“Bruce, we calls ’im,” the stableman told me. “Lord Gilbert rode ’im at Poitiers, he did. Took a bolt in the haunch, but never so much as flinched. Lord Gilbert didn’t know as he’d been hurt ’til battle was over.”
The stableman held the horse’s head and scratched his forelock while I mounted. Four hours later Bruce and I ambled through the gate with barely enough light to see that Wilfred had not yet swung it shut nor dropped the portcullis. Waiting for my return, he said, as I greeted him.
No one, male or female, was missing from Aston or Cote. Not missing for unknown cause, anyway. There were so many missing from plague that the old woman who spoke to me in Cote suggested that the families who remained might petition their lord to remove to Newbridge or some other town less decimated by disease.
I planned to visit other villages to the east of Bampton the next day, but this was not to be. Shortly after I rose from my bed, before I completed my morning wash — I know many consider this an unnecessary affectation — there came a pounding at the door of Galen House.
I opened it and peered into the gloom. Before me stood three men, two of them carrying a litter upon which a fourth was lying. Motionless.
The door-thumper removed his hat and explained their mission. The man on the litter was his father. They were foresters in Lord Gilbert’s lands to the northwest of Bampton. At dusk the evening before, they had felled a last oak for the day. The man on the litter had not seen it coming his way as it dropped until it was too late. A large limb had caught him across the head as he ran, leaving him unconscious, and leaving a dent in his skull as well as a laceration. He had regained consciousness briefly, complained of headache and nausea, then, after they got him to his wife and hut, he’d passed out again. And this time remained comatose. I motioned for them to bring him in. Fortunately I had thought to repackage the bones and move my dispensary table to its rightful place. The sight of a surgeon’s table strewn with bones might put off even the most needy client.
“Put the litter on the table there.”
I lit two more candles — one was already burning — and inspected the wound. It was depressed to the depth of my finger and yet oozing blood.
“Can you do aught for ’im?” the son asked, his cap still grasped tightly before him.
“Perhaps. You would have done well to have brought him to me last night.”
“’E woke up for a span. ’Is wife wanted us to bring ’im in, but ’e said ‘No.’ Worried ’bout t’expense, y’see. So when he went down again we thought ’twas but for a minute, like. But he hasn’t wakened yet, an’ seems to me he ain’t breathin’ right.”
He wasn’t. I told the son and the other bearers I would do what I could, but I was not optimistic. For what I must do I wanted no spectators. I sent my patient’s three companions to wait in the street. The injured man remained comatose, which was good. He would feel no pain, nor thrash about.
I heated water and shaved the indented part of the skull, and a circle around it, then bathed the wound with the last of my wine. I used the scalp laceration for the cross-stroke, and made two vertical incisions at either end. This created two flaps of scalp which I could fold back to reveal the fracture.
I caught my breath when I saw the extent of the damage. The fracture was a finger’s length in diameter, and included four large bone fragments and many small splinters. I employed a probe to lift the largest piece, and in the gathering light from my eastern window I peered beneath it.
I was cheered to see that the damage was not so severe as the broken skull would have it appear. I saw no great rupture of dura mater encompassing the brain. There was much coagulated blood under the break, but that could be teased out, with time and care.
So I took my time and was careful. Three hours later I had cleaned the smallest bone splinters from the wound, positioned the larger pieces in a convex curve to match the undamaged portion of skull, and sewed up the “H” flap of scalp. My back ached and sweat ran into my eyes, but a sense of accomplishment overwhelmed my discomfort. The man might not survive, but he had not died on my table. At least, not yet. And I had given him a chance to live.
I packed ground moneywort over the wound, wrapped the woodcutter’s head in several layers of linen strips, then called to his son and friends. They had remained standing, motionless, since the moment I sent them out, and it was now past the sixth hour. I had seen them through the window several times while I worked.
“Take him home carefully. It will be his life should he receive another blow on the head. He must not rise from his bed for a week. After seven days he may rise but to eat and care for himself. No labor! In a fortnight he must return to have the wound inspected and have the windings changed.”
“He will live, then?” asked the brother.
“He may. I cannot pledge. The fracture was severe.”
“When can he return to work?”
“Perhaps a month. Certainly it will not be safe to do so sooner.”
“What is your fee?”
A wage for men like these might be two pence per day. I asked for four pence, brain surgery being somewhat more skilled employment than woodcutting and, from the stiffness of my back, nearly as arduous.
“I’ve but t’uppence. He’ll bring two more in a fortnight. If God wills an’ he lives.”
Fair enough, I thought. Success should be worth more than failure.
I was weary from the morning’s labor, and had no heart for another unfruitful journey through the autumn countryside. I had used much white archangel and moneywort to staunch the bleeding of the woodman’s scalp, and knew a meadow north of town where I might replenish my supply.
The afternoon I spent gathering plants; white archangel, lady’s mantle, clover, moneywort, and betony. All these I did not find in the same field, but since the plague much land lay fallow. Brief journeys from meadow to meadow supplied all my needs. I hung my gathered medicines from beams in the dispensary to dry.
I sat and contemplated this room as the day died. Tomorrow I would resume my search. Tonight I would enjoy the quiet reward of a day lived well, work well done, and the pleasure of searching God’s forest and field for the tools he has provided whereby we may be healed of our afflictions. I concluded the day with maslin, a haunch of cold mutton, and a pint of the baker’s wife’s ale. Life was good.
The Angelus Bell awakened me early next day. It does so every day. Before the sun was over St Andrew’s Chapel I bid Wilfred good morning and found Bruce snoring contentedly in the marshalsea.
I rode northeast this day, to Yelford and Hardwick, then all the way to Witney. Plague had reduced the first two villages so I spent little time there. No one had gone missing.
Witney was grown large as Bampton, and plague had reduced it but little. Witney required more time. My task was to learn what I could, as thoroughly as I could, as quickly as I could. I decided on two strategies; seek an innkeeper, and approach an old woman or two. If such as these knew of no person mysteriously absent from the town, it was likely all its inhabitants could be accounted for. Two hours later an innkeeper and three grandmothers could recollect no missing citizen.
I returned to Bampton through fields brown with autumn, forests golden, as frost worked its designs. A pity, I thought, to be on such a morbid mission when beauty surrounded me. But this also reminded me of death. Leaves and stems were dying, as would I, some day. Would my death bring some brief glory to the world, as did the dying foliage?
Some deaths bring no radiance. To die young, or of some festering disease, this is an infamous way to meet God. Even the slaughter of battle may bring with it an aureole of dignity. I had chosen to spend my life battling against ignoble death — against wasting disease and injury. But now I found myself in a struggle against the calamity of murder, the death of the young. I felt unequal to the assignment. My feelings would nearly prove accurate.