‘I manage well enough,’ Mercure replied.
There was silence for a while as they consumed the hot, savoury food. Then Gurdyman said, ‘Hrype will, perhaps, visit the town. I hope for news, for I am anxious to return. I have been grateful for your hospitality, Mercure, but if the danger is past I wish to be back in my own home.’
‘Say rather back at your work, my old friend,’ Mercure said with a grin. Then, raising his head, his large dark eyes on Gurdyman, he said, ‘But please, do not go yet. Think what became of Morgan and young Cat.’
‘I do, constantly,’ Gurdyman said. ‘However, you forget that I too have my young adept, and I have the strongest sense that she is in danger.’
‘Danger,’ Mercure echoed. ‘It is all around, yes.’
A soft humming seemed to start up. Gurdyman shook his head, wondering if it originated inside his own ears. He glanced at Mercure to see if he had noticed, but he was calmly carrying on with his meal.
Something was happening.
Gurdyman felt as if his limbs were slowly turning into soft wool. He slumped back against the wall, relaxed, drifting into a trance. Mercure seemed to be similarly affected: his eyelids were drooping and his empty bowl fell from his limp hand and rolled away. Somewhere in Gurdyman’s head a warning note sounded. As if a part of his mind fought whatever was overcoming him and his companion, he saw an image of Lassair, and she had tears on her face and an expression of dread in her eyes. Then he saw a tall, stooping figure in a dark hooded cloak, and when the figure of horror turned to stare at him, its face was dead white and it had dark holes for eyes.
Gurdyman struggled. He saw Mercure fall over sideways, gently, a smile on his face, and curl up, surrendering. Gurdyman struggled against the enchantment. Lassair was in terrible danger and he must find her, go to her, use the mighty power of his lifetime’s accumulation of strong magic to fight off whatever loomed over her and keep her safe.
He managed to get up on to his knees. Then the humming suddenly intensified, so that the whole of the little house seemed to thrum, and he fell back. His eyes closed, and the trance took him.
They took Jack to a small cell off the room at the tavern which Walter and his men were using. He was alive. That was as much as I or anyone could say. I didn’t let myself think about how much blood he had lost. Could a big man go on living when he had been so gravely depleted?
In my panic, as we settled him on a narrow cot, I kept looking round for someone to tell me what to do. I had never taken charge of a really serious case. There was always Edild, calm, serene, quietly watching me and guiding me when I went wrong or didn’t know what to do. Gurdyman, too, knew so very much more than I did about the human body and how it works, and while I might not have had his reassuring presence when I tended severe injuries and diseases here in the town, he was always there for me to talk to, giving his advice and explaining how he would have set about the appropriate treatment.
I realized quite soon that the only person telling me what to do was me.
Furthermore, the others – Walter, Ginger and their companions; the kindly and anxious man and wife who ran the tavern – made it perfectly obvious that they were looking to me to save Jack’s life.
I bathed and cleansed the wound so that I could see just how badly hurt he was. Gaspard Picot’s treacherous little blade had gone into the big muscle in Jack’s chest, just to the left of his breastbone. Had it gone in straight, it would have pierced his heart. It went in at a slight angle, and so he still lived. He was very well-muscled and it was probably that which had saved him from instant death, for at that angle the blade wasn’t long enough to reach the heart through all the muscle.
Gurdyman had explained to me the theory of the Arab doctors who taught him when he was young, to do with how blood goes round the body. They said it went in little tubes, some leading away from the heart and some returning to it. If that was right – and my own observations told me it was – then I was guessing that the knife thrust had torn one such tube inside Jack’s chest. If the blood stopped before he lost too much, he would live. If the wound was too big to mend itself, he wouldn’t.
I stitched him together as best I could. Both my teachers are wonderfully nimble-fingered, and neither is satisfied with me unless I perform as well as they do. With Jack’s blood still pumping up under my hands, I compromised, sacrificing a bit of neatness for speed. I hoped it was the right thing to do, and I prayed, harder than I’d ever prayed for anything, that it was.
Some time in the middle of the morning, I realized that the bleeding had slowed. The pads pressed to his chest were still colouring red, but slowly now, as if the blood was only seeping. Jack was still unconscious – luckily for him he had been all the time I was sewing the wound – but once or twice he stirred slightly. I knew I must get him to drink, and I asked the innkeeper’s wife to have clean water ready. Delighted to have something to do, she rushed off and presently returned with a huge bucketful.
I smiled involuntarily. She seemed to think I was nursing a fully-grown horse.
The day went on. I managed to get a small mug of water into my patient. He felt cold, as the afternoon waned, and I asked for a fire. He still felt cold, so I got on the little cot beside him and took him in my arms.
I hadn’t realized that it was night until I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. Turning quickly round, I saw in the soft light of the fire in the little hearth that a grey-haired priest stood over the bed.
‘I am Father Gregory,’ he said quietly. ‘I am the infirmarer at the priests’ house, and I came to offer my help.’
‘Oh!’ Quickly I sat up, carefully pulling the covers up over Jack and straightening my gown. ‘Thank you, how kind.’
‘We all like Jack,’ he said solemnly. ‘He is a good man.’
I tried to gather my thoughts to explain to this kindly man what had happened, what I’d done to help, how Jack had been all the long day. But my mind was a blank. I looked up at Father Gregory, shaking my head. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to think,’ I said.
He took my hands and raised me to my feet. ‘Go and rest,’ he said firmly. ‘I will sit with him.’
‘Will you-’ I began.
I didn’t have to finish. ‘Of course I will,’ he said.
The tavern-keeper had made up a bed for me in a corner of the main room. I walked carefully between other sleeping bodies and sat down on it. A candle had been left burning to help me find my way. I was about to stretch out and try to sleep when I heard someone approach.
It was Ginger. ‘I found this, miss.’ He was holding out a little bag made of soft fabric. His face was wretched; I realized how much he and the others cared for and depended on Jack.
I held out my hand. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ginger said, ‘I haven’t opened it. It fell out of your satchel when you were – when you tended the master.’
I took it from him. ‘Thank you.’
He nodded. Then he said, ‘How is he?’
‘He’s sleeping and so far he isn’t feverish.’ It was all I could say and no answer, because what Ginger was really asking was, Is he going to live? and I didn’t know. ‘There’s a priest with him,’ I added, in case Ginger thought I’d left Jack alone.
‘Aye, Father Gregory. He’s all right, he is.’ He smiled. ‘Get some sleep, miss. You look all in.’ He nodded again, then crawled away.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to close down my racing, panicky mind, so I thought I might as well investigate the little cloth bag. It was the object I’d found in the secret hiding place in Osmund’s cell, when Jack and I went to leave Robert Powl’s token.
Jack. Fit, whole, healthy. And now he-
I shut off that thought before it could undermine me.