Chapter 22: 22 - Secrets

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The rabbits didn’t like the lavender pillow oil. Where did it come from? Potential medicinal uses?

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Parrot burned the note as soon as he’d finished reading it. Lavender pillow oil? That was oddly specific. Why not a lavender oil perfume or hair oil? But pillow oil?! How did they know it was intended for the pillow? At least they had a source now. With only a matter of weeks (days?) left to wrap the investigation up before the young queen’s return, follow-up on the pillow oil was urgent.

Closing the last buttons of his servant’s uniform, Buhne left the servant’s quarters — kinda like a bunker when he stopped to think about it — full of beds sleeping dozens of male servants who all slept in shifts depending on when their crews were assigned to work. As the sun rose, so did crew seven, and Buhne was grateful that the steward hadn’t filled his position after he’d left to “tend to his ailing mother”... who was now dead. Sad. Rest in peace, mother dearest.

He met his crew at the bottom of the stairs to the hospital wing, followed them up, and began the mundane task of cleaning the treatment rooms. It was mindless work at this point. Mindless enough to leave plenty of brain space for thinking.

Buhne wanted to find an excuse to talk to the doctors. That was the singular benefit of working in this section of the palace, and it was an underutilized resource so far. He had so many questions to put to them if he could just find a way to weasel out of cleaning duty and into schmoozing duty.

The opportunity came with the arrival of their lunch break when one of the more administrative doctors, a more seasoned veteran of the hospital wing, poked his head in for a casual check-in. “Is everything in order?”

Mannus, Buhne’s crew leader, answered in the affirmative. “We are almost finished here. Is there anything you need before we move on?”

“No, thank you. Well… if you had a spare set of hands, we are restocking shelves and could use the muscle.”

“I’ll do it!” Buhne volunteered before Mannus could reply one way or the other. “I don’t mind, even if you need me through lunch.” Mannus rolled his eyes; he still didn’t care for Buhne’s intentional enthusiasm. The doctor, on the other hand, smiled with crinkly eyes and beckoned to him with long, age-atrophied fingers. Buhne followed him out feeling the pressure to not screw this up.

“What is your name?”

“Schakern Latebros,” Buhne introduced himself. “And you are…?”

“Doctor Sanus.”

“How long have you been working in the palace, Doctor Sanus?”

“Oh, quite possibly longer than you’ve been alive,” came the reply.

“You must have seen a lot of interesting cases then,” Buhne invited casually.

“Yes,” Sanus chuckled. “Some more than others.”

“I’m curious, have you delivered many babies here in the palace?”

Sanus’s good humor immediately sank into hesitant suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

“My sister’s pregnant,” Buhne immediately spun a disarming lie together. “It’s her first baby, well, second pregnancy. She lost the first pregnancy and now she is really stressed about this one, which I suppose is understandable. I said I’d ask the palace physicians some questions for her if I ever got the chance to, so I’m asking.” He laughed awkwardly, selling the bit and returning the casual tone of the conversation.

“I’d be happy to answer what questions I can,” Sanus offered pleasantly.

“That’s very gracious of you,” Buhne flattered. “Oh, where to start? Well, first, my sister is worrying herself sick over the idea that one miscarriage might mean all of her pregnancies are doomed to failure. Is that true?”

“Not necessarily, in fact, most likely not. Though, I have had a few patients that consistently struggle with their pregnancies. I’ve seen cases in which females, for some reason, are born healthy, but males are repeatedly miscarried or stillborn. And I’ve had a case or two when, no matter what we try, we can’t bring the pregnancy to term. But those are statistically rare scenarios.”

Buhne frowned, absorbing the information and trying to decide what was most important to follow up on. Someone consistently struggling with pregnancy: the young queen certainly qualified. Someone who only lost male pregnancies? His Majesty was the only son born after a streak of six sisters. Perhaps this was the case Sanus was referring to?

“Was there anything else you wanted to ask?” Sanus prompted, and Buhne realized he’d spent entirely too long in thought.

“I’m sorry. I was thinking about what you said.” Maybe it was best to simply continue with the planned line of questioning. “Um, my sister wanted me to ask you about lavender oil?”

“Let me guess, her doctors are worried about her being too stressed and prescribed it as an aromatherapy to help her sleep?” Sanus rolled his eyes, and Buhne’s mind churned harder for it.

“How did you know?”

“Oh, it’s an old wives’ remedy.”

“Does it… do anything?”

Sanus seemed to grow tired, like this was a nuisance he was weary of dealing with. “There is no evidence that lavender oil has any benefit whatsoever for expectant mothers. It won’t do any harm, mind you, and it might… soothe the young mother because she thinks it’s doing something, but lavender oil might as well be called snake oil.”

“A placebo?”

“Yes, exactly,” Sanus seemed relieved not to get any pushback on that assertion.

“Have you ever prescribed it before?”

“Not directly, no.”

“But you have indirectly?”

He was growing more agitated again, so this would most likely need to be the last question on this subject. “It is a battle I no longer fight with young mothers and their mothers and mother-in-laws. If they want to drown in the aroma of lavender oil every night, I’m not going to stop them. It’s harmless but useless.”

Buhne grinned, appreciating his position… and also detecting an opportunity. “My sister’s mother-in-law has been obsessed with her pregnancy. I realize that this will be her first grandbaby, but her interest feels… extreme maybe? Is that normal?”

Sanus laughed, a slightly wheezy echo of a once youthful joviality. “You might be surprised. I’ve had a patient recently whose mother-in-law has been acting like she’s the one that’s pregnant.”

“Women are so fussy sometimes!” Buhne egged him on as they arrived at their destination, both men pausing to finish their conversation before getting to work.

“Yes, well, the fairer sex certainly deals with a lot more than we men do. They’ve earned the right to be a little fussy.”

“How do you mean?”

“Forgive the indelicacy of saying so, but have you ever stopped to consider what it costs a woman to maintain her fertility? Most men only consider the inconvenience to themselves when their sisters or wives spend a week or more of every month cleansing their wombs with life blood and the pain that comes with it. Primordials forbid that she feels unwell or cranky during the process! And then pregnancy is its own endeavor with symptoms that can rival the worst illness man has ever contended with, and women bear it with grace and even reverence. Not to mention childbirth! Not all women survive childbirth. Consider that the next time you lay with someone. It’s a sobering thought that your moments of pleasure might sign away her life.”

Buhne, genuinely, felt his face drain a little. He was thinking about Treu. He’d left her while she was pregnant, returning only after Ruhe had been born to help with the baby while she recovered. What if he’d left only to return for her funeral? He’d barely been back at the palace a few weeks, but he was suddenly quite homesick.

“Ah, yes. The dawning of understanding,” Sanus commented on Buhne’s contemplative silence. “Perhaps you will better excuse the female sex for being a bit fussy now.”

“Your thoughts were… provocative,” Buhne conceded earnestly, and then he returned to business. “You must feel passionately about this.”

“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Any particular reason why?” Buhne pressed, sensing a bitterness that warranted investigation.

Sanus sniffed. “Suffice it to say that I have my reasons.” That was it. Sanus walked away, into the storage room where a couple of other physicians were already busy with the task of unloading products from wooden crates and onto shelves. “Mr. Latebros, there are more boxes like this just down the hall that need to be brought here. Please fetch them.”

Buhne gave a short bow and left to collect the crates in question, finding another doctor, a much younger doctor, already in negotiations with the towering stack of supplies. He put on a cheerful smile. “I’m here to help.”

“Oh! Oh, excellent. Thank you, mister…?”

“Latebros.”

“I’m Doctor Avens.”

Introductions completed, Buhne wasted little time. “I was wondering if, while I’m helping you, you might be willing to answer some questions for me?”

Doctor Avens laughed pleasantly and then heaved a crate up as Buhne did the same. “I can certainly try.”

Buhne smiled and gave the doctor the same story about his sister being anxious about her pregnancy before launching into his questions. “Do you treat many pregnant women here at the palace?”

“Not at all,” Avens shook his head. “Apart from the queen, obviously, and the odd emergency with a pregnant maid, it’s rare that we deal with obstetrics.”

“Oh,” Buhne frowned. “You don’t treat the maids here?”

“Only emergencies,” he reiterated.

“Hm. I was talking with doctor Sanus, and he seemed to know a lot about the subject.”

