The Pillar (2 page)

All the buildings were constructed of gray stone. The town was so famous for its skilled stonework that it had been named Zidar,
mason
, to commemorate the profession. In the center of the square was a tall pillar made of the same stone as the buildings and the Old Bridge. It was old too, and very solid.

A dying man was tied to the pillar.

Faris couldn’t see him due to the dark and the distance from the kafana doorway. But he knew the man was there. Faris imagined he could almost smell the coppery hint of blood, the ammonia tang of urine voided in pain and terror.

He stood for a long time in front of the closed kafana door, staring into the darkness, the satchel heavy on his shoulder. He might have stood there forever, but a gust of wind blew through the alleys, bringing with it a fresh splatter of raindrops. Only a drizzle now, but another downpour might follow. Or the night could grow colder still. Walking slowly, he crossed to the center of the square.

The man was slumped head down with his forehead against the pillar, his entire weight borne by his wrists, which were bound by knotted rope to heavy iron rings set into the stone post. If any shreds of clothing remained, they weren’t visible. He was so still that at first Faris thought he had arrived too late—and the thought filled him with both relief and regret. But then he heard the man’s breathing, shallow and harsh.

Faris removed a knife from his satchel and sawed at the thick ropes attaching the man to the post. The man started to fall, but Faris was prepared for that and bore the man’s weight. He laid the knife on the cobbles and tried to ease the man down to the pavement as gently as possible, taking care to settle him on his side, where the wounds would be less terrible. Faris put away the knife and squinted into the night. As he’d expected, someone had left a handcart nearby. No doubt it had been Ibro. If anyone asked Mirsada about it, she would shrug. “He’s a boy and careless that way. I’m always yelling at him to put things back where they belong.”

Faris wheeled the cart as close to the pillar as possible. With considerable difficulty, he lifted the man, but his grip slipped a bit and the man thudded into the cart harder than intended. At impact, the man moaned harshly. That was good—he wasn’t past feeling and reacting to pain. Faris resettled him on his side, his body curled to fit the small confines of the cart.

As the rain began to fall harder, Faris removed his cloak and draped it over the man. His shirt was soaked through before he’d even left the square, but he was grateful for the nasty weather, which meant he was unlikely to pass anyone else on the way home.

The cart was heavy, difficult to push up the incline of the bridge and even more difficult to control on the downward slope. At least Faris’s house wasn’t located on one of the streets that were so steep they became stairways. His was a small cottage alone at the end of a narrow lane. He parked the cart in front of his door—Ibro would no doubt come to fetch it before dawn—and struggled again to lift the unconscious man, get him to the house without losing footing on the slick cobbles, and open the door. All while balancing the satchel over his shoulder and shaking his head in a vain attempt to get tendrils of wet hair out of his face.

The house had only one bed, a wooden platform pushed into a corner and topped with a mattress and blankets. It had once been Enis’s bed, and Faris had slept on a rug near the fireplace. Even after Enis died, Faris had hesitated for several months before moving off the floor, a reluctant acknowledgment that his master was gone for good. But he returned to his rug now and then, whenever he had a patient under his care. He knew that by the time he finished his tasks tonight, he would be so exhausted he’d be capable of sleeping on bare stone.

After setting the man on the bed—on his side, facing the wall—Faris briefly stretched his aching muscles, then crossed the room to add wood to the fire, which had nearly died out. He lit a lamp and put it on the small table at the head of the bed.

“Good God,” he swore when he finally got a good look at what lay before him. All that remained of the man’s clothing was a bloodstained scrap of cloth that had once been the waistband of his breeches. Everything else had been cut or torn away. The skin had been ripped away as well, long bloody lash marks covering his shoulders, back, buttocks, and upper legs. When Faris cut the last of the ropes away, he saw that the man’s wrists were bruised and torn too.

He had to bend over to see the front of the man’s body and was relieved to find far less damage there. Scrapes and discoloration on his chest suggested the man had been beaten before being whipped.

