be some reason the men hadn’t wanted him to meet them well prepared.
The wimpled woman howled. She swayed on her feet but refused to sit. Her cries carried ahead of the rowboat through the warm August air. “Must you lurch so? Oh, I fear I shall faint before we make it to the shore!”
The rowing men grimaced, and John suspected they’d have liked for the woman to faint, if only to still her cries. As the boat drew nearer, the man closest to the prow, the only man without an oar in his hand, called out, “Greetings in the name of Charlemagne, Emperor of all Rome.” The man spoke in impeccable Latin. “What lands are these?”
John could only hope his own linguistic training was up to the imperial standard. “Friends, this is the Christian Kingdom of Lydia.”
A relieved smile spread across the man’s face, and John realized his expression had been quite anxious up to that moment. The man tossed a rope. “We seek King John, the healer.”
“You have found him.” The symbol of cross and crown that decorated John’s habergeon signified his position. He caught the rope and pulled the boat toward the dock with a mighty heave. Behind him, Luke and Renwick grabbed the line, while Eliab and Urias stumbled over themselves.
The man’s smile grew broader. “Then God has surely been with us. I am sorry to arrive unannounced, but we had no alternative.” As the boat was pulled alongside the length of the dock, the man bounded onto the wharf and bowed low. “I am Boden, a servant of Charlemagne and acting captain of the emperor’s ship.”
“Acting captain?” John looked the man over. Clearly the youth was a strong and strapping lad, but he hardly seemed old enough to be a captain. Indeed, he was certainly younger than John or Luke.
“Alas, my beloved father was commissioned captain by Charlemagne himself and vested with a mission of the utmost importance—to carry the emperor’s most precious cargo. But we were attacked at sea by Saracens, and my father died defending his ship.” Boden’s face blanched as he spoke.
“You have done well to continue on his mission.” John hoped his words would provide some comfort to the youth.
But Boden only shook his head. “I implore thee, Your Majesty John the healer. You are our only remaining hope that this mission might succeed.” He raised his hand toward the boat.
The wimpled woman had quit her moaning and now peeled back the silk veil that covered the face of the bundled figure the men had so carefully loaded onto the boat.
John saw a flushed jawline and rosy lips that could only belong to a woman. So Luke had been right. This was no boy but a female of about twenty years of age. In fact, whoever she was, her features were beautiful, her complexion pale, save for a flush John recognized all too well.
Fever.
Her drawn lips confirmed it. The woman was suffering. No wonder Boden had twice referred to him as John, the healer. It was a title he was loath to use, but one which desperate men rushed to give him, especially when they had need of a man to stand between their loved ones and the advancing scythe of death. Yes, he’d been trained by his mother as a healer—a practice her family had observed for generations. When he’d taken to his studies with far greater success than his brothers, some had said he had a gift.
Now he considered it a curse. He hardly considered himself worthy of the title healer. Not when he’d failed to save his own wife or the mother who’d trained him.
Boden nodded to the lady in waiting, who peeled back more of the cloth.
“Ah!” Urias and Eliab recoiled at the sight of the infected gash above the woman’s right eye, which followed the curve of her eyebrow. The angry wound had swollen her eyelid shut, festering across her face in fever-reddened waves.
John understood immediately. He’d seen injuries that had deteriorated to a similar state before. Rarely had the sufferer survived. Rather than ask the men to lift the young woman, John lowered himself into the boat and approached her. He could smell the rancid scent of the infection and recognized with dismay the golden yellow crust that seeped from the gash.
The sight and smell carried as clear a message as any tolling death bell.
The lovely woman had less than a day to live.
And the herb that could save her grew half a day’s journey into the mountains, in the borderlands Lydia shared with the Illyrians. John’s father, King Theodoric, had died defending those borderlands. And yet, as John observed the woman’s fever-flushed features, he realized she’d have to have crushed hare’s tongue leaves applied to her injury by nightfall. Even then, it might be too late to save her.
He turned to Boden. “Was she injured two or three days ago?”
“Three days,” Boden answered. “How did you know?”
Relieved that the Saracens hadn’t attacked closer to the Lydian coast, John nonetheless felt the weight of the young woman’s grim prognosis. She’d already gone too long without treatment. “Infections of this nature always run the same course. Once the secretions turn yellow, the sufferer has less than a day to live.”
Boden’s face blanched, and his men at the oars hung their heads.
John didn’t doubt the sailors had been at the oars to bring the ship to Lydia—with her sails rent and patched, they’d have rowed in desperate hope of saving the woman’s life. Obviously the woman must have meant a great deal to them for the men to take on such a strenuous task. John wished he could tell them their efforts hadn’t been in vain. “You mentioned the emperor’s precious cargo.” He began the question slowly and found his throat had gone dry.
As he’d feared, Boden pointed to the woman. “She is the precious cargo—Princess Gisela, one of Charlemagne’s daughters. She has been pledged to marry an Illyrian prince. We were to have her delivered by Christmastide.”
“You were running ahead of schedule.”
“That we were,” Boden acknowledged with a bittersweet smile, “until the Saracens found us. If she dies, there will likely be war.”
“War!” Urias exclaimed.
“And you’ve gotten us involved in it?” Eliab added.
John raised a hand to quiet the courtiers. “Boden made the right choice.” He looked at the flushed face of the princess and felt sorrow rise inside him. Such a beautiful young woman. It would be tragic for her to die so young. His heart beat out a desperate prayer that somehow, in spite of his failures as a healer, God would see fit to spare the princess from death.
* * *
Princess Gisela felt the boat rock as someone stepped out from it. The sun burned hot against her face, even hotter than when the stifling veil of silk had covered her. Or perhaps her fever had grown that much worse.
“Can you save her?” Hope sprang to Boden’s voice.
“I could.” The voice of King John, the healer, followed him as he climbed back onto the dock. “Hare’s tongue leaves have proven an effective cure against this type of yellow secretion. But the leaves must be freshly picked, and the nearest plants grow in the mountains on the Illyrian borderlands. A swift rider could reach them by nightfall.”
“Then
