The Laundry
Ursula laughed out loud to herself as she hung out yet another set of sheets in the drying room above the hospital ward in the castle. She was working just as hard now if not harder than she had in the tower. And yet the work felt so much easier. It was warm, first of all, because no one skimped on firewood in the castle, and the walls were insulated with tapestries in almost every room. But more importantly, Ursula cared about what she was doing here, and why. In the tower she had been spinning skein after skein of wool for a woman who didn’t like her and was making money off her labor that she would never see more than a few pennies of. Here, she was scrubbing clean, drying, and lavender-scenting sheets that would help patients relax and heal. She was paid, and she was praised by Mathilde, who was no blood relative to her but treated her better than any relative but her father ever had.
It was funny to Ursula how little she thought about her mother. She felt guilty about it sometimes. But just because you were born to someone didn’t mean they liked you, or you liked them. It had ever been that way with Marta. Ursula had wondered sometimes if she were adopted. But she clearly had her mother’s hair and temperament, and her father’s looks, so that fantasy didn’t last longer than a laundry soap bubble. But her memories of her mother were getting just as hard to keep alive. How long had it been since Marta had remarried and abandoned her in Kiefersheim? Ursula struggled to remember. She struggled even a bit to frame her mother’s face in her mind’s eye. Even her time at Elisabeth’s was starting to feel very far off. The hospital work was so real, and so absorbing, that it was getting hard to remember anything before it.
She thought about the patients as she rung out another sheet. They had fewer now, as the war wounded were recovering and leaving the hospital. That was a good thing. Mathilde was a genius with medicaments and basic surgeries. She had this incredible medical manual in Arabic, brought back by the graf’s father from the Crusades, authored by a sage Mathilde called Ibn Sinna. She had translated it with the help of a servant years ago who had spent some years as a prisoner of war in Istanbul. The wisdom of the infidel doctors was nothing short of astonishing compared to current practice in Europe. Mathilde had applied it to cleaning the hospital and its instruments, to distilling tonics and compounding medications that fended off fever and corruption, speeded healing, and calmed the spirit. When they had a few spare moments, Ursula had Mathilde read her pages from the book, explain the diagrams. She had started helping Mathilde compound some of the simpler herbal remedies and hoped to work her way up to the distillations.
Ursula hung her last sheet, dried her hands on her apron, and trotted downstairs to see what Mathilde needed done before they knocked off for dinner and let the night watchman take over rounds. But when she reached the ward floor, she saw Mathilde standing by the fire talking to a tall man dressed in riding gear–maybe one of the couriers who brought her medical supplies from Salzburg. Ursula flushed as she drew closer and recognized the graf. She stopped herself from touching her hair, which she knew to be a bit wild, as they turned her direction. She hadn’t seen Leopold since she had ducked out on him at the von Neubeuerns’ ball.
“There you are,” Mathilde said as she came within earshot. “The graf would like to greet the patients before they settle in for the night. Could you take him round, dear? These old bones need a hot cup of wine and a sit-down.”
“Of course,” Ursula said. “Can I see you up to your room?” she asked hopefully. But the matron waved her off.
“I’m not an invalid, just tired at the end of a long day, like anybody else. You two young people can get along without me.” And she turned her cheek for the graf to kiss before patting Ursula’s shoulder and heading up the stairs.
The graf and Ursula just stood and sized each other up for a moment. “There’s the door,” Leopold said. “Sure you don’t want to make a run for it?”
“Based on the rumors I heard from Regensburg, you might beat me to it,” Ursula shot back. Leopold grinned.
“Touché, von Koppl. Now, can I impose upon you to give me a tour of my own hospital?” Ursula curtsied.
“It would be my pleasure, your Grace.”
The Rookery 