“Would you like to leave?” I asked politely. “I’m sure Mother Hildegarde could summon a carriage for you.” I glanced over one shoulder to the vacant darkness of the hallway. “I’m afraid the Comtesse and Madame Lambert have left already.”
Mary gulped audibly, but tightened an already firm jaw in determination.
“N-no,” she said. “If you stay, I’ll stay.”
I definitely intended staying; curiosity and the urge to worm my way into the operations of L’Hôpital des Anges were much too strong to weigh against any pity I might feel for Mary’s sensibilities.
Sister Angelique had gone some distance before noticing that we had stopped. Returning, she stood patiently waiting, a small smile on her plump face, as though expecting that we, too, would turn and run. I bent over a pallet at the edge of the floor. A very thin woman lay listlessly under a single blanket, her eyes drifting dully over us without interest. It wasn’t the woman who had attracted my attention, so much as the oddly shaped glass vessel standing on the floor alongside her pallet.
The vessel was brimming with a yellow fluid – urine, undoubtedly. I was mildly surprised; without chemical tests, or even litmus paper, what conceivable use could a urine sample be? Thinking over the various things one tested urine for, though, I had an idea.
I picked up the vessel carefully, ignoring Sister Angelique’s exclamation of alarmed protest. I sniffed carefully. Sure enough; half-obscured by sour ammoniac fumes, the fluid smelled sickly sweet – rather like soured honey. I hesitated, but there was only one way to make sure. With a moue of distaste, I gingerly dipped the tip of one finger into the liquid and touched it delicately to my tongue.
Mary, watching bug-eyed at my side, choked slightly, but Sister Angelique was watching with sudden interest. I placed a hand on the woman’s forehead; it was cool – no fever to account for the wasting.
“Are you thirsty, Madame?” I asked the patient. I knew the answer before she spoke, seeing the empty carafe near her head.
“Always, Madame,” she replied. “And always hungry, as well. Yet no flesh gathers on my bones, no matter how much I eat.” She raised a stick-thin arm, displaying a bony wrist, then let it fall as though the effort had exhausted her.
I patted the skinny hand gently, and murmured something in farewell, my exhilaration at having made a correct diagnosis substantially quenched by the knowledge that there was no possible cure for diabetes mellitus in this day; the woman before me was doomed.
In subdued spirits, I rose to follow Sister Angelique, who slowed her bustling steps to walk next to me.
“Could you tell from what she suffers, Madame?” the nun asked curiously. “Only from the urine?”
“Not only from that,” I answered. “But yes, I know. She has-” Drat. What would they have called it now? “She has… um, sugar sickness. She gets no nourishment from the food she eats, and has a tremendous thirst. Consequently, she produces large quantities of urine.”
Sister Angelique was nodding, a look of intense curiosity stamped on her pudgy features.
“And can you tell whether she will recover, Madame?”
“No, she won’t,” I said bluntly. “She’s far gone already; she may not last out the month.”
“Ah.” The fair brows lifted, and the look of curiosity was replaced by one of respect. “That’s what Monsieur Parnelle said.”
“And who’s he, when he’s at home?” I asked flippantly.
The plump nun frowned in bewilderment. “Well, at his own establishment, I believe he is a maker of trusses, and a jeweler. When he comes here, though, he acts usually as a urinoscopist.”
I felt my own brows rising. “A urinoscopist?” I said unbelievingly. “There actually are such things?”
“Oui, Madame. And he said just what you said, about the poor thin lady. I have never seen a woman who knew about the science of urinoscopy,” Sister Angelique said, staring at me in frank fascination.
“Well, there are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Sister,” I said graciously. She nodded seriously, making me feel rather ashamed of my facetiousness.
“That is true, Madame. Will you have a look at the gentleman in the end bed? He has a complaint of the liver, we believe.”
We continued, from one bed to another, making the complete circuit of the enormous hall. We saw examples of diseases I had seen only in textbooks, and every kind of traumatic injury, from head wounds inflicted in drunken brawls to a carter whose chest had been crushed by a rolling wine barrel.
I paused by some beds, asking questions of those patients who seemed able to answer. I could hear Mary breathing through her mouth behind my shoulder, but didn’t check to see whether she was in fact holding her nose.
At the conclusion of the tour, Sister Angelique turned to me with an ironic smile.
“Well, Madame? Do you still desire to serve the Lord by helping his unfortunates?”
I was already rolling up the sleeves of my gown.
“Bring me a basin of hot water, Sister,” I said, “and some soap.”
“How was it, Sassenach?” Jamie asked.
“Horrible!” I answered, beaming broadly.
He raised one eyebrow, smiling down at me as I lay sprawled on the chaise.
“Oh, enjoyed yourself, did ye?”
“Oh, Jamie, it was so nice to be useful again! I mopped floors and I fed people gruel, and when Sister Angelique wasn’t looking, I managed to change a couple of filthy dressings and lance an abscess.”
“Oh, good,” he said. “Did ye remember to eat, in the midst of all this frivolity?”
“Er, no, as a matter of fact, I didn’t,” I said guiltily. “On the other hand, I forgot to be sick, too.” As though reminded of delinquency, the walls of my stomach took a sudden lurch inward. I pressed a fist under my breastbone. “Perhaps I should have a bite.”
“Perhaps ye should,” he agreed, a little grimly, reaching for the bell.
He watched as I obediently downed meat pie and cheese, describing L’Hôpital des Anges and its inmates in enthusiastic detail between bites as I ate.
“It’s very crowded in some of the wards – two or three to a bed, which is awful, but – don’t you want some of this?” I broke off to ask. “It’s very good.”
He eyed the piece of pastry I was holding out to him.
“If ye think ye can keep from telling me about gangrenous toenails long enough for a bite to make it from my gullet to my stomach, then yes.”
Belatedly, I noticed the slight pallor on his cheeks, and the faint pinching of his nostrils. I poured a cup of wine and handed it to him before picking up my own plate again.
“And how was your day, my dear?” I asked demurely.
L’Hôpital des Anges became a refuge for me. The blunt and unsophisticated directness of nuns and patients was a wonderful refreshment from the continual chattering intrigues of the Court ladies and gentlemen. I was also positive that without the relief of allowing my facial muscles to relax into their normal expressions at the Hôpital, my face would quickly have frozen into an expression of permanent simpering vapidity.
Seeing that I appeared to know what I was doing, and required nothing of them beyond a few bandages and linens, the nuns quickly accepted my presence. And after an initial shock at my accent and title, so did the patients. Social prejudice is a strong force, but no match for simple competence when skill is in urgent demand and short supply.
Mother Hildegarde, busy as she was, took somewhat more time to make her own assessment of me. She never spoke to me at first, beyond a simple “Bonjour, Madame,” in passing, but I often felt the weight of those small, shrewd eyes boring into my back as I stooped over the bed of an elderly man with shingles, or smeared aloe ointment on the blisters of a child burned in one of the frequent house fires that beset the poorer quarters of the city.