The chapel infirmary had been a sacristy once, and it still had the sacristy’s smell, a dry cold mixture of old incense and mildew from the stone. Sella had hung bunches of dried horehound from the hooks where the vestments used to go, and the place now smelled of the horehound too, and of vinegar, and of the lye she used to scrub her instruments, and under all of it the faint sweet rot of a wound that had been dressed too quickly.
Tessaly Mott sat on the bench under the high window with her cloak off and her sleeves rolled to the elbow. She had not been asked to roll them. She had done it herself, briskly, the way she did everything, so that the bonesetter would not have the pleasure of ordering her to.
“Breathe,” said Sella.
Mott breathed. The breath caught halfway down, and became a cough, and the cough went on for some time.
Sella listened to it with her head on one side and her hands folded in her apron. She had a cup of warm water ready on the stool beside her, and a clean cloth, and her black book open on the table at the proper page, with the lock-string hanging loose from its spine. She left the book alone for now. She looked at the factor.
