Page 2

“He’s here on th’ floor.” Reverence laced the servant’s voice. He shut the door, then knelt on the dirt floor beside a man-sized length of metal and rags. “I’ve brought ye help, master,” he whispered. “She’ll make ye well.”

No response, no movement, no sound. Edlyn feared this master must already be dead, and she balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to flee at the moment despair struck the wretched oaf.

Then her captor groaned in unconcealed anxiety. “Master…”

Before she could change her mind, she laid a hand on the servant’s shoulder. “Move aside and let me see what I can do.”

The servant shuddered under her hand, then leaped to his feet. “If he dies, ye die.”

He snarled, but her sharp edge of fear had been dulled. Her captor was, after all, only a servant afraid for his knight, and that made him less of a monster and more of a man. Rebuking his arrogance, she answered, “Your master is in God’s hands, as are we all. Now move aside.”

The servant stumbled back, and his gaze settled on the cross over the door.

“Open the oven and stir up the fire. I need light.” Edlyn knelt beside the prone warrior. A closed, battered helm cupped his head. His surcoat had been removed, and chain mail swathed his chest, legs, and arms. His man freed the embers from their blanket of ash and laid kindling to encourage the flames, and in their light she observed blood oozing through the iron rings. She untied one lacing on the side of his chain mail hauberk, but found the other one severed and flapping loose. The fallen knight’s opponent, she guessed, had slipped a lance through the laces. The force of the blow had ripped them open, then the point of the spear had torn the flesh. With a grunt, she moved the heavy hauberk aside and stared in dismay at the blood-soaked quilting beneath. “Give me a knife,” she demanded.

“Not likely,” came the surly answer.

“Then you cut off his padding,” she said, impatient to see the wound on the knight’s belly.

Her captor knelt beside her. “This padding is an aketon.” With unsteady hands he cut away the tattered remains of the breeks and shift. “An aketon, ye stupid bitch. It protects me master from blows t’ th’ armor. Don’t you know anything?”

She knew more than she wanted to, but she didn’t admit that. Instead she said, “It may protect him from blows to the armor, but it has done nothing to preserve his flesh.”

Then the servant laid his master bare and Edlyn sucked in her breath. “God preserve him.” She dropped back down on her knees and stared, too afraid to even touch the white ribs and torn muscles that gleamed through the tattered skin. “You need someone more experienced than I to tend this.”

“Ye do it,” the servant insisted. “No one but ye.”

“Why would you condemn him to my incompetent care when across the square lies an infirmary? I’m the herbalist,” she declared firmly. “I don’t nurse the wounded. I only apply poultices and recommend medicines.”

He looked her over, his eyes thin squints of hostility. “I hear how ye talk. Ye’re a lady, an’ ladies know how t’ physic their folk.”

“Some of them more competently than others.”

“Make it better.” The cold point of the dagger touched her cheek again. “Now.”

So he wouldn’t even talk about it. That meant, she supposed, the wounded man was one of Simon de Montfort’s rebels and the servant feared the prince’s men would find his master and kill him. It made sense, but she’d seen men die of wounds like this. She’d seen them live, too, but only under the experienced care of the nursing nuns and their trained servants. She glanced at the dagger out of the corner of her eye. She should have run while she could rather than let compassion sway her.

Instead she had stayed and committed herself to doing the job at hand. She had to—she had more than herself to think of.

Standing, she moved steadily through her dispensary while the servant watched her. Inside the compact building set in the middle of the convent’s herb garden, the walls were lined with shelves. Dried mushrooms hung on strings from the rafters. A long table ran the length of the room in the center, and at one end stood the clay oven.

“What’s your name?” Edlyn asked.

“Why?” The crouching man fingered his dagger.

“Because I don’t know what to call you.” Edlyn opened a wooden box and scooped a handful of dried yarrow into her stone bowl. Picking up her pestle, she ground the leaves into powder and said, “And I want you to build up the fire to a full blaze.”

“Why?”

She wanted to snap at him, but she understood the suspicion he felt—plus he still clutched his knife. “A patient as severely wounded as your master should be kept warm. Also, I’ll make him a poultice when I’m done sewing him and that will help draw out the evil humors of his blood.”

The man mulled that over, then rose and went to the small stack of wood beside the hearth. “Not much wood here,” he said.

“The woodpile’s outside.”

“Huh. I’m not leaving ye here alone with him.”

“As you wish.” Adding just enough water to the leaves to make a paste, Edlyn placed the bowl atop the oven to warm, then gathered supplies for the job at hand and arranged them on a tray. When she stepped to the side of the table near the door, the servant followed, dagger at the ready. It irked her to be so mistrusted, but it didn’t surprise her. This was the harvest of violence: men who couldn’t trust and who couldn’t be trusted. When she returned to the wounded man, she said, “You’ll have to put that away. I shall need your help.”