It was pretty much what Faris had expected. He’d seen worse, in fact. He’d seen men with bodies so broken that they would never mend. He’d seen Enis drip a strong and very toxic tea into those men’s slack mouths, a peaceful death being the best the old herbalist could do for them. Faris himself had given that same tea twice. He’d held mangled hands and listened as rattling breaths slowed and then stopped.
This
man would have died if left untreated in the cold and rain, but Faris didn’t believe he’d require the deadly tea.

What did surprise Faris, however, was the man’s age. It was difficult to tell for sure because his face was swollen and bruised, but he was fairly certain the man was somewhere near his own age—thirty or so. Most of those sent to the pillar were much younger: boys so desperate or so foolish as to break the law, or youthful slaves who rebelled against their owners’ authority.

“Even if they’re no longer desperate, some remain fools even as they age,” Faris said with a bitter chuckle.

He might have been only mildly skilled at drawing and painting, but Faris was a good healer. Even Enis had said so, shaking his head fondly at Faris’s unlikely mix of talents. Enis had spent many hours teaching Faris the uses of herbs and ointments, and Faris had an innate ability to gauge a patient’s needs. His hands were clumsy with paintbrushes but gentle and sure when it came to cleansing wounds, applying bandages, easing bodies into slightly more comfortable positions.

Now, he boiled water and prepared an astringent bath. His patient whimpered as Faris used a soft cloth to dab on the greenish fluid, but the man never quite woke up. Good. Easier that way. Then Faris slowly applied an ointment that would soothe the pain and speed healing. Some of the wounds would scar, and he’d keep a particularly close eye on the lash marks near the shoulders and limbs so that scar tissue wouldn’t build up and impede movement. “You’ll still feel a twinge now and then,” he informed the unhearing man. “When you’re tired or when you move too quickly. You’ll get used to it.”

That was a lie.

As he worked, Faris noted other details of his patient’s condition. The man was large-boned and wide-shouldered, but so thin that his ribs and hipbones stood out. His face and arms were tanned even this late in the year, his hands deeply calloused, his muscles heavy even though he was underfed. Most telling of all, though, was the raw-looking circle around his neck—the kind an iron collar would make as it chafed the skin. The collar itself was gone, removed by an owner who’d decided this chattel no longer had value.

Faris had never been a slave. He could have been. After Enis removed him from the pillar and nursed him to health, Enis could have claimed him. Anyone left on the pillar—slave or thief—had lost all claims to life and freedom. Faris had been in his late teens then, and although Enis might not have desired a slave of his own, he could have sold Faris for a good sum. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d kept him and taught him and cared for him. Faris always called him master, but in truth, Enis had treated him like a son. They had been a good fit: a man without children raising a boy without parents.

A strangled sob escaped from Faris’s throat, startling him into dropping his cloth. “Stupid!” he snarled. Enis was five years dead. And Faris was well into adulthood, with a home of his own and a skill that kept him clothed and fed.

W
HEN
F
ARIS
woke just before dawn, his belly reminded him that he’d had nothing for dinner except coffee. First he’d been too busy with his new plants—he looked ruefully at the wilted leaves on his table—and then with his new patient. By the time he’d done everything he could for the man, including tucking him under several warm blankets, Faris had been too tired to do anything but grab a blanket for himself and fall asleep in front of the dying embers.

Now he stoked the fire and set a kettle over the flames. He changed out of the previous night’s tunic, which was stained with dirt and blood, gave himself a quick rubdown with a towel, and donned clean clothes. He opened a shutter to let in enough light so he could check on his patient.

He wasn’t especially pleased with what he found. The man was still unconscious, but his breaths had a thick, harsh tone and his forehead burned with fever. He might have survived the pain and shock of the whipping, but he could still die from infection or from a sickness that settled in his lungs.

The bread and dry cheese Faris wolfed down did not satisfy his stomach, but his stomach was just going to have to wait. He swallowed a big cup of tea with honey as he prepared two different poultices: a thick one to spread over the lash marks and a thinner one for the chest. He didn’t like the smell of the thin one—it was sharp inside his nose—but he knew it was very good for easing labored breathing. He made a terrible mess of the bedding as he smeared the stuff on his patient, then wrapped him in fresh bandages and covered him with a clean blanket.

