1358
When had Alejandro Canches last read the language on the papyrus before him? It would not come clear to his sleepy mind. In Spain, he thought; no, France, when I was first here.
Ah, yes, he remembered, it was in England. The letter from my father, left behind when we fled.
He struggled to reach back into the memory of that time, to push aside the veil of the years, for nestled dormant beneath the bitter wisdom of manhood was the sweet eagerness of the boy he had once been, the one who had studied these letters by candlelight under the careful scrutiny of his family. He had found pleasure in the task, while other boys his age complained. Of what use is all this studying? they would say. Soon we shall all be forced to speak Spanish anyway.
If we are not killed before then, he recalled thinking at the time.
The first page was done, its symbols unlocked, the words finally revealed. He felt the pride of that small boy, and the hunger for praise that never died. He ached to the depths of his immortal soul to do more, but his mortal body seemed determined to forbid him that joy. Would he awaken later in a cold pool of his own spittle, with the letters smeared to ruin beneath his cheek? Or would the candle burn down while he snored with his chin on his chest, and spread its wax upon the leaves? He could not allow either.
He carefully turned back the papyrus pages and read to himself again what he had translated. The symbols, applied with aching precision in the purest gold, ran right to left on the page.
ABRAHAM THE JEW, PRINCE, PRIEST, LEVITE, ASTROLOGER, AND PHILOSOPHER, TO THE NATION OF THE JEWS, BY THE WRATH OF GOD DISPERSED AMONG THE GAULS, SENDETH HEALTH.
In these pages, the apothecary had claimed, there were great secrets. And it was only because he was in desperate straits, the rogue had further said, that he would consider parting with such a treasure. So the young woman who called Alejandro Canches her père had reached into the pocket of her skirt on a trip to the apothecary shop and extracted the gold coin he insisted she always carry, should they somehow be separated, and boldly exchanged the coin for the book. Alejandro had sent her out for herbs, and she had returned with leaves of a different sort. She had known what it would mean to him.
He glanced across the small dark cottage in which they made their home of the moment, and smiled at her sleeping form. “I have taught you well, then,” he said quietly.
Straw crinkled as the young woman shifted. Her soft voice drifted through the darkness, affectionate but chiding.
“Père? Are you still awake?”
“Aye, child,” he said, “your book will not let me go.”
“I am no longer a child, Père. You must call me by my name, or ‘daughter,’ if that pleases you. But not ‘child.’ And it is your book, but I begin to regret buying it for you. Now you must go to bed and give your eyes some peace.”
“My eyes do not lack peace. They have far too much peace. They are hungry for the words on these pages. And you must never regret this acquisition.”
She rose up on one elbow and rubbed the sleep from her face. “I shall if you will not heed your own warning that too much use will ruin the eyes.”
He peered through the semidarkness at the young woman who had grown up so fine and lovely under his care, so straight and strong and fair. Only the barest hints of child-flesh remained on her face and fingers, and soon, he knew, that too would melt away, along with her innocence. But the rosy blush of girlhood still lingered on her cheeks, and Alejandro wished silently that it would remain just a little longer.
She has become a woman, he admitted to himself. This notion was accompanied by a familiar twinge that he had yet to define to his own satisfaction, though he often thought “helpless joy” to be as close a description of it as he would ever find. It had lurked in his heart since the day, a decade before, when he’d suddenly found himself with this child to raise, and had grown as he discovered that despite his considerable learning, he was no better prepared than an unlettered man for the task. Although some men seemed to know just what to do and when to do it, he himself was not a man who did the work of mothering with natural grace. He thought it God’s cruel trick that the Black Death had claimed so many mothers—it was they who had labored alongside the physicians to bring comfort to their dying husbands and children, and then because of their proximity had died themselves in terrible numbers. And though he abhorred the dearth of mothers and physicians, Alejandro wished that more priests had been taken. Those who had survived were the ones who had locked themselves away for the sake of self-preservation while their brothers perished in service. He considered them a thoroughly scurrilous lot.
He had done his solitary best for the girl, without a wife, for he would not sully the memory of the woman he had loved in England by marrying for mere convenience. And Kate had never complained of her lack of mothering. She had reached the threshold of womanhood with unusual grace and now stood ready to cross it. As the motherless ward of a renegade Jew, she had, through some unfathomable miracle, become a creature worthy of awe.
