In the hall they had hung extra lanterns from the rafters to see by, and pushed back the trestle table to make a clear space. There were small bundles of gear and possessions stacked within the doorway, easily to be caught up for a hurried flight. With the Sea Wolves so near, the Brothers and their refuging village folk had been prepared for flight when we came, and they had left all things ready in case the worst should happen after all.
Those of us whose hurts were slight stood back against the wall while the more sorely scathed were tended. After the chill of the spring evening it was very warm in the hall, for they had lit a fire, to boil water and heat the searing iron. The smoke hung among the rafters and made drifting yellow wreaths around the lanterns; it grew hot, and there began to be a thick smell of salves and the sweating bodies of men in pain, and once or twice, when the searing iron came into use, the sickening reek of scorched flesh. The first time the iron was used, it was on Gàult, and the boy cried out, short and sharp as the scream of a hawk. Afterward he wept, but I think he wept because he had cried out, not for the pain.
Brother Lucian, working with the sleeves of his habit rolled to the shoulder, and the shaven forepart of his head shining sweat-beaded in the lantern light, had two or three helpers, amongst them a young novice, whom I had noticed before. A yellow-haired overplump lad with a good straight pair of eyes, and a way of slightly dragging his left foot. Watching him now, somewhat anxiously at first, for he was so young that I doubted his skill, I saw that he knew what he was doing, and that he cared deeply for the doing of it. Once he glanced up and saw me watching him, but his eyes returned instantly to the work of his hands, without, I think, even being fully aware of mine. I liked the singleness of purpose in him.
When it came to my turn, it so happened that the Infirmarer was still busy upon someone else, and the novice turned to me as I came forward to the table under the lanterns. I was just going to pull off the clotted rag, but he stayed me, with the authority of a man who is about his own trade.
“No, let me. You will set it bleeding again.” He took up a knife and cut through the rag, eased away the stiffened folds and looked at the gash.
“It is not much,” I said.
“Clench your fist,” he ordered, and when I had done so, he nodded. “It is not much. You are fortunate. A nail’s breadth farther that way, and it might have severed the thing that bids the thumb answer to your will.” He bathed the gash and salved it, drawing the edges together, and lashed it. His hands were less plump than the rest of him, very sure of their work, strong and gentle at the same time, with a gentleness that had nothing soft in it but could be swiftly ruthless if the need arose. Also they were the hands of a fighter. And I thought for the first time that it was a pity that the healing art should lie altogether with the Church; better the old way when the healer had been part of the world, when army surgeons had marched with the Legions. Somehow I could not see these hands as belonging to one shut away into sanctuary, their healing shackled always to the dictates of one religion.
He fastened off the bandage and I thanked him and turned away, and in a little we went out, those of us who were still on our feet, to join the rest of the Companions, who had unhelmed and loosened off their war gear, and were kneeling about the candlelit doorway of the wattle church — there would have been room for less than half of us within — for it was the hour of evening prayer. The Abbot spoke the Thanksgiving prayers. His stately words meant little to me, but I remember that there was a late blackbird singing in the orchard, and the wind came siffling up from the marshes, and I had my own Thanksgiving prayer within me, because there was one less settlement of the Sea Wolves in Britain. Afterward they brought out and held up before us their chief treasure; some bones from Saint Alban’s foot, I think it was. The light from the open doorway woke colored fires in the goldwork and enamel of the reliquary, as the Abbot raised it between his hands; and I heard the soft awed gasp of the village folk, who lived, as it were, in the shadow of its sanctity.
Then mercifully there was food at last. We made camp in the orchard, and ate there, for, like the church, the hall would not have held half of us, let alone the huddled refugees of the countryside. The brown-clad Brothers served and ate with us; and the Abbot served me with his own hands.
We had a fire, well clear of the apple trees, and by the flicker of it I saw the young novice watching me, more than once. And late that evening, as I crossed the monastery garth toward the bothy where our sorest wounded had been housed, I met him coming from there, swinging a lantern in his hand and walking with that faint drag of the left foot that I had noticed before. “How is it with Gault and the others?” I asked as we came together, and jerked my chin in the direction of the bothy.
“I think that if they do not take the wound fever, they will do well enough. How is it with that arm, my Lord Artos?”
“Well enough, also. You’re a good surgeon.”
“It is my hope that I shall be, one day.”
I would have gone on, but he lingered as though there was something he wanted urgently to say; and I found myself lingering also. Besides, he had been catching at my interest all evening. “Is that why you entered the religious life?” I asked after a moment.
“There is nowhere that one can learn or follow the healer’s craft outside the Church, in these days,” he said; and then, speaking as though the words stuck a little in his throat, “That is a good enough reason for my choice of life, but lest it should fail me, I’ve another.” He thrust forward his bare left foot from the thick folds of his habit, and glancing down at the sudden movement, I saw that it was turned inward, wasted and drawn up like the cramped claw of a bird, and the reason for his slight lameness became clear. “I am a younger son. I possess nothing of my own save a certain skill with wound salves and black draughts; I had the normal weapon training that all boys have, but as my father was at pains to make clear to me, I’d not be likely to find a lord overeager to take a fighting man as slow-footed as I am into his hall.”
“I wonder if he was right,” I said.
“My Lord Artos is kind. I have wondered the same thing — now and then. But I expect he was.”
“I am willing to believe, at all events, that you will make a better surgeon than you would have made a soldier,” I said. “Why do you make this defense, as though I had accused you of something?”
His eyes were bright and wretched in the lantern light, and he laughed a little drearily. “I don’t know . . . I suppose because it is a time for taking the sword, and I would not have you think —” He caught at the words as though to have them unspoken again. “No, that is presumption; it sounds as though I were fool enough to think that you — that you —”
“Might waste my time thinking of you at all,” I said, rescuing him from the stammer. “My way is the sword and yours is prayer, and both are good. It should not matter to you what I think of you.”
“It will always matter to men, what you think of them,” he said; and then on a lighter note, “Nevertheless, it is good to follow the healer’s craft.”