Three Great English Victories: A 3-book Collection of Harlequin, 1356 and Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell
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plentiful enough,’ another man said.
‘The voice of the privileged,’ the first man, whose hand was still on Thomas’s forehead, answered. ‘You take life,’ he said, ‘so value it as a thief values his victims.’
‘And you are a victim?’
‘Of course. A learned victim, a wise victim, even a valuable victim, but still a victim. And this young man, what is he?’
‘An English archer,’ the second voice said sourly, ‘and if we had any sense we’d kill him here and now.’
‘I think we shall try and feed him instead. Help me raise him.’
Hands pushed Thomas upright in the bed, and a spoonful of warm soup was put into his mouth, but he could not swallow and so spat the soup onto the blankets. Pain seared through him and the darkness came again.
The light came a third time or perhaps a fourth, he could not tell. Perhaps he dreamed it, but this time an old man stood outlined against the bright window. The man had a long black robe, but he was not a priest or monk, for the robe was not gathered at the waist and he wore a small square black hat over his long white hair.
‘God,’ Thomas tried to say, though the word came out as a guttural grunt.
The old man turned. He had a long, forked beard and was holding a jordan jar. It had a narrow neck and a round belly, and the bottle was filled with a pale yellow liquid that the man held up to the light. He peered at the liquid, then swilled it about before sniffing the jar’s mouth.
‘Are you awake?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you can speak! What a doctor I am! My brilliance astonishes me; if only it would persuade my patients to pay me. But most believe I should be grateful that they don’t spit at me. Would you say this urine is clear?’
Thomas nodded and wished he had not for the pain jarred through his neck and down his spine.
‘You do not consider it turgid? Not dark? No, indeed not. It smells and tastes healthy too. A good flask of clear yellow urine, and there is no better sign of good health. Alas, it is not yours.’ The doctor pushed open the window and poured the urine away. ‘Swallow,’ he instructed Thomas.
Thomas’s mouth was dry, but he obediently tried to swallow and immediately gasped with pain.
‘I think,’ the doctor said, ‘that we had best try a thin gruel. Very thin, with some oil, I believe, or better still, butter. That thing tied about your neck is a strip of cloth which has been soaked in holy water. It was not my doing, but I did not forbid it. You Christians believe in magic – indeed you could have no faith without a trust in magic – so I must indulge your beliefs. Is that a dog’s paw about your neck? Don’t tell me, I’m sure I don’t want to know. However, when you recover, I trust you will understand that it was neither dog paws nor wet cloths that healed you, but my skill. I have bled you, I have applied poultices of dung, moss and clove, and I have sweated you. Eleanor, though, will insist it was her prayers and that tawdry strip of wet cloth that revived you.’
‘Eleanor?’
‘She cut you down, dear boy. You were half dead. By the time I arrived you were more dead than alive and I advised her to let you expire in peace. I told her you were halfway in what you insist is hell and that I was too old and too tired to enter into a tugging contest with the devil, but Eleanor insisted and I have ever found it difficult to resist her entreaties. Gruel with rancid butter, I think. You are weak, dear boy, very weak. Do you have a name?’
‘Thomas.’
‘Mine is Mordecai, though you may call me Doctor. You won’t, of course. You’ll call me a damned Jew, a Christ murderer, a secret worshipper of pigs and a kidnapper of Christian children.’ This was all said cheerfully. ‘How absurd! Who would want to kidnap children, Christian or otherwise? Vile things. The only mercy of children is that they grow up, as my son has but then, tragically, they beget more children. We do not learn life’s lessons.’
‘Doctor?’ Thomas croaked.
‘Thomas?’
‘Thank you.’
‘An Englishman with manners! The world’s wonders never cease. Wait there, Thomas, and do not have the bad manners to die while I’m gone. I shall fetch gruel.’
‘Doctor?’
‘I am still here.’
‘Where am I?’
‘In the house of my friend, and quite safe.’
‘Your friend?’
‘Sir Guillaume d’Evecque, knight of the sea and of the land, and as great a fool as any I know, but a goodhearted fool. He does at least pay me.’
Thomas closed his eyes. He did not really understand what the doctor had said, or perhaps he did not believe it. His head was aching. There was pain all through his body, from his aching head down to his throbbing toes. He thought of his mother, because that was comforting, then he remembered being hauled up the tree and he shivered. He wished he could sleep again, for in sleep there was no pain, but then he was made to sit up and the doctor forced a pungent, oily gruel into his mouth and he managed not to spit it out or throw it up. There must have been mushrooms in the gruel, or else it had been infused with the hemp-like leaves that the Hookton villagers had called angel salad, for after he had eaten he had vivid dreams, but less pain. When he awoke it was dark and he was alone, but he managed to sit up and even stand, though he tottered and had to sit again.
Next morning, when the birds were calling from the oak branches where he had so nearly died, a tall man came into the room. The man was on crutches and his left thigh was swathed in bandages. He turned to look at Thomas and showed a face that was horribly scarred. A blade had cut him from the forehead to the jaw, taking the man’s left eye in its savage chop. He had long yellow hair, very shaggy and full, and Thomas guessed the man had been handsome once, though now he looked like a thing of nightmare.
‘Mordecai,’ the man growled, ‘tells me you will live.’
‘With God’s help,’ Thomas said.
‘I doubt God’s interested in you,’ the man said sourly. He looked to be in his thirties and had the bowed legs of a horseman and the deep chest of a man who practises hard with weapons. He swung on the crutches to the window, where he sat on the sill. His beard was streaked with white where the blade had chopped into his jaw and his voice was uncommonly deep and harsh. ‘But you might live with Mordecai’s help. There isn’t a physician to touch him in all Normandy, though Christ alone knows how he does it. He’s been squinting at my piss for a week now. I’m crippled, you Jewish halfwit, I tell him, not wounded in the bladder, but he just tells me to shut my mouth and squeeze out more drops. He’ll start on you soon.’ The man, who wore nothing except a long white shirt, contemplated Thomas moodily. ‘I have a notion,’ he growled, ‘that you are the godforsaken bastard who put an arrow into my thigh. I remember seeing a son of a whore with long hair like yours, then I was hit.’
‘You’re Sir Guillaume?’
‘I am.’
‘I meant to kill you,’ Thomas said.
‘So why shouldn’t I kill you?’ Sir Guillaume asked. ‘You lie in my bed, drink my gruel and breathe my air. English bastard. Worse, you’re a Vexille.’
Thomas turned his head to stare at the forbidding Sir Guillaume. He said nothing, for the last three words had mystified him.
‘But I choose not to kill you,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘because you saved my daughter from rape.’
‘Your daughter?’
‘Eleanor, you fool. She’s a bastard daughter, of course,’ Sir Guillaume said. ‘Her mother was a servant to my father, but Eleanor is all I’ve got left and I’m fond of her. She says you were kind to her, which is why she cut you down