made his backward progress with little interference from milling servants and reached the kitchen archway without once being stopped.
When he looked up from under his hood one last time, something caught his eye.
Across the hall, almost exactly opposite the destroyed tapestry on which Crispin made his escape, he saw Miles, teasing the shadowy edge of a pillar.
Across from Miles, the French couriers stood apart from the English throng. But Crispin saw the moment they spotted Miles and recognition flowered on their faces.
Miles did not notice them, however, and took a step back, shielded from the king by the column. Something was in his hand.
Without thinking, Crispin reached for his dagger, but he was hindered by the cassock, and he wrestled with the unresponsive garment, trying to free it.
Before he could draw his blade, his shoulder—the same dislocated only the night before—slammed against the wall as if punched, ablaze in fiery pain. He staggered forward with a choked gasp, suddenly woozy. He took a step back—one, two—until his foot found no step at all. Darkness was closing in as he lost his balance and tumbled down the kitchen stairway. When his head hit the bottom step, he was already unconscious.
23
CRISPIN OPENED HIS EYES a crack, but as soon as he did, it seemed the whole world burst upon him in a roiling sea of hot pain. His head—no, his shoulder hurt more, the same one he had dislocated, and felt as if a demon jabbed it with a hot poker.
He tried to roll toward the shoulder, but strong hands pushed him back. His eyes looked up, tried to focus, gave up.
“Don’t try to move.” A woman’s voice. Familiar. Her hands were tearing open the cassock. “I’m going to fix you up.”
His dry lips parted as his mind caught up. “Livith?”
“Don’t move, I say. I found you at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Where am I now?”
“You’re in my room. It’s only a storeroom, but we call it home. For now.” She smiled at Crispin, a pleasant sensation out of so many discordant ones. “You went and got yourself shot with an arrow, didn’t you.”
Crispin turned his head and looked at the shaft protruding from the space between his shoulder and collarbone. Hawk fletching.
“Damn Miles to Hell.” Crispin jolted upright, or at least tried to. The searing pain flattened him again. “The king! Is he well?”
“He is. No harm came to him. You must keep your strength. I’ve got to get that arrow out.”
Crispin was about to protest, but realized Livith couldn’t very well get a physician or even a barber. He wasn’t supposed to be in the palace in the first place, and if caught, an arrow in the shoulder would be the least of his troubles.
“Very well,” he grunted. He felt the sweat burst out all over his body and a queasy feeling rumbled in his belly.
She nodded and looked behind her. Crispin was on the floor and she grabbed his arm and yanked. “It’ll be easier if you were on the table.”
He rose to his feet and stood on his two legs, though they did not feel as if they belonged to him. She maneuvered him toward the table and he sat on the edge and slid the rest of the way. “You’ll have to slide your shoulder to the edge. I’m going to drive the arrow through.”
“Christ’s blood.”
“It ain’t Christ’s blood I’m worrying about.”
She helped him to maneuver his bad shoulder off the table’s edge. He felt her at his belt.
“What are you doing?”
She smiled a sly grin full of immodesty. “Now then, Master Crispin. You think I’ll take advantage of you?” She kept her smile even as she crawled up on the table and straddled him. Her thighs tightened around him. “I like my men fully aware and conscious. And they like it that way, too.”
He managed a smile. “I’ve no doubt of that.”
She unbuckled the belt, stretched the leather between her hands, and held it toward his face. “I want you to bite down on this.”
He nodded and dutifully opened his mouth to receive it like a horse receiving his bit. The leather tasted of dirt, oil, and the dull tang of tanning. He bit down hard, especially when Livith brought up her wooden shoe and Crispin’s knife. She put the shoe on his chest and grabbed the arrow’s shaft. She cut the shirt away from the arrow wound and began running the blade around the shaft, sawing an even line around its circumference. “I’m going to break off the arrow as much as I can,” she said, hair falling in her face. It was the first time she hadn’t worn her scruffy linen kerchief and he could see the thick tendrils of the ash blond hair falling about her cheeks. He reached up and touched a curled end of one lock, and Livith slowed. She watched his fingers entwine, the hair curling around his hand. She looked into his eyes and he smiled again and spat out the belt.
“I thank you for this.”
“You can’t go about with an arrow in you, eh?” She smiled and replaced the leather between his lips.
His gaze fell away from her’s as the pain of the arrow overwhelmed. He stared at the shoe on his chest, ran his glance over its contours, the mud on its sole. Something about the shoe disturbed him, and he tried to unwind the hidden thoughts about it, but another wave of pain forced a groan from his lips through the belt, and he forgot all else.
Livith grabbed the arrow shaft at the base at Crispin’s shoulder, grasped the other fletched end, and suddenly snapped it.
Crispin arched and grunted through his teeth.
Livith steadied herself on Crispin and took up the shoe. “When I count to three, I’ll drive it through with this. Then I’ll have to pull it out from below. I’ve no way to tie you down and there’s no time to get help from anyone. Do you understand?”
He nodded and clenched the leather.
She put her one hand firmly on his good shoulder to keep him still, and raised up the wooden shoe in the other hand. “One . . . two . . . three!”
Crispin screamed through his teeth. The leather belt took the brunt of it. He wanted to thrash out, to arch his back, but he held himself firm and stretched his neck sinews as far as they would go.
When he felt her yank the bloody arrow through his back, blackness encompassed him. The last conscious sensation was a wave of relief and his head smacking against the table.
* * *
CRISPIN AWOKE AGAIN, THIS time on a straw-covered pallet. His shoulder was packed solid with cloth and a sling was tied around his arm and neck. The cassock had been removed completely and lay in a heap beside the bed. He thought about sitting up for the grand span of a heartbeat and gave up the idea when the pain told him to stay where he was. He stared up at the dusty cobwebs and beams, inhaled the musty air, and licked his dry lips, praying for wine.
A door opened. He lifted his head enough to see Livith shutting it carefully, and she had something in her hand and over her arm. “I brought you wine,” she said, raising the bowl. “Master On-slow gave it to me when I told him what it was for. I also brought your cloak.”
She handed him the bowl and spread the cloak over his nakedness like a blanket. She slipped her arm under
