Chapter Thirteen
“One more step, Cassius,” Dacia said gently. “We’re almost there.”
Cassius could hardly lift his leg. He’d been functioning on a battle high ever since those arrows carved into his body, but now, that high was wearing off. His entire left side was soaked in blood and he was starting to feel faint.
But he couldn’t let his guard down.
He had to make it into the keep under his own power.
Once inside the keep, there was a constable chamber inside the door to the left.
It wasn’t a big chamber, but it had a good-sized bed in it and a hearth and, at the moment, that was all that was needed.
There hadn’t been a constable in the chamber in years, so it sat cold and unused except by visitors on occasion.
Dacia took him inside the chamber.
“Sit, Cassius, please,” she said softly as she and several soldiers lowered him onto the bed.
Once he was down, she looked to the men around her.
“Bring light in here, as much as you can, and get a fire going in the hearth. I need hot water and as much wine as you can find, so get that for me right away. Hurry, now. There is no time to waste.”
Two of the men fled, but the older two didn’t move. They were looking at her with some uncertainty.
“My lady?” one man finally ventured. “Have you…?”
She looked at him sharply. “Why are you still here? I gave you orders.”
The men nodded patiently. “I know, my lady,” the first man said. “And we shall follow them. But after we’ve helped you remove those bolts. Have you ever removed them from a man’s body before?”
Dacia looked at Cassius, who was gazing at her with complete and total trust. There wasn’t anything in his expression other than the full knowledge that she would heal him. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind. But Dacia had to be truthful in her answer.
“Nay,” she said reluctantly. “I… I suppose you were right to remain because I am sure I will need your assistance. Help me lay him on the bed and remove what clothing we can. I must see the wounds.”
Between Dacia and the two old soldiers, they manage to lay Cassius flat on the bed and straighten him out as much as they were able. He was so tall that his booted feet hung over the end of the bed at least a foot.
“Hurry,” Dacia commanded softly. “Help me get this clothing off.”
They tried. They removed his belt and scabbard, carefully setting aside his sword and purse, and other things that were contained on his belt.
With that off, Dacia was forced to cut through the royal tunic.
Cassius had finally closed his eyes. He was deathly pale as Dacia and the others rushed to help him, but when it came to his mail coat, they could go no further.
It was sticky with coagulated blood and the bolts were pinning it to Cassius’ body.
“I cannot cut through this mail coat,” she said. “We have no choice but to remove the arrows before we go any further.”
Edie had entered the chamber by that point, setting the medicament bag next to the bed.
There were boiled linen bandages in the bag, but they were forced to wait until men started returning with the hot water and wine that Dacia had sent them for.
She couldn’t start anything without the things she needed.
As soon as she had the water, the wine, and the bandages, she nodded to the soldiers hovering around the bed.
“Am I to understand that you have done this before?” she asked quietly.
The older soldiers nodded. “Aye, my lady,” the first man said.
Dacia bent over the gut wound, trying to get a close look at it, but it was difficult with the mail and tunics he had on. Gently, she prodded around, determining where, exactly, it had penetrated.
“If this arrow had been just an inch or so to his left, it would have missed him completely,” she said.
“I do not know if it has hit anything vital but I assume that if he was going to bleed to death, he would have already done so. But we must remove them both, so I shall let you take charge. Tell me what you wish for me to do.”
The two soldiers spread out around the bed.
“Removing these requires some strength, my lady,” the first man said. “I’ll yank this one out and Bardo will remove the one in the shoulder at the same time. ’Twill be better for him that way if we can do it all at once. You will hold him still, if you can.”
Dacia nodded, struggling not to feel sickened by the whole thing. She was trying very hard to be clinical about it, to not feel any emotion, but the shock of seeing Cassius impaled had faded, being replaced with a strong sense of horror.
God, help me to help him!
She had to stick to what she’d been taught, to everything the priest had taught her. But it was difficult when her patient was Cassius.
All she wanted to do was weep.
But she fought it.
“Let me douse the wounds with wine first before you pull,” she said, forcing herself to focus. “The wine helps kill any poison.”
Edie handed her a wine jug but before she poured it, she bent over Cassius as he lay there with his eyes closed. She put a warm, gentle hand on his forehead.
“Cassius?” she said softly. “Can you hear me?”
It took him a moment to answer. “I do.”
She stroked his sweaty forehead, smoothing back his dark, dirty hair. “We are going to remove the bolts,” she said. “Please try not to move. We shall be as swift as we can.”
His eyes lolled open, focusing on her. “As you say, Angel,” he murmured, his tongue thick. “I am in good hands.”
Dacia smiled faintly at the man as his eyes shut once more, exhausted from blood loss.
She stroked his head one last time before moving to the bolt in his shoulder.
Quickly, she doused the wound and the one in his torso with the wine.
Alcohol on an open wound was excruciating, but Cassius didn’t flinch.
“Go,” she commanded huskily. “Pull them out.”
They did. Both bolts came out fairly easily, one after the other. As the soldiers took them away, Dacia and Edie went to work.
Quickly, they placed the boiled linen over both wounds, which were now starting to bleed again.
Edie held tightly to the one on his shoulder while Dacia held tightly to the one on his torso.
They pressed them down, stemming the flow of blood because Cassius had already lost a goodly amount.
Dacia had her eyes on his face as she held the linen down and she only saw him twitch once.
Considering the pain he must have been in, it was remarkable that he’d not uttered a sound.
As the bleeding lessened, Dacia was finally able to get a look at the wound.
As far as she could tell, it was really only as deep as the head on the bolt, which was maybe three inches at most. But the head of the arrow had pushed all kinds of debris into the wound – fabric, pieces of mail, and other things.
Dacia knew she had to get those out. When the soldiers returned, she had them strip Cassius