Ramiro leaned his weight upon his master, while Marco knelt on the bench and gripped his ankles. The Hospitaller drew his dagger, removed the softened scab and made one swift, deep incision. A stream of pus, mingled with blood, welled out. Landry wrenched against the hands holding him, but they were firm. The knight cut and probed, wiping away the corrupted humours until they ceased to issue, and then rolled a strip of linen into a thin tent, which he thrust into the wound to drain it. He straightened his long back and wiped his blade.
“Keep hot cloths on the leg, demoiselle,” he bade her. “Dress the wound with wine, and give him no food, but fair water as much as he will drink.”
“He—he seems a little eased.” Rodriga whispered. The release of the humours had indeed relieved him; he had ceased to groan and was lying still. The two men loosed their grip and stood up, watching warily.
“He is gravely ill, demoiselle,” the Hospitaller told her gently. “As soon as he recovers his senses, you must fetch a priest.”
Rodriga chilled. Her lips felt stiff as wood, beyond her control, as she forced them to shape words. “He—you mean he will—will die?”
“Demoiselle, with wounds of this sort there is always great danger, and your father is not young.”
She nodded dumbly, and dropped to her knees beside him, taking his hand in both of hers and carrying it to her breast. Her eyes burned, but they were dry of tears, and a weight of lead seemed to have settled at her midriff. The knight looked compassionately down at her, and she remembered the duty she owed him.
“You—you have been most kind, Sir Jehan, and I thank you, for my father and myself. Will—will you accept refreshment?”
“Nothing, I thank you, demoiselle.” The Knights of Saint John, who had mostly been knights in the world before taking vows, were not commonly abashed in the company of women. He sat down and smiled at her. “I will stay a while and see how he does,” he offered, and she accepted gratefully, not knowing that he should not have done so. She was too ignorant of the Hospital’s rules even to wonder by what persuasion Marco had brought him here alone in flat contravention of them.
Landry’s hand twitched and tugged at Rodriga’s, and he muttered her name without opening his eyes.
“Yes, yes, I am here, dear father. Here beside you.”
“The fire—put out the fire,” he muttered.
“The fire? There is no fire, father.”
“The fire—too hot—scorching me.”
It was his own fever that scorched him, and she looked helplessly at the Hospitaller, who shook his head. Ramiro shifted the lamp-tripod back, but that tiny flame could have made no difference to him. The torrid night had them all streaming with perspiration, but his face was dry. Rodriga sent for water, to bathe his face and breast. It was tepid at best, but he ceased to twitch and mutter and fell into an uneasy doze. She let the cloth fall back into the bowl and sat crouched against the bench, wretchedly watching the centre of her life and heart.
“The hot season,” murmured the Hospitaller. Sickness was always rife in summer’s heat, which bred fevers, dysentery and ague in the unaccustomed host, and the sheer heat was an ordeal to be endured. Rodriga knew that the heat aggravated her father’s fever, but there was nothing cool in the whole city. The knight stood up, and she rose stiffly to do him the courtesy of seeing him at least to the stair. Marco had vanished while she had tried to tend Landry; she had seen no movement, heard no sound, but he was gone, and she knew a momentary sensation of emptiness. The Hospitaller did not seem surprised; he shrugged a little, and smiled.
“Odd animal,” he observed, with a tolerance few men displayed in speaking of Marco. “He has astonished me today; never before knew him trouble about any other man’s welfare.”
“I saved his life.”
“So the knave knows gratitude at least.”
“You know him, Sir Jehan?”
“I have had dealings with him, and can testify that he is not so black as men would have him. He is an honest trader, whatever else.” She murmured something about believing that, and he went on, perhaps hoping to distract her. “It was four years ago, when Jerusalem was lost and half our Order had perished as martyrs at Hattin. All trade was at a standstill, and we were in sore need of drugs. An apothecary recommended Marco. God knows how the man accomplished it, or at what risk—for his profit, yes, but it was risk indeed to go among the Saracens in those days, but he brought me all I asked, at the price arranged and before the time appointed. Which, if you but knew the trade, amounted to a miracle.
“The Chapter, though, was mightily angered, and refused to sanction any further dealings with a suspected renegade. They would traffic with Armenians, Jews, or the Saracens themselves, but not Marco. I had to tell him so.”
“Oh! And—and what—”
“He said only, ‘I should have expected no less from pious Christians.’ I cannot find it in my heart to blame his bitterness.” They were at the foot of the stair now, and Wulfric was waiting to unbar the door. “Demoiselle, God preserve you and your father. I shall pray for him,” the Hospitaller said simply, and was gone.
She climbed back to the upper room, and even in that moment marvelled at the quality of Marco’s gratitude; for her sake he had humbled his high pride and asked help of a man who had been the instrument of a previous humiliation and, most galling of all, had sympathised with him. Then she heard her father’s cracked voice muttering and forgot all else.
For three days she and Urraca and Ramiro tended him, while the victorious city drank and whored and roistered around them, and they dared not open the door without checking on the caller’s identity. Landry’s wound had been opened in time, and the swelling and inflammation diminished, but the fever, intensified by the relentless heat, still scorched him. He twisted and tossed on the bed, rambling incoherently for hours; sometimes of the days when he and his girl-brat had wandered over half the face of Europe; sometimes of the present, of Acre and Piers and the siege, and occasionally of that brief and glorious madness, his one love, of the fierce young slave-girl who was not even a memory to Rodriga.
They snatched food and sleep at his side. Sir Jehan, however he reconciled it with the rules of his order, visited him daily, growing more grave each day, so that apprehension became hideous certainty. She could not imagine life without Landry, the dear heart of her existence and centre of all her memories. All means that their combined wits suggested they used in the attempt to cool his fever, but nothing served. The flesh wasted visibly from his bones, his delirium grew feeble and intermittent, between periods of frightening stupor, and he weakened fast.
The whole household was tense with dread and grief. Ramiro had served Landry from his first days in Spain; his sons had grown up in his family. Robert de Veragny brought rare fruits he could not touch, and tried to console Rodriga by promising to take her into his own care when the end came. Rodriga, bleakly looking into the desolate future, knew that when Landry died the household would be her responsibility, and could not imagine how she would maintain that charge, among strangers in this horrible city of death. Piers was no help; he came on the third evening, after Father Augustine had administered the Last Sacrament, but after protesting his devotion and his wish to be of service he fled, embarrassed by his own uselessness. Rodriga could not disagree with Urraca when the old woman croaked, “Good only for one thing, your randy young stallion.”
Sir Jehan returned to the house after nightfall. Landry was breathing stertorously and moaning half-conscious protests against the fire that scorched him. His face was gaunt under the tangle of dulled red hair, his eyes deeply sunken in dark sockets. They glittered unnaturally as he blinked at the lamp and fretfully shut them. The Hospitaller laid a hand on his hot dry brow, felt the beat of his hurrying heart and his thin pulse, and shook his head.
“He has still great strength, but it is wasting fast,” he told Rodriga. “If we could give him relief from the heat he might recover, but there is nothing cool in Acre.”
“We have tried everything we can think of,” Rodriga answered dully, and tears of helpless misery flooded over her cheeks. So little to need, and yet so impossible to obtain! A breeze from the sea, a shower of rain, would mean life for her father, but the fiery wind from the hills scorched him inexorably, and would shortly burn out his life. All her love and prayers were futile, and there was no help; God did not send miracles to Acre.
“It is God’s will,” murmured the knight gently, “and his soul is bound for Paradise as surely as though he had been slain in the battle where he got this wound.”
“I know—I know!” gasped Rodriga, fighting to steady her trembling mouth and choke back the sobs that seized her. “But I love him—Holy Mary, Mother of God, hear my prayers! Father— father!”
Ramiro put his arm round her, and she buried her face briefly in his bony shoulder before she made a harsh effort, straightened herself, gulped resolutely and dried her eyes. She sat down on the floor by her father’s head and caught up the branch of palm with which she fanned the swarming flies from his face. She prayed desperately for succour, for a miracle that would spare him, while Sir Jehan examined the leg-wound and then covered it. He sat on the low brick shelf beyond his feet, and Urraca padded out and returned with a basin of water.
They sponged his body, which brought temporary ease, and covered him with a fresh sheet against the whining mosquitoes. He quieted a little. Once he spoke Rodriga’s name, and she caught his hand in hers and held it. Presently she nodded into a doze where she sat, weary with watching and grief, and roused at a soft stir nearby. She was stiff with cramp, so she must have slept for a little time. The knight was preparing to leave, and Landry, though twitching a little and breathing uneasily, was still quiet. The house was very still, and even the blurred roar of revelling Acre seemed dulled.
Sir Jehan signed to her to stay where she was and slipped to the door, silent in his soft shoes. She heard a murmur of voices at the foot of the stair, and recognised Wulfric’s accent though she could distinguish no word. Then, shockingly loud in that hush, she heard an imperative knock at the stable-gate. She heaved herself to her feet with a little grunt of effort, and hobbled somehow, for her legs were without sensation, to the stair head, her heart thumping with wild hope. Wulfric was already crossing the courtyard; she heard the tail-end of a muttered oath as the knocking sounded again. Voices sounded in the lower room, where the men slept, and the tall gaunt Hospitaller backed four steps up the stair and set his hand on his sword. Esteban, Diego and Pablo issued half-dressed from the passage demanding to know what was amiss.
Wulfric’s voice was raised in parley at the gate. Another voice answered, and he padded back across the courtyard. Rodriga, recovering the use of her legs, ran impatiently down the stair. The knight put out a hand to check her, and she gasped with annoyance and jumped off the edge of the stair, landing lightly in the soft dust. She thought she knew that voice, and unreasonable hope flared impossibly in her.
“It is that harlot’s bastard outside, bidding me let him in!” growled Wulfric, who had not reconciled himself to the tolerance accorded the renegade by those who were indebted to him.
“Unbar the gate!” cried Rodriga, and followed him, wild eagerness filling her. Ramiro was behind her, his javelin ready, and Pablo the forethoughtful came running with a newly lighted torch flaring and spluttering. The bar grated, and the gate swung open under the arch. Into the torchlight came Marco, grey with dust and reeling with fatigue, leading two horses that stumbled from exhaustion. One bore a bulky pack.
“I am not—too late?” the renegade croaked.
“No—no—he is still alive!” Rodriga gasped eagerly. “Oh, can you help?”
He dropped the reins, gesturing vaguely towards Ramiro, who dived to catch them, and leaned limply against the wall. He nodded at the bulky pack. “Snow!” he said simply.
For a stunned moment no one spoke or moved; wits refused to credit the existence of snow in that torrid heat. Then the grave and dignified Hospitaller uttered a yelp and hurled himself at the pack. Never was a horse so swiftly disburdened. He hoisted the load to his shoulders and plunged towards the stairs, Rodriga trotting to keep up with his long legs. He took the steps in long bounds; the load was plainly light for all its size. When Rodriga gained the bedroom he was bidding Urraca fetch basins and jugs, while he picked at the seams of a coarse canvas wrapping with his knife. His gaunt face was one wide jubilant grin. Rodriga, half-incredulous, half-afraid to believe lest she be disappointed, asked in a breathless little whisper, “How can it be snow?”
“Snow it is,” he declared confidently, slashing at the gaping canvas. Masses of tight-packed straw were bulging through the cuts. “Snow from the Lebanon mountains—the Saracens use it. They bring it down by relays of horses all through the summer, and store it in deep pits to cool their food and drink.” He was tearing at the straw, strewing it heedlessly in piles about him, and Rodriga came to help. All at once, as she thrust her arms into the close prickly straw, she knew that it was true; the chill that blessed her hot and sweating skin was proof enough. Then her fingers encountered hard, icy-cold cloth, and the kernel of the bale was uncovered; a tight parcel of waxed linen with more stitches to be slashed, about twice the size of a man’s head. Urraca pattered back, slung about with rattling utensils, and the Hospitaller tipped into the largest basin a grey-white glistening mass, already streaming water, that was merely an enormous version of the snowballs the children of the North played with in winter. It blurred to the girl’s sight as tears gathered, but snow it was, squeezed almost to solid ice.
“No hope of saving it, with no pit,” Sir Jehan was saying practically, “but it will last longest in the mass.” He poured carefully into a jug the ice-water that had melted from it, and passed that to the old woman; then he set the basin on the canvas, packed it round with straw to keep the cold in, covered it with the waxed cloth and gathered the canvas over the top. “So! God’s blessing on that misbegotten knave, and may he come to redemption! Let us see how this serves.”
They laid cloths soaked in the icy water on Landry’s brow and breast; they bathed his face and hands, fearful of chilling him too sharply, and set the basin with all its wrappings beside him to cool the air. They cooled wine and mixed it with the ice-water, and he drank it avidly. They hung a sheet soaked in it beside him to turn the hot draught to a cool one. He quieted and lay still, and by the time dawn climbed into the grey sky, he had fallen into his first true, sound sleep for days, his breathing easy, his fever-flush fading, and his skin moist.
Sir Jehan stretched until his muscles cracked. “Thanks be to God,” he said, smothering a vast yawn, “and to that intelligent scoundrel. I think he will live. But by God’s Mercy, whenever I think on it I marvel! You realise what the man has done? Ridden to the Lebanon, raided the snow-traffic, and back again in three days! He must be beaten out of iron, and I wonder how many horses he has foundered! I had thought, demoiselle, that I knew something of mankind, but only God can fathom all that is in a man’s heart. That soulless renegade to do so much for gratitude!”
The soulless renegade’s intelligent, instant action had saved her father’s life, and again tears blurred her sight as she came back to the bed and listened to his easy breathing. She had learned before the quality of Marco’s gratitude, and now, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, she vowed that she would to her life’s end remember this boon and be equally grateful, equally ready to serve him in any way she might as requitement.
CHAPTER X
Wulfric tramped back from opening the door for Sir Jehan, and cleared his throat harshly to attract Rodriga’s attention.
“My lady, that Infidel’s get is asleep in the courtyard. Shall I put him forth?”
“Marco? Asleep—?” She pushed past him as he stood bulkily in the doorway and ran down the stair, indignant both with him and with herself. Her gratitude was of small worth, indeed, if in thankfulness for the gift she forgot the giver.
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br /> Marco was huddled uncomfortably under the fig tree, his head down on one arm against the brick curb of the murky rain-water pool. He was grey with powdered dust, clothing, skin and hair. She could see nothing of his face but the hard angles of temple and cheekbone. He was deep in the sleep of utter physical exhaustion, and for a moment she hesitated to rouse him. But he could not be left here in the courtyard, assailed by sun and flies. She spoke his name, quietly at first and then more loudly. He did not stir. Wulfric grunted and dug him roughly in the side with his toe, and he came awake all in one piece, lunging to one knee and thence to his feet with an animal’s instant reaction. His dagger glittered in his hand, which had moved almost faster than Rodriga’s eye could follow.
He blinked as though dazzled, from her face to Wulfric’s and back; then his right hand dropped, and he drew the back of his left across his bloodshot eyes, that were sunken in sockets stained dark as bruises with fatigue. Under the dust a faint flush rose up his haggard face.
“My lady, I ask your pardon,” he said tonelessly, and sheathed his dagger with fingers that fumbled a little.
“My pardon? But—why, you are asleep on your feet, Marco! Come out of the sun!”
Thanks could wait; his state demanded action. He followed her like a sleepwalker, up the stair to the outer room, his feet dragging. Hastily she threw together scattered cushions, fetched a sheet from the inner room and flung it across them, and turned to the silent renegade. “Talk will keep; sleep is your first need,” she said quickly, as he opened his lips.
At that he seemed to gather his wits with a physical effort; he stiffened his weary body, and asked, “Your father, my lady?”
“Asleep, God be praised! Marco, I can never thank you for the snow as you deserve! His skin is cool, and he sleeps soundly—you saved his life, and it was no light task, Sir Jehan says!”
His mouth twitched slightly. “No one came to harm—not even a Saracen, so your heart may be at ease, my lady.”
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