The lady’s face almost froze in puzzlement, mixed with the slightest hint of consternation, and it was plain to see that she had expected me to say something about her other daughter, Cynthia. Fortunately, that realization alone permitted me to overcome my own uncertainty and speak more easily. Managing to smile without a hint of strain, I told her that I had encountered the child a few days earlier and had realized only after she left to go on her way that I had forgotten her name, if I had ever known it at all.
She stared at me, her eyes wide and troubled. “Is it important that you should remember the name of a child so young, Master Clothar?”
I grinned at her then, suddenly enjoying this situation. “No, Lady Demea, I doubt that anyone could think such a thing important. I merely found it unfortunate because, after I had seen the child and passed her by, I suddenly remembered being ten years old myself, and I recalled clearly how convinced I had been on my tenth birthday, of my own importance in this world. It was a short-lived feeling, because almost as soon as it had occurred to me, I was crushed to discover that a close friend of my father’s, whom I had known most of my life, had absolutely no idea of who I was or what my name was.”
Demea sat blinking at me, a tiny, vertical frown visible between her brows, and I found myself growing aware that, beautiful as she might be, Symmachus’s young wife was not a creature of great intellect.
“I was greatly hurt by that,” I told her, saving her the pain of wondering about what I really meant. “So hurt, in fact, that I promised myself I would never hurt any child that cruelly when I became a man. And until now, I never have … although I fear I may have caused your daughter to suffer exactly as I did myself, and that has made me bold enough to come and ask for your assistance.”
The lady’s face blossomed suddenly into a wide smile as understanding dawned upon her.
“Her name is Maia. She was born in the month of May, and although she is not my own daughter, her father and I first met in the month of May.”
I bowed deeply, thanking the lady for the information, then excused myself and made my way to my own table, planning how I would seek out young Maia the following day and settle our imagined differences. I wanted to see how she would handle a spear on a second attempt.
The next day, the weather changed again for the better, and I decided to ride out hunting with Perceval and Tristan. Young Bors would carry our tents and hunting paraphernalia in the body of a light, high-wheeled, single-axle cart drawn by two horses. There was still a deal of snow on the ground in many places, and the combined strength of the animals together with the high, narrow wheels of the cart would allow us to take the vehicle almost anywhere we wished to go.
Unfortunately, it enabled us to take the cart to where we had no wish to go. Tristan shot a large hind in a dark, barely accessible spot at the base of a cliff late that afternoon, and after we had gutted and cleaned the carcass we experienced some difficulty in getting the meat to where we could transport it easily.
Perceval took the measure of the cliff above us. It was perhaps as high as the height of five tall men standing on one another’s shoulders, and he estimated—accurately, as it turned out—that we could save ourselves a great deal of grief by pulling the wagon to the edge of the cliff up there and lowering ropes by which we could haul up the meat.
Everything proceeded smoothly until we were raising the last hindquarter of meat, when something startled one of the horses. The beast shied and its harness mate reacted in equal panic, leaping away from its companion as far as it could and causing the wheels of the cart to shift slightly. It was enough to cause Perceval to overbalance. He fell out of the cart and over the edge of the cliff, where he crashed solidly to the ground as all of us watched in horror, too stunned to move.
He was alive and conscious, we knew, as we made our way down to him, because we could hear him cursing savagely, using language that one seldom heard coming from his lips. But his left leg was twisted violently up behind him so that it lay beneath his back.
Fortunately, Tristan’s days of service as a mercenary had exposed him to the harsh realities of military life, and now it appeared that he had learned how to deal with such things in the field. As soon as he reached his brother he knelt behind Perceval, ostensibly to support his back but in reality to conceal his hand as he unclipped his large dagger from his belt and grasped it by the sheathed blade before bringing the heavy metal handle down solidly across the back of his brother’s neck, knocking him unconscious on the instant.
He wasted no time after that. Perceval’s body slumped to the ground as Tristan shifted rapidly around toward his brother’s legs. He grasped him about the waist, then squatted there above him, gulping in great breaths of air.
“Right,” he grunted. “I’m going to lift him as high as I can. You two take hold of his leg and pull it around to where it should lie naturally. Then pull it straight. Quickly now, and be careful but don’t be timid. Haul back on that leg with all your strength and straighten it until the ends of the bone are back together, or as close as you can get them. If you don’t do it properly the first time, he won’t thank you later for attempting to be gentle! I don’t know how long he’ll stay unconscious, but he’ll never be able to stand the pain of trying to straighten that leg out if he’s awake, so on the count of three, I’ll lift and you pull. Ready? Now, one, two, three!”
Tristan thrust upward with all the strength of his thighs and legs and managed to hoist his larger brother clear of the ground while Bors and I, not daring to look at each other or reflect upon what we were doing, seized the broken leg and pulled it around into its normal position, or as close to it as we could manage. The break appeared to be high on the thigh, and Perceval’s breeches were doused with thick, fresh blood. The ends of his splintered bones grated audibly as I pulled on the leg, which was amazingly heavy, and my stormach lurched as nausea swept over me. Remembering what Tristan had told us to do, however, I gritted my teeth, fought down my revulsion, and threw all of my weight backward, pulling with all my strength until I felt the leg I was gripping flex and almost seem to stretch.
“Do you have it?” Tristan’s voice was close to breaking with the strain of holding up his brother’s body, and as soon as he heard my affirmative shout he allowed Perceval to drop heavily. He spun around to look at what I had managed to achieve.
“Good,” he hissed. “That looks excellent. Bors! Quick as you can, break me two long boards from the tailgate of the cart—I need them to splint his leg. Be quick, and bring rope, too, the thinnest rope we have, to tie the boards in place. Move, now!”
As Bors scuttled away to do his bidding, Tristan was already turning back to me, looking at my legs. “Yours are longer than mine. That’s good, because I need to be doing other things. Sit here, and take his leg between your own. Lodge your left foot securely in his crotch, making sure his balls are on the outside of it.” I wriggled myself into position. “Right, now wrap your right elbow around his foot—the left one—and lock it in place with your other hand. Get as strong a grip as possible. Good, that’s good. Now here’s what we’re going to do. When I give you the word you’re going to lean back, pulling against his leg as hard as you can and bracing yourself with that straight left leg of yours. You understand? What we’re trying to do is stretch his leg … farther than it ought to be stretched.” He scrambled away as he was speaking and took up a kneeling position ahead of me and on my right, facing his brother’s broken leg. “What’s happened is that the bone is splintered, like a tree struck by lightning, and the ends are too jagged to come together again on their own.”