“Can you do aught for ’im?” the son asked, his cap still grasped tightly before him.
“Perhaps. You would have done well to have brought him to me last night.”
“’E woke up for a span. ’Is wife wanted us to bring ’im in, but ’e said ‘No.’ Worried ’bout t’expense, y’see. So when he went down again we thought ’twas but for a minute, like. But he hasn’t wakened yet, an’ seems to me he ain’t breathin’ right.”
He wasn’t. I told the son and the other bearers I would do what I could, but I was not optimistic. For what I must do I wanted no spectators. I sent my patient’s three companions to wait in the street. The injured man remained comatose, which was good. He would feel no pain, nor thrash about.
I heated water and shaved the indented part of the skull, and a circle around it, then bathed the wound with the last of my wine. I used the scalp laceration for the cross-stroke, and made two vertical incisions at either end. This created two flaps of scalp which I could fold back to reveal the fracture.
I caught my breath when I saw the extent of the damage. The fracture was a finger’s length in diameter, and included four large bone fragments and many small splinters. I employed a probe to lift the largest piece, and in the gathering light from my eastern window I peered beneath it.
I was cheered to see that the damage was not so severe as the broken skull would have it appear. I saw no great rupture of dura mater encompassing the brain. There was much coagulated blood under the break, but that could be teased out, with time and care.
So I took my time and was careful. Three hours later I had cleaned the smallest bone splinters from the wound, positioned the larger pieces in a convex curve to match the undamaged portion of skull, and sewed up the “H” flap of scalp. My back ached and sweat ran into my eyes, but a sense of accomplishment overwhelmed my discomfort. The man might not survive, but he had not died on my table. At least, not yet. And I had given him a chance to live.
I packed ground moneywort over the wound, wrapped the woodcutter’s head in several layers of linen strips, then called to his son and friends. They had remained standing, motionless, since the moment I sent them out, and it was now past the sixth hour. I had seen them through the window several times while I worked.
“Take him home carefully. It will be his life should he receive another blow on the head. He must not rise from his bed for a week. After seven days he may rise but to eat and care for himself. No labor! In a fortnight he must return to have the wound inspected and have the windings changed.”
“He will live, then?” asked the brother.
“He may. I cannot pledge. The fracture was severe.”
“When can he return to work?”
“Perhaps a month. Certainly it will not be safe to do so sooner.”
“What is your fee?”
A wage for men like these might be two pence per day. I asked for four pence, brain surgery being somewhat more skilled employment than woodcutting and, from the stiffness of my back, nearly as arduous.
“I’ve but t’uppence. He’ll bring two more in a fortnight. If God wills an’ he lives.”
Fair enough, I thought. Success should be worth more than failure.
I was weary from the morning’s labor, and had no heart for another unfruitful journey through the autumn countryside. I had used much white archangel and moneywort to staunch the bleeding of the woodman’s scalp, and knew a meadow north of town where I might replenish my supply.
The afternoon I spent gathering plants; white archangel, lady’s mantle, clover, moneywort, and betony. All these I did not find in the same field, but since the plague much land lay fallow. Brief journeys from meadow to meadow supplied all my needs. I hung my gathered medicines from beams in the dispensary to dry.
I sat and contemplated this room as the day died. Tomorrow I would resume my search. Tonight I would enjoy the quiet reward of a day lived well, work well done, and the pleasure of searching God’s forest and field for the tools he has provided whereby we may be healed of our afflictions. I concluded the day with maslin, a haunch of cold mutton, and a pint of the baker’s wife’s ale. Life was good.
The Angelus Bell awakened me early next day. It does so every day. Before the sun was over St Andrew’s Chapel I bid Wilfred good morning and found Bruce snoring contentedly in the marshalsea.
I rode northeast this day, to Yelford and Hardwick, then all the way to Witney. Plague had reduced the first two villages so I spent little time there. No one had gone missing.
Witney was grown large as Bampton, and plague had reduced it but little. Witney required more time. My task was to learn what I could, as thoroughly as I could, as quickly as I could. I decided on two strategies; seek an innkeeper, and approach an old woman or two. If such as these knew of no person mysteriously absent from the town, it was likely all its inhabitants could be accounted for. Two hours later an innkeeper and three grandmothers could recollect no missing citizen.
I returned to Bampton through fields brown with autumn, forests golden, as frost worked its designs. A pity, I thought, to be on such a morbid mission when beauty surrounded me. But this also reminded me of death. Leaves and stems were dying, as would I, some day. Would my death bring some brief glory to the world, as did the dying foliage?
Some deaths bring no radiance. To die young, or of some festering disease, this is an infamous way to meet God. Even the slaughter of battle may bring with it an aureole of dignity. I had chosen to spend my life battling against ignoble death — against wasting disease and injury. But now I found myself in a struggle against the calamity of murder, the death of the young. I felt unequal to the assignment. My feelings would nearly prove accurate.
I did not seek for a missing girl next day; ’twas Sunday. At the third hour, bells from the tower of the Church of St Beornwald called the faithful to matins and the mass. They called the unfaithful as well. I suppose the congregation included some of each.
Lord Gilbert did not attend. He and his family worshipped in a private chapel in the castle, but most others in the town could be expected to be present. Before plague struck, the nave was barely large enough to contain the parish. Now there was room enough and to spare.
Father Thomas led the two other vicars in procession around the church, blessing altars and congregation, and sprinkling holy water on both. A clerk led the prayer of confession and read the scripture for the day from St Paul’s epistle to the Galatians: “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
“Do not grow weary in doing good.” I thought this a word from God, for I was already grown weary of wandering the countryside searching for a girl who might be missing from some place of which I had never heard a hundred miles away.
My mind was so occupied that I neglected the prayers for the living and the dead. Father Thomas sang the mass well, and as I had some little training to do the same, my thoughts returned to the service in time to venerate the host and kiss the pax board. We shared the holy loaf, and as always after mass, I departed the church determined to live better, and in particular, to discover a name for a missing girl. I should attend mass twice each day. Although, come to think of it, there are lords who do for whom the practice seems without benefit.
I am always ravenous when mass is done. Although some break their fast before the sacrament, I hold with those who do not. After the midday meal of a Sunday, it is Lord Gilbert’s custom to invite tenants and yeomen to bring bows to the castle forecourt for practice at the butts. He provides a cask of ale to ensure good attendance, and a prize for the most competent marksman. As the award, usually two pence, is not granted until the last competition, those who rewarded themselves already with Lord Gilbert’s ale seldom stagger home with any coin.
Monday found me unoccupied, so I journeyed to the north again, to Curbridge, Minster Lovell, and Brize Norton. A woman had disappeared from Minster Lovell seven years earlier, but the gossip who told me of this was convinced her disappearance had to do with a band of Italian wool buyers who passed through the area a few days before her husband awoke to a cold bed. And the woman was twenty-six: too old to be the skeleton in my dispensary.
I did not mount Bruce again until Wednesday. I had an earache and a boil to deal with on Tuesday. Truth to tell, the child’s ear was not the only thing in Bampton which ached. My hindquarters were unaccustomed to days spent in a saddle. A day practicing my profession provided sorely needed respite.
On Wednesday I rode through Black Bourton, Alvescot, and Shilton, all the way to Burford. Burford was as
