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thanks to you. And you?"
    He looked at her, she at him, and both broke into laughter.
    The lackey, at whose instigation she'd awakened her man, stared at the two as if they had lost their senses. And when they made no attempt to get up immediately, he cleared his throat self-importantly to get their attention. "Seamus, the lady sent me for you," he announced, his disapproval of these two big people sounding in every syllable.
    "Aye, be right with you," said Seamus, reaching for his boots. While he put them back on, Nelly, with a flurry of white petticoats, rose awkwardly to her own feet. Reaching into the pocket suspended from a cord around her waist, she brought forth a small flask of wine
    and one well-squashed napkin containing a flattened slab of bread.
    "Now, look what you've done," she began, but Seamus husked her.
    "Nay, Nelry, that's just the way I like it," he protested, manfully chewing off a big chunk.
    Nelly wasn't mollified; her expression softened, however, as she saw how hard he worked at his chewing while trying to smile at her. "Aye, eat hearty. Drink, too. You been weakened by your long sleep judging from that love-tap you just fetched me."
    With that, she gave him a cuff that sent him staggering on his way, for Nelly was as big for a woman as Seamus was for a man. Passing through the kitchen, he paused now and then to wash down the bread with a hearty swig of wine. The lackey, following close on his heels, twice ran into him. Seamus, in disgust, motioned him to lead the way up the stairs to the courtyard ... only to call him back while he took a piss on the manure pile outside the mew doors. His audience, irritated at first by the delay, was impressed in spite of himself by the strength and duration of the man's relievings.
    Finished, his codpiece tied and his points secured, Seamus followed his guide past the chapel and into the hall, behind the screen's passage, up the stair and into the upper chamber of the cross-wing and from there into the solarium. The room, the largest on the second story, was well lit and well peopled. Still a bit muddled, Seamus thought himself come to Bedlam, St. Mary's Hospital for the insane in London.
    In the big four-poster bed in the middle of the room lay Seaforth, ignored by his men as they argued among themselves. The countess was deep in debate with Father Cariolinus, the aged family chaplain, and contending between themselves were two total strangers, both ill kept and shabby. The tonsured one Seamus surmised to be a priest-physician.
    "God pray," he said silently, "let the man be a little skilled and not simply a horse-leech." Long before, Seamus had come to the decision that it would be better to die than be mangled at the hands of. most so-called physicians.
    The grubby priest was arguing animatedly with an equally dirty, little man of indeterminate age, his short robe stained, splotched, and grime-encrusted, his boots badly patched and run down at the heels, his stockings sagging about his scrawny calves. This was undoubtedly the priest's barber-assistant. That he had been admitted to this chamber boded no good for the earl.
    For the past four hundred years, ever since a papal decree that no priest willingly shed blood, the gorier aspects of medical care had been relegated to a lay brother whose only real expertise with the razor might lie in shaving his priest's tonsure. Such a man bled the patient, drew teeth, and, as Seamus recalled queasily, sawed off limbs.
    Off to one side was still a third stranger. His young, apple-cheeked face looked more used to laughter than serious discussion, and his appreciation of the good life showed in the way his fur-trimmed, red woolen physician gown bellied out in front. Belying the overall impression of softness and baby-fat were the firm, muscular hands he clasped before him. Except for his robes, he didn't look like any physician Seamus had seen before. Priest and barber argued over the juxtaposition of Jupiter with Gemini,