First Lessons (A Medieval Tale #1)

Chapter 2 part 2

She wasn't interested in the storerooms behind the locked door; she wanted to find the library. Aliya had always valued a good education, and she would need to know how to write and count according to local custom in order to avoid being taken advantage of. She had things to accomplish, so she was relieved when she finally found what she sought.

Her relief didn't last long. She reached for a book and gasped in horror. She reached for a second book, and then a third. They were all manuscripts written on parchment. She opened as many books as she could; first on one shelf, then the next, as far up as she could reach. A stash of unused parchment got her hopes up, but they fell again when she found a goose feather dipped in ink. One more item hit her to-do list: find a blacksmith and get some pens made.

The best thing she discovered in the library was that she could read the local language. She was as slow as a first-grader, but she could read. That was important.

The next book she laid her hands on had an intriguing title: "A Detailed Description of the Lands, People and Customs of the World, Made by the Humble Kalerius of Ativerna." That sounds useful. She hoped the book wasn't a work of fiction, like Gulliver's Travels. And she hoped Lilian's brain was capable of reading a whole book.

Aliya could tell that her host didn't like to study. Lilian preferred embroidering with gold thread. Taking a deep breath, Aliya set the geography book aside. She would read it later. She also slipped a few pieces of parchment into the book, but not too many, so that no one would notice.

Further digging on the same shelf failed to turn up anything else useful, but Aliya decided she had enough for now. The book would teach her things she couldn't find out from her nanny's stories. She would make this new brain of hers work harder than it ever had before. After spending so much time in close study of Lilian Earton's lazy, half-empty mind, Aliya decided that she couldn't really blame the woman's husband for staying away.

There was no sign that the woman had ever read anything—books, newspapers, or even letters. She knew some prayers by heart, but that was it. I wonder how her husband stays awake when she talks to him.

She stopped. The unfairness of the situation was obvious. Lilian never had a chance to get even a basic education. Family and custom kept her at home working on her embroidery, so it was no surprise if people found her boring. From her nanny's conversation, Aliya knew that the Earl felt that way; he stayed well away from his ancestral home and his wife. Aliya felt her hands clench into fists. She didn't care if that Earl husband of hers held all the titles in the kingdom; he'd need a dentist after she got in a room with him. And then she'd divorce him.

But for the time being, she had work to do.

The stove in Aliya's room was always fired up, keeping the room hot as a greenhouse. She decided that pieces of coal would make better writing tools than feathers that always needed sharpening. Note to self: invent pencil.

♦

Aliya lived like that for two weeks. The book she had found turned out to be a treasure chest of information. Good old Kalerius gave a thorough run-down of all the countries in her new world and described the people who lived in them. Some of it was probably lies, but she was grateful to at least have the geography under her belt.

It became clear that her fears were justified; this world was stuck in the Middle Ages. They hadn't even invented gunpowder. Aliya knew that gunpowder was made of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate. She also knew how to prepare nitroglycerine, but she decided to keep that information to herself. A little less civilization would mean a much healthier planet; that's a fact. In her previous life, Aliya had read somewhere that technology should never be allowed to outrun morality. Otherwise, the clock will strike Armageddon, and both God and the Devil will turn tail and run.

Reading further in her new geography book, Aliya realized that glass was so expensive that no one had ever tried making mirrors out of it. They didn't even have tools for cutting glass properly. She smiled to herself. Not all progress led to war and destruction, and not all inventions could be used for murder. She would have to be careful what she shared with this world. She couldn't do everything for them, but she did have medicine on her side. They didn't have surgeons in her new world, and without her help, it might be another five hundred (or more) years before they learned how to operate on the human body.

She read on. Wars were fought the old-fashioned way, with bows and arrows and catapults. Soldiers were wounded by the cartload, and most of them died, even if their wounds could have been treated easily on Earth. That was sad, but it meant that a good doctor would always be popular. Aliya didn't plan to stick with the Earl of Earton long, so it was nice to know that she could earn money treating patients.

Industry was non-existent, and most people were subsistence farmers. She liked that because it meant that there were no factories or pollution. When people traveled by sea, they used sailboats. When they traveled by land, they rode horses. They had wagons and carriages, judging by the drawings in her book, but Aliya thought they looked like coffins on wheels. Shock absorbers? Not invented yet. There wasn't much she could do about that. Medical school was great for learning how to stitch people up, but Aliya wasn't even sure what shock absorbers should look like.

Backwardness wasn't always a good thing. There were no factories, but there were also no schools. Most people were illiterate. Aliya decided to work on opening schools for the children of Earton—or at least preschools that would teach them to read and count. Her schools would run in the winter since the farm families would need their children to help in the fields in the summer. Those same farm families, she read, had to spend two out of every ten days working in their lord's fields.

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