The Embalmer's Apprentice by Lyra

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Chapter 64

Azruhâr has to do some housekeeping.

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Chapter 64

Never would I have thought that I'd be so happy to return to the lonely morgue out in the vinyards. When the road neared its end and the laurel hedge came into sight, I felt as though a weight fell off my shoulders – and that was even before I rode inside and saw that the house hadn't burned down, nor had the apprentices rebelled, in my absence. In fact, the scene that greeted me was downright idyllic. Galîr and Nêrad were raking a freshly dug up vegetable patch. In the yard, Zâdosh and Umâr were hanging up laundered clothing and linens, while Lîdosh was sitting in a cushioned spot on the porch, wrapped in her blanket and mending a torn tunic. Since she had come here, her health had improved – she could stay awake over half of the day now, and had lost some of that deathly pallour – but she was still unable to use her legs; indeed, the healer we'd asked to look after her had expressed doubts that she would ever again be able to walk on her own, because something in her spine had been damaged during the long time in which the child had been stuck.

I would have expected Yorzim to rage against this diagnosis, but he rather gave the impression of a man who had known that this was coming but hadn't wanted to pronounce it himself. As a surgeon, I suppose he must have known – surely spines were not exclusively a woman's matter – but I couldn't blame him for clinging to hope rather than telling his own daughter that she would never heal entirely. Lîdosh and her mother had taken that announcement with admirable composure. While I was grimly regretting that I had promised the midwife I would protect her, their most dire concern (or the most dire concern they mentioned to me, at any rate) had been where and how Lîdosh would be able to live. I had assured them that I was willing to host Lîdosh and her mother, for as long as Lîdosh would take to recover (or, to be honest, beyond). For once, Yorzim had not objected, which probably showed how serious the situation was.

Umâr had promptly asked what duties they should expect to perform in my household. Although I would have been perfectly satisfied to have them here as guests for the time being, Sidi and Yorzim had been uncommonly insistant that it would be safer if they had some sort of position within the household. I didn't quite see what safety had to do with it, but I remembered how worried the Umbari were about debts, and thus I had suggested that Ûmar could help Zâdosh and Talmar with the daily chores. That had apparently been acceptable. Even Lîdosh had immediately asked for work, now that she had the strength for it, and though I did not like it, I had found something for her to do. Ultimately, I understood her concerns, because I had been taught to always prove my usefulness, too. I just wished I could have made them see that it wasn't necessary with me.

But that was beyond me, just as I couldn't make them understand that there was no need for them to interrupt their work and bow low when I rode into the yard, nor for Khûraz to come running to take the reins, nor for Nerad to help me unhorse, which I would have been perfectly capable of doing all by myself. I knew why they were doing it - if I had been in their place, and some other man had been my master, I would have done the same - but I did not like that they thought I was the kind of man that needed to be kept in a good mood by, as Lord Eärendur would have said, demonstrations of power and subservience. Especially today.

Nerad, unperturbed by the indignity of steadying my foot as I dismounted, smiled up at me. "Welcome home, Master. I hope your business went well?"
"Unfortunately not," I said honestly, and felt guilty as soon as I saw his face fall.
"I am sorry to hear it," Nerad said, bowing again.
I said, "It's not your fault." And because that wasn't enough, I added, "I am glad to be home." Truly, this was the first time that I thought of the morgue – in spite of everything – as home. "I hope all is well?"
"I believe so, Master," Nerad said, giving a more cautious – almost pleading - smile.
I made myself smile in return, for the sake of reassurance, and said, "Good."
I hope it sounded as though I meant it.

All was well – or as well as it could be, anyway. The apprentices had cleaned the corpses with the necessary diligence, as far as I could see, even the unsavourable parts, except for some bodies which they had laid aside because they had been alarmed by signs of advanced decomposition. Sidi was visibly anxious when he showed me, explaining that they had been worried about spoiling the tools or basins or the other bodies if they treated the spoiled ones, and so they had waited for me to return and tell them what to do, and if they had been wrong, would I please forgive them.
"There's nothing to forgive," I said, "I specifically told you to ask me if you had questions or doubts, and since I wasn't there to ask, you had to wait until I was back. That's just sensible. You did exactly the right thing."