“He would certainly know more than I would,” Avens admitted. “Before he came to work in the palace hospital wing, he was an obstetrician. He got called in to consult on the last queen’s fertility struggles, and they offered him a full-time position after His Majesty was successfully born.”

Buhne resisted the reflex to express surprise. “I see. So he hasn’t seen many pregnant women in… thirty years?”

“Give or take,” Avens laughed again. “Sorry I’m not more help.”

“Oh, no, I appreciate your willingness,” Buhne pardoned him readily. He had things to ponder anyway.

His mind was racing, trying to recall the exact wording Sanus had used. “Recently.” Buhne was certain Sanus had said “recently”, but he couldn’t remember the exact context. He began reviewing the points of conversation: miscarriages and extreme cases, lavender oil is a placebo he no longer fights patients about, meddling mothers and mothers-in-law, the lecture on women being fussy, he has his reasons.

“Recently.” Primordials! Where had that word been used?!

Buhne kicked himself for not remembering and attempted to apply the word to the different points to see where it best fit.

Hold on. Doctor Sanus had said that he no longer fights women about using lavender oil… which made sense given that they’d found some in the young queen’s room.

No! He’d said that he no longer fought women or their mothers/mothers-in-law. That would imply “recently”. And then that comment had transitioned into the lecture about women being allowed to be fussy.

Oh, Primordials! It was right there on the fringes of his memory teasing him but just out of reach. He couldn’t remember. He sighed, giving it a rest to see if maybe the memory would float a little closer without him trying to force it.

He reoriented his thoughts and approached the gleaned information from a different angle. This all begged the question, was he hearing what he expected to hear? Shield’s hunch that the dowager queen was behind the conspiracy made sense in a way that was hard to ignore, but that didn’t mean that Doctor Sanus was referring to Ustrina Rex when he mentioned involved and pushy mothers-in-law.

That was it! Recently, Sanus had been treating a patient whose mother-in-law was acting like she was the one who was pregnant.

Ok. So the only recent patient would have to be the young queen. This comment confirmed that the dowager queen had been, well, fussy about her daughter-in-law’s pregnancies. But then, if Ustrina had experienced her own fertility struggles, perhaps her involvement in Flore’s pregnancies was an expression of empathy? At the very least, this wasn’t proof of her involvement in a conspiracy; in fact, the contrary seemed more likely knowing what he did now. There was nothing inherently suspicious about an invested mother-in-law.

If he could just prove that Ustrina had been the one to suggest the use of lavender oil, then maybe he’d have a case to further investigate the dowager queen, but even if she had pressured the palace doctors into the prescriptions, who’s to say that her motives were anything beyond genuine concern for the healthy birth of her grandchild? Who’s to say that someone else hadn’t added the abortion drug to the lavender oil later? No. There was no case here, only speculation. Undefined grumbles of frustration cluttered his internal musings.

They were down to the wire on this one, and they still had no concrete suspects beyond the councilmen whose roles in this conspiracy were limited to information gathering and reporting. It was time to risk a meeting.

***

“General, your horse is ready.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you, soldier.” Callida smiled and accepted the “reminder” without question. Maybe this meant they had finally found something? She could only hope. She was expecting Flore to return sometime in the next couple of weeks; she’d almost certainly had the baby by now, but traveling with an infant would be slow.

She allowed the soldier to escort her down the familiar paths and through the trees, the stables coming into view where a stable hand she did not recognize stood with her supposedly requested mount. Confused and suddenly on edge, she began to finger the hilt of her sword.

“Coda! Hey!” Someone darted out of the stables, and Callida instantly relaxed to see Erkunden. “I’m sorry, Coda, my fault. Nympha is still nursing an injury.”

“But… but the General is already here!” Coda protested quietly but indignantly enough to still be heard.

“I’ll take the heat for this and trade out the horses,” Stag promised his coworker and took the reins from him before turning towards Callida. “General, I apologize. We prepared the wrong horse for you. This mare has an injury.”

“I can wait,” Callida played along. Stag fixed her with an expectant look, and Callida started scrounging for the hidden intentions. “I could…” she was on the right track, “... join you? That way I can inspect the mount for myself before you saddle her — make sure you get it right this time.”

