Seeds of Time

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Meg was reading in her room when Hal entered and insisted they leave for Westminster castle and visit his father, advising her to pack as he didn’t intend to stay here any longer.

“You’re moving back?” she asked.

“My father is gravely sick, so ‘tis time I threw off this loose behaviour.”

“Is that why you’ve been drinking less?” she asked.

“In part.”

“And here I thought you were taking my advice,” she teased. “Surely I won’t be welcome at the castle though?”

He hesitated as he considered her words. “Perhaps not,” he admitted.

“You don’t need to look so guilty, Hal. As soon as I’ve diagnosed your father, I’ll be returning home anyway.”

Hal nodded thoughtfully. “Then let us away, I shall send a servant for my belongings.”

Westminster was very different from the place she remembered, and a reminder that this was not where she belonged. Sometimes while in Hal’s company, she almost felt at home.

She followed meekly behind him, playing the part of a page boy.

“Warwick, this boy is apprentice to an acclaimed physician from the north,” Hal explained to one of Father’s advisers. “He comes to examine my father, see if he or his master can discern the malady which consumes him.”

“Why does the physician himself not come?”

“He is too old to travel far, thus the boy goes in his stead.”

Warwick nodded his acceptance of the lie.

“How doth the king?” Hal asked.

“He ails terribly. I fear this malady will be the end of him.”

“If I may?” Meg stepped forward and looked at Warwick. “What are his symptoms?”

“Symptoms?”

“How does the illness present?”

“Do thou not wish to examine the king?”

“Eventually, but first I want to ask what the signs are.”

“His skin suffers disfigurement and his body on occasion.”

After a lot of prompting, she understood that the king often seemed unsteady, prone to bouts of paralysis, was unsteady on his feet on occasion, and then he would take between minutes and hours to recover. There seemed no rhyme or reason to the onset of attacks, although they were becoming more frequent.

“How is his memory?”

“It fails a little,” John admitted. “More as time goes on.”

She then went into see the king and examine him. He had recently had an attack and was tired and not very responsive, but she couldn’t find any causes for his symptoms.

She looked for the most common causes of dizziness, such as an ear infection, questioned his diet in case it was low blood sugar, checked his pulse in case his heartbeat was uneven but she found nothing. It could still be a heart condition, she could not diagnose a mild heart attack without modern machinery, but there was little point focusing on what she couldn’t prove.

When she had exhausted all the options she could think of, she nodded to Hal, who led her from the room.

“So?” he asked.