The relief was tangible – I hadn't even realised how tense the apprentices had been until their shoulders sunk in relaxation, until pinched lips were released and fists unclenched. Good grief, one should have thought that I was the type who beat people bloody over minor mistakes. At this point, I felt they really should know better.
Then again, I had beaten two people over misunderstandings. So I suppose I couldn't blame them when they remained anxious. That was a mistake I couldn't take back.

"Anyway," I said, trying to push that unpleasant thought aside, "you were right to hesitate. They probably will spoil the rest of our bodies, treated or otherwise, and then we can do none of them justice. We'll have to give them over to the grave-diggers, I'm afraid." I wouldn't normally have dared to admit defeat, but the last day had made me feel somewhat less guilty about disappointing my betters.

So that's what we did that afternoon – take the bodies that were spoiled beyond saving to the grave-diggers, and arranging for their swift burial. It meant that another precious afternoon was wasted on dealing with the mess Lord Herucalmo had left me with, because I did not want to send either my stablehands nor my apprentices nor even respectable Urdad into town with a cart laden with dead men of Yôzayân on their own – it was too easy to imagine how that could go wrong. So I had to accompany them to arrange matters with the grave-diggers, and then make appointments with Lord Roitaheru and Captain Gohenor to explain the situation. Perhaps that latter part wasn't strictly necessary, and I certainly didn't like the thought of explaining my failure while still smarting from yesterday's embarrassment, but neither did I want to be accused of hushing up said failure. Besides, I was hoping that Lord Roitaheru was going to pay the grave-diggers, because otherwise I had a problem.

Fortunately, he agreed to that readily, and my failure had no serious consequences. Lord Roitaheru reasoned that the soldiers would have been buried in the days before I had come here, too. At least they would be laid to rest amidst their own community, which was more than previous generations – who'd had to be buried in the field – had received.
"But perhaps you can accompany the army next time, to ensure the fallen receive the proper treatment on the spot," he suggested. "You would be well protected, of course, so you needn't worry about the fighting!"

I bit my lip, hard. "I very much hope that there will be no 'next time'!" I said. "At any rate, it would be very awkward if I had to leave the morgue and my apprentices for more than a day or so, since I have no replacement here."
Lord Roitaheru shrugged. "Well, it was just a thought. Perhaps in a couple of years, when your apprentices are somewhat more self-reliant, or when another embalmer can be sent over from the Motherland."
"Perhaps," I said cautiously. In truth, I doubted that another embalmer would be sent over. It would have been nice to have one of my colleagues here, but it was unlikely to happen.

Lord Roitaheru was satisfied with my reply, at any rate, and he gave me leave to return to my work.
But Captain Gohenor saw the need to take me aside on the way out. "Please do not take offense at my addressing this," he said. "I understand that some of my men have given you cause for grief, and you have made it clear how you feel about the campaign. But I do hope that you can set these misgivings aside for the fallen and treat them as you would any other..." he trailed off.

"Client," I suggested, and to defend myself, I said, "And I do. They are dead, and in my care, and I will not hold what happened in life against them. That's not how I do my work. In the cases we've spoken about, the damage was done before they even came into my care, when they were dragged through the heat untreated for weeks. That isn't something I can reverse somehow, and if I had kept them, they'd infect the other bodies in my care, to whom I also have a responsibility. This way, at least I can hope to preserve the others, or most of them, anyway."
"Of course, of course," Captain Gohenor said in a reconciliatory tone. "I did not mean to suggest that you would do bad work on purpose, I assure you. I trust you to be a man of honour." (He did? When had that happened?) "I just wanted to make absolutely certain. After all, I was responsible for these men. No offense was meant."
"None was taken," I replied. In truth, I hadn't even considered that offense was something I could have taken. Or that Captain Gohenor would worry about having caused offense without meaning to, if I had a right to be offended in the first place. It was something to think about – once I found the leisure to do so.

