Chapter Eight
Something hard was forced between my teeth, and then a trickle of fluid ran down the back of my throat. I coughed and nearly choked. I did not have the strength to lift my eyelids. Worse, my heart was pounding in a frightening way, its beat irregular.
A faraway voice said calmly, ‘You must swallow.’ I knew the speaker but I was too confused to remember who it was. I swallowed.
Time must have passed, for when I regained the strength to open my eyes, it was to see Osric’s familiar face. He was leaning over me, a narrow tube in his hand. He inserted it again into my mouth.
‘Drink as much of this as you can,’ he said.
Obediently I sucked on the liquid. It had no taste and left a sticky coating on the inside of my mouth. My stomach churned and my bowels had turned to water. I felt so weak that I could not move my limbs.
‘Lie quietly,’ said Osric.
I must have drifted off to sleep for when I came to my senses again, it was night. By the light of a single candle Osric sat beside me, and once again he made me drink the sticky liquid. I was lying on some sort of bed and had soiled myself. The bed linen stank. Feebly I tried to sit up, but he pushed me back down with his hand.
‘Here, chew,’ he said, and dropped into my mouth a lump of some substance which crumbled into powder as I bit into it. He held a cup of water to my lips and I swirled down the thin paste. It tasted of nothing. Again I drifted off into blackness.
When I awoke a second time, it was to find that I had been washed and dressed in a clean bed gown. Osric was gone, but Alcuin was sitting patiently on a stool, his face grave.
I looked about me. I was lying in a small, plainly furnished room. Daylight entered through a window in the whitewashed walls.
‘Where am I?’ I asked.
‘The king’s house, a room where the crown couriers rest between trips.’
‘What happened?’
‘You ate something which made you so violently sick that you were brought here, the nearest place.’ The priest folded his hands in his lap. ‘Perhaps it was a food which you were not accustomed to. There were times when it was thought you might die. Prayers were said for you.’
I detected a hesitation in his voice.
‘Was anyone else taken ill?’ I asked.
‘The old man, Gerard of Roussillon, suffers the same symptoms, but they began some hours later. He managed to get back to his own bed. He breathes with difficulty and is getting weaker.’
I remembered Osric dosing me.
‘My slave Osric must treat him with the same medicine he gave me. It seems to have been effective.’
‘As could have been our prayers,’ Alcuin reminded me quietly, but he agreed to my request and got to his feet. ‘When you are strong enough, you will be able to return to your own quarters.’
No sooner had he left the room than a worried-looking Count Hroudland and Berenger appeared in the doorway. I managed to raise my head and greet them. Hroudland’s face lit up with relief.
‘Patch, it’s good to see you awake,’ said Hroudland. ‘There were times when we thought you were finished.’ He came across to my bed and laid a hand on my brow. ‘The fever has broken, thank God.’
‘Fallen on your feet again, Patch,’ Berenger said, his usual jaunty self. ‘Convalescing in the royal household.’ He grinned. ‘I always knew that banquet food was bad, but I had no idea quite how awful it could be.’
I smiled weakly. My stomach felt as though a horse had kicked me in the gut.
‘Get well quickly, Patch,’ Berenger continued. ‘There’s to be a grand hunt in two weeks’ time, the first of the season. You wouldn’t want to miss that.’
Hroudland was pacing up and down the room, looking agitated.
‘Patch, do you have any idea what could have poisoned you?’ he asked.
I shook my head. I could remember eating smoked eel, pig meat with dumplings, and then some of the chicken and vegetable pottage.
‘Perhaps it was something I drank,’ I said.
‘All of us enjoyed Anseis’s wine, yet only you and Gerard are sick.’
‘What are you trying to tell me?’
Hroudland chose his words carefully.
‘That someone may have harmed you deliberately.’
It took me a moment to grasp his meaning.
‘Are you saying that someone tried to poison me? Why would they want to do that?’ I was astonished.
He hesitated.
‘You are known to be my close friend. It could have a warning aimed at me, or simply an act to hurt me.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘The king has said that he will appoint me to the next important post that falls vacant. Others seek that post for themselves. They see me as an obstacle to their own ambitions.’
I thought back to Alcuin’s opaque warning about dangers lurking in the court.
‘That seems a very vague threat,’ I said.
‘Then there’s Ganelon.’
It took me a moment to realize whom he was talking about.
‘You mean your stepfather?’
‘He loathes me. The feeling is mutual. He thinks I’m trying to turn my mother against him. He’ll lose much of his wealth and power if she divorces him.’
I recalled how the man in the yellow jerkin had watched me during the banquet. But surely it was impossible that Ganelon would have been able to carry out a deliberate poisoning so quickly. Also I found it difficult to believe that that a family feud could be so bitter that it would extend to murder. I told myself that my illness was probably an accident and I would be more careful what I ate in future. First, though, I would check with Osric. He had known how to cure me, so he might know what had harmed me.
Berenger had started to tell a bawdy joke when the door opened and my fourth visitor of the day swept in, someone so completely unexpected that I goggled: it was Princess Bertha.
Berenger immediately broke off his tale and bowed.
‘We were just leaving, your highness,’ he said smoothly. At the same time he treated Hroudland to a meaningful glance. The two of them made for the door and, just as they were leaving, I was startled to see Berenger turn round and, behind the princess’s back, wink.
I had still not got over my surprise when the princess said, ‘I am so pleased to see that you are recovering.’
She was looking lovely in a pale-blue gown of some soft, clinging material gathered at the waist with a thin silver belt. Her long yellow plaits hung free as when I had first seen her, though now the amber necklace was missing.
‘It is kind of you to come to see me,’ I mumbled.
‘You told the story of Troilus so beautifully. My father says you are a natural storyteller.’
The princess’s voice was husky and musical, and she had the same direct manner of speaking as her father. She walked over and sat down beside my bed on the stool that Alcuin had used. A hint of rose perfume reached me. She smoothed the front of her gown over her bosom.
‘His regular bard is furious.’
Briefly I wondered if he had been furious enough to warn me off with something poisonous in my food.
‘Sigwulf is a nice name. It’s a pity that everyone calls you Patch.’
I wondered how she came to know this detail, but already she was reaching to remove my eye bandage.
