Light came first. A hazy light, smeared, in which Thomas thought he could see a wide window, but a shadow moved against the window and the light went. He heard voices, then they faded. In pascuis herbarum adclinavit me. The words were in his head. He makes me lie down in leafy pastures. A psalm, the same psalm from which his father had quoted his dying words. Calix meus inebrians. My cup makes me drunk. Only he was not drunk. Breathing hurt, and his chest felt as though he was being pressed by the torture of the stones. Then there was blessed darkness and oblivion once more.
The light came again. It wavered. The shadow was there, the shadow moved towards him and a cool hand was laid on his forehead.
‘I do believe you are going to live,’ a man’s voice said in a tone of surprise.
Thomas tried to speak, but only managed a strangled, grating sound.
‘It astonishes me,’ the voice went on, ‘what young men can endure. Babies too. Life is marvellously strong. Such a pity we waste it.’
‘It’s plentiful enough,’ another man said.
‘The voice of the privileged,’ the first man, whose hand was still on Thomas’s forehead, answered. ‘You take life,’ he said, ‘so value it as a thief values his victims.’
‘And you are a victim?’
‘Of course. A learned victim, a wise victim, even a valuable victim, but still a victim. And this young man, what is he?’
‘An English archer,’ the second voice said sourly, ‘and if we had any sense we’d kill him here and now.’
‘I think we shall try and feed him instead. Help me raise him.’
Hands pushed Thomas upright in the bed, and a spoonful of warm soup was put into his mouth, but he could not swallow and so spat the soup onto the blankets. Pain seared through him and the darkness came again.
The light came a third time or perhaps a fourth, he could not tell. Perhaps he dreamed it, but this time an old man stood outlined against the bright window. The man had a long black robe, but he was not a priest or monk, for the robe was not gathered at the waist and he wore a small square black hat over his long white hair.
‘God,’ Thomas tried to say, though the word came out as a guttural grunt.
The old man turned. He had a long, forked beard and was holding a jordan jar. It had a narrow neck and a round belly, and the bottle was filled with a pale yellow liquid that the man held up to the light. He peered at the liquid, then swilled it about before sniffing the jar’s mouth.
‘Are you awake?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you can speak! What a doctor I am! My brilliance astonishes me; if only it would persuade my patients to pay me. But most believe I should be grateful that they don’t spit at me. Would you say this urine is clear?’
Thomas nodded and wished he had not for the pain jarred through his neck and down his spine.
‘You do not consider it turgid? Not dark? No, indeed not. It smells and tastes healthy too. A good flask of clear yellow urine, and there is no better sign of good health. Alas, it is not yours.’ The doctor pushed open the window and poured the urine away. ‘Swallow,’ he instructed Thomas.
Thomas’s mouth was dry, but he obediently tried to swallow and immediately gasped with pain.
‘I think,’ the doctor said, ‘that we had best try a thin gruel. Very thin, with some oil, I believe, or better still, butter. That thing tied about your neck is a strip of cloth which has been soaked in holy water. It was not my doing, but I did not forbid it. You Christians believe in magic – indeed you could have no faith without a trust in magic – so I must indulge your beliefs. Is that a dog’s paw about your neck? Don’t tell me, I’m sure I don’t want to know. However, when you recover, I trust you will understand that it was neither dog paws nor wet cloths that healed you, but my skill. I have bled you, I have applied poultices of dung, moss and clove, and I have sweated you. Eleanor, though, will insist it was her prayers and that tawdry strip of wet cloth that revived you.’
‘Eleanor?’
‘She cut you down, dear boy. You were half dead. By the time I arrived you were more dead than alive and I advised her to let you expire in peace. I told her you were halfway in what you insist is hell and that I was too old and too tired to enter into a tugging contest with the devil, but Eleanor insisted and I have ever found it difficult to resist her entreaties. Gruel with rancid butter, I think. You are weak, dear boy, very weak. Do you have a name?’
‘Thomas.’
‘Mine is Mordecai, though you may call me Doctor. You won’t, of course. You’ll call me a damned Jew, a Christ murderer, a secret worshipper of pigs and a kidnapper of Christian children.’ This was all said cheerfully. ‘How absurd! Who would want to kidnap children, Christian or otherwise? Vile things. The only mercy of children is that they grow up, as my son has but then, tragically, they beget more children. We do not learn life’s lessons.’
‘Doctor?’ Thomas croaked.
‘Thomas?’
‘Thank you.’
‘An Englishman with manners! The world’s wonders never cease. Wait there, Thomas, and do not have the bad manners to die while I’m gone. I shall fetch gruel.’
‘Doctor?’
‘I am still here.’
‘Where am I?’
‘In the house of my friend, and quite safe.’
‘Your friend?’
‘Sir Guillaume d’Evecque, knight of the sea and of the land, and as great a fool as any I know, but a goodhearted fool. He does at least pay me.’
Thomas closed his eyes. He did not really understand what the doctor had said, or perhaps he did not believe it. His head was aching. There was pain all through his body, from his aching head down to his throbbing toes. He thought of his mother, because that was comforting, then he remembered being hauled up the tree and he shivered. He wished he could sleep again, for in sleep there was no pain, but then he was made to sit up and the doctor forced a pungent, oily gruel into his mouth and he managed not to spit it out or throw it up. There must have been mushrooms in the gruel, or else it had been infused with the hemp-like leaves that the Hookton villagers had called angel salad, for after he had eaten he had vivid dreams, but less pain. When he awoke it was dark and he was alone, but he managed to sit up and even stand, though he tottered and had to sit again.
Next morning, when the birds were calling from the oak branches where he had so nearly died, a tall man came into the room. The man was on crutches and his left thigh was swathed in bandages. He turned to look at Thomas and showed a face that was horribly scarred. A blade had cut him from the forehead to the jaw, taking the man’s left eye in its savage chop. He had long yellow hair, very shaggy and full, and Thomas guessed the man had been handsome once, though now he looked like a thing of nightmare.
‘Mordecai,’ the man growled, ‘tells me you will live.’
‘With God’s help,’
