The King's Witch (28 page)

“You crazy fool! Where’s your helmet?”

Rouquin put a hand to his head, covered only with the mail cowl. At Richard’s grin he began to grin, too. He reached out his hand in its mail glove, and Richard clasped it.

“I’ve never fought a battle like that.”

Rouquin said, “No, that was another thing entirely.”

“We trampled them.”

“It was pretty one-sided.”

Someone yelled, nearby; they were looting the tents. Richard said, “Better stop that,” and reined around. Rouquin dismounted, to ease his horse, and went to look for something to drink.

Of course, even then they could not stop fighting. There was still Jerusalem.

JAFFA

The terrace thrust out over the beach, over the edge of the sea; Richard walked up to the railing, his gaze turned toward the west. The triumph of the battle still lay on him like a magical brightness, like the hand of God. Nothing he did could be wrong if God gave him such a victory. Moments of it rose into his mind: the sight of the army coming out of the wood, the thump of arrows on his shield, the weight of his axe in his hand, the vast rumble of the charge. He felt as if he would live forever.

Footsteps grated on the floor behind him; the wide terrace was full of men. No one would approach him until he made some sign that he was ready. He stood with his back to them, staring west, and cherished this last satisfaction, before he had to sink back into the muddy doubtful everyday, and get back to work.

After Richard took control of Jaffa, he sent Rouquin and his company to find Saladin’s army, and the Sultan himself, if he could. Rouquin patrolled the coast back toward Acre and saw no Saracen warrior; he circled back along the feet of the low hills inland toward the Jaffa road, watching the while on the heights and in the gorges.

At a spring he came suddenly on some Saracens and charged them. There were more of the Saracens than the Crusaders, but for a few moments the weight of the mailed knights told, and they fought a brief hard clash. Rouquin galloped side by side for three strides with a chestnut mare, striking at the rider. His sword bit deep, and he saw blood spray from the Saracen’s arm, but the mare pulled steadily away from him.

An arrow clanged off his shield. He drew rein, holding one hand up, and his men stopped. With a last patter of arrows the turbaned warriors ahead of them disappeared over a low rise.

“My lord—my lord—”

He turned, looking them over. Two of the knights had taken arrows and one man was on the ground, his dead horse pinning him. Rouquin sent four men to keep watch, in case the Saracens circled back, and the rest helped him drag the carcass off the downed man.

He was alive, panting, blood running down his face. “I’m—I’m—” He got to his feet and walked in a wobbly circle and fell. “All right,” he said, looking up at Rouquin standing over him.

“Let’s go home,” Rouquin said. “I’ve seen enough.”

Roger Besac said, “This man has a fracture of the skull bone.”

Rouquin snorted. “Put it in Latin.” He had known that already. He looked around the long dim room; when they told him at the gate he should take his wounded to the hospital, he had expected to find something run by the Order of Saint John. This doctor, round and pudgy, was no knight. The space around him was no monastery. Maybe he had made a mistake.

Besac had the injured knight lie on his back on a table, although the knight kept saying, “I’m all right.” Two lamps hung above the table, and the knight blinked at them but did not move. A servant brought straps and bound him to the table across the chest and the thighs.

The doctor said, “I have sent for my assistant.” He turned to the other man, who had an arrow in his thigh. “That will have to come out.”

He was a fountain of the obvious. Rouquin began to think he should have taken the men to Edythe. But then, to his surprise, Edythe came in the door, her pouch under her arm.

She and Besac greeted each other familiarly; she was the assistant. She turned to Rouquin at once and smiled.

“See our hospital?” She sounded proud.

“Yes,” he said. He saw nothing much, just a long room with heaps of straw for beds. Mercadier was watching from the door. Rouquin folded his arms over his chest. “Where did you get this idea?”

Besac said, “The Hospitallers have nothing better, my lord.” He said to her, “This man has a crack in the skull, do you agree?”

She went to the man on the table, who said to her, “I’m all right.” The bleeding had mostly stopped. She felt gently of his head.

“Yes, I agree. What will you do?”

Besac went up beside her. “He is awake, so there is no deep damage. But we must examine the crack.”

“I’m ready,” she said.

“He must keep his head still.”

Edythe opened her pouch and got out one of her collection of jars. When Rouquin moved to watch her, she said, “You must not get between his head and the light, my lord.”

He grunted at her, almost apologizing, and went around the table to the other side. She took a little black ball from one of the jars and held it to the injured man’s lips.

“Eat this.”

“I’m all right.”

“Yes, but eat it anyway.”

“What is it?” Rouquin asked. The injured man opened his mouth and she put the little black ball inside.

“Gum of the poppy,” she said. “With some henbane. It will quiet him and keep him from moving. He won’t feel the pain as much.” She glanced quickly at Besac, who had brought out his kit and was choosing a knife. “What should I do?”

“Have your pincers ready.” He was already standing at the end of the table, bending over the knight’s head. His fingers padded gently at the knight’s scalp, and then with his knife he cut a six-inch slice across it.

Rouquin said, startled, “Hunh.” The knight stiffened, his eyes widening. The doctor ignored all of this and, turning the knife, brought it sideways in another long slash across the middle of the first. A thin sheet of blood ran through the knight’s hair.

The knight blinked. “I’m all right,” he said, in a thick voice.

Edythe stood there with her pincers in her hand; the little doctor peeled back the four flaps of the knight’s scalp, hair and skin and all, exposing a patch of bone as big as Rouquin’s palm. Another trickle of blood ran down the knight’s face. The doctor said something under his breath and made the sign of the cross over the wound.

Edythe used a cloth to wipe off the blood. She bent quickly over the knight’s head; her hand with the pincers darted in and out and dropped something on the floor, in and out again. Rouquin said, “What’s that?”

“Bits of bone,” she said. She was looking at Besac. “It’s depressed, there. See the cracks.”

“I have to raise the bone,” he said. “Make sure there are no more fragments. If they fall beneath—”

“Yes,” she said. She put her face close to the skull of the knight, and with the pincers she took out more splinters. “Let me wash it.”

“Do that,” the doctor said. He had taken something that looked like a drill out of his kit.

She opened another of her endless jars and dripped liquid onto the knight’s head; he frowned slightly, but did not move. She daubed gently at the exposed skull. “It’s clean.”

She stood back. The doctor moved toward the knight, the tool in his hand.

It was a drill. Shocked, Rouquin saw him set the sharp tip against the skull just behind the crack and turn the handle, and the tip screwed into the bone. There was a little collar behind the tip, he guessed so it would not pierce too deep. He realized he was holding his breath. His gaze went to Edythe, watching calmly, her hand with the pincers raised. When the drill was well into the knight’s skull, the doctor backed it slowly out again, and peered into the hole.

“Did you hear anything break?” he said.

“No.” Edythe put her fingertip to the exposed bone; to Rouquin the crack seemed thinner. There were tiny concentric cracks around the drill hole. “The fracture meets exactly now.”

Besac sighed, relieved. “Good.” He stepped away, and she went forward, looked into the hole, and with her pincers drew out a narrow white curlicue of bone.

“I have to smooth the edge,” Besac said. He had another tool, this one much like a farrier’s rasp, but smaller. Edythe backed off, and the little doctor bent to work on the edges of the hole.

“All right,” said the knight, and yawned.

Besac stood back. “That went well.” His voice was lighter; obviously it could have been bad. “Sew that,” he said to Edythe, and put his tools back in the kit. “I will deal with this arrow.”

Rouquin drew a step nearer, his gaze on the bared skull; the white dome of bone with its bumps and tiny seams looked like a map, with the fracture for a river. He put his hand up to the top of his own head. She had a needle and thread, and she flopped the four quarters of the knight’s scalp back into place, like a woman wrapping a baby, and stitched them together. With the edge of her hand she pushed the knight’s hair down out of the way for the needle. Being one of Rouquin’s men, he was close-cropped. The ends of the stitches poked up stiff through his hair.

The other knight howled. Besac had pushed the arrow out through the far side of his thigh. Edythe paid no heed, bent over her patient.

She said, “We must keep him here. Until he heals.”

Rouquin made a sound in his chest. “I wasn’t about to take him drinking.”

She laughed, to his surprise. She called to the servants, who carried the whole table away, man and all, into the back of the hospital. Rouquin followed them and stood watching them lift the hurt man onto a heap of straw covered with canvas. The knight was smiling dimly at the ceiling. He was well enough, for now, anyway. Rouquin went back under the lights.

Besac had the other knight on a chair and was fussing over the arrow wound. That knight moaned and yowled; his eyes followed Edythe, full of hope. Rouquin thought he wanted some of the poppy. She was putting her jars away, ignoring his cries.

“My lord, the King will be glad you’re back,” she said.

“Isn’t Johanna here yet?”

“No.” She took the pouch under her arm and followed him out the door into the courtyard. “Has he sent for her? The palace is really very rude yet.”

“He sent de Sablé to bring her.”

She stopped, her mouth open, and then licked her lips and looked away. Rouquin’s horse was still hitched to the brass circle by the street, but his men had gone. He said, “I will ride you back.”

She said, “I would walk, if it please you, my lord.”

So they walked, his horse led alongside them. He liked measuring his strides to hers. He liked her beside him, their shadows in front of them on the uneven dirt of the street. He said, “What’s wrong with de Sablé?”

“He—” Her eyes shone. She was about to lie to him. Instead she said, in a thin, angry voice, “He is not supposed to expose himself to us sinful daughters of Eve. Pure and uplifted soul that he is.”

A clever diversion, but not an actual lie. He had taken off his gloves, and he reached down for her hand. “Whose idea was this hospital?”

“Besac’s and mine,” she said. “The Hospitaller place here had been torn down.” Her hand lay warm in his. In the shadow now there was this link between them. “Is it not excellent?”

It was not the hospital that interested him. He remembered the deft fingers taking up arrows of bone he could barely see. Her hand tightened around his.

“My lord Rouquin,” she said, in a brave voice. “I have to tell you something—”

Then a page was running up to them. “My lord! My lord! The King is most wrathful you have not come.”

“Well, damn the King, anyway,” Rouquin said, “two of my men were hurt.” But he turned to her. “I have to go.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

“I’ll see you later.”

“Yes, my lord,” she said, in that brave voice. He got on his horse and went to exchange some wrath with Richard.