Lord Gilbert and Sir Roger pushed through the mob from one side, and I did the same from the other. We met in the midst of the conflict. With a roar Lord Gilbert commanded the combatants to cease their brawl. When they saw who it was who moved between them they did so, breathing heavily from their exertions.
It was William Willoughby and Sir John who had so disturbed the peace of the castle. I saw blood issuing from the squire’s nose, and Sir John’s fine grey cotehardie was slashed and a crimson stain was seeping between the fingers of his left hand which he had pressed against the edges of the cut.
Sir Roger seized the squire’s dagger and Lord Gilbert snatched Sir John’s. “What means this unseemly contest?” he bawled.
“The knave struck me,” Squire William said. As if to prove his assertion drops of blood fell from his nose to the dirt of the castle yard.
Lord Gilbert turned to Sir John and said, “Why did you do so?”
The knight opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came forth. He swayed upon his feet, collapsed to his knees, his eyes rolled back, and he fell face first into the dust, arms outstretched before him. He had evidently received a perilous cut.
I stepped to the fallen knight, turned him to his back, and inspected his wound. It bled freely. The thrust seemed deep, but I could not know this for certain without a closer inspection. A shadow fell across Sir John as Lord Gilbert knelt opposite me.
“Is he dead?” he asked.
“Nay. He breathes, but mayhap ’tis mortal. He must be carried to a table where I can see how severely he is hurt.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Arthur. I motioned to him to approach and when he did I told him to take Sir John’s shoulders whilst I grasped his feet. Together we lifted the insensible knight from the mud and carried him to the hall. This was not an easy task, for Sir John was not a small man. He was a near twin in size to Lord Gilbert, and surely weighed fourteen stone or more.
Uctred was nearby as well, and I shouted for him to hasten ahead and set up a table under a window. He did so, closely followed by two other grooms who had, moments before, been stunned into inaction but now saw a way to make themselves useful.
“Put that man in the dungeon,” Lord Gilbert said to John Chamberlain, who had also appeared. He pointed toward Squire William. “We will deal with him later.”
Sir Roger and Lord Gilbert followed Arthur and me and our burden through the great oaken door and into the hall. Once past the door I heard the clatter of trestles and boards as Uctred and his companions hastily erected a table. Someone would later need to scrub bloodstains from the planks, and from the flags, also, for Sir John bled freely, crimson drops falling even upon my shoes.
No sooner had the knight been laid upon the table than he blinked and tried to lift his head. He had regained his wits.
I told him to be still, drew my dagger, and slashed at his cotehardie and kirtle until I had cleared the clothing away from the wound. What I saw gave me some hope for the man’s life. The cut was as long as my hand. Such a laceration is generally the result of a slashing stroke rather than a thrust. The wound bled much, but was not, I thought, so deep as I had feared. A smaller puncture could be the result of a stabbing blow, which might seem at first of less consequence. But if such a wound penetrated to some vital organ the knight would surely die. William’s blade had cut deeply enough that I saw two ribs through the blood and flesh, but the bone had prevented the stroke from doing harm to any vital organ.
I had no instruments at the castle with which to deal with this injury. I grasped the fragment of kirtle I had cut away from the wound and pressed it firmly against the cut to stop, so much as was possible, the flow of blood. This seemed effective. I told Arthur to hold the linen in place whilst I ran to Galen House for instruments with which I might close the wound. I also requested of Lord Gilbert that wine and a basin of hot water be brought to the hall, to cleanse the wound. I then hastened from the hall.
I was longer in returning to the castle than I would have been three or four years past. This sluggishness is Kate’s doing. I have enjoyed too many coney pies and egg leeches since we wed. When I lived alone and made my dinner of bread, cheese, ale, and an occasional roasted capon I was more fleet of foot.
I hesitated at my home only long enough to blurt out the news to Kate and throw instruments into a sack. By the time I crashed through the doors into Bampton Castle Hall I was breathless and unfit for any surgery. Lord Gilbert saw my state and offered a cup of wine from the ewer the butler had provided.
I drank from the proffered cup whilst I regained my breath, and inspected the knight’s wound. Someone had provided a new cloth. The rag which I had left with Arthur lay red-stained beneath the trestles, and he was pressing a new, larger piece of fabric against the cut.
Sir John lay quietly during this inspection, but when he saw me produce a needle and spool of silken thread from my sack he spoke.
“Am I a dead man?”
“Mayhap. There is no way to know ’til a day or two passes. If you are yet alive come Tuesday, or Wednesday, I think then you will live. But Lord Gilbert’s chaplain should remain close by to shrive you.”
In my absence another table had been erected, and upon it I saw one of Lord Gilbert’s napkins, missing a fragment which now stopped Sir John’s blood from gushing from his wound. I ripped a length from the napkin, soaked it in wine, and wiped the wound as Arthur lifted the blood-soaked cloth. What good this might do I cannot tell, but it has always seemed to me that if a wound might heal better after being stitched and then bathed in wine, then to wash a cut with wine before any surgery or work with needle and thread might also help a wound to heal.
Squire William had already made the first cut, so ’twas too late to test the theory fully, but I poured more wine into the empty cup, then poured this directly into Sir John’s cut. He gasped, and clenched his hands into fists, but was otherwise still.
I cut a length of silken thread as long as my arm and began to stitch Sir John’s wound closed. The day was near done, and light from the window above my head was growing dim. The day had been sunny and warm. So as I bent over my patient, the better to see what I was about, drops of sweat beaded upon my lip and forehead and I was required to wipe the perspiration away with what remained of Lord Gilbert’s napkin, else I would have dripped sweat upon the knight’s wound.
The cut was in a place where others would be unlikely to see it, but I was careful to do fine work so that should the man live, his scar would be thin and faint. Perhaps, I thought, should he marry, his bride will appreciate my competence.
Twenty stitches closed the wound. A few tiny drops of blood yet oozed from the cut. These I wiped away with an unstained corner of the cloth Arthur had used to staunch the flow, then I soaked another scrap of napery in wine and once more washed the wound.
I could do no more. Whether the knight lived or died was now in God’s hands, not mine.
I stood away from Sir John, washed blood from my hands in the basin, wiped sweat from my brow again, and placed my hands behind my back to stretch my complaining muscles.
“Will he live?” Lord Gilbert asked. He, Sir Roger, Arthur, Uctred, and several others had watched as I sewed Sir John back together, but so intent was I on the task that I had taken no notice of spectators.
“God knows. If the cut is not deep, he will survive, I think. But if the blade went under his ribs, which I think it did not do, he will likely die soon.”