Lora of Two Worlds

Lohenheim to Augustburg was two hundred leagues. The southern road, the Southridge Way, was the gentler of the two, with twenty-seven posting houses along its length. Only the stretch from Lohenheim to the mid-way town was truly flat. A troubadour’s old ballad had it:

From the ridge to the eastern town, the hills fall low and the road runs level. Sixty leagues of open country, thirteen stages from gate to gate.

Even a royal courier with a wax-sealed express, changing horses and riders at every post, needed the better part of a day and a half to reach Augustburg.

When Lora iron pote, she figured the courier was just about entering the city.

”My lady, the Count sent word. Your lying-in is lifted. But he also says you still can’t remember your way around, so if you go out, take two extra people.”

Lucy opened the windows and rolled up the bed-curtains, quick and deft. She had a special errand today: seeing Aprille off. Lora had already had her pack a pile of Aprille’s clothes, and she’d added a velvet gown to the lot.

Lucy knew that Aprille was going home to work the fields, a gown that fine would be almost useless. But even as a coverlet on a cold night, it would keep her warm and remind her of the young lady’s kindness.

The old young lady had been good too, more of a child, really. This new young lady spoke and acted with more care. She didn’t just go easy on the staff, she treated them like friends, naturally looking out for them, thinking of them.

In one short week, the way she’d treated Norton, Shawn, and even Aprille, who’d wronged her, the whole tower chamber had seen it. They hoped this life would last.

”Chance, come here!”

Lora held a meat-filled bread roll, crouching on the step, calling the dog that was playing tug-of-war with Norton over a stick.

The dog’s first master was present, so the second mistress normally ranked below. But when the second mistress had a meat roll, that changed everything.

Chance abandoned Norton without a backward glance and bounded toward Lora, toward the roll, rather, tail going like a pendulum.

Norton followed, gesturing excitedly. Margaret laughed and translated:

”Norton says Chance is amazing, it caught a rat in the courtyard last night!”

”Good dog! Extra scraps tonight. A rat, huh, don’t we’ve a cat in the kitchen?”

”There’s a tabby in the kitchens. She was yowling fit to wake the dead this spring. They say she’s big around the belly, just don’t know when she’ll drop. If my lady likes, once the kittens come, Norton can go pick one out.”

Norton watched their lips carefully. Even without signs, if they spoke slowly, he could piece together two words in three.

”A cat’s pregnant for about two months, she’ll have them next month. But a mother cat hides her kittens for the first few weeks. We won’t see them running around till Anne.”

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These small puzzles were no trouble for Lora. She’d even helped deliver kittens, swinging the newborn by the scruff to clear the fluid from its lungs, nearly launching the half-palm-sized thing across the room.

Then her gaze settled on Norton’s ears. Right, if his deafness came from a childhood fever, it was almost certainly nerve damage. Nerve damage was irreversible. Mostly untreatable. That was the modern medical view.

To treat it, you’d need a cochlear implant, and that was something this age would never build.

But she’d seen her grandfather cure a deaf man of twenty-three. That man had lost his hearing as a child, after a febrile convulsion.

In the old humoral theory Grandpa Summers had taught her, a child’s humors were delicate. A fever could drain the vital moisture, so it couldn’t rise to the head and feed the clear senses. The ear was the seat of clarity, the senses blocked, the ear lost its function.

So said the old humoral theory. And it wasn’t necessarily wrong.

Needle therapy for deafness went back to Galen’s canon. Every era had its own records. The most complete method, for different types of deafness, was in a text that wouldn’t be written for another four hundred years.

So when Mother had discovered Norton was deaf, the household physician and the barber-surgeons in the city had been helpless.

”Norton, I’d like to test your ears. See if you can still hear anything. May I?”

She had no testing instruments, not even a tuning fork. She’d have to do it the primitive way.

Norton blinked, startled. He hesitated, then nodded.

”Turn around. Close your eyes. Listen carefully. When you hear a sound on one side, point to it.”

He nodded again. But something had shifted in his eyes, the young lady wasn’t joking. In her gaze he caught a thread of pleading, of hope.

They set up. Everyone nearby held their breath. Lora cupped her palms into a bowl shape and clapped hard beside Norton’s left ear. The sound was sharp, and the cupped palms directed the air pressure.

Norton pointed, hesitantly, to the left. But then he gestured rapidly, explaining that he’d felt a puff of air.

”Don’t mind the air. Just listen, is there a sound inside your ear? One more time. This time, tell me where I stop.”

She clapped again, both sides, left and right, alternating. Then she clapped hard on the right and stopped.

Norton opened his eyes and turned back. Slowly, he signed:

Both sides. I heard it. The last one, was here.

Everyone looked at the ear he was pointing to and broke into smiles. Chance, who hadn’t dared wag its tail during the test, caught the mood and launched itself at Norton.

Lora smiled:

”If your ears do have some residual hearing, I have a needle method that might help. But, I can’t promise it will work. Are you willing?”

Nothing could be worse than now, right? Norton looked at Lora. Then, with deliberate weight, he added one more sign: I will.

”Margaret, go find me a full set of silver needles from the apothecary’s. Aiden, take this drawing to Lord Carl. Have him get a blacksmith to make a tuning fork to these specs. Norton, come here. I’ll walk you through the plan.”

The apothecary sold silver needles off the shelf. In this age, they were thicker than modern steel needles. Lora didn’t actually need them, but they made good cover. She couldn’t pull needles out of thin air every time.

”The treatment has three phases. Four groups of pressure points, rotated. The first phase is ten consecutive days of treatment. If we see results in those ten days, the rest is meaningful. At the same time, you’ll practice speaking with me, like a child learning to talk for the first time.”

Lora opened the needle roll and smiled at Norton:

”Let’s try first. See if your ears and your tongue respond to the needle.”

While Margaret went to close the door, Lora turned her back to Norton. She slipped the Rose Needle from her finger and gave it a practiced pull, the ring stretched into a long, fine probe.

She ran through the four groups in her mind, sixteen points in all, each group four. Grandpa Summers had set them to a rhyming mnemonic. Every point name, every function, floated up clear.

She tapped the Rose Needle on the back of her hand. It shrank to a hair-fine needle, the points she needed, at the nape and before the ear, took a needle of barely half an inch.

Without the Rose Needle, Lora wouldn’t have dared. But she’d already run the experiment on Dorothy Dunbar, that gave her some confidence.

Norton, you’re my second patient. We’re going to make this work.