Reynevan lay in the convent infirmary until Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost. Exactly nine days. As a matter of fact, he only totalled up those days afterwards, since the returning waves of fever meant he remembered little of his stay or the treatment. He remembered Jutta of Apolda spending a great deal of time at his bedside, and the stout infirmary nurse, called—most aptly—Sister Misericordia. He remembered being treated by the abbess: a tall, serious nun with bright, blue-grey eyes. He remembered the remedies she gave him, acutely painful and invariably causing fever and delirium. It was thanks to those remedies, however, that he still had his arm and could make tolerable use of it. He heard the nuns talking during the treatments—and they discussed his clavicle, shoulder joint, subclavian artery, axillary nerve, lymph nodes and fasciae. He heard enough to know that the abbess’s medical knowledge had saved him from numerous complications. Not to mention the medicaments she had and knew how to apply. Some of them were magical, some of which Reynevan knew, either by their smell or by the reactions they caused. She used both dodecatheon—much stronger than the one they had obtained in Oława—and peristereon, a medicine which was very rare, very expensive and very effective against inflammation. The abbess used a medicine called garwa, the secret of which had apparently come all the way from the druids in distant Ireland, on his wound, which had to be re-opened several times. Reynevan also recognised by its typical poppy-like scent wundkraut, a magical herb of the Valkyries which the priests of Wotan had employed to treat the wounded following the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The scent of dried henbane leaves betrayed hierobotane, and the scent of poplar bark leukis, two powerful anti-gangrene medicines. The powder called lycopodium bellonarium smelled of clubmoss.

And by the time they started using it, Reynevan could stand up unaided. The fingers of his left hand were no longer numb and he could hold various objects in them. Owing to which he was able to help the nuns treating Samson. Who—though conscious—was still unable to stand up.

Jutta never left Reynevan’s side. Her eyes shone with tears and love.