Fire Dance (31 page)

CHAPTER 16

"Robert must decide," she said. She looked so frightened, but more as if she feared what would happen to Robert than herself.

"Robert has decided," he replied. "He will put himself in your hands."

"And if I fail you, lord?"

"You do not fail me. Even if you decide you cannot do it. I cannot choose this for you."

Melisande fell silent, and walked with her arms folded over her chest. He kept his peace, walking with her, let her think. Although she had a talent for healing, he had more faith in her than she had in herself. But the greatest of talent would not insure success. Aye, he knew he asked too much of her.

"I will need a carpenter. One with great skill is not needed. Merely one who can plane a slat thin and smooth, and drill holes exactly where I need them."

"I shall find you one."

"And fine linen for bandages. We have almost exhausted what we brought. And I must have a small, curved needle, very fine."

Alain grinned and drew her into his arms for a hurried kiss. Melisande's round blue eyes grew rounder with her astonishment. Well, she would have to become accustomed to his affectionate ways, for he had no intention of changing them.

"You shall have it all."

"We must hurry. The bones have already begun to knit. It must be now, or not at all."

"Hugh!" he shouted.

Hugh came running.

* * *

She had all she asked for. Melisande wiped her tools and laid them out on a clean linen cloth as she observed her sleeping patient. The wild lettuce syrup was working well. Cloths were spread out across the clean linen sheets. The Norman lord and three others stood aside to hold him, for she knew he would struggle at first. She needed only to start.

She said a hurried prayer. If God did not favor her, mayhap Robert had His ear, and she prayed for him, not for herself.

Melisande began by probing about the wound. Her patient stirred. It would get worse. With her sharp knife, she cut into the bruised skin beside the wound alongside the first broken rib, and waited as the men calmed him, held him still. Through the slit, she probed for the bone and felt the break. But it lay amidst a mass of mangled, unidentifiable tissue. This would be harder than she had imagined. Her heart pounded a rapid rhythm.

As the Norman lord spoke soothing words to Robert, the lullaby of his voice calmed her as well. She found the point where she thought the bone might be easiest to lift. Robert trembled as she slipped the needle into the wound, then went still. Anxiously, she caught the lord's gaze. He nodded solemnly for her to continue.

She found the rib, and deftly worked the needle beneath it and out the other side, pulling the sinew through and leaving it to dangle. Its opposite side, she did the same way. Two more ribs to go. Blood oozed. She sopped it up with a clean cloth, then sought another from Robert's squire who stood by.

What worried her most, she realized as she repeated the steps on another rib, was the possibility of infection. The sinew would have to remain beneath the bone, inside the body, yet extend outside the skin so that it could fasten to the rigid board. She didn't know what would happen, then. Would the skin grow to the sinew, or fester around it? Would it leave a hole, or would it close up as an ordinary wound would?

How long should she leave it in place? If not long enough, would the bone fail to knit properly? If too long, would they be unable to remove the sinew without cutting it out? If they left it entirely, what?

She continued to work, gently easing the small bone needle beneath and around each rib, then threading the long strips of sinew through their corresponding holes in the pad of linen and the slat above it.

She frowned. "There is no place to set this," she said. "I cannot have it tugging against the strings until I am ready."

"I will hold it," said the squire.

The boy stood by Robert's opposite side and held the slat precisely where she wanted it, moving it slightly when she signaled to him. Soon, she had worked her sinews beneath both ends of the third rib.

Now came the test. She pulled the sinew strings through the board until the board fit flush with Robert's skin. Then she gradually tightened the first pair, easing the bones back where she thought they belonged, gauging by the amount of sinew she could pull through. She tied each pair of strings together above the board.

The next rib, then the third. She gently eased the right side up to where it ought to be. Then the left side. But it would not come. She pulled harder. Yet, it would not budge.

"What is wrong?" asked the lord.

"This one will not lift," she replied. "But why?"

"Mayhap, you should raise the other side first," said Alain.

"Aye. As it was cut by a sword, mayhap the bone is cut at an angle. Show me the way the sword would have hit him."

The lord used the side of his hand to demonstrate the angle.

"Then the left side must be raised first. But I have already raised the right. I will have to push it down again. Mayhap but a tiny bit will do the job."

The lord bit at his lip. "Do it," he said.

Melisande dragged in a long, hard breath, and worked her finger beneath the board. She pressed gently. Robert stiffened and cried out. She watched the lord stroke his huge hand over Robert's brow and speak gentle words in his low, quiet voice.

She knew that hand. Knew the comforting of his voice. For all that she remembered none of it, she knew it, all the same, for it was the same voice that brought her peace at night. And now it gave her courage when she would have flagged.

Again she breathed deeply to steady her hand and resumed the fearful tugging. The left side of the rib eased into place, and the right followed, as smoothly as if it had all been intended that way. She tied the strings together on the back side of the wooden slat. It was done. She sat back, and at last expelled the great gulp she had held in her lungs.

"Finished?"

"Aye. Now, he must not be allowed to move. Especially, he must not roll."

"I will see that someone stays with him," said Hugh.

"Good. Mayhap place pillows to his back, as well. He has not bled as badly as I expected, but place cloths around him, anyway. And keep him warm."

She stood and walked to the little table that had been brought into the chamber, and washed her hands in the basin while she continued her instructions. Blood streaked and spotted over her kirtle, and she daubed ineffectively at the stains, merely weakening them to pale pink smudges. But it was a plain grey one that served well for such occasions.

"Come, lady," said the lord. "I am told a fine supper awaits us in the hall."

His arm encircled her waist and drew her to his side. She leaned for a moment against him. And she could not help wondering why, if he was the biggest threat to her, she felt so safe in his arms.

Sitting at the lord's table between her husband and Hugh, she ate quietly, conscious of her husband's gaze. If she looked up at any time, he was watching her, with a different sort of look in his eyes, that seemed to smolder with a quiet intensity. She could never discern his thoughts, as he seemed to do hers.

"Lady," said a young voice beside her.

She turned, saw the face of Robert's squire, who had been sitting with him, and felt the blood drain from her face.

"Aye?"

"Do not fear, lady. He has not worsened. He is awake. And hungry."

A raucous cheer filled the hall, coming from the group of knights who had kept their supper subdued while they waited.

"I will go to him," she responded.

The lord also rose to accompany her. In the chamber behind the dais, Robert lay on the bed in the position she had prescribed. He grinned, a wide, toothy grin, yet grimaced as he did.

"You have not killed me, lady, so it must be that I will live."

"I had no plan to kill you, Robert. But I feared that as the result."

"I but meant to tease."

Melisande blinked, once more confused by the odd thing Normans called teasing. "How do you feel?"

"Some things hurt more. Some less. Mayhap I can breathe better, soon."

"Nonetheless, you must not breathe deeply for a while. I will bind your chest again tomorrow. I have heard that you wish to eat. Mayhap broth, and a bit of bread."

"No meat?"

"No meat. For a few days."

Robert groaned.

"Odd," she said, "how a man might be stolid about such a serious wound, yet complain loudly if his stomach is not filled."

The Norman lord laughed.

Puzzled, she studied him. "What is funny?" She had merely spoken the truth.

He laughed harder, and gave her a great hug.

"Well, I do not understand," she said, determined to persist. "It seems to me, men's jokes are based on lies. But what I said was the truth."

Robert groaned again. "I do not think this is a good time for jokes. It hurts to laugh."

"But I did not tell a joke, Robert."

She stepped back then, watching with curiosity the strange interchange between the lord and his knight, that consisted largely of bantering and teasing. She had never accomplished the art of teasing, certainly never had known it in such a way as these men gave so irreverently to each other. It was the same way Gerard had treated her, that she had never quite understood.

Mayhap she could try harder to understand it. If she had not much time left to be in this world, would it not be nice to feel this merriment, a bit of joy or silliness? Surely it could not make her situation any worse. The trouble was, she had not the slightest notion of how to go about it.

Then she would have to learn.

Aye, she needed to find out how it was done.

* * *

How extraordinary she was. While Alain talked and planned with his knights, he could not take his eyes off her. Melisande left their company and went about the injured men, who rested in some sort of comfort on fresh straw in the great hall's aisles. She seemed pleased with what she saw. With her, it was hard to tell, for she never smiled.

Nor, he realized abruptly, had he seen her shed a tear. Not within those terrible night terrors, not even at the burial of her father. There, she had merely dropped a handful of dirt into the grave and walked away. No matter that she had hated him, would she not have cried a little? Might she be one of those people who could only weep when alone?

Such a paradox. Such a mass of contradictions. She had a store of secret knowledge that baffled him. Latin. Strange herbs. Other strange beliefs that came out at unexpected times. She pretended it was not so, but it was. More than that, she had new ideas of her own, and supplemented her knowledge with them. Yet, she thought herself no different from any other woman.

Right now, she was a very tired woman. She surely had not had a day quite so unnerving and exhausting for some time. What she had accomplished was truly remarkable. He had never seen anything like it, and he hoped desperately, for her sake as well as Robert's, that it would work.

After the supper meal, the tables were folded away, and the tired knights, servants, and villeins dispersed themselves to their piles of straw, winding themselves in their cloaks for warmth in the chilly hall. Alain chose his place closest to the hearth. For her.