A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

compassionate enough to use it to save a patient’s life. That the School of Medicine was known to permit it put it at risk from the Church.

But this, this intervention could not be hidden; Joanna’s body was a present from the King of England to the King of Sicily; when its wrapping was taken off in the bridal bed, its blemish would be discovered, the jewel found imperfect, deliberately spoiled by what was, in the eyes of the Church and, undoubtedly, a royal Christian husband, an act of the grossest impiety

Adelia thought of all this, of the far-reaching consequences, and knew that in the end, it didn’t make any difference.

She looked up at the Irishman. “It doesn’t make any difference,” she said. “It can’t. A doctor’s duty is only to the patient. Joanna is dying. Because there’s just a chance of saving her, I have to take it.”

“What are the chances?”

“Well, it’s been done. My tutor performed the operation once, on an old man, but the patient died; it was too late, the organ had burst and spread poison. My father… I was assisting when he saved two by it, both children.” It was strange, she thought, how the condition so often affected the very young. “I also assisted when three others died-it’s such a horrible risk.”

“But you know how?”

Tears were making her eyes blink. “O’Donnell, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to, but I’ve got to. I can’t just let her die.”

“Yes,” he said gently. “It’s the reason I love you.”

He watched her face and gently reached out with his finger to raise her dropped jaw. “Did you not know? Ah, well, it’s no matter.”

No matter? No matter? He had stupefied her. All she could find to say was: “Why?”

It made him smile. “Now, then, if I knew that, we’d have the answer to why the sun comes up and goes down.”

She would have done anything then, anything, to help the pain of this wonderful man to whom she owed everything, anything not to hurt him. But the one thing he wanted of her, she was incapable of giving him.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. So sorry”

“No need. But it had to be said. Go along now, and get ready”

THE OPERATING TABLE, Gershom said, was an altar on which the surgeon laid his supplication to God and, like all altars, it had to be pristine. Just as he who was to be dubbed a knight the next day took a bath before his night’s vigil in church, so must the supplicant surgeon and his offering be cleansed in the sight of God so that, if the surgeon’s prayers were accepted, God would return that offering to health.

Now Adelia became tigerish. Everybody was put to work. The suffering princess was removed from the keep’s table and laid on a couch while Ulf and the O’Donnell dragged the table itself out into the open air-there’d be more light there-and made to scrub it as it had never been scrubbed before. Johan’s knives gleamed well enough, but they were nevertheless once again put into boiling water, as were the needles and silk thread from the sewing basket that Mistress Blanche, for all her panic, had brought with her from the ship, along with her face powder, rouge, and scents.

Everything, everything must be holy

As Adelia lowered a basket of the wool swabs she would need into the vat’s bubbling water, Mansur touched her arm. “You know you are mad? You should leave the girl be, she is in the hands of Allah.”

“No, she’s in mine. Oh, God, Mansur, I’m so frightened.”

He sighed. “Well, well, they can only hang us once. What did the gladiators say in the arena? ‘We who are about to die… ’?”

She wasn’t listening to him. “Is Fabrisse scrubbing our clothes?” She must be washed of her sins, of the guilt of Brune’s death, of Ermengarde’s. She had to be pure for this, all things had to be pure.

The Arab nodded. “Scrubbing hard. We shall be in clean robes.” He allowed himself a smile. “But they may be wet.”

It was in the middle of all this that a cry came from the top room of the tower. Fabrisse went up to see about it and returned, grimacing. “Boggart’s waters have broken,” she said. “The baby’s coming.”

“Not now, oh, not now.”

“Now.”

Adelia took in a deep breath. “You’ll have to see to it. Take one of the shochet’s knives. And you…” She turned on Mistress Blanche, whose worry, so far, had kept her from being of use. “You go and help.”

“But I…”

“Help, I said.” Adelia bit her lip and lowered her voice. This was, after all, a brave and loving woman. “Blanche, my dear, you had the courage to bring Joanna to me, now you must leave her in my hands.”

FOR OVER AN HOUR, Ulf and Johan with his collection of grandsons had been squatting in the bailey, well away from the table in its center, like people watching a sacred, terrible rite from a distance-as they were.

Despite a bright sun, it was bitterly cold. Mansur, who leaned over the table, the long fingers of his left hand holding the cut edges of flesh apart, swabbing with his right, shivered in his damp clothes. O’Donnell, standing next to a smaller table, on which implements and flasks lay on a cloth, also shivered-despite the fire in the brazier next to him.

A fresh blanket had been tucked around the head, arms, and legs of Joanna in her laudanum sleep, but the flesh of her bare, white stomach was goose-pimpled, except for the gaping slash down it.

From the top bedroom of the keep, where Boggart’s contractions were coming hard and fast, deep, loud, involuntary huffs from her lungs groaned round the bailey like the blasts of a horn.

Adelia was aware of none of it, not noise, not the passing of time, not people, not fear, not even the humanity of the body on which she operated. She was battling with the enemy, a plump, yellowish, glistening, red-veined vermiform tube proving difficult for her tweezers to tease away from the rest of the gut. It hadn’t yet perforated, thank God. But it was taking too long.

At last she had it. Still holding the tweezers in place, she gestured for O’Donnell to pass her a knife, and cut.

“Cauterizing iron. Quick.”

There was a hiss. The body on the table jumped and Mansur, in response to Adelia’s brief look, held the laudanum sponge to Joanna’s nose.

The worm was thrown into a bucket.

Now the sewing up. “Needle.” She was passed the curved steel needle from Blanche’s sewing kit and knotted the sutures.

“Brandy” The wound had alcohol squeezed over it and was covered with lint.

Adelia took a swig of brandy herself and then sat down on the ground, staring into space, still clutching the bottle.

She only looked up as Fabrisse came out of the keep with a lustily bawling baby in her arms.

Joanna was breathing, but the battle for her life would continue and was now mostly in the hands of God. Adelia had done her best; it remained to be seen whether it was good enough.

FOR A WHILE it looked as if the Lord had given and the Lord was taking away. Donnell, as the new baby boy was called, thrived while Joanna went into a delirium and Adelia into panic.

The Irishman rowed out to his anchored ship to tell those aboard that it was still touch-and-go for the princess, but that “Lord Mansur’s ministrations” were doing her good.

He refused their demands to take them ashore and ordered his crew to keep all passengers on board, where water, wine, and food would be rowed out to them.

There was to be no mention of an operation; if Joanna died, it must be assumed that she had succumbed to the illness that had been the reason for her abduction in the first place-some small protection for Mansur and