The last readers were leaving the schoolroom when Jon came in from the rain. One of them held his book beneath his coat; another followed him towards the barracks, still disputing a word. Light showed beneath the infirmary door.
Inside, Lorren had drawn the bench close to the hearth. A quarryman sat with his boot off and his breeches cut above the calf, gripping the edge of the seat while Lorren held linen against his shin. His muddy stocking lay upon the floor. Beside the door his mate stood crushing both their caps, too broad to leave much room for anyone passing.
Jon left his sword against the wall and slipped past him. He had ridden from the Black Yard in the rain, and his wet coat clung coldly between his shoulders. Wylla took it from him and spread it over a chair well away from the clean linen. The room smelled of damp wool and the soap she had used upon the table. On the shelf above it, Lorren's jars still bore the little ties that had kept their stoppers in place all the way from Oldtown.
"Woods sent him straight here," Wylla said.
Lorren looked up. "It has slowed, my lord. I am waiting before I lift the cloth."
Jon crouched beside him. The quarryman tried to draw his foot back beneath the bench.
"Leave it where he has put it," Jon said. "What is your name?"
"Bors, my lord."
"Did the stone fall upon it?"
"No, my lord. The sledge shifted. I was getting clear."
"He had his leg out," his mate said. "Only the back of his stocking caught, and then—"
"I felt it," Bors interrupted.
His mate fell silent. Lorren asked Bors to move his toes again, then described what he had found beneath the torn stocking. He spoke to Jon without taking his eyes from the injured man.
"Is my wife coming?" Bors asked.
"I sent word to the wool hall," Wylla told him. "She knows where you are."
"She will think it worse than it is."
"Then she will be pleased when she sees you." Wylla put another stick upon the fire.
His naval training had taught him to keep a man alive until better help came. Lorren had spent years with patients, and had already found the position in which Bors could keep his leg still without trembling. Jon waited until he had finished his examination.
When Lorren eased the linen aside, the wound had ceased to bleed freely. Grit remained along its edge. He reached towards a jug upon the stool.
"What is in that?" Jon asked.
"Water, my lord. Wylla had it boiled."
Jon touched the outside of the jug. It had cooled while Lorren worked. At the basin he worked Wylla's soap around his nails and between his fingers. Beside Lorren's open book, thread and the knife used upon the breeches crowded the lamp.
"Wash again before you clean the wound," Jon said.
"I washed when he came in."
"Before you cut away his stocking?" Jon glanced at the mud beside the bench.
Lorren looked down at his fingers. He had wiped them upon a cloth; nothing remained upon the skin that Jon could see. Bors was watching them both.
"The stocking was filthy," Lorren said. He set the jug aside and came to the basin. "Keep your leg where it is, Bors. I shall only be a moment."
Jon took his place beside the bench. "How long have you been working with the stone gangs?"
"Since hay cutting, my lord. There is more earned at it."
"And you will need another stocking."
"My wife will tell me." Bors looked towards the door, then down at his ruined clothes. "The little one keeps stealing her shoe. He has only just found his feet, and now he wants to be shod."
Jon laughed. His own daughter had rejected an expensive toy for its box; he could still hear his wife laughing at the price. "Was it at least an old shoe?"
"Her good one. She keeps giving him the other, but he will not have it."
Lorren returned with his sleeves turned back. "This will sting, Bors. Keep looking at his lordship."
Wylla held a basin beneath the leg. Lorren poured clean water over the wound, taking his time with the dirt. Jon steadied the man's knee when he flinched. A fold of clean linen lay ready upon a separate stool. The muddy stocking went into a bucket beside the door.
The quarryman's mate reached for a cloth to wipe the bench.
"Use the one by your foot," Jon told him. "Those are for the wound."
The man dropped his hand. "Beg pardon, my lord."
Lorren glanced at the untouched linen, finished cleaning the cut and examined it by the lamp. Bors let his breath out as Lorren wound the bandage.
"Come back tomorrow," Lorren told him. "Earlier if the pain grows worse, or you feel feverish. You are to keep off the stone gang until I have seen you again."
"I could stand at the light end."
"You can scarcely stand here."
Bors looked at Jon.
"Master Lorren decides when that leg is fit for work," Jon said. "You will keep your wages while it mends."
For a moment Bors seemed more troubled by that than by the bandage. He looked at the mate still holding his cap.
"There is work I can do sitting, my lord. Woods has pegs waiting to be trimmed."
"Ask him in the morning, if Lorren lets you go. Tonight you are going home."
His mate helped him to the door. Outside, a man from Hewyn's company took his other arm. Their voices dwindled along the passage, with Bors insisting that he could manage the last stretch himself.
Lorren waited until they were out of hearing. He gathered the used cloths, leaving the clean folds upon their separate stool.
"I would have washed again if I had seen dirt upon my hands," he said. "You think wiping them was not enough?"
Jon pulled a stool to the table. "Sit down. I have been meaning to speak with you about this since Branoc cut his hand."
Wylla brought him a bowl of stew. He had forgotten supper. She placed it upon the far end of the table, away from the healer's tools, and remained to hear.
