voice came from, he recoiled backwards sharply. He only gave a muffled moan, as if he had stubbed his toe, but when he hit the ground I could see that a quarrel had embedded itself in the top of the Lionheart’s left shoulder. At first, I thought the injury was superficial.
The King seemed calm and still.
‘How is it?’
‘Not too bad, sire. We need to get the bodkin out, but it doesn’t look too bad.’
Then the King winced. I called for a lantern and looked more closely at the wound. It was worse than I feared. His collarbone was shattered; his jerkin had a wide gash in it and was already soaked in blood.
I tried not to sound alarmed and quietly asked the Sergeant to call for the physician and to find Mercadier. As I did so, the Lionheart stirred and began to get to his feet, even though I tried to stop him.
‘I don’t want to keep the girls waiting; give me your good arm.’
We managed to make it to the tent. But as soon as we crossed the threshold, the King staggered and we both collapsed to the floor.
I shouted for Negu, who rushed to help us.
The Sergeant then appeared with worrying news.
‘Sir, the Lord Mercadier has been hunting and is not back yet. And we can’t find the physician anywhere; he may be with a local woman.’
‘Well, find him! Turn out every bed in the area.’
The King’s shoulders were nestled in Negu’s lap, who was crouched behind him and sitting on her haunches. Blood was flowing freely from the wound, and I could see the pain on his face.
But the King remained calm.
‘This bodkin needs to come out; I’m bleeding like a stuck pig, we need to staunch it.’
I looked at Negu; she nodded.
‘I’ll do it.’
The King grasped her hand.
‘Have you treated wounds before?’
‘We didn’t have to remove many arrowheads at Rupertsberg, but I’ve tended many an injury from scythes and ploughs.’
‘That’s good enough for me. Let’s get on with it.’
I called over the King’s Steward and two of his guards, and between us we held him firmly. Negu began to clean the area around the wound with wine, which made the Lionheart wince. She then tugged a little on the shaft of the arrow, before stopping with a look of alarm on her face.
‘The shaft has been deeply scored just below the bodkin. It has been gouged so that it will break off when someone tries to remove it.’
It was an old archer’s ruse, but it took time to do and was only used for a one-off shot, of the sort used by a hired killer.
The King forced a smile.
‘It seems someone who dislikes me wants me dead. Let’s make sure he doesn’t get his way. You’ll have to dig the bodkin out.’
Negu took a breath and nodded to us to hold her patient tightly. Then, with some speed and dexterity, she snapped off the shaft and grasped the tang of the bodkin.
‘My Lord, are you ready?’
‘No, but don’t hesitate. Use all your—’
Negu did the deed before the Lionheart finished his sentence. She had to twist the tang sharply to get it free. When she did so, a considerable amount of flesh and bone came out with it. The King cried out in agony. But such was the pain and shock that he fell back, unconscious.
Negu sighed deeply and then took control again.
‘Heat a blade; I need to seal the wound.’
As the blade was being made hot, Negu packed cotton into the wound to stem the bleeding. She held up the arrowhead to show me. It was the worst kind, not a simple bodkin, but a swallowtail broadhead, with barbs almost an inch long to inflict the maximum damage. It was an expensive arrow, not one for use in bulk in battle, but one intended to kill a man in a single strike.
Negu looked at me; she was in tears.
‘I don’t think he’ll ever use his left arm again… I think he’s lost all feeling in it.’
The Lionheart jolted back to consciousness when Negu applied the blade to his wound. The searing had to be extensive as the wound was so big. The smoke and stench were overwhelming, and the King’s cries difficult to bear.
But it was done.
Negu bound the shoulder as firmly as she could before she collapsed in spasms of anguish and exhaustion.
We sat with the King all night; he hardly slept, and neither did we.
By dawn, the Lionheart had become feverish and agitated.
‘I must get up; I need to finish the siege.’
He tried several times to get to his feet, but he was too weak. He began to drift between moments of clarity and long periods of delirium. The pain seemed unrelenting.
Later that day, Mercadier appeared, by which time the King’s colour had drained away and the fever had taken a firmer hold. He took one look at the Lionheart and immediately sent messengers to summon Berengere, Queen Eleanor and the rest of the Grand Quintet.
He feared what Negu and I feared; the injury was severe, and the bleeding beneath the surface may not have stopped.
‘I will send for Jean de Veyrac, Bishop of Limoges, he’s the nearest high prelate.’
Negu, thinking she may have hastened the Lionheart’s demise, was distraught.
‘We should also find the King’s physician.’
‘He’s a dead man; he will be executed as soon as he’s found. They can bring someone from Limoges with the Bishop, but I fear his skills may be redundant.’
The next morning, when we cleaned and dressed the wound, it looked angry. The skin was fiercely hot to the touch, and the King was very edgy. Negu had prepared a poultice and a medicinal broth, both based on cures devised by Hildegard.
‘We must get his fever down.’
As Negu was applying the poultice, Mercadier noticed the talisman around the King’s neck.
‘What in God’s name is that?’
‘It is the Talisman of Truth, something very precious to him.’
Mercadier grasped the chain to remove it.
‘It is an amulet of the occult; it has no place around the King’s neck.’
‘Leave it! It belongs to the King.’
Few men ever crossed Mercadier, or spoke to him as I did, but he knew that my resolve was unshakeable. He backed off and walked away.
‘I’m going to finish the siege; I want the man who did this.’
Negu’s poultices and broth began to work, and the fever appeared to relent a little.
But on the fourth day, she summoned me as she was dressing the wound. What I saw turned my stomach, and I had to leave.
Negu joined me outside the tent when she had finished.
‘The wound is putrefying; it’s gangrene.’
‘What can we do?’
‘We could try canker maggots, but the infection is very deep. The King knows; I think he accepts the inevitable.’
I went inside to see him.
‘Sire, is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?’