“I’m going to have to pay a fortune to my laundry woman,” Faris said. That wasn’t quite true. The woman had a granddaughter who’d been born with several deformities. Faris kept the poor girl supplied with a wash that eased her eyes and a mixture of herbs that helped her frail heart beat more steadily. The grandmother would gladly have washed a mountain of soiled cloth in return.

The handle of the stone pestle was smooth and familiar in Faris’s hand as he ground some dried leaves. The mortar and pestle had been a gift from Enis, an acknowledgment that the student had finally learned enough to be trusted to mix medicines. Faris could still clearly remember the smile on his master’s face when he’d handed the items over and the warm swell of pride in his own chest as he’d taken them. At that moment Faris had almost stopped feeling like an orphan and a thief and had almost felt like a man of worth.

Faris poured the crushed leaves into a ceramic cup, then added just enough hot water to cover them. He let it brew for several minutes, added some cool water from a jug, and strained out the leaves. It made for a very strong infusion that tasted awful. But it was one of the best remedies for fighting a fever, and it was concentrated enough to work in small doses.

The man’s eyelids fluttered and his fingers twitched when Faris spooned the medicine into his mouth. The patient swallowed automatically but didn’t wake. In fact, he soon slipped into a deeper, quieter sleep, thanks to one of the herbs in particular. Faris didn’t want him thrashing around, disturbing his bandages and probably reopening the wounds.

Faris was accustomed to keeping busy, so he cleaned up his aborted painting project. Although the wilted plants now made poor models for his illustrations, he could still test the roots’ ability to cure toothaches. He made some careful notes on when and where he’d found the plants, then cleaned the roots, cut them into pieces, and laid them in a single layer in a flat, shallow basket in the warmest part of the room. He made himself stew to eat later, and while it simmered fragrantly, he mixed up a large batch of all-purpose salve. The townspeople went through the stuff quickly, especially once the weather turned cold and blustery. He checked his inventory and noted he was running low on willow bark and mistletoe. The former was good for minor aches and pains, and the latter eased seizures for the two villagers who were prone to them. He reread what Enis had written years ago about treating burns—those injuries became more common during the winter as well—and added a few things he’d learned the previous week, when a child had been brought to him after spilling scalding water on her arm. He cleaned the dried mud from his boots and swept the parts of his floor that weren’t covered by rugs. He would have taken the rugs outside to air them, but the weather was gray and damp. He darned a hole in a thick red sock.

As he worked, he muttered to himself as he always did. And he frequently paused in his labors to check on his patient, to clean him, to renew the poultices and administer more of the strong, vile tea.

He came to know his patient’s body. The man had thick, straight hair, light brown where it wasn’t darkened by sweat, cut unevenly short as if it had been hacked with a knife. His eyes were a startlingly light gray-blue, his cheeks were broad, and his chin was square. He was, Faris realized uncomfortably, quite handsome. The man had sparse body hair, which made it easy to see not only his current wounds but also many old scars and calluses. Like most slaves, he’d led a hard life. Because he was uncircumcised, he must have been Christian—either Orthodox or Roman Catholic, there was no way to tell which. Judging by the state of his feet, his owner had not provided shoes. For no good reason, it was this final detail that made Faris so angry that he slammed a fist into the stone wall, bruising his knuckles.

“Fool,” Faris growled at himself as he awkwardly medicated his own hand. “As if injuring yourself will help. This slave was abused for years and left to die. Your anger can’t change anything.”

He didn’t see slaves often; there were very few in Zidar. But there were a few wealthy families that owned quarries or large farms not far away, and they tended to find slave labor cheaper and more versatile than horses and mules. Occasionally when members of these families came into town, they were accompanied by a slave or two, someone to tend to their needs or carry burdens. And of course he saw slaves at the pillar, where those who defied their owners were tied and stripped and lashed, then left to die.