"Do you believe that so little dirt can corrupt a wound?" Lorren asked.
"Less than we can see." Jon broke a piece of bread into the stew. "Some sickness is carried by living things so small that our eyes cannot find them. They pass from a sick man in his waste, in what he coughs out, or upon hands that have touched him. There are others in dirt and spoiled matter. Some do us no harm. Some grow in a wound and make a man gravely ill."
Lorren's hand remained beside his book. He had been ready to open it; now he studied Jon instead.
"Living things. In a man who has no worms?"
"Far smaller than worms."
"Within the pus?"
"They help cause it. They need not wait for a wound to look foul before they are there."
The healer pushed the lamp nearer. In its light his two silver links shone against the throat of his robe. "A wound may fester beneath a clean dressing. I have seen that often. We take the dressing away and find it hot and swollen, though nothing foul could have touched it."
"It may have been carried in when the man was hurt. Or upon the hands that dressed it."
"Mine, then."
"Possibly." Jon let him consider that. "You can clean a wound and still lose the man. I cannot give you a way to save every one of them."
Lorren frowned at the basin. "We would look to his food, or the air of the room. If the dressing was clean, we would begin elsewhere."
"Attend to those too. But do not take clean cloth for proof that nothing harmful reached the wound."
Lorren thought about that while Jon ate. Beneath the window, rain tapped upon the sill. Somewhere outside a horse struck its stable door, followed by a groom's weary complaint.
"Can you see these creatures with a lens?" Lorren asked.
"With sufficiently good glass and enough enlargement, some of them. I do not have such an instrument here."
"Yet you are certain."
"I am."
"Did Maester Luwin teach you this?"
"No."
"Then where did you learn it?"
Jon put his spoon down. There had been a time when the answer would have needed no care at all. He could have named the place, described the room, complained about the man who had taught him. Some of those details had grown dim; the instruction remained. None of it would explain him to Lorren.
"I have had good teachers."
"Could I read what they wrote?"
"I have no book of theirs to give you. You will have to question me."
Lorren glanced at the little hand beside the bowl.
"At the Citadel I would be asked for more than my word," Lorren said.
"So would I. Keep your accounts of the patients. Write down what you do, and what follows. We will go through them together."
"You are asking me to change how I tend them before I have that answer."
"Would washing your hands again have harmed Bors?"
"No." Lorren looked towards the bucket by the door. "But if your explanation is right, that rag could carry his sickness to another man."
"It could. So could the hand that wrings it out. That is why I want clean cloth kept apart, and hands washed between patients."
"Boiling the water kills them?"
"Many of them. It does not excuse leaving blood or dirt upon a tool. Those must be cleaned off first. And a pot over a fire cannot make every instrument fit for every operation."
Lorren nodded slowly. "I have seen a man scrub a blade, heat it and wipe it upon his apron. He was particular about the blade. He would not have let me use it uncleaned."
Jon waited. The healer did not name the man who had taught him.
Wylla took away the empty bowl. "And I have watched a woman rinse a sick child's cloths beside the water she meant to cook with. She thought the water was clean because she could see through it."
"Boil what she means to drink," Jon said. "Keep the washing water away from it."
"The infirmary linen can be washed apart. But I cannot have the kitchen kettle missing whenever Lorren needs water."
"Ask Abel for another. And tell Woods I want a cupboard here, with doors that close."
Wylla looked at the shelf. "Those jars can go higher. I need the dry place for the linen."
Lorren moved his book to let her measure the space with her hands. When she had gone, he opened it at a page crowded with additions. The first question concerned bleeding a patient whose wound was swollen. Jon answered that one readily; the next brought him to a halt.
The healer had fetched a jar of dried northern root. He described how it was prepared, then waited for Jon to tell him whether he should continue using it.
"You must teach me that," Jon said. "I have never used it."
"But you know what causes the wound to fester."
"I know something of it. I do not know every remedy on your shelf." He turned the jar to read its label. "Tell me what it does, and what you have seen when you give it."
Lorren drew his stool nearer. For a while Jon listened. When he could not answer a question, he said so, and they put it aside to ask Luwin. The healer's book lay between them now, its lower corner weighted with the jar.
Later Lorren returned to his patients with flux. Jon wanted clean drinking water, waste kept clear of the well, and close watch on what the sick could swallow and retain. He had seen men withhold drink until the stools ceased. Patients must not dry out while the illness ran through them.
"How many can you watch at once?" Jon asked.
"I cannot watch them all." Lorren rubbed his eyes. "Bors's mate did not know what to do when he reached the door. If I had been in the barracks, he would have stood there waiting."
"Then we shall teach them something to do. Hewyn can send you steady men."
"I can show them. Keeping them useful when they are frightened is another matter."
Jon knew that too. He had heard instruction given calmly in a room like this and struggled to recall it when someone was bleeding in front of him. "We can practise that. I will bring Henly after dinner tomorrow."
Lorren marked his place but did not close the book. "There is more of this than one lesson, my lord."
"Then we shall have more than one."
* * *
By the following afternoon the rain had cleared. Through the infirmary's open window came the thud of practice shafts striking wicker. Lorren had moved the bench against the wall to clear the floor. He was putting away the broom when Jon arrived with Henly, two poles and a roll of strong canvas.
