I CARRIED BERTIE LIKE A BABY ALL THE WAY TO THE HOUSE where the Doge is staying, and from there to his surgeon, Taddeo.
“You again!” he said. “Well, you’re in luck. By the sound of things, I’m going to be busy tonight.”
I gently laid Bertie on the table, on his left side, and Taddeo took hold of his right forearm.
Bertie yelped. “I never saw it,” he sobbed.
“So,” said the surgeon thoughtfully, “in here…grazing your collarbone. Down! Right through.” He sighed. “The tip’s just sticking out of your back.”
Bertie moaned.
“Take hold of Arthur’s hands,” Taddeo told him. “Try to crack each bone in them. What’s your name?”
“Bertie.”
While he was talking, Taddeo was examining Bertie, and then he turned to his brazier, and pushed the iron deeper into it.
“What’s in that pan?” I asked.
“Elder oil,” the surgeon replied. He placed the pan on the open coals. “Seethe it. Don’t let it start popping. Now, Bertie! This is going to hurt.”
Taddeo put his left arm under Bertie’s neck and grasped the arrow shaft and drove it in deeper.
Bertie screamed. He cracked my hands. Then, all at once, his own hands went as limp as dead sparrows. His whole body went limp.
“Now the pliers,” the surgeon said. “Why do things always hide when you need them?”
I was panting and shaking.
Taddeo rummaged in the straw on the floor until he found the pliers, and he gave them to me.
“Good lad!” he said to Bertie. “Some men writhe and scream, and however terrible the pain, they still stay awake.”
The surgeon put his left arm under Bertie’s neck again, and cradled him.
“Now, Arthur!” he said. “Got the pliers? Snap off the point. Quickly!”
As soon as I had, Taddeo pulled the shaft back out. Bright red blood flowed from the wound and dripped from the table onto the floor.
Taddeo pulled the iron out of the brazier. The tip was red hot. He just touched it to Bertie’s wounds, front and back. “To seal the blood vessels,” he said. “Now! The oil. Tip some onto his neck and his back.”
Taddeo rubbed in the oil, then wiped his own hands on a bloodstained shaggy towel.
“A very near thing,” he said. “An inch away from his windpipe. He may be all right, but I’m no Avicenna.”
“Who, sir?”
“Avicenna. A Saracen. He wrote a book about medicine. Yes, he should be all right.”
“Coeur-de-Lion wasn’t,” I said. “An arrow went in through his shoulder and stuck out of his back.”
The surgeon’s mouth twisted. “He will be rather sore,” he said, “when he wakes up.”
I didn’t even realize it was Bertie to begin with. I just rounded a corner and saw two Venetians dragging a boy down the street by his legs.
You can’t run in armor, but I waded after them.
That’s when the arrow struck him. Some Venetian shot it from a window or up on a roof.
They let go of his legs, and he screamed and clutched his neck, and I clanked up to him, and that’s when I saw it was Bertie.
The two Venetians faced me. One had a glittering knife, the other a staff.
I unsheathed my sword. The dazzling blade Milon gave me. I grasped the pommel in my left hand.
The man with the staff leveled it at my chest, but as he lunged at me I sidestepped. Then the other man raised his right arm. The knife flashed. It glanced off my cheek guard.
I swung my sword. I missed. The blade clashed against the stone wall, and struck sparks.
The man with the knife threw himself at me. I heard the blade grating against my mail-shirt. Then the other man drove his staff at my groin, and grabbed me.
I don’t know how I worked myself loose. I must have raised and swung my sword, but I don’t even remember hitting him—the man with the glittering knife. All I can see is his nose. His nose. Lying in front of my feet.
I can see them running.
I can hear the man howling.
I can hear Bertie choking and moaning.
It’s a good thing Lord Stephen had told me to put my armor on.
Frenchmen were chasing Venetians; Venetians were chasing Frenchmen. They were knifing each other. Hacking. Jabbing. Slinging stones. Loosing arrows.
Lord Stephen and I tried to stop them, and so did many other knights and squires—Milon, even Sir William—but it was almost impossible. There were so many of them, rushing along the narrow streets, searching, killing.
It was dark, and Lord Stephen and I were soon separated. I didn’t know where to go. I was cold and sweating and trembling. My mouth was dry. I was afraid of dying. And that’s when I rounded the corner and saw them dragging Bertie away.
It started around Vespers and went on all last night. It didn’t stop until midday.
As soon as it was quiet in one street, there was fighting in another. Like fire in Pike Forest you can’t put out. But the French were the stronger, or the braver. They swept the Venetians back into their own half of the city. They almost pushed them back to the channel and their ships.
Some say the French began it, but no one agrees. We all visited Milon’s quarters this evening, and Bertie was sleeping deeply in one corner. Milon told us his men were angry because they’re not allowed to keep plunder for themselves—gold and silver and stones and spices and silks and carpets and things like that—but the Venetians are.
“Certainly not!” Milon said. “I say who and what. First we pay the Venetians for their ships.”
Sir William says the French dislike being led by a Venetian, Serle says if only the marquis were here, this would never have happened and he only hopes Simona is safe, and Lord Stephen says the French object to staying here.
“It suits the Doge,” he said, “because he needs to secure Zara, but it doesn’t suit the French. They’ve already been away from home for three seasons, as we have, and now we’ve all got to wait here until Easter.”
In any case, everyone agrees the Venetians were asking for it, but I keep thinking of that man. His blood leaped over my boots and stained them. His nose! I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to protect myself.
Milon thrust out his jaw. “One hundred and one men dead,” he announced.
“It’s going to take a lot of time and skill to calm things down,” said Lord Stephen.
“Sir Gilles de Landas. Dead!” Milon said fiercely.
“How?” asked Sir William.
“They arrowed his eye.”
Sir William grunted. “Not so lucky as your squire, then.”
“Except for Arthur,” Milon went on, “Arthur and surgeon, Bertie is dead.”
Lord Stephen looked down at Bertie. “Poor pumpkin!” he said.
In his sleep, Bertie said something. Well, he made a noise like someone talking. Like a leucrota. Then he began to pant.
The upper part of his body is covered with a marjoram poultice, but I could see it’s almost twice its normal size. His face is so white, and shining with cold sweat. His hands and feet are cold too. I know that’s a sign someone may die.
Not Bertie!
Surely Death won’t dance for him tonight. He’ll kick and yell and tell Death to go away.…