Read Online The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Susann Cokal
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different-smelling spice inside.
“Take solace,” says Nicolas. His light blue-green eyes are wide and kind. “Health to your soul.”
Christian likes Lord Nicolas very much. The Bullens are a clever family; they have curried favor and married well, though Nicolas is the last of them. His father was a minor officer in Christian’s father’s household, his grandfather little more than a craftsman who had something to do with building the palace but who managed to wed a baroness. Christian considers having Nicolas (who is not yet married) leave the Queen’s household and take a position in his own. He could use a man like this, one who is quietly reliable.
Thinking, the King lifts the pomander to his face. He sniffs each of the eight spices in turn, then wipes his nose and eyes with a handkerchief also provided by Lord Nicolas. A ruby ring winks on Nicolas’s forefinger and fills all Christian’s vision.
Christian feels dizzy, dazed, light-headed. The figures in the room waver.
Lord Nicolas takes back the soiled handkerchief and tucks it into his sleeve.
“Very well,” Christian says to the doctors, around a bubble of nausea. He waves limply, overcome by a falling sensation caused, he thinks, by grief. “Very well, you may begin on Sophia.” His darling child, about to be sliced open as even a husband never would have done.
Head swimming, he looks up and there is Lord Nicolas again, nodding encouragement, lips parted and showing handsome white teeth inside.
The dissection takes place in a room near the nursery, a room with a good window, a high table, and a plentiful supply of beakers and basins, plus candles for places the window doesn’t light.
Candenzius has been trusted with a key; he turns it in the lock. He will be the main operator. The most modern of the physicians, a student of the revolutionary Paracelsus rather than the ancient Galen, he made his reputation in Dresden by curing a baron’s gout with a daring dose of caustic antimony.
Any substance can be either cure or poison,
he is fond of quoting.
It is only a matter of determining the dose.
There’s no question of curing Princess Sophia, unless it is to be in the manner of leather, preserving her long enough for the funeral. The cadaver has changed yet again since Candenzius last saw it. The skin is mottled yellow and blue where it is not marked with the dried crusts of Sophia’s ulcerous wounds. That skin is peeling away in thick flakes. Her eyes, not yet sewn shut, stare cloudily toward Heaven, and her blue hands sit clenched in knots by her ribs, where her arms contracted in her final throes. Excepting that detail, she has been arranged quite prettily on the table by her former nursemaids and by Countess Elinor Parfis, Mistress of the Nursery. Sunlight caresses Sophia lovingly. The fine linen shift in which she died is spread in a swoop, its delicate embroideries stiff with blood and other fluids.
It falls to Doctor Candenzius to lift that skirt and pass judgment — first, on the state of what lies beneath it. The other two — hunched old Venslov and big-eared young Dé (whose youth makes him no less a believer in old Galen; he has yet to come down on one side or the other) — stand with basins and styluses at the ready, poised to collect viscera or take notes as needed.
What Candenzius sees under Sophia’s skirt must interest him a great deal, for he spends some minutes staring at it, gathering an initial impression. Then, holding the shift in his left hand, he uses his right to nudge her legs farther apart. He asks for a candle and a sponge.
The other physicians don’t dare gaze on the princess in this way. Venslov lights the candle and holds it at Sophia’s feet, but he doesn’t look. Dé averts his eyes, moistens a cloth in vinegar, and passes it to Candenzius, who seems satisfied, although this is not precisely what he asked for. He scrubs at the shadows on the Princess’s thighs and then orders Venslov (who was chief
“Take solace,” says Nicolas. His light blue-green eyes are wide and kind. “Health to your soul.”
Christian likes Lord Nicolas very much. The Bullens are a clever family; they have curried favor and married well, though Nicolas is the last of them. His father was a minor officer in Christian’s father’s household, his grandfather little more than a craftsman who had something to do with building the palace but who managed to wed a baroness. Christian considers having Nicolas (who is not yet married) leave the Queen’s household and take a position in his own. He could use a man like this, one who is quietly reliable.
Thinking, the King lifts the pomander to his face. He sniffs each of the eight spices in turn, then wipes his nose and eyes with a handkerchief also provided by Lord Nicolas. A ruby ring winks on Nicolas’s forefinger and fills all Christian’s vision.
Christian feels dizzy, dazed, light-headed. The figures in the room waver.
Lord Nicolas takes back the soiled handkerchief and tucks it into his sleeve.
“Very well,” Christian says to the doctors, around a bubble of nausea. He waves limply, overcome by a falling sensation caused, he thinks, by grief. “Very well, you may begin on Sophia.” His darling child, about to be sliced open as even a husband never would have done.
Head swimming, he looks up and there is Lord Nicolas again, nodding encouragement, lips parted and showing handsome white teeth inside.
The dissection takes place in a room near the nursery, a room with a good window, a high table, and a plentiful supply of beakers and basins, plus candles for places the window doesn’t light.
Candenzius has been trusted with a key; he turns it in the lock. He will be the main operator. The most modern of the physicians, a student of the revolutionary Paracelsus rather than the ancient Galen, he made his reputation in Dresden by curing a baron’s gout with a daring dose of caustic antimony.
Any substance can be either cure or poison,
he is fond of quoting.
It is only a matter of determining the dose.
There’s no question of curing Princess Sophia, unless it is to be in the manner of leather, preserving her long enough for the funeral. The cadaver has changed yet again since Candenzius last saw it. The skin is mottled yellow and blue where it is not marked with the dried crusts of Sophia’s ulcerous wounds. That skin is peeling away in thick flakes. Her eyes, not yet sewn shut, stare cloudily toward Heaven, and her blue hands sit clenched in knots by her ribs, where her arms contracted in her final throes. Excepting that detail, she has been arranged quite prettily on the table by her former nursemaids and by Countess Elinor Parfis, Mistress of the Nursery. Sunlight caresses Sophia lovingly. The fine linen shift in which she died is spread in a swoop, its delicate embroideries stiff with blood and other fluids.
It falls to Doctor Candenzius to lift that skirt and pass judgment — first, on the state of what lies beneath it. The other two — hunched old Venslov and big-eared young Dé (whose youth makes him no less a believer in old Galen; he has yet to come down on one side or the other) — stand with basins and styluses at the ready, poised to collect viscera or take notes as needed.
What Candenzius sees under Sophia’s skirt must interest him a great deal, for he spends some minutes staring at it, gathering an initial impression. Then, holding the shift in his left hand, he uses his right to nudge her legs farther apart. He asks for a candle and a sponge.
The other physicians don’t dare gaze on the princess in this way. Venslov lights the candle and holds it at Sophia’s feet, but he doesn’t look. Dé averts his eyes, moistens a cloth in vinegar, and passes it to Candenzius, who seems satisfied, although this is not precisely what he asked for. He scrubs at the shadows on the Princess’s thighs and then orders Venslov (who was chief
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