Two spearmen waited by the hearth. The broader had scarcely room to straighten beneath the beam and watched Henly lay out the canvas with growing interest.
"Are we carrying that, my lord?"
"One another, once we know it will bear you."
His companion looked him over. "I should have come before dinner."
Henly passed the poles through the sewn sides. Jon had asked Hewyn for steady men who listened when frightened. Every century would need them, and Lorren would have to teach them. Today they could make their mistakes without an injured friend at their feet.
He put one man on the floor and had the other kneel beside him. A folded cloth stood for the dressing. Jon described the wound they were to imagine, then watched the soldier press the cloth into place.
The man lifted it almost at once to look beneath.
"Keep it there," Jon said. He crouched beside him and put his own hand over the soldier's, showing the firmness he wanted. "Let Lorren judge when you can move it. You do not help by lifting it every moment."
They changed places. The broader man gave a theatrical groan until Lorren told him he would have breath enough to complain after the lesson. Jon moved back to the bench and let the healer take them through the next attempt.
Lorren began with an explanation of where to put the dressing. Halfway through, the kneeling soldier glanced towards Jon.
"Ask him," Jon said.
"Do I fetch you first, Master Lorren, or stay here?"
"If you are alone—" Lorren stopped and looked at the room as though seeing the man upon its floor afresh. "Call for help. Tell whoever comes to fetch me. You keep your hand there."
Jon tested the canvas seams while they practised again. Henly had left the poles long enough for a good grip at either end. Jon lay upon the carrier and folded his hands over his belt.
The men lifted one end ahead of the other. His heels slid towards the foot of the canvas.
"Down," he said.
They lowered him at once. The broader soldier had been watching Lorren; his companion had taken his word from Henly, who was pointing to a twist in the canvas.
"Choose who calls the lift," Jon told them. "The other waits for him. Look at one another."
The next attempt brought him up level. Jon had them set him down and let the broader spearman take his place. Lorren took one end while the other soldier carried the foot. Henly went ahead to hold the door and guide them through the narrow passage. A pole end scraped the post; the man upon the canvas seized its edges.
"Where does it hurt?" Lorren asked when they set him down.
"It does not. I thought you would tip me out."
Lorren looked back at the doorway. "You could not see where we were going."
"I could see the ceiling. That was enough."
They tried it again, with the healer telling him when they meant to turn. Henly marked the scraped handle so he could smooth it later. By the time they came back, Jon had laid out the padded wooden support beside the bench.
Lorren examined the poles afterwards. "We can keep these with the tents."
"And a set here," Jon said. "A cart will not reach every place a man falls."
Henly lay down for the last trial. Lorren showed the soldiers how to steady his uninjured leg upon the padded support without wrenching it. When they carried him, the healer walked beside them and asked what moved and what rubbed. After the soldiers had left, Henly knelt to examine the edge that had pressed beneath his heel. Jon sent him for Woods's plane.
"I shall need helpers of my own," Lorren said. "For the room as well as the field."
"Hewyn will send you men in turns, beginning tomorrow. Teach them what you need done here as well as in the field. When we next take boys for the household, you shall examine those who fail at weapons but show sense and steadiness."
"For carrying?" Lorren asked.
"The soldiers will do that. Your youngest lads can begin with the linen, water and dressings, under your eye."
"And their letters?"
"Alongside the work. I want them able to read what you leave for a patient, and tell you plainly what has changed."
Lorren drew the bench back beneath the window. "I have had grown men tell me a patient was better because he had stopped complaining. Sometimes he was too weak to speak."
"Then that is something you must teach them to notice." Jon stood and stretched his cramped knees. "Choose boys who will come and ask you when they are unsure."
Lorren straightened. "And you will continue the lessons?"
"Bring your questions after supper twice a week. If I am at Winterfell, have them ready when I return."
At the door Jon found Munin perched upon the stone ledge. The crow had worked a straw loose from the thatch of the shelter opposite and seemed unwilling to surrender it. Jon held out his wrist. Munin stepped onto the leather, straw and all, while Lorren watched from within.
"She will not be coming into this room," Jon said.
Lorren laughed and put the cover over his clean linen. He bowed as Jon went out.
Four days later Jon met Bors upon the path to the timber shelter. Woods had given him seated work, smoothing pegs. He carried his little boy upon one arm and his dinner in the other hand. The child held a shoe by its heel.
"I see he kept it," Jon said.
"His mother wants it home before supper, my lord." Bors shifted the boy higher. Small teeth had left marks upon the leather strap.
When Jon went to the infirmary that evening, Lorren had already examined the leg. The cut was closing without redness, though he meant to keep Bors off the quarry. His notes lay open beside the lamp.
"One man," he said. "I have had wounds mend cleanly before."
"Of course."
"I should like to follow the others as closely." Lorren turned the page to the next patient's name. "And I have questions about the men with flux."
Jon drew up his stool. From the yard came the changing guard's footsteps, and above them Munin called once from the roof. Wylla brought a second lamp before the room grew dark.