The knot of onlookers parted as I approached and in their shadow I saw a man lying in the street in a great pool of blood. One hand twitched at his side, the other was clasped to his neck. Between the fingers clutching his throat blood flowed in a copious stream. I knelt in the dirt and saw the man’s eyes follow me as I examined the wound under his fingers. Something, or someone, had slashed through the great vein. He had only minutes to live unless I could staunch the flow of blood.
“A cloth,” I shouted. “A clean cloth — quickly!”
A housewife in the crowd presented her apron. It was flour-dusted but clean enough. I pried the fellow’s hand from his wound and pressed the folded cloth tight against the gash.
I required my instruments, but could not leave my patient to fetch them. From the corner of my eye I saw a youth who had won a footrace last autumn at Michaelmas. I called to him.
“Run to the castle and fetch my instruments.” The youth gazed at me blankly. “Find Alice, the scullery maid. She knows the box where they are kept. My chamber will be clouded with smoke…pay that no mind. Run! Be off!”
The mob parted and the youth sprinted away toward the castle. I returned my attention to the pale form at my knees. Blood seeped from under the folded apron, but not so profusely as before.
“Who is this?” I asked. “What befell him?”
A dozen voices related the news. I could make no sense of their words. By shouting louder than they I managed to quiet my informers. I searched for a face I knew and saw Hubert Shillside’s adolescent son. He was a stolid youth, and perhaps lacked imagination. But in this matter I did not seek invention, but fact.
“William…what has happened here?”
The crowd was restive, and one or two would have answered for the youth, but I silenced them and bid the lad continue.
“There was an argument…many heard.” Heads nodded in agreement. “Philip accused Edmund of something.”
Then it was that I recognized the bloody figure over whom I knelt: Philip, the town baker. And standing before his forge, his arms pinioned to his side, was Edmund, the smith. The smith’s eyes were wide in fright, or amazement, at what he had done. He made no move to escape the grasp of those who clutched his arms.
“Philip picked up Edmund’s hammer, as he’d laid it down when the dispute began,” William continued. “But he swung wide, not bein’ accustomed to swingin’ hammers. Edmund swung back with a piece of hot iron in his tongs. Philip ducked but the edge caught ’im by the throat…an’ there he lays.”
“What was their dispute about?” I asked.
“Dunno,” William offered. “Wasn’t close enough t’hear plain. Just saw when Philip swung the hammer.”
The matter in dispute was of little importance at the moment. I did not press the matter, but rather concerned myself with Philip’s seeping neck. The man began to moan, but in his mouth I saw no blood. I was relieved. If the stroke had penetrated his throat he must die, for the bleeding would continue no matter what I did for his external wound.
I kept the sopping apron pressed close against the laceration and wondered when the runner would return with my instruments. The lad arrived soon enough, and I saw from the corner of my eye the mob part to allow him through. Alice had followed, and pressed in behind him.
I called for a bystander to take my place at the wound while I readied the instruments I would need. The crowd hesitated, and in that moment Alice knelt at my side. “Wha…what must I do?” she stammered.
“Keep this cloth pressed tight against the wound until I tell you to release it. Then be ready to apply it again should I need it.”
She nodded understanding and did not hesitate but took the red, sodden apron in both hands and forced it against the cut.
I opened my kit and prepared needle and thread. As I worked I asked the curious who hovered above me for an egg. A crone lurched wordlessly off down the High Street in response.
I would have liked to repair the torn vein first but knew of no way to do that without releasing a great flow of blood once again. So with needle and thread in my right hand, I held my left above the wound and told Alice to release the apron.
When she did, blood flowed again from the torn flesh, but not so much as before. A clot was beginning to form at the edge of the cut.
I gripped the lips of the wound with the fingers of my left hand. As I did so Philip groaned and twisted in pain. I spoke rather more sharply than I ought, I fear, and told him to be still, else I could not patch his cut. I should be more generous in such situations, but sometimes I lack sympathy for those who need my care because of their own foolishness. Certainly if Philip had not first picked up the hammer he would not now be producing a stream of blood in the street.
One hand was not enough to close the wound. As I pinched one end shut the other opened and poured forth more blood. I needed a third hand. Alice saw my dilemma and provided the extra appendage. She reached red fingers past my hand and pinched the other end of the laceration closed. No words passed between us, but she smiled, then looked back to her work.
With two sets of fingers closing the wound I could work quickly, and in but a few moments was able to stitch shut the laceration. Alice used her free hand to squeeze blood from the dripping apron, then dabbed at the fresh effusions as I worked.
The old woman who had set off for an egg returned as I pulled the last suture tight. I broke her egg in a cup from my instrument box and removed the yolk. The albumen I spread over the stitched wound.
Normally I follow the practice of Henry de Mondeville, who taught that wounds heal best when dry. Therefore I apply few salves to a cut such as Philip received, preferring only to wash the wound in wine. But I thought in this case a poultice might serve, for a few days. I bound Philip’s neck in strips of linen, then assisted him to a sitting position.
Philip’s eyes wandered and I thought he might swoon. His face was white and his lips pale blue. I had thought to ask some of the gawkers to assist him to his feet and see him down the High Street to his home and bakery on Broad Street. This could not be done. Philip had lost too much blood.
I sent Will Shillside to the carpenter’s shop for a plank and two poles. When he returned I instructed two men to lift the baker onto the plank, his feet and arms dangling on either side, and with a pole crosswise at each end four spectators bore him home. I told Philip I would visit him on the morrow and that he must rest ’til then.
As the bearers moved off with Philip I heard another commotion and looked up to see the baker’s wife come panting up to her husband. She had been tardily informed of her husband’s hurt.
I stood aside while three women competed with one another to tell the lurid details, including some particulars of which I was unaware.
When they had done I spoke, and told her to see that her husband did not rise from his bed until the morrow, when I would call. The woman nodded understanding, shook flour from her apron, and wordlessly followed her husband toward Broad Street. She took the news well, I thought. Too well, as it happened.
I turned to Edmund, still standing at his forge. “Release him,” I told his captors, who were holding his arms but loosely anyway.
“What have you to say of this matter?” I asked the smith. He did not reply, but looked to his feet and with a toe began rearranging clinkers on the floor of his forge.
“What did you argue about with Philip that came to this?” I pressed, and nodded to the bloodstains soaked now into the dirt of the street but yet visible.
“Ask Philip,” the smith replied. “’Twas he come to me.”