by S. A. Swann
Chapter 5
“Mother? What's that sound?” Burthe looked over at her suddenly wakeful daughter. Hilde had sat up in bed, her nightshirt hanging loosely on her too-thin frame. Burthe set down the trousers she was mending and hurried over to Hilde's bed. She felt the side of Hilde's face for signs of fever, and was gratified to find that it hadn't come back since breaking during the night. Still, she put her hand on Hilde's shoulder to keep her from sitting up any farther.
“Be still, child. You've been too ill to be jumping around.”
“It's Ulfie, Mama. Don't you hear him?”
Burthe grunted. Her daughter had always had keener ears than she did. Age, and an infection that had savaged her after Hilde was born, had left her half deaf.
“Do you think he brought something for me?” She tried to toss her blanket aside, and swayed a little. “Oh ...”
Burthe put her hands on Hilde's shoulders and firmly guided her back into bed. “If your brother's home, he'll be here soon enough. The more you rest, the sooner you'll be able to get up.” It took all of Burthe's considerable will to keep the heaviness she felt out of her voice. Over the last month, she had exhausted what herbal lore she knew trying to break Hilde's infection. She had not told Uldolf or her husband, but she had begun to doubt that Hilde would get better.
Because of that fear, she found it hard to give into the same relief Uldolf had shown this morning. She held onto the worry, perhaps fearing that to let it go too soon would be to invite the evil back into her child's body.
So even though part of her wanted to encourage her to jump on the bed like any other six-year-old, she only gave Hilde a stern stare as she drew the blanket up to her chin. “You rest, child.”
“I've been resting forever.”
She bent down and kissed her forehead, thinking, I mustn't cry. “Don't talk like that. You have not been resting forever, and you know it.”
“I'm sorry, Mama.”
The words echoed in Burthe's head. Resting forever. Hilde had two siblings the child had never known about. They would have been ten and eight, had either lived. Her older brother, Masnyke, had died of a fever before he was one year old. Hilde's sister had never had a chance to have a name, as the Christians had come when Burthe had been five months with child. She had fallen in the panicked rush to city gates ahead of the invaders. The fall had torn something inside her, and she had lost the child during the too-short siege that followed.
After the city fell, she and her husband, Gedim, had taken in the orphaned Uldolf. They thought she had been left barren and he would be their only child. And after so many losses, he was a blessing.
But two years later she had Hilde. And as difficult as the pregnancy was, as painful the birth, her daughter was a miracle. Like the adopted brother she worshiped, Hilde had reserves of strength that left Burthe humbled and a little bit in awe. As a midwife, she saw boys years older succumb to illnesses not half as vicious as those she'd seen grip Hilde.
Yet now she was smiling, had a good color, and was chatting away as if she'd just woken up from a nap. “Mama, Ulfie sounds like he needs help.”
Burthe kissed her again, then stood up and listened. Muffled, outside, she heard someone calling, “Mother!”
It was Uldolf.
She stepped toward the door, casting a warning glance at Hilde. “You stay there, understand?”
“Yes, Mama.”
Burthe pushed the door to the cottage open and stepped out into the front field—the one that largely went to grow the taxes and the tithes that allowed their family to remain here unmolested. The week's thaw had stripped the black earth naked, but when she stepped outside, her footsteps crunched; the ground was still stiff with frost.
The field between the cottage and the road was framed by a rough stone wall that testified to the rocky nature of the soil. Every stone had been clawed out of the mud years ago by Uldolf and her husband. Similar walls marked off the other fields they tilled and the pasture where they kept the livestock, when they had livestock. Since midwinter, the pasture only served their one horse, which was absent at the moment, having taken Gedim and the wagon to Johannisburg.
Uldolf was just now walking along the outermost wall, by the road. He stopped at the waist-high gate that led in to the field.
From inside the cottage, Burthe heard Hilde ask, “Did he bring something?”
That he had.
Uldolf saw her and called, “Mother, help!”
It took a moment for Burthe to respond to her son's plea, because she was unable immediately to make sense of what she saw. Uldolf cradled his cloak in his arm, half draped across his shoulder like a sack of grain.
“Oh, by the gods!” She ran across the field, realizing that Uldolf was doing his best to carry a human body one-handed. As she reached him, she amended the thought.
A woman's body.
Burthe could see the bloody temple and scalp resting against her son's shoulder. She didn't bother to open the waist-high gate. She just extended her arms over it. “Hand her to me.”
With a grunt and an audible sigh of relief, Uldolf unloaded his burden into her arms. The woman was small, but dead weight, completely unconscious. Even though Uldolf was wearing just a linen shirt in air that fogged the breath, he was coated with sweat and deeply flushed.
“How. Is. She?” He was so out of breath he could barely speak.
Burthe looked at the woman.
Not a woman, she thought. Only a girl.
The girl in her arms was taking breaths that were even and deep, and her skin was of good color. “Despite the wound, she looks better than you.” She stepped back so Uldolf could open the gate and come in. “How far did you carry her?”
“Not far. I found her in the woods by Johannisburg's eastern wall, I think bandits—”
“By Johannisburg? That's five miles at least.”
“She was able to walk herself, at first.”
Burthe looked back at the girl's head. The damage was awful, and were it not for the fact that this girl was flush and breathing, she might have thought it mortal.
“And how far did she walk, with such a grievous injury?”
“A quarter mile, maybe.”
Burthe shook her head. “No wonder you're late.”
***
“Mama, who's that?” Despite Burthe's instructions, Hilde was sitting up on the edge of her narrow little bed.
“A guest,” Burthe told her. “And she's hurt, so don't you be bothering her.”
She laid the girl down in Uldolf s bed. The girl sighed slightly and seemed to relax, but she didn't regain consciousness. The bottom of Uldolf s cloak slid open, revealing a filthy naked leg.
Uldolf stepped next to Burthe. “She's got a bad wound on her shoulder, too.”
“Draw me some fresh water, and bring some clean linens.” Uldolf nodded and went outside to the well. The ground here might be hard and rocky, but at least they had good water. Their Christian masters might have taken most everything, but they hadn't taken that.
Burthe undid the cloak and unwrapped the girl so she could get a good look at her.
“Oh, you poor child.”
“Mama?”
“Shh, Hilde, Mama's working.”
The shoulder wound was awful, as well—a ragged crater in the middle of shreds of torn flesh, larger than the head wound. It was incredible that the girl hadn't bled to death. Incredible enough that Burthe checked her breathing again, and felt for her heartbeat.
“You're strong,” Burthe whispered. “That's good.”
Strong like her own children, maybe strong enough to fight off the fever that would inevitably come after such an injury.
“Young, too. That will help.” Burthe went to a small chest she stored on a shelf next to the hearth. She walked back to see Uldolf standing over the
girl's bedside holding a large bucket of water, the linens draped over his shoulder.
Burthe glanced at her son's expression, then down at the girl, lying uncovere
d in her son's bed.
“Uldolf!”
He tore his gaze away from the injured girl's nakedness to look at her.
“Set those things down, and maybe allow our guest a little modesty?”
Uldolf s face turned bright red and he set down the bucket. He started walking away, but Burthe cleared her throat. “Those as well.”
For a moment, her son looked confused. Burthe sighed, reached up, and took the linens off his shoulder. “Go on, then. Don't you have game you can dress?”
He nodded and headed out the door, closing it behind him.
Burthe turned back to her guest. The girl was her son's age, maybe a little younger. There was no denying that she was attractive, even in her distressed state. She really couldn't blame Uldolf for staring.
“Can I help, Mama?”
Burthe sighed and looked at her daughter. Hilde was still on her bed, but only just. She was up on her knees and straining about as far forward as she could without falling off. Burthe's annoyance was tempered by the fact that Hilde's excitement seemed to have renewed her strength.
Better to placate Hilde's curiosity before it got her into trouble.
“Only if you can be very quiet and still. Can you do that?”
Hilde's face lit up. “Yes, Mama!”
“Then pick up that stool and come sit over here.”
Hilde scrambled out of bed and brought the stool over, sitting at the head of Uldolf s bed. When she sat, Burthe handed her the chest. “Now, when I ask you for something, you hand it to me.”
“Yes, Mama.” Hilde nodded vigorously, a very serious expression on her face.
“Good.”
Burthe took one of the linens and dipped it in the water. First things first; she needed to clean those wounds.
***
It was a long, laborious process, and Burthe was grateful the girl was unconscious. Even though the wounds were remarkably clean, without pus to drain or dead flesh to cut away, they were deep and ragged. After cleaning the dirt, she cut the hair from around the girl's head wound.
Cleaned and exposed, Burthe saw that there were two wounds, as if something had impaled the poor girl's flesh, cracking but not quite breaking the skull underneath. A surgeon would more than likely take a drill to the skull there, releasing the vapors and evil humors that would gather at the injury.
“It isn't sunken,” she told herself. “She's not in obvious distress.”
“Mama?”
“Shh, my child.”
If there had been tremors, or chills, or cold white skin, she might have tried to open the skull, despite not having the proper skills or equipment. But with the girl merely unconscious, the risks did not seem worth it.
As to what had impaled her at such an angle, Burthe had no clue. “Perhaps she fell on a branch.”
Though that wasn't a satisfactory answer, since she couldn't conceive of what kind of force that would require, or imagine the kind of tree that grew branches this thin that could pierce flesh without splintering.
Regardless of how she had come by her injury, Burthe knew well how much pain this wound could cause, even after it healed. She'd been a young girl once. She took great care in sewing the raw edges of the wound.
“What are you doing, Mama?”
“If someone is hurt this badly, Hilde, the skin won't heal together all by itself.”
“It won't?”
“No. The edges of the wound need to touch to mend properly.”
“Does that mean she's going to have a seam in her head, like my dolly?”
Burthe smiled and knotted the thread on the third stitch. She was tying them as small and close as she could. That, and some salve, would help to minimize the scar. “Just for a little while. When the skin heals back together, I'll remove the thread.”
As she worked her way up the scalp, her patient remained blissfully unconscious.
“Does that hurt?” Hilde asked her.
“Not as badly as it did when she injured her head.”
“I don't think I could sleep through that.”
After she had stitched and bound the girl's head, Burthe started working on the shoulder.
Once the wounds were taken care of, Burthe turned her attention to cleaning off the mud, blood, and filth. It was an exercise that took almost as long as tending to the girl's injuries. As she cleaned the girl off, Burthe did notice one other strange thing. Filth and blood covered her entire body, except for her left foot. That, for some reason, had remained untarnished by whatever had befallen the unconscious girl. It was even clean under the toenails.
As inexplicable as that was, Burthe didn't think any more of it once she was done.
***
She awakened, naked, in a strange bed, as if she had been asleep for a very long time. As if she barely remembered ever being awake.
She remembered dreams—dreams of being someone else, being something else. She remembered being someone cold, unfeeling, angry, and very cruel. The nightmares she remembered frightened her, even though they were all mixed up in her head in a confusing muddle.
It felt as if she had been dreaming for years.
She tried to move, and winced, pain shooting through her shoulder and her skull. Something that was half memory and half dream told her that
there were men who wanted to hurt her. She wanted to think that was just the dream; it wasn't real.
But the pain was very real.
She wondered where she was, who she was, and how she had come to be in such a place. She thought she knew, but as she reached for the thought, something inside her flinched, as if it didn't want to know.
She remembered, vaguely, the man who had pulled her from the stream. He had given her his cloak and had kept talking to her. The words should have made sense, but she couldn't understand. It had frustrated her so much that when the man reached for her, she had bit at him.
He had yelled, making her cower. But after a few moments, he had lowered his fist and had started speaking lower, more softly. That's when she had realized he only had one arm. She had realized then, because he hadn't struck her, that he couldn't be one of the bad men.
The thought of bad men brought a painful flash of memory—of blood, of men screaming, of flesh tearing; too vivid to be a dream, too horrible to be anything else.
She swallowed and pushed the evil thought away.
Those weren't the people here. She was somewhere else now, away from the bad men.
Maybe here she would be safe.
Interlude
Anno Domini 1229
Ten years before the bloodbath at Johannisburg Keep, before the keep existed and before the town bore the name of Johannisburg, Erhard von Stendal, a knight of the Order of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem, had been elevated to the title of Landkomtur, province commander of the Teutonic Order. Before then, he had been serving in the Holy Land as a simple knight of the Order.
His elevation had been no common event. Normally, a brother arrived at a position of authority in the Teutonic Order by a consultation of his peers. It would be the collective wisdom of the Kommende—the house where the knight served—that would raise him to commander. Likewise it would be the collective wisdom of a province's commanders that would raise such a Komtur to the level of Landkomtur, province commander. Until he'd been granted the title himself, Erhard had no idea that a brother might achieve that rank in any other way.
However, only a few weeks after the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II was crowned king of Jerusalem in the church of the Holy Sepulcher, the grand master of the Order himself, Hermann von Salza, had informed Erhard of his new duties. Erhard was to leave his own house and travel to the frontier of Prûsa. No brothers had consulted to elevate him because, as far as Erhard could tell, there were no brothers in the province he commanded. Nor, in fact, did there seem to be an actual province.
Erhard accepted these orders without question, even though he had little idea why the grand master would call him from
his brothers in Jerusalem, or why he was elevated in rank in such an unusual manner. He was certain that any adventures to Christianize Prûsa would create more houses and provinces for the Order, though he had never heard of creating leadership for such beforehand.
When he rode into Kulmerland on the southwest edge of the Prûsan wilderness, he still believed that his destiny would be to lead a force of men into battle against heathen, infidel, and pagan. He expected to use the point of his sword to protect those who preached the glory of God, and those who had accepted the words of Christ. He had never thought that following the
Lord's will would be the easy path, but he still believed he knew where it led.
On this summer day, that path led him to a monastery east of the city of Torun, along the River Drweca.
Thanks to a rare episode of agreement between the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX—an agreement brokered by Grand Master Hermann von Salza himself—the lands just to the north of Erhard had been jointly granted to the Teutonic Order. By virtue of papal and imperial authority, the Teutonic knights held sovereignty over the whole of Prûsa.
Currently, it was a fief in name only, as Prûsa was still untamed, stretching through bog and dense woods to the north and east along the Baltic. The pagans who made those woods home had a reputation as fierce as any Saracen.
The Prûsan appetite for Christian blood had troubled all their neighbors: Danes, Saxons, and Poles. The Poles' failure to contain the continual pagan raids across their northern border led the duke of Mazovia to beg for the intervention of the Teutonic Order in the first place.
The monastery Erhard now approached was a testament to that Prûsan barbarism. The walls were scarred by fire and partway collapsed, crosses had been defaced, and a statue of Mary that had once filled a niche near the entrance had been toppled, the head removed. Yet Erhard knew that the building did not suffer the worst. The brothers serving this mission who hadn't been killed outright had been taken as slaves by their Prûsan attackers. It was only one in a long line of offenses against the body of Christ: slaughtered bishops, destroyed churches, and enslaved converts.