For now, there was no such leisure. The quieter days that followed gave us a chance to catch up with our work at long last, but I still had the feeling that time was slipping away from me. It would be weeks (Urdad said) until the ice could finally be delivered, and I had to hope that the temperatures in the wine cellars would be cool enough to preserve the bodies until then. In the meantime I realised that, while the ice would doubtlessly help to cool the catacombs, it would also introduce even more moisture, and we would somehow have to counteract that. It also wouldn't be a good idea to wrap the ice in straw, as you usually did to insulate it, because wet straw was likely to get mouldy. It appeared that we would have to go back to the experimental stage that I thought my colleagues and I had left behind to figure out how to keep the ice from melting too quickly, and how to dry the air.

Experiments meant that we would have to take meticulous notes again, which meant that my apprentices' writing practice, which I had let slide in the busy weeks since the spring festival, had to be prioritised again. For some ot them, that was proving a serious challenge, and not just because we were still very busy with our regular work. Elâl and Dârujan in particular were struggling even more than I had been, back when Amraphel had painstakingly made me write letters and voice their sounds – and Master Târik had made me copy old records – until at last the shape of the letters and the sound they represented had become inseparable in my mind. Bâgri and Jômar were doing about as well as could be expected (and Yorzim and Sidi had known how to write even before they had joined my household), but Elâl continued to turn the letters the wrong way around more often than not. As for Dârujan, he was making no progress at all.

Accordingly, I was more than displeased when I looked through his pitiful writing practice one day and found that, far from diligently copying the letters that gave him such trouble, he had instead used the precious paper and ink to draw – some simple doodles, but also more elaborate sketches of the morgue, and of hands, and of the faces of the people around him.

To be fair, these drawings were pretty good. I had previously thought that perhaps controlling the quill was what made writing so hard for Dârujan – I knew that it had taken me a good while to hold it properly, even after learning the shapes of the letters – but from what I saw now, Dârujan could handle a quill perfectly fine when it came to drawing. You could recognise all the faces and the individual expressions that made them familiar – Bâgri's shifting, ever-vigilant eyes, Yorzim's angry jaw, Sidi's copious laughter lines, Talmar's shy glance. My own face was there, too, although Dârujan had been less true to nature than with the others. He had taken great care to give me a fairly lordly look - sharp, clean angles; keen eyes; a firm chin; a mouth so stern that it looked almost as though chiselled into stone. Lord Roitaheru would have been very pleased, I was sure, although I doubted that Dârujan really saw me like that. Perhaps he had foreseen that his drawings would be discovered eventually, and drawn me in the most flattering light possible to appease my anger.

I was angry. Well, perhaps not angry. I was disappointed, that was it – not even about his misuse of the paper and ink, although that was frustrating after the apprentices had previously been so worried about the expenses that they suspected terrible things. But above all, it was the dishonesty that angered me. All those times I had commended him for working so hard to learn writing, which clearly caused him such trouble, and instead he had done something pleasurable – well, I assume that it had been pleasurable to him, since he had done it although he didn't have to. And of course he was allowed to do things for the pleasure of them – but not when he was supposed to work. Above all, I didn't want him to lie about it. Yes, he should have practiced writing, and yes, he shouldn't have used the resources that Lord Roitaheru's treasury was paying for, but first and foremost, he shouldn't have pretended to be exercising when he was drawing instead.

I didn't want to confront him about the matter, but there was no way around it. So that evening, towards the end of dinner, I said to him, "So, Dârujan, when were you planning to tell me about your artistic talent?"
"Artistic talent, Master?" His confusion appeared genuine.
"I found your drawings today. When were you going to tell me that you can draw so well?"
Dârujan bit his lip even as the corners of his mouth were twitching into a nervous smile. "You think I can draw well, Master?"
I felt my own lips purse in displeasure. "Of course, but that isn't the point. The point is that you were telling me that you were practicing your writing – which is very necessary – and instead, you made drawings. Not only did you neglect your duties, you also used up paper and ink – materials that you thought was getting you into debt, not long ago! – and above all, you lied to me. Did you think I wouldn't find out?"
The smile had gone, from Dârujan's face and from the faces of the others. He bowed his head and didn't reply.