The lovely creature spoke. “Please, Père, I beg you to heed your own wisdom. Go to sleep. Otherwise I shall have to do your reading for you when you are an old man.”
This brought a smile to his lips. “May God in His wisdom grant that I shall live long enough to know such a worry. And that you shall still be with me when I do.” He closed the manuscript carefully. “But you are right. I should go to sleep. Suddenly the straw seems terribly inviting.”
He moved the tome aside so it would not be splattered with wax, then placed one hand behind the candle flame and drew in a breath to blow it out.
There was a knock on the door.
Their heads turned in tandem toward the unfamiliar sound, and Kate’s voice came through the darkness in a frightened whisper. “Père? Who—?”
“Shhh, child … be silent,” he whispered back. He sat frozen in the chair, the light of the candle still flickering before him.
The knock came again, then a man’s firm, strong voice. “I beg you, I am in need of a healer … the apothecary sent me.”
Alejandro shot an alarmed glance at Kate, who sat trembling on her straw bed with the wool cover pulled up protectively around her neck. He leaned closer and said in an urgent whisper, “How does he know I am a healer?”
“He … he thinks that I am the healer!”
“What? What nonsense is this?”
“I had to tell the apothecary something, Père!” she whispered back, her voice almost desperate. “The man was inordinately curious and would not let the inquiry go! And it is not nonsense. You yourself have trained me in the healing arts. And so to satisfy him I told him that I—”
“Midwife!” the urgent plea came from beyond the door. “Please! I implore you to open up! Your help is sorely needed!”
Alejandro wanted simply to shoot a look of fatherly consternation at her, to shake a scolding finger in her face, to tell her she must never behave so foolishly again, and be done with it. But there was a stranger at the door. “Why did you not tell me this before?” he asked.
She hastened to explain. “It did not seem necessary, Père—when the apothecary asked why I wanted such herbs as you sent me for, I told him that I was learning the healing arts! That was why he showed me the book. I swear, I said nothing of you.”
He saw fright in her eyes, and understood that she was frightened of him. It was a woeful realization, one that filled him with shame. She had been trying to protect him from discovery and please him with the gift of the book. His anger melted. “All right. What’s done is done,” he said. “Now I must think how to answer.”
Kate tossed the cover aside and rose up from her pallet, shivering in her thin shift. She found her shawl in the darkness and wrapped it tightly about her shoulders. “Why do anything at all?” she whispered. “Why not just ignore him—the door is strong enough. Eventually he will give up and move on.”
Another knock came, more insistent. They huddled closer together.
“There is nowhere else for him to go, if he is being pursued.”
“Then we must open the door and turn him away!” she answered, her words barely audible.
“He may not be so easily repelled.”
“I will tell him I cannot help. Surely he will not insist!”
The knock was louder this time, the voice pleadingly urgent. “Midwife—I beg you, open the door! I mean you no harm … I have brought an injured man!”
“A moment, sir!” Kate called back. And with her words, all possibilities of hiding were eliminated.
She ignored the astonished look on Alejandro’s face. “He has the speech of an educated man. He cannot be a ruffian.”
“That is no guarantee that he will not harm us. Or betray us. A peasant is not likely to know that we are sought. An educated man might.”
Their words were rushed and panicky. “But why a ruse—why not just capture us and be done with it?”
An injury—work for his hands. All his physician’s healing instincts rose up, overwhelming his better judgment. Often of late his hands seemed to tremble in need of the work of healing. And it was entirely possible that the man had come solely because he was in need of help.
Alejandro’s heart almost sang with the thought.
He nodded his head toward the door and whispered, “God grant that we shall not regret doing this.”
There came more pounding, then pleading. “Midwife!”
“Lie down on your pallet, Père,” she whispered urgently, “and do not show yourself just yet. Let me speak for us.”
“I cannot allow you to face this man alone—”
“Be calm, I beseech you! A midwife is expected, and that is what we shall present. Pretend to be infirm—if I need your help or advice, I will say that I need to tend to you. If I kneel beside you we can whisper to each other without his hearing what is said.”
