The Winter Mantle (60 page)

Pausing at a door that was coloured deep red, Father Gilbert knocked loudly. 'I am looking for Alexius the physician!' he cried, 'I have a sick man who needs his skills!'

The woman who had been beating the mat gave Sabina and her companion an unfriendly look and, retreating into the dark arch of the room, fastened the shutters with a smart rap. The children disappeared down an even narrower side alley, like the lizard into its crevice.

'Greeks!' snorted the priest. 'Now you understand why it is a waste of time.'

Sabina set her lips. 'I will not give up so easily,' she said and raised her own hand to knock at the red door.

Even before her knuckles had connected, a man appeared from around the side of the house, his expression decidedly grumpy. He was moving his tongue around the inside of his mouth as if clearing food from his palate, and indeed, a few crumbs of bread were trapped within his luxuriant black beard. A loose robe of blue linen with silk borders billowed around his tall, narrow frame.

He looked his two visitors up and down with irascible dark brown eyes. Sabina guiltily lowered her hand and put it behind her back.

'Can a man not eat his food in peace?' he demanded sourly. 'You Franks, you are barbarians!' He spoke Norman French with a heavy accent, but since Sabina could not even begin to comprehend Greek she was not going to carp at such a minor flaw.

'I am sorry to disturb you,' Father Gilbert said somewhat stiffly, 'but there is a sick man in need of your services and our errand is one of Christian mercy.'

'Hah, why come to me? You have your own physicians who are quite capable of "Christian mercy".' His tone was decidedly scornful. 'I have no desire to interfere with their learned treatments.' Flicking crumbs from his beard, he started to turn away.

'Wait… please — they have said that the only way is to remove his leg… and I know it will surely kill him,' Sabina cried.

Alexius the physician snorted down his nose. 'That is what your healers always say. They hack pieces off people more readily than common street butchers.' However his manner thawed slightly. 'I will come,' he said. 'But I will promise nothing. You Franks only send for me in the last resort, when it is usually too late. Wait while I finish my meal and fetch my satchel. A few moments will make no difference.' He disappeared again.

'I warned you, daughter,' Father Gilbert said wryly.

Sabina managed a wan smile. 'In truth I can bear with his manner if he is able to do something for my lord.'

'Only last week, I stood by and watched your Frankish chirugeons kill a man,' said Alexius as he followed Sabina through the large wooden gates and into the courtyard of the house where Simon was lodged. 'He had taken a spear wound to the thigh and I had been treating him with poultices, but your people insisted that he would only recover if the limb was removed.' He gave a snort of derision. 'Needless to say, he parted company with this life almost as swiftly as they parted him from his leg with a war axe.'

'My lord has refused to submit to the knife,' Sabina said. 'He says that if he is going to die, it will be with his body intact.'

'Wise man,' said Alexius facetiously.

They entered the sick room, which was darkened because the shutters had been closed against the hot beat of the sun. Simon was thrashing in the midst of a fevered dream. Turstan, who was keeping watch at his bedside, leaped to his feet and looked anxiously at Sabina and the newcomer.

'It's all right,' Sabina said quickly. 'Master Alexius is here to help Lord Simon.'

'If he is not beyond help,' the Greek confirmed pessimistically and striding to the shutters unfastened the latch and threw them wide to admit a surge of hot, yellow sunshine. 'And that I cannot tell if I cannot see what needs to be done.'

Simon had cried out and thrown his forearm across his eyes at the sudden burn of light. Sweat glistened on his body, making it seem as if he had just emerged from a pool, and his eyes were an opaque fever-glazed gold.

The physician approached the bed and, drawing aside the light cover, gazed the length of his patient's body. He made a soft clicking noise between the slight gap in his front teeth and shook his head.

Sabina's stomach plummeted. 'Can you do anything for him?' she asked.

'I can do much for him, but whether he will live is another matter.' Removing his satchel, Alexius pushed back his sleeves. 'I will need hot water and fresh linen bandages.'

Sabina nodded and went to the door.

'And if you have some good, clear wine, then that too.' He stooped over Simon's bandaged, massively swollen leg and once more clucked his tongue.

'You are not taking it off!' Simon gasped and struggled upright against the soaked sheets and bolsters.

'Of course I am not,' Alexius said, his nostrils flaring with indignation. 'I am not one of your barbarous Prankish chirugeons.' He pressed one long, firm hand against Simon's brow. 'Your fever is high, I see, but not so great that you do not know what is happening to you. I am going to give you a drink that will dull your pain, and then I am going to clean and drain your leg and poultice the wound.'

Simon lay back, panting, and bared his teeth in the terrible semblance of a smile. 'Do you then challenge the priest who came here to shrive me in preparation to greet death?'

Alexius mirrored the smile with his own lack of mirth. 'It was the priest and the woman who came to fetch me,' he said. 'Father Gilbert's task is the comfort and saving of souls. My concern is with the flesh.'

Sabina returned with the requested items. She had thought that the wine was a vehicle for mixing the physician's nostrums — indeed, it was, but most of it disappeared down Alexius' throat in very short order and only a scant cupful was left for the patient.

'Drink this,' said Alexius, handing Simon a chalcedony cup filled with hot wine and herbs. 'It will make you sleep.'

'What's in it?' Turstan demanded suspiciously, his hand hovering close to his sword hilt.

Alexius gave him an irritated look. 'I believe it is what you Franks call a potion of dwale. It contains the juice of hemlock, white poppy and henbane, together with vinegar and briony.'

'Jesu, you will kill him!' Turstan started forward, an inch of steel showing at the rim of his scabbard.

'Put up!' Simon gasped at the young man. 'Think you if he kills me that he expects to leave this room alive!'

'It is the quantities that are crucial, not the contents,' Alexius said, unperturbed. 'A man can kill himself on wine alone if he drinks enough. This will do no more than dull your master's wits whilst I do what must be done.'

Turstan slotted the sword back into the scabbard but his frown remained. Filled with misgivings of her own, Sabina watched the physician hold the cup to Simon's lips. The taste must have been foul, for Simon grimaced, but he drank steadily until it was all gone.

Very soon his eyelids drooped and when Alexius raised Simon's arm and let it drop there was not the slightest response. Save for the rise and fall of his chest, the man on the bed might as well have been dead.

Alexius turned his attention to the infected leg and with a dexterity and speed too swift to follow set about draining and poulticing the wound. The stench was appalling and Sabina had to draw her wimple across her face. Turstan visibly paled, but steadfastly held his ground. Alexius seemed not in the least disturbed, all his concentration bent upon his task.

'I can see that this leg has been broken long ago,' the Greek said. 'The ill humour stems from this old injury.' He washed out the crater left by the abscess with warm salt water. 'Now it needs to be poulticed and bandaged,' he said, and snapped his fingers and pointed, indicating that she should pass him the hot water and the bandages.

Sabina forced herself through the barrier of her revulsion and came to the bedside with the items. Even lanced and cleaned, the wound looked so terrible that she did not think it could ever heal.

Alexius tested the heat of the water with his wrist and, with a satisfied grunt, poured about a quarter of it into a wooden bowl. Taking what looked suspiciously like a large hunk of mouldy bread from his satchel he broke it into pieces in the water and mashed it around until it formed a gluey, bluish-grey mass. This he packed into the wound and bound it firmly in place with the fresh bandages.

'So,' he said. 'We replace the dressing twice a day for a week and see how matters progress.' With a grunt of satisfaction he washed his hands in the remaining water and then applied himself to tending Simon's minor injuries from the battle at Dorylaeum. These he smeared with a thick application of honey before lightly bandaging.

'Leave him to sleep now,' he said. 'I am afraid that when he awakens he will have sore need of the pot, for his bowels will void the potion in a vigorous manner.' He gathered up his instruments and returned them to his satchel. 'I will come again this evening before the curfew.'

Sabina saw him to the door and presented him with one of the gold bezants given to her by Ralf de Gael.

Alexius smiled dourly as he took it. 'At least you pay in good Byzantine gold and not the common silver of the Franks,' he said.

'You do not think much of us, even though your emperor summoned us to help him against the Turks,' Sabina was stung to retort.

'I think you are a barbaric hoard,' Alexius said. 'And our emperor asked for a few trained mercenaries, not the rabble of zealots that has washed up against his walls. But I cannot fault your courage, or the endurance of your fighting men and the women who follow in their dust.' Inclining his head to her, he departed, a tall thin figure striding out like an ungainly wading bird.

Sighing, Sabina closed the door and returned to her vigil in the sickroom. She had done her best. Now it truly was in the hands of God and a Byzantine physician who obviously cared deeply about his craft, if not his patients.

Nunnery of Elstow, Christmas 1097

'Is there news?'

Matilda had known that her mother was going to ask, but even so the question made her tense. 'Only the letter that arrived in September when they were preparing to leave Nicaea.' She shivered. The day was bitterly cold with snow threatening in the raw wind, but her mother had lit only the most meagre of fires in her chamber. Judith could have had grand apartments and as much charcoal on her fire as she desired, but she chose to live a Spartan life, bereft of colour. The embroideries of which she had once been so fond had been banished into one of two plain coffers standing against the side of the room, leaving the walls bare of all adornment save a large crucifix. Even the shutters were plain, with no hangings to exclude the draughts that blew through the wooden joints.

Moving with the stiffness of rheumatic joints, Judith went to one of the coffers, threw back the lid and drew out a green woollen mantle.

'Here, put this on. You are too soft.' She handed her daughter the garment and scooped more charcoal into the brazier with a small shovel. 'Your uncle Stephen wrote that they had a great victory against the Turks at a place called Dorylaeum, but that was in the summer. News takes so long to travel.' She crossed herself. 'I pray daily for their success and their safe return.'