Stag’s lips twitched upwards, and he began a show of groveling. “Certainly, General. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Would you like to pick the horse yourself?”

“I would.” Unlike Erkunden, Callida’s smirk escaped as she led the way into the stables. It became evident very quickly what the goal here was. Erkunden returned Nympha to her stall without bothering to remove the bridle and saddle and instead led Callida to the far back corner of the stable, quickly making sure that they were alone before ducking into an empty stall full of hay and equipment. The rest of Squad 14 was already waiting silently behind a giant haystack in the corner. This was either really good or really bad.

“Parrot, how’s the family,” Callida immediately whispered to Buhne as she took her place in the huddle with her back against one of the walls. The wistful joy on his face told her more than words ever could, and Callida beamed back at him. “When did you get back?”

“Early February.”

She nodded, and turned to the rest of the group. “Let’s hear it.” Ablenkung provided the recap, and Callida was instantly disheartened to learn that there was nothing new in it since they’d identified the poison in the pillow oil. “So where does that leave us?”

“We’ve been pursuing Shield’s hunch,” Buhne took over. “I’ve been talking to physicians in the hospital wing, and I came out with more questions than answers.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “I’ve discovered that the dowager is invested in the young queen’s pregnancies and may have even pushed for the prescription of lavender oil — it’s apparently an old wives’ remedy for restless sleep — but her motives are unclear at best. Have any of you heard anything about the dowager’s personal struggles with pregnancy?”

While the rest of the group shook their heads, something in Callida’s memory triggered. It had been a long time since she’d thought about this, but it also wasn’t her secret to tell.

“The thing is,” Parrot was saying, “if the dowager struggled with pregnancy herself, it makes sense that she would be sympathetic to her daughter-in-law and suggest remedies and such. She is carrying her grandchildren after all. It just doesn’t make sense to me, and there could be any number of opportunists who poisoned the oil afterwards. All I’m saying is–”

“I have something… you need to hear,” Callida interrupted him as she came to a decision. “It’s a secret I swore to protect, but it’s one you need to… it’s one you need to possibly make sense of things.” She choked on the guilty knot in her throat.

“It won’t leave this circle,” Professor promised, and the rest of the squad nodded their solemn agreement.

She swallowed. “The dowager queen is not His Majesty’s mother.”

The group stood in stunned, processing silence. Callida ducked her head to her chest, still struggling against the guilt of sharing this secret. Verum had told her in confidence years ago, back when she was still a new bodyguard — still a teenager.

“That changes things,” Professor finally broke the silence.

“The councilman did say that ‘she’ wanted to replace the king with someone ‘she’ could control,” Stag added. “If the dowager isn’t… it would make sense that she feels her power has been undermined.”

“There is a lot of tension in their relationship,” Callida confirmed. “Has been since His Majesty was quite young.”

Parrot shifted uncomfortably. “Enough tension to motivate the murder of his unborn children?”

Callida frowned, looking at her toes as she pondered. “Enough tension that a power-grab scheme would make sense coming from her. Murder though? I’m not sure, but possibly. These tensions have been brewing for a long time.”

“So where do we go from here?” Shield asked. “We’ve been investigating the dowager for months already. I can’t get close enough; Professor can’t get close enough…. We’re running out of time.”

Callida sagged against the stable wall and leaned her head back. “Guys, if you can’t find your evidence by the time Her Majesty gets back….” She sighed and looked back at the demoralized faces watching her. “I’m going to assign twenty-four hour bodyguards to the queen and baby the moment they get back, but you should know, if we don’t have the answers we need by then, I plan to rattle the councilmen’s cages. Just be prepared to watch the way they panic.”

“What are you planning to do?” Spahen was scowling at her, and Callida recognized the surfacing protectiveness in his blue eyes.

“I’m not sure yet, but if the queen arrives with a baby in her arms, they’ll already be spooked. I’m going to try to provoke them into making a mistake.”

“They’ll just come after you!” Stag exclaimed as loudly as a whisper would allow, the anxiety in his posture mirrored by the rest of her team.

“Maybe,” Callida conceded tiredly.

“Beta, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

She shook her head with a faint smile attempting to be reassuring. “Nothing else has worked. I have to try.”