“Aye, ” he answered quietly. “When did you become so brave and clever?” He hugged her to him for a few moments, cherishing the warmth she gave, missing terribly the small child she had once been. “May God protect us,” he said, and reluctantly he went to his bed.
Staring back at her through the flickering light of the upheld candle was not the devil she had expected, but the frightened, uncertain face of a man she had not seen before, either in the nearby village of Meaux or in their recent travels north of Paris. Kate felt certain she would have remembered a man of such distinctive appearance—but he was not familiar.
The silhouette of her unwanted caller nearly filled the doorway and she could feel his need to enter, but she stood her ground and barred the path through some miracle of courage. One glance in the candlelight told her that the man was younger than Père but older than herself, with intelligent, quick eyes and a high brow. And though his clothing did not speak of poverty, it was disheveled and dirty, as was his hair. He appeared to have been involved in a skirmish.
She returned his hard look with one equally firm. “Sir, the apothecary has made too much of my skills, and I do not—”
But he would not be refused, and pushed her aside. On the travois he dragged over the threshold were two forms—a heavy burden for even the strongest man.
“Help me with these wounded!” he ordered.
She ignored his demand and kept her eyes fixed steadily on him as he bent to his companions, one of whom began to groan and writhe. “Karle …” the fallen soldier called out in his pain. “Help me, Karle … I am run through, I fear.”
The stranger beckoned urgently with his hand. “Bring the light—I cannot see him!”
Kate held up her candle with one hand as the stranger pulled aside the blanket covering both men, and when the horror of what lay beneath it met her eyes she gasped out a quick and desperate prayer. Both men wore torn, filthy woolen garments that were soaked through with blood. On first glance she could not tell if both were bleeding or, if it was only one, from whom the blood originated.
“Dear God in heaven,” she cried, “has there been a battle?” And then, with deeper fear in her voice, she looked with dismay at the man who had been called Karle and asked, “Are there English nearby?”
The stranger gave her a suspicious look and said, “Midwife, though I would swear you are far too young to bear that title, it was not the dogs of England who did this to these good men, but the forces of Charles of Navarre, their own countryman!”
As relief washed through her, she heard her own name called low from Alejandro’s straw pallet. The stranger Karle quickly turned his head in the direction of the sound. His hand went straight to a knife strapped to his belt.
“It is my father,” she explained quickly. “He is ailing!” And before Karle could protest, she rushed to Alejandro’s side and kneeled down next to him.
“Be careful,” Alejandro whispered to her, “there is danger here.…”
“What shall I do? He says there are no English.”
“We can never know when Edward’s agents may be at hand.”
One of the injured men began to wail. Kate turned to go back to him, but Alejandro grasped her by the shawl and held her at his side. “Wait!” he said in a low voice. “Do nothing, but watch what he does.”
“Midwife!” Karle called. “What keeps you? You must come now!”
She turned to face him and said, “My father—”
But the cries of the maimed—the pain of their wounds, the agony of knowing that they had been cut down by the swords of their own countrymen—overwhelmed the sound of her words. Finally Alejandro could stand it no more. Muttering curses, he threw off his cover and rose up from the pallet. He went straight to where the two men lay and knelt down beside them. “Give me light!” he said. Kate thrust the candle up so its light would be cast where he needed it.
Karle stared down at the physician, then glanced back at the daughter. “You make too light of your skills,” he said. “You seem to have worked a miracle on your ailing father. Midwife.” The title was spoken with an unmistakable sneer. “But perhaps I should be addressing your father as such, and not yourself.”
Alejandro cut off his examination of the groaning warriors and stood up abruptly. He held out a bloody hand, which Kate knew from years of assisting him to mean that her père wanted a cloth. Alejandro took the one she found and wiped the blood from his hands, and then came nose-to-nose with the younger man. “Address me as you like,” he warned, “but you will not speak to my daughter in such a tone.”
They stood with their eyes locked in a combative gaze and took each other’s measure. Neither seemed to find the other lacking, but it was the intruder who stepped back first. “I meant no disrespect,” Guillaume Karle said, “neither to you nor her. Nor is it my intent to harm either of you. I came here seeking help, expecting only a midwife. Your circumstances are of no interest to me. I need to stay out of sight, for I am known to all around here, and as you can see, the night has brought—difficulty.” He gestured toward his fallen comrades. “I will be grateful for anything that you or your daughter can do for these two.” He swallowed hard. “Now you have looked at them,” he said. “What say you?”