I sighed. I knew that I was unlikely to get an explanation, because Dârujan would probably think of that as making excuses, which he had been discouraged from. But I didn't want to be unjust, either, so the impulse to ask for his reasons was hard to resist. Nonetheless, there seemed to be no point in drawing the whole thing out yet again, and I decided to pronounce judgement at once. I had spent much of the afternoon pondering what to do. Obviously I did not have the heart to dismiss Dârujan and send him back to prison, not over something like this. Besides, I had thought of what Lord Arandur had said about the teachings of Tar-Minyatur - that the punishment should fit the crime. That was a welcome justification for my softness. "You will spend an additional hour every day to practice your writing, until you have mastered the skill," I said. "Of course, the cost of the paper and ink you've already misused will be deducted from your pay."
Dârujan nodded, his head bowed, and answered in a very small voice, "Yes, Master."
In the silence that followed, I heard the expectation of more, and worse.

"Then that is settled," I said instead. And to show that this really was the end of it, I turned towards Galîr and said, "Can you pass me the wine, please?"
Galîr handed the jug across the table, a worried frown on his brow. I was aware that almost everyone around the table was watching anxiously as I poured myself more wine – there were spoons half-suspended above bowls, hands holding chunks of bread stopped on their way to mouths. I demonstratively raised my glass to my observers, and drank, and didn't address the matter further; and eventually, the others finished their dinner.

"He will do it again," Yorzim said later, while the table was being cleared. He didn't look at me nor clarify who he was talking about, but I was fairly certain that he had spoken to me, and I knew that he meant Dârujan, anyway.
"Well, then he'll practice and lose an hour of his own time for even longer, and have to pay for more paper," I said. "Or he will learn to draw only in his free time, and to buy his own paper for the purpose. See, the problem isn't that he likes to draw. It's that he did it when he was supposed to be working, using work materials."
"So you are not going to punish him?" The disbelief in Yorzim's voice sounded as though he felt personally horrified by the thought.
"I am punishing him. He is losing an hour of leisure every day, and a goodly part of his pay to make up for the materials he misused."

Yorzim shrugged. "That's only consequences. Not punishment."
I had to smile. "It's both. But Yorzim, I find it strange to hear you advocate for harder punishment. One should think that you of all people would understand the value of lenience."
"He will not learn not to do it again, without punishment," Yorzim insisted, almost reproachfully. And then he added, "When I did wrong, you beat me."
I winced at the reminder. I suppose Yorzim had reason to feel treated unjustly (although in all honesty, running away without permission or explanation, no matter how understandable it had turned out to be, was a worse offence than what Dârujan had done). I pointed out, "But it didn't stop you from running away again, did it. So evidently, you didn't learn a thing from punishment, either."

Another stubborn shrug. "Lîdosh was more important."
"Of course she was! And if you'd explained the situation from the start, then I wouldn't have had to beat you!"
And perhaps we could have brought Lîdosh here earlier. Or at the very least, perhaps I could have made the midwife help in time. Perhaps – but these speculations were leading nowhere, except into further feelings of guilt. Because perhaps I should have insisted harder on an explanation. Perhaps I should have figured out earlier that the other apprentices knew what was going on. Perhaps I should have pressured Darîm into revealing more about Yorzim's family. I really had done a poor job looking after the people in my care; no wonder that they didn't trust me.

I took a deep breath. "I'm trying to learn from my mistakes," I said. "And I gave you a chance to learn from your mistakes – otherwise, you wouldn't be here anymore. Now I'm giving Dârujan a chance to learn from his mistakes, too. If I see that he wastes that chance, there will be harder punishment the next time, but for now, I'm hoping that he'll be reasonable. That is my decision."
Yorzim's jaw clenched briefly, and the look in his eyes was both knowing and scornful. Then he remembered his situation, and he bowed his head, and said "As you say, Master."
But I realised that he had seen me for what I really was, and that he now knew for certain how empty my threats of punishment or imprisonment really were. And I feared what would happen when he told the others.