The Man in the Moon
“I’m surprised how few patients you have now compared to when we returned from the battlefield,” Leopold said quietly to Ursula as they finished the rounds of the ward and stood by the fire watching the patients getting their soup before settling in for the night. “Is it true that none we brought home with us have died?”
Ursula nodded. “You have Mathilde to thank for that–and your surgeon Dr. Henrichs. They agreed right away that keeping everything spotless and feeding patients according to their temperaments would help the patients fight corruption and heal–rather than bleedings and other extreme treatments.” She pointed to a blonde boy near the far wall. “He has a cold temperament with an excess of phlegm, so Mathilde makes him dried ginger root tea every morning. That girl,” Ursula pointed to a back turned to them in another bed, “has a dry temperament, so we feed her bone broth and apply an ointment with clary sage and peppermint to her rashes. Mathilde believes with Ibn Sinna that God made the body to heal itself, if it has what it needs to balance its humors.”
Leopold raised an eyebrow. “So this infidel doctor believes in God?”
Ursula shrugged. “According to Mathilde. I can’t read the Arabic for myself; it just looks like beautiful designs to me. But I suppose that’s how our letters must look to Turkish readers.”
“Who taught you to read?”
“My father. And to figure, too. And we started in Latin and…” the rest stuck in her throat as she suddenly remembered going in for her lessons to find her father slumped over his desk. She sucked in a breath and put her hand on her stomach.
“Are you all right?” Leopold moved so he could see her face more clearly in the firelight. “It’s late. I’ve kept you too long. You must be hungry and tired.”
Ursula shook her head. “No, it’s not that, it’s just…Oh! Look at the moon.” In turning away from the graf, she had suddenly caught a glimpse of the globe of the rising moon filling one of the eastern windows of the ward. The silver light it cast on the floor was competing fairly with the golden light from the fire.
“It’s full tonight,” Leopold squinted at it. “And perfectly clear out. Ironically, my rooms in the keep don’t have a single good view. A good defensive move, I’m sure, but….”
“Come on, then, I have something to show you.” Ursula reached for her heavy cloak lying over the back of a chair by the fire and started toward the stairs that Mathilde had gone up a half hour before. Leopold followed her as she climbed that flight and then turned off into a cramped staircase that wound up a narrow tower. At the top was a sticky door that, after a shove, gave out onto a parapet running below the roof line of the wing that housed the hospital ward. Before Leopold could stop her, Ursula scrambled up the pitched roof to the ridge, using the iron steps the workmen used to repair tiles.
“Hey!” he called and climbed up after her, only to discover that the ridge line was wide and flat, and when he turned around, there was nothing in front of him but the moon floating over the wild black sea of eastern pine forest. He made an astonished sound in his throat and sat down with a thud.
“Told you,” Ursula gloated, her breath a glittering cloud in the icy light. She bundled herself in her cloak, pulling up the hood. “Best view in the burg.”
They just sat a few minutes in silence. Somewhere in the forest, an owl hooted. “Does it look like a rabbit or a man with a pack on his back to you?” Ursula asked. Leopold cocked his head.
“Neither. I’ve always thought it looks like a face, singing.”
“Huh.” It was Ursula’s turn to lean her head. Leopold looked at her and smiled.
“It seems like you’re enjoying working in the hospital,” he said. “Am I right?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever properly thanked you,” Ursula answered. “For bringing me here. I love Mathilde and the work here. I could do it forever.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m always so forward with you. I really was brought up better, I promise.”
“Stop,” Leopold said. “I told you already I wish more people would talk to me the way you do. Now, leaving me in the von Neubeuern women’s clutches the other night, on the other hand….”
“I’m sorry about that, too,” Ursula said. “I just…I was just so miserable there, with those people, in Sidonie’s dress. Since my father died, that’s not my place anymore, and they remind me every chance they get.” She flicked a pebble off the ridgeline. “Fine by me. I’m not interested in that life.”
“What life interests you instead?” Leopold asked.
“This one. Working with Mathilde in the hospital. Learning to read Arabic maybe so I can read Ibn Sinna. Learning medicine. Getting to talk to you like this. I know I shouldn’t say this either, but I feel like you’re the first real friend I’ve had.”
Leopold didn’t say anything, not because he didn’t want to but because he couldn’t. His throat was too tight to get words out. It was because of everything Ursula had just said–about being able to choose a life, about having friends instead of councillors and spies and enemies and allies. He was suddenly shaking with anger. He wanted to break something. He thought: I’m not living in a life, I’m living in a trap….
“Leopold? Are you all right?”
It was the first time he could remember anyone other than his parents calling him by his forename. It snapped him out of his rage as instantly as if Ursula had thrown a bucket of icy water in his face. He looked at her and found her watching him, worried, her eyes dark and face pale in the moonlight. She reached out and put a hand on his. It was cold. He lifted it to his lips and blew on it to warm it, folded it between his hands. “I can’t choose another life, Ursula,” he said. “So I just want to be good at this one. I want to be a good graf. And I’m failing. I can’t win this idiotic Hussite war for the king. I don’t even want to. I don’t care how people worship God, and I don’t certainly don’t feel like killing them because they do it a different way than I do. I can’t protect my subjects from going to war and paying absurd taxes to finance it. I can’t seem to find a woman to marry; honestly, I’m not sure I even want to. You feel like you’re doing everything wrong? I know I’m doing everything wrong. And I just got a letter from the king telling me it’s starting all over again in the spring.” He shook his head. “I can’t do it again. But I can’t not do it again. Because I’m not the only one who will suffer if I say no.”
Ursula nodded. She turned and looked at the moon again for a minute, chewing on her lower lip. Then, she clicked her tongue and said: “What if you got the king’s permission to make Kiefersheim into a royal hospital under the Order of the Dragon? My father said the Teutonic Order of knights did that–turned into a healing order after the Baltic crusades. The king needs a good hospital on the war front. You could make him one for a fraction of the cost of raising an army. And since Mathilde’s methods work, the king would lose fewer soldiers. The hospital would more than pay for itself in the end–I’m sure of it.”
Leopold felt a knot loosen slightly in his chest that had been there for months, maybe even years. He felt dizzy as blood and air suddenly rushed together to his head. Was this a way out? He wanted to believe it could be, but…”I don’t know,” he said, almost gasped it out. “I don’t know if Sigismund would agree to it.”
“Only one way to find out.” Ursula stood, pulling the graf up with her. “Write him a letter. Come on, you’re starting to shiver. I don’t want to end up having to make up a bed for you in the ward. Mathilde would kill me right on the spot, and there would go our perfect recovery record.” Leopold chuckled at that, and they climbed down off the roof, leaving the moon to sing its winter songs over the sleeping burg.
The Rookery 