by Treadwell » Sat Apr 30, 2016 3:10 am
However, Aloisius went to the fair in his wheelchair with his servant. All was well until Catch showed up again. The butler was pushed clear, and Treadwell was thrown from his chair--a mighty feat!--only to be rescued thanks to outside intervention.
Morning, 30 April 216 AR.
The Treadwell Estate, Myrkentown.
"You are going nowhere, Aloisius--not to hire guardsmen, not to work at your shop, not to nap in the meetinghouse. Nowhere!"
This from the beloved, yet currently very stern, Alice, who uses one hand to shoo young Harvell from the bedroom and the other hand to wag a quite disapproving finger at the child's father, who lies fully exposed on his bed, completely disrobed from head to feet so that the red-bearded personal physician, Doctor Jacobson, can attend his well-paying, well-fed patient. Never mind that said patient is dozing due to being quite sedated by various mixtures given him a couple of hours past.
"Nowhere at all, Holy Tubbius, at least not in this body" he echoes.
"Aloisius, Bill. Call him 'Tubbius' all you like at church or--or--or if you're praying to him, but as you work on him, here--"
"Madam. Aloisius, then, the Rememdium staff did very well with the burns, and I have continued their work while you were away bathing, my lady Alice. His knees are my worry, now."
"His knees?"
"This makes twice his entire weight has been upended onto the ground in a day's time. Gregory told me everything a little while ago about how he was thrown free from his chair by Catch last night--"
"Catch!"
"Catch, and he landed face down in the grass. Your husband, here, and my lord, told me also of how he fell on the porch of the Broken Dagger but two nights ago, landing on his knees."
Plump-fingered, heavy-fleshed hand lightly strokes both knees in question. In the bed, Aloisius Treadwell, despite his slumbers, shudders. Doctor Jacobson's voice lowers.
"Aloisius will be lucky if he walks again in the next month, my lady."
"But you, and all the rest of you Tubbians, claim he is a god. He has said it himself. Why can he not just," Alice's hands flap about in a pseudo-magical spell casting, "wish his legs normal again?"
"Tubbius is a god of growth, my lady, and life, but Tubbius focuses more on plants and foods and fields. People? People are different. He is fed by our own feasting and growing, yes, and there is one known, rather extreme instance of his raising a man from the dead, and--"
"The dead? That would be Regis Drivel, his cousin, a short, fat fellow of middle years. He is a tailor along with his wife, Lilah, a seamstress."
"A very similar man in body and temperament. I should think that is part of the reason He could do such."
"So what is the problem now? What is stopping him from getting up from bed, hale and hearty and ready to run about?"
"It simply is not that easily accomplished, my lady Alice. Aloisius has been known to heal small injuries to himself before, yes, but those have been small things--a cut to the hand, or a bit of upset stomach, or quicker recovery when he was already on the mend from harm."
A shake of the doctor's head.
"He is Tubbius. He can do what He wishes. He can do it all better if He has faithful around Him. . . and most of those were sent away some time ago to convene elsewhere. Besides, it is quite difficult, I fancy, to call upon magic when you are constantly in pain."
Another shake of that voluminous red beard and the jowls behind it.
"I am certain my lord can hasten to good health. . . in time. But for now? Aloisius Treadwell, your husband, is a corpulent, fragile, old man of seventy years. He needs to rest now if he is to do anything to help himself at all in the future. Now, help me put his gown back on him and cover him again. We need to be elsewhere so he can sleep."
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium