“Well, come in for now while I assemble some instruments. How long have you awaited me?”
“Since mid-day, sir.”
“Then, here, take this loaf while I am about my work.”
The girl gnawed hungrily at the maslin loaf. I could not remember having seen her before, which I thought strange, for there were few young people of her age or younger in the town. Not for nothing was the return of pestilence two years past called the “Children’s Plague.”
“Where is your father?” I asked as I pulled tight the drawstring of my bag.
“At Weald. He has a quarter yardland of the Dean of Exeter.”
That explained why she was unknown to me; her father was a tenant of the Bishop, not Lord Gilbert. A quarter yardland would keep a family alive, with perhaps a small surplus to sell, if it was a small family, and if the land was fertile. “Is your mother attending him?” I asked.
“Got no mum…she died o’ plague when I was newborn.”
The girl recited her family history as we made our way back across Shill Brook, past the entrance to the castle, where all seemed quiet now, then turned left down a narrow track to a group of small huts. She was, I learned, the only child of her father’s second marriage, he having lost two wives. She had two older half-brothers. Two of the huts at Weald belonged to them.
The girl opened the door to her hut and led me inside, announcing to the dark interior the tardy appearance of the town surgeon as she did so.
I could see nothing. There was little enough starlight outside the door. None of that came through the oilskin window or the open door. I asked for light, and after a time of rummaging about in the dark, the girl produced a cresset and lit it from a coal which glowed dully on the hearthstone.
The hut was smoky from the nearly exhausted fire, so the flame from the cresset did not at first illuminate the patient. But I detected the sound of his labored breathing from a dark corner. A haze of stale wood-smoke enveloped everything in the hut. I could not see above, but it was my impression that the thatching of the roof must have begun to collapse over the gable wind-holes, so that fumes had nowhere to go and so filled the small room. I knew I would reek of smoldering fire for hours after this visit.
Alice put sticks on the fire as I made my way, coughing, to the bed. Blessings on the man who invented the fireplace.
I was surprised to see how old the girl’s father was. The pain of his injury surely added lines to his face, but even considering that, he was a man of sixty years at least. I asked what had befallen him and learned that it was he I had seen carrying a sack of hides to the tanner across Shill Brook that very morning. Though but half a day earlier, the event seemed in my mind to have occurred a lifetime ago. His name, he said, was Henry; Henry atte Bridge.
He had fallen, he said, on icy cobbles before the tanner’s shop. He had gone there with three hides: he had butchered a boar and two aged sheep of his small flock. He was taking the skins to the tanner when he fell under the load. He could not stand on his leg. The tanner and his apprentice helped him home, where he had awaited me in his bed. I feared a broken leg. No, that was not my greatest fear; a broken leg might mend. I feared a broken hip.
I drew the blankets from the man and went to probing his right hip, where he indicated the greatest pain was located. It took little prodding before I was certain of my diagnosis. A broken hip. I saw no gain to prevarication, so I told him plainly of the nature of his injury.
“As I feared,” he said softly. He coughed twice in the smoke, then spoke again. “I’m finished, then.”
“Perhaps not. But I will not deceive you. Even young men, hurt in summer, do not easily rise from an injury such as yours.”
“What is to be done?” He coughed again.
In Paris I read of an Italian physician who believed he could improve the recovery of his patients with such injuries by raising the head of the victim’s bed. For, especially in winter, a man who cannot rise from his bed will soon die as his lungs fill with fluid. It was this physician’s belief — I cannot recall his name — that elevating the head might retard injury to the lungs common to a supine position.
I made a poultice of pulped root of comfrey, packed it about the injured limb, then wrapped it in woolen strips. The break was too high, as are most fractures of the hip, to apply a splint. Comfrey is thought to speed healing of broken bones when applied so. In this case I had doubts, but felt no harm in trying. And it gave the man hope that something could be done for him. I am convinced that hope is a curative in the ill and injured, for I have seen those severely wounded recover when they should not have, because they thought they would. And I have seen those ill, but capable of recovery, pass to the next world because they were persuaded they would not recover.
I asked the girl for ale, but she had none. I wished to make a draught to ease her father’s pain. I did not bother to ask for wine; in a house that has no ale there will be no wine.
I excused myself, walked the frozen streets back to Galen House, and armed myself with a flagon of ale. It was weak stuff, sold before the village taster had approved it. But for what I intended, it would serve. Alan the beadle accosted me on my return to the Weald cottage, but bid me farewell when in the star-lit gloom he recognized me and learned of my business.
Into the ale I mixed the ground seeds and root of hemp. This concoction would relieve pain and induce sleep. I told Alice that in the morning she must find men who would lift the head of her father’s bed, and showed her how high it should be raised. There was nothing more to be done. I promised to return the following evening with another potion, then stumbled home through the cold and dark to an equally cold bed. For all my desire to find a wife to warm it for me, I had made little progress to that end.
The Angelus bell woke me before dawn, but I lay in bed until light streaked my windows. Lord Gilbert had bid me attend him, so shortly after dawn I made my way to the castle. His chamberlain escorted me to the solar, where Lord Gilbert, his wife, Lady Joan, and the guest were seated about a blazing fireplace. I felt warm for the first time in several weeks.
Lord Gilbert bid me be seated. I did so in some embarrassment, for my apparel was plain, and not in the best repair. I noted the hem of my cloak torn out, as it had been for many days, and it seemed to me that Lady Joan’s eyes fell also on the offending seam.
“I would hear your opinion of this business. What do you make of it, Master Hugh? Have you reflected on this matter since we parted last night?”
My thoughts had indeed been swimming through the various interpretations which could be assigned to finding a cotehardie and dagger together in a forest.
“M’lord, I have thought of little else. As the cotehardie and dagger were found some distance from the road, it seems to me likely that Sir Robert and his squire were drawn there as they passed by. Perhaps a call for assistance took them from the road. But someone, I think, wished them away from the path…to a place where what was to happen could not be seen by a traveler.”
Lord Gilbert pulled at his chin and nodded agreement. “The cotehardie?” he asked.
“When Sir Robert saw that he had been lured to an ambush, perhaps he threw off the cotehardie, to preserve it, or to escape the restrictions to movement and his own defense that such a close-fitting garment would cause.
“I think the fight went badly. The squire lost his sword, else he would not have been reduced to defending himself with but a small dagger. In time, even this was lost.”
“And the fight was over,” Lord Gilbert growled. “What then?”
“Death, m’lord.”
“But why? You may rob a man without killing him.”
“I think this was no robbery. It is as you said. A man may be robbed on the road, not in a forest, if enough strength is presented to him so that he will not challenge his state. It is my belief that Sir Robert’s death was desired.”