Alejandro’s defensive posture relaxed a bit. He put the bloody rag down on the table and took Karle by the elbow, then led him out of the injured men’s earshot. “One will live; I will have to take his arm, but he will live.”
“You possess the skills to do this?”
Slowly, warily, Alejandro nodded. “I am a physician.”
The look he received back from Karle was one of genuine surprise. “You have hidden yourself well, then, sir. It is said there are no physicians hereabout.”
“Not well enough, I think, since you seem to have found me. But had you not, you would have found the skills to take the arm yourself, had the need to do so arisen. Of this I can assure you.”
Karle’s expression was full of doubt. “I cannot say that I would have it in me. What of the other?”
Alejandro sighed and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Are you a merciful man?” he asked.
As if insulted, Karle raised his chin and said, “To a fault.”
“Then you must show the other your best mercy by dispatching him quickly. He shall not survive more than a few hours, and those, I promise you, will be agony. I have laudanum enough to quiet the one whose arm must come off, but not enough to ease the pain of the other. It will best be eased with the sharp thrust of a sword.”
Karle glanced nervously over Alejandro’s shoulder in the direction of his two prone warriors; Kate was comforting both as best she could by gently wiping the sweat off their brows and cleansing their faces with cool water.
“You have no poison?” he asked quietly.
Alejandro studied Karle’s eyes again. He recognized in them the same expression he had often seen in his own reflection, the fear and uncertainty of a man on the run. He decided he had nothing to lose by speaking frankly.
“I am trained in the healing arts, and I have sworn an oath to do no harm. I have broken that oath more times than I care to recall, but I am not of a mind to do it again right now. And I have no skills with poison. Such things are the business of the apothecary. Or the alchemist. Practitioners of a different cloth than I.”
“I meant no offense—”
“I took none. Now, this man is your comrade, is he not?”
Karle looked down with stricken pity, and the image of the man’s falling rushed undesired through his memory. “Aye. A worthy one.”
“Then be as worthy a comrade to him, and dispatch him.”
Reluctant horror spread slowly over Karle’s face. “I have killed many soldiers in battle,” he said, “but never one of my own. I have seen it done, but I do not know if I have the will to do it myself.”
Alejandro put a hand gently on Karle’s chest, just above his heart. Karle stiffened, but did not move away. “Angle the sword horizontally so it will slip between these ribs,” he said, demonstrating the exact location with his fingers, “then give one quick thrust.”
Karle winced as if he could feel the sword between his own ribs.
“It is no different in method than slaying a boar or other such beast,” Alejandro said sympathetically. “Though it will seem far more abhorrent to you. But if the dying one is sent swiftly to meet his God, we can concentrate our efforts on the one who may yet live.” He stared directly into Karle’s eyes. “I think we must do this quickly, eh?”
The amber-haired man knew Alejandro was right, and nodded.
They lifted the man who could be saved off the travois and placed him on the long table in the center of the dark cottage. Alejandro handed the bloody rag to Karle and whispered, “Place this around the sword to soak up the blood before you thrust. There will be blood enough when we take this one’s arm. Now hurry, or we will lose them both.”
The physician turned away. Guillaume Karle stood over his mortally wounded comrade, a rag in one hand, his sword in the other. Tears filled his eyes as he placed the tip of the sword on the man’s chest. He crossed himself, then pressed down with all his might. The dying man arched his back upward and let out a sharp breath, but did not cry out. He fell back limp, and blood began to ooze out of his open mouth.
Alejandro gave Karle a sympathetic nod and said, “You have shown courage. And the man died well and honorably. Now move him aside and come here; your help is needed.”
Karle was too stunned even to consider protesting and did as he was bidden, then came back to the table, where Kate and Alejandro were busy at work. They had already cut away the cloth of the warrior’s sleeve to expose the mangled, soon-to-be-removed appendage, and had slowed the bleeding by tying a torn strip of the sleeve cloth tightly around the upper arm. Blood no longer spurted, but instead oozed; still, the man’s skin was ghastly white.
The physician said, “There is little time—I have already dosed him with laudanum, but its effects will not last long. He will feel something of what we do, so you must lean on his chest with all your weight to keep him still.” He touched the handle of a wooden spoon gently on the lips of his patient, who took it between his teeth almost instinctively and bit down. “Scream if you like,” he told the frightened warrior, “but keep the stick in your mouth and no one will hear it outside these walls. I will do this as quickly as I can.” He touched the man’s sweaty forehead briefly. “God be with you.”
Karle held the man down but turned away, for he could not stomach the look of raw terror on his comrade’s face. He let his eyes wander; they came to rest on the tools laid out on the edge of the table, a sight no more appealing. More than once he had seen similar tools used to draw and quarter a man with slow and deliberate cruelty. But the physician’s motions were mercifully swift and far more practiced than Karle expected, and remarkably the soldier did not writhe. Instead he lost consciousness, for which blessing Karle whispered a heartfelt prayer of thanks.
“We are done,” Alejandro said. He touched Karle on the shoulder. “You need not hold him down anymore.” He went to the hearth and pulled an iron out of the coals. He pressed the glowing tip against the oozing stump of the upper arm. The hiss was quickly followed by a loathsome stench, and all three turned their heads away. When the cautery was complete, Alejandro poured wine over the blackened stump and wrapped it in clean cloth bandages.
His work finished, he sat down on a bench and buried his face in his hands. He breathed deeply a few times, then looked up at the other two. “The air in here is foul,” he said.
He went to the door and opened it a crack, then looked outside. “The shadows are still,” he reported. He beckoned with his hand to Kate and Karle. “Come out into the air. It will clear your senses.”
But Karle was reluctant to leave his comrade on the table, so Alejandro reassured him. “He will not move, for his body has suffered a grave insult.”
The daughter followed the father out into the night air and stood beside him. Alejandro placed a consoling arm around her shoulder. Through the darkness, the stunned Karle watched as comforting was passed between them. The night was now velvety black and he could just make out their silhouettes; he was surprised to see that the young woman was a shade taller than the man he had heard her call Père. He watched as the physician stroked her hair in a soothing, fatherly manner, and tried to calm her as she wept against his shoulder.
And though the night’s events had left him in a state where cogent thought felt almost unnatural, he found himself momentarily disturbed by how unalike the two seemed.
As the light of day filtered into the small cottage, Guillaume Karle sat on a bench and watched as his unconscious companion’s chest slowly rose and fell. What remained of the man’s left arm was wrapped in a bloody bandage, but the color of the seepage was not the bright red the physician had warned him to watch for; instead, it was the pale, dullish color that indicated all was going as well as could be expected.
He glanced over at his two benefactors and allowed himself, now that the need for urgency had passed, a moment of curiosity. The physician lay on a straw pallet, apparently sleeping, but with one eye half-open. Karle had the sense that the man was well used to incomplete repose. Beyond him lay the maiden Kate on her own pallet. The physician was a lean, angular man, dark and olive-complected, with softly curling locks the color of coal. He was oddly handsome, with long limbs and finely shaped hands. And while Kate too was long and well-shaped, she was fair and pink, almost Nordic in her coloration, with eyes that had sparkled blue even in the light of the candle the night before.
As if he knew he were being watched, the physician stirred and opened his eyes fully. He rose up on one elbow and met Karle’s gaze. “What of your man?” he inquired immediately.
“Quiet,” Karle replied. “He sleeps. I have kept him from moving as you said I should.”
“Well done,” Alejandro said as he rose from the bed. He took a quick look at the bandage on the stump, then said, “Good. There is no fresh bleeding. This bodes well.”
He took a basin down from a cupboard and filled it with water from a large pitcher that sat on the edge of the hearth, then stripped off his shirt and began to wash himself, first his face, then the upper part of his body, and finally, with painstaking attention, his hands. Though Alejandro angled his body so his chest could not fully be seen, Karle caught a quick glimpse of what he thought might be a scar. The Frenchman gave a moment’s thought to inquiring about it, but decided to leave it be.
But the physician made no attempt to contain his own curiosity. As he dressed himself, he said, “I have heard of no battles hereabout. How came these men to be wounded? And contrary to what you may have heard, it is rumored that there is a physician in the next town. Why did you not seek his services before those of a midwife?”
“Which question would you have me answer first?” Karle asked warily.
“Whichever you like,” Alejandro replied with similar wariness. “But answer them both.”
Karle looked him straight in the eye. “As you wish,” he said, “but when I am through with the telling, I will likewise want some answers from you.”
“No doubt,” Alejandro said. “We shall see if you get them. Right now you are far more in my debt than I in yours.” He glanced at the sleeping, one-armed man. “You will pay by speaking. Start by telling me your name.”
The amber-haired man hesitated a moment, then said, “You heard my man speak my name last night.”
“He called you Karle,” Alejandro recalled.
“Guillaume Karle,” he said, and nodded his head. “There are many who would pay handsomely for knowledge of my whereabouts.” He grinned bitterly and said, “But here I am, as you say, in your debt. Now permit me the honor of knowing to whom I am speaking, and why you are hiding as well.”
Karle’s quick and accurate appraisal of their situation caught the physician by surprise. He raised one eyebrow and said, “In due time. How were these men wounded?”
Karle drew in a breath. “They rode with me against the oppression of the nobility. They caught their wounds in the battle to claim their rightful portion of the soil of France.”
Alejandro saw a zealot’s fire in the eyes of the young man, and in his brow, the tight weariness that was the fire’s inevitable toll. “What remains of France to be portioned?” he asked. “All is gone to the Free Companies, is it not?”
“They have taken all that is gold or silver,” Karle said indignantly. “But France herself, the good earth of France, is there still and will always be there. We want only that share of land that will allow each man to live decently. And freedom from the excessive taxation the nobility forces upon us to finance their despicable wars.”
“Ah,” Alejandro said, “I see. Simple requests, then.”
Karle gave him a caustic look. “But one must be hiding in a cabinet not to know of these things. How is it that you do not?”
Alejandro’s mouth curled in the faintest smile. “We shall speak of my circumstances when yours are more fully explained.”
Karle took in a breath and continued. “We rose up against the royal palace at Meaux last night. Against Charles of Navarre. He was far better prepared than we thought he might be, and many more than these two were wounded. Those who could, scattered.”
Alejandro considered the walk from Meaux. He had done it many times. Unburdened and in daylight, it took well more than an hour. But this man had dragged two wounded companions behind him with only the moon to guide his steps. His opinion of the intruder improved.
“Some may escape to their own homes,” Karle went on. “They will take what wounded they can. But some who are hurt will have been left. God alone knows what will happen to the bodies of those who fell in the battle. We could not stay behind to gather them up.”
“Who will see to this one?” Alejandro pointed to the dead man on the travois. “He will shortly be unpleasant company.”
The ghastly remains were beginning to bloat as putrefaction took hold of his inner organs. “I suppose it shall be upon me to see to him,” Karle said with resignation.
“He cannot be buried near this cottage,” Alejandro said quickly.
Karle sighed. “I will take him into the forest to bury him, then.” He looked up at the one-armed man still sleeping on the table and added grimly, “Along with Jean’s arm.”
They heard a stirring behind them as Kate sat up. “There is a clearing in the wood to the north,” she said. “There are many berries there, but I saw no signs of anyone having passed through recently. It is not holy ground, but it seems otherwise fit for a burial.”
“There is no holy ground left in all of France, I fear,” Karle said. “But I thank you for telling me of this place.”
She nodded in the direction of the corpse. “All brave men deserve a good end, do they not?”
Alejandro watched Guillaume Karle’s eyes digest the sight of Kate, then reluctantly break away. When the two men faced each other again, Karle’s skin was flushed, as if he had been caught in an indecent thought.
“Perhaps, if you are of a mind to do so, your père will allow you to show me this clearing,” he said quietly.
She answered too eagerly for the physician’s liking. “I shall be glad to.”
“We shall all go together,” Alejandro said.
“What of my man?” Karle said.
“We will see to his needs before leaving,” the physician said. “Clean him, give him water and the little bit of laudanum I have left. And if he is made fast to the table, I am not concerned to leave him alone.”
Not nearly as concerned as I am to have you alone with Kate, he thought.
