King’s corpse, and that alone might prove satisfactory to you.

Q: Duke Walen, I would hope that your wit might devise a way to discover the woman’s fraudulent nature long before that could possibly occur.

W: Indeed. And I have just such a commission in hand.

Q: There, you see? And what is your plan?

W: Close to fruition, I hope.

Q: You will not tell me?

W: It is unfortunate that it seems neither of us can indulge the other, Quettil.

Q: Yes, isn’t it?

W: I have no more to say, I think.

Q: Very well. Oh, Duke?

W: Sir?

Q: I take it I can rely on the woman not still somehow disappearing while the court rests at Yvenir, can I? If she did, I might have to think most carefully about whether to reveal to the King what you have revealed to me.

W: You gave me your word.

Q: Why, that I did, dear Walen. But I’m sure you would agree that my first loyalty is to the King, not to you. If I judged that the King was being deceived for no persuasive reason, it would be my duty to inform him.

W: I am sorry I have troubled you, sir. It would appear that we have both wasted our time this morning.

Q: Good day, Walen.

This too I found later, not in the Doctor’s journal but in some other papers (and have edited it slightly to present a more continuous narrative). The common participant of these two passages is Walen, but — especially given all that happened later — I simply do not know what to make of it. I record. I do not judge. I do not even offer speculation.