Rhuddlan (27 page)

“Forget about me—go after them!” Longsword
gasped hoarsely.

“Shut up, Will!” Delamere snapped. He looked
at the wound and felt his stomach heave. He forced himself to
swallow.

“Should we chase them, Sir Richard?” someone
asked hesitantly. “I counted only several men.”

He glanced up, his pleasant features twisted
with anger, hatred and fierce concern. “Yes! Six of you go—but not
too far. Be wary! This may have been only a ruse to draw us further
on into a larger ambush.” He returned his attention to Longsword
and tried to think. Apart from the rapid rise and fall of his
friend’s chest and the fluttering of his eyelids as he struggled to
keep them open, there was no other movement in his body. The
drizzle had suddenly become a hard rain. “He needs a physician,” he
said to the other men. “Will! Can you hear me?”

Longsword made a noise in his throat. “This
thing…heavy, Richard…off.”

He wanted his hauberk removed but Delamere
didn’t know how to do that without knocking into the arrow shaft.
He was frustrated by his own inaction. Blood continued to run down
Longsword’s neck and chest and was beginning to stain the ground.
It was imperative that he decide something quickly…Rhuddlan was
hours away at a fast clip and there wasn’t anyone there who was a
healer, anyway. He cursed audibly, and despite the cold, rainy day
felt sweat trickle down the sides of his face. In all their
grandiose plans, they had failed to consider what would happen if
the Welsh proved equal.

“Sir Richard, there’s the abbey,” a knight
called Guy Lene, ashen-faced, suggested hopefully. “They’re bound
to have an infirmary.”

Optimism flooded into him. He looked up at
the man. “Get us there.”

He jumped onto his horse and helped pull
Longsword up by his armpits while two men on the ground pushed the
unresisting body towards him. The rough movement seemed to increase
the flow of blood and Delamere called impatiently to the others to
hurry and mount up. Longsword was a heavy weight in his arms and
the rain poured mercilessly down but he hardly noticed. He muttered
every prayer he could think of and in between admonished his
unresponsive friend not to die.

The abbey of Saint Mary was a Benedictine
house for women founded some forty years earlier when the earl of
Chester controlled Rhuddlan. It was a small chapter, consisting of
only eighteen nuns, one abbess and three dozen or so lay people,
and was housed in a modest collection of timbered buildings half a
mile from the sea and almost a day’s ride from Rhuddlan. Although
the Welsh were as devout a people as any other, the abbey had found
it impossible to recruit new sisters from among them. This was
because the Welsh were suspicious of the Norman-introduced
Benedictine order which they viewed as part of an insidious plan to
reform their Church. The result was that the abbey, except for its
lay people, was made up entirely of aged Anglo-Norman women, all of
whom had come out to Rhuddlan in the idyllic days of Norman rule
and who had been left behind when Owain Gwynedd had seized the
castle and evicted the foreigners.

Delamere didn’t pay heed to their direction
or to the possibility that there might be more Welsh warriors
lurking behind the next hill. He was conscious only of how slow
their progress seemed to be, despite the fact that now, after every
prayer and admonishment, he urged the men to travel faster. But at
last the land ironed out and trees were scarcer, and he saw the
fuzzy grey outline of the little settlement on the green, misty
plain. And Longsword was still breathing.

One of the knights had raced ahead so that by
the time Delamere and the rest of the party had gained the first
building, a tiny stone church, there was a crowd of people, huddled
together against the rain, half of them garbed head to toe in
somber brown, to meet them and to gape at the injured man. He
gripped Longsword more tightly.

One woman stepped up to him and introduced
herself as the abbess. “We’ve sent for someone to tend to your
man’s wounds,” she told him. “In the meantime, I’ll show you where
you can set him down in preparation. It will take the priest
several days to get here if I send a groom now—”

“He doesn’t need a damned priest!” Delamere
interrupted tersely. “Only a physician. And this isn’t my ‘man’,
Mother Abbess; this is the son of King Henry and the lord of
Rhuddlan Castle!”

The abbess was taken aback. The knight who
had flown into the midst of the sisters’ quiet reflection in the
church had shouted out nothing more than that a badly injured man
was on his way who needed immediate aid. She looked with
undisguised shock at the inert figure, the blood-soaked hauberk and
the arrow shaft which protruded sickeningly from just above the
collarbone, and unconsciously crossed herself.

Delamere gazed anxiously upon Longsword’s
pale face. He was alive, but barely. Already his breath grew
shallower and his hand colder. There was no formal infirmary at the
abbey because its tenants were so few and Delamere and three others
had carried Longsword to the abbess’ own room in the dormitory and
laid him carefully on the clean, neat bed, which was immediately
fouled by his muddy boots and wet and bloodied clothing.

The abbess had closed the only window in the
chamber and had had a brazier brought in and a fire made in it to
dispel the chill. Delamere complained about the paucity of light
and she left briefly, returning with a man who bore two tripods
holding new candles. But these comforts did nothing to alleviate
Delamere’s anxiety and every second which passed served only to
infuriate him further.

“Where is she? What can she be doing?” he
demanded. “He will die soon if the bleeding doesn’t stop! Perhaps
you ought to have sent for the priest, after all; he’d probably get
here before she does!”

“Please, Sir Richard, I am certain she will—”
the abbess started to reply but broke off when she saw the knights
weren’t looking at her any longer but at the door to the chamber.
She followed their gaze and breathed in relief. “Here she is. This
is Gwalaes.”

A woman stood calmly in the doorway, dressed
plainly in homespun, undyed wool, a shawl over her head and a
basket on an arm. The shadows by the door made her features
indistinct but to Delamere one thing was clear enough and he
whirled around on the abbess.

“Tell me this isn’t your Sister Infirmarer!
This is a child!” He sputtered. “Perhaps I haven’t made it clear to
you, but that man there is—”

“Sir Richard!” the abbess interrupted so
sharply that Delamere fell immediately silent. “We have no Sister
Infirmarer. She passed away almost two years ago. Gwalaes was her
lay assistant. She’s a clever girl and knows as much as Sister was
able to teach her before her death. She is the only one at St. Mary
who might be able to help Lord William.”

Delamere opened his mouth to protest
again.

“Each minute you spend arguing is a waste of
valuable time. I can see from here that your master is in a
precarious state.”

It was the young woman who had spoken, in
Welsh, not loudly or hurriedly, but with enough quiet force to
stifle his complaints. Her voice was low and calm and his shaking
emotions were abruptly stilled. He took a deep breath and released
it slowly, in measures. He took several steps in the young woman’s
direction until he could see her eyes. She held his gaze, her head
almost on a level with his. She was young but there was nothing
immature in her expression. He clenched his jaw and nodded.

“You must wait outside,” she said to him.
“I’ve found that the sight of bloody wounds often turns a man’s
stomach and I don’t want the interruption.”

“No. I’m staying.”

She paused, then inclined her head. “Very
well. But the others must go and you’ll sit in the corner and keep
out of my way.”

He wasn’t used to being ordered about by
women, especially one of her station. The other men muttered,
understanding the tone and not the language. When she started to
walk past him, into the room, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to
face him again.

“I’ll pardon the way you’re speaking to me
now because the plight of my lord is more important. But you’d
better heal him. If he dies—”

“What?” she hissed furiously. “If he dies
what? Take your hand away! If he dies now it will be because all
his blood has seeped away while you catered to your injured
dignity! Now, will you tell them to go? The stench of horse in this
room is overpowering.”

Stunned, Delamere released her arm. The woman
ignored his outraged face and made her way to the bed. She set her
basket on the floor and bent over William Longsword’s motionless
body.

When the men had gone, the abbess appeared at
his elbow. “I apologize for Gwalaes’ sharp tongue, Sir Richard,”
she said to him in a low voice.

“She has a high opinion of herself to speak
like that to me,” he said angrily. The abbess smiled in agreement
but didn’t answer. He gave up the argument, feeling suddenly tired,
and sighed. He glanced at the bed. The girl had a hand on
Longsword’s chin and was carefully turning his head slightly so
that she could get a better look at the injured area. “Do you
really think she’s so capable?” he asked the abbess.

“Sister Eleanor—that was the name of our
Sister Infirmarer—said she has a gift, Sir Richard. Since she’s
been with us she’s brought people through fevers and midwifed
births. And every week it seems there’s another accident; an animal
bite or a knife cut in the kitchen, or something more serious when
the men do heavy work.”

“But an arrow wound…” His voice was
desperate. People did not often survive such a wound; if the loss
of blood didn’t kill them, the subsequent infection did. He was
pleading for a miracle and hoping the abbess would tell him this
Gwalaes would give it to him.

She put a hand on his arm. “As I said before,
Sir Richard, if anyone can help Lord William, it’s Gwalaes.”

PART IV

Chapter 20

February, 1177

Saint Mary’s Abbey, Gwynedd

The wound wasn’t as bad as it looked at first
glance; if it was, the poor man would have been dead already. The
rain had kept it somewhat clean and the man’s companions hadn’t
stuffed it with leaves or horsehair or bits of their filthy tunics
to stop the bleeding. She’d seen people pack wounds with some very
imaginative materials, mostly to little effect. And anyway, now
that the knight was lying horizontally and was still and out of the
wet, the bleeding had stopped on its own.

But how to dislodge the arrow…She frowned at
the protuberance at the base of the Norman’s neck. She knew what an
arrowhead looked like, of course; even the peasants’ little boys
went hunting for small game with rude versions of the weapon. She
also knew that pulling it out without causing much more damage to
the area would be her second hardest task. The first would be to
prevent her patient from sickening with fever once the arrow was
removed.

She heard the other knight, Sir Richard,
shift impatiently on his stool by the door. He was waiting for her
to do something instead of just staring.

She looked over to him. “Perhaps you can help
me,” she said.

“How?” He came to stand at her side.

“Well, I need to know how wide the base of
the arrow point is,” she said. “Is there any way you can tell?”

He peered at the shaft and then stretched out
an arm to touch it gingerly. He slid his fingers along the smooth
surface. “Judging from the length of this and the tail, I’d say
probably so wide.” He held up his thumb and forefinger spread about
three-quarters of an inch apart. “And I think it’s in rather deep.
I think there’s almost an inch of shaft missing.”

“Mmm.” She was thoughtful.

“The bleeding’s stopped.”

“Yes.” She pointed to the spot on Longsword’s
neck just above the arrow shaft. “He’s lucky. He wasn’t struck
here. Have you ever seen a pig slaughtered? Or sheep? The butcher
draws a knife across the neck right in that spot because it’s one
of the life centers of the body. It’s the same with people. If the
arrow had gone in here, your lord would be dead now.”

Sir Richard exhaled noisily and Gwalaes
studied him curiously. Even though he was almost as bedraggled as
the injured knight, she could see he was a handsome man. His short,
dark hair had already dried and curled in a pleasing manner and his
eyes, lit by the softly flickering candles, were the color of
spring leaves. His jaw was firm and lightly flecked with a day’s
growth of beard, which he rubbed every now and then as if it
irritated him. His nose was long and straight. But she wasn’t
impressed by mere beauty; her brother had been just as good-looking
and she had known him to be cold and calculating and often times
cruel.

She reached into her basket and pulled out a
roll of white cloth. “Do you think you could ask someone to fetch
me a jar of water?” she said to him.

He wavered, obviously loath to leave, but
then nodded. “Very well.”

He had to go out of the dormitory, she knew.
She also knew the darkening sky meant the sisters would be in the
church for Vespers and that the men who had been with him were
probably lounging around the kitchens waiting for supper and
getting in the way of the cooks. Unless he happened to snag a
passing child there was little chance of him returning right away,
which was fine with her because she didn’t want him to witness her
next maneuver.

She unwound the roll of cloth to expose a
short, sharp knife, polished clean and sparkling. For good measure
she wiped the cloth across the blade several times and then she
used it to gently pat at the crusting blood near the wound, to
clear away what she could without starting it to bleed again. She
put the cloth down on the bed and picked up the knife. Although she
wasn’t nervous or unsure of her actions, she closed her eyes and
murmured a brief prayer.