Chapter 22: what do we actually know?

It had been a long night.

We were tired, physically fatigued from the battles we fought last night and mentally fatigued from last night’s revelations. We had come back to border creek in order to recuperate after the loss of Frank, but we had been forced to defend the town against a pack of werewolves instead. We were tired.

The tiredness and mental fatigue bled into our moods for the rest of our down time, and it seemed to bleed into the mood of the village too. From my brief three month stay in the village, I remembered it being a lot noisier and more active. But the fatigue seemed to have dampened the village’s vibrancy. We spent the time quietly going about our various tasks, each of us preferring to spend times inside our own heads. I spent my time helping Bess with the cooking, which she reluctantly allowed me to do, the kitchen was her domain and no men were allowed, but I managed to convince her to let me cut the vegetables and stir the potage. I also helped Mark and Luke around the farm doing the various repairs and maintenance that needed doing, like repairing the broken wheel spoke from our carriage. I debated whether I should add suspension to the carriage, adding a rudimentary leaf spring suspension would be possible. Ultimately I decided against the idea as the steel required to make the suspension would be too wasteful (it required more than 4 swords worth of steel. and it had to be steel as iron didn’t spring back, which is kind of important in a spring).

I also spent a lot of time monitoring Mathew’s condition, he seemed to be healing up ok and there didn’t seem to be any signs of an infection. I had also started to wean Mathew off the modern painkillers I had been giving him. Mathew was awake by this point and he was not happy when the pain started to increase. I explained this away by suggesting that his body was building up a tolerance to the willow bark. By this point most of the village knew about Mathew’s injury and one of them spoke up about the normal drug given to sedate someone when willow bark brought no relief. It was a concoction of hemlock and henbane.

“I was told that ‘it will cause a dreamless sleep for 3 nights’ by one of my relatives.” Mathew’s wife said to me

“After which he will never wake up!” I snapped back, I took a deep breath and calmed myself down. I reminded myself that Harriet was simply trying to help. “Look Harriet, I know you and Henrietta (Ian’s wife, and Harriet’s identical twin) are just trying to help but trust me on this, just keep giving the him willow bark to chew and make sure that he wound is kept clean, he will be fine. He is over the worst of it. As for hemlock and henbane; they are both lethal poisons that are more likely to kill him than relieve the pain.”

Hemlock and henbane were incredibly dangerous poisons and people knew this. Despite knowing this they still used it as a sedative. I don’t even know why. Probably for the same reason trepanning (drilling holes in the head) was used to relieve headaches in various different cultures to treat headaches. In some extremely rare cases a headache could be caused by an increased intracranial pressure, basically too much fluid in the brain, and the too much fluid starts to crush the brain. In those rare cases trepanning allows the excess fluids to drain out and this stops the brain from being crushed. Some old shaman/shyster probably tried it as a desperate measure and it worked, so they started using it to treat all headaches. And it probably worked, in that ‘I wouldn’t notice my original headache if someone was DRILLING into my skull’ way.

It was the fifth night of our “leave” when we finally recovered from our collective malaise and decided to sit down and have a squad meeting.

We met at the only real meeting place where this sort of discussion could take place; the pub. It was late and Ian had graciously closed the doors a little early to let us have our meeting. In exchange we would have to clean up the pub before leaving. Smelling the room, he got the better deal. We may have cost the notorious miser a couple of coppers but we saved him from having to wipe down the tables and chairs, which at this point in the night were covered in a foul mix of dried ale, mead and sweat. The tables and floor were tacky and the whole room smelt like 30 rowdy farmers had been dancing inside; because they had.

“We should clean up first.” Isiah said. His tone made it clear this was not a suggestion.

“Fine” replied mark, Josiah and I just nodded and got on with the job.

We spent the next 30 minutes cleaning the pub in silence. I fetched some water and began wiping down the tables, Mark and Isiah began sweeping the floor, and Josiah followed behind them and was mopping the floor. By the time we were done the pub was relatively clean and tidy, well at least it wasn’t sticky. I had added a little soap and lavender to the water so the smell was also mostly gone.

When we were done we sat down around a table to have our talk. Isiah pulled down some flagons and got us each some ale, except for me he just gave me an empty small cup, I noticed he got one for himself as well. I took out my waterskin full of whisky and poured some into our cups. It was the Compass Box blend’s Phenomenology, a crazy blend of dissonance that somehow managed to work together to produce something exceptional.

Mark looked at the two of us accusatorily; Isiah hastily got up and got two more cups. I poured a couple of fingers worth in the cups and handed them to Mark and Josiah. Mark looked at the small amount (relative to the flagons of ale) and decided to sniff the cup; Josiah on the other hand took a look at the cup and decided to swallow the whole thing in one gulp. He then proceeded to cough and splutter it all out again. Then he spent the next minute gasping. Finally he recovered, grabbed the cup and with a massive grin on his face he said “more please!”

“Pffft” we all burst out laughing. The silent and sombre mood that had hung around the room seemed to disappear.

“What is this?” Mark asked suspiciously.

“It tastes like fire!” Josiah replied cheerfully his hand still outstretched demanding more.

I deftly switched the waterskin full of the really nice Phenomenology of which I only had one case, with a waterskin full of Tennessee Jack and poured another double into Josiah’s cup. “Sip it slowly” I said to him as he brought the cup to his face.

“This is what happens when you try to turn ale into a tincture. Alexander of Aphrodisias came up with the process of purifying water by distilling it. I applied the same process to ale and it resulted in an undrinkable horrifying thing. It looked clearer than the cleanest spring water but it burned in the throat, so I called the thing firewater. I stored it in a barrel and forgot about it for years. Then one day I returned back to the thing hoping to mix it with herbs to make something to treat a cough. It had turned back into the colour of ale. Out of curiosity I tasted some and I liked the taste. It didn’t help with the cough though.” I invented this story taking credit for inventing whisky a thousand years before its invention; although this is probably close to how it was discovered ... or the perfume industry.

Mark took a tentative sip at the same time as Josiah took his second sip. They went through the time honoured face making that happens when everyone sips their first hard alcohol: oh-that’s-a-new-flavour; oh-that’s-bitter; oh-that-burns; oh-that-was-horrible-and-I-am-never-doing-that-again; oh-it-feels-warm-in-my-stomach; oh-that-feels-nice. Let’s do it again!

Isiah got us back on track by clearing his throat “we need to clear the air between us”

“You all have been hiding things from me and planning things behind my back” Mark said

I tried to look a little bit apologetic; Josiah just rubbed his head innocently, this was all still too new for him. Isiah took a different approach.

“Yes.” He said with more than a hint of defiance in his voice. “We had to hide our secrets. Our mere existence is a crime; by law you should be trying to kill us. By the letter of the law we are unnatural monsters that should be hunted down and killed. The king has outlawed the existence of magic and all magical beings. So we hid the part of ourselves that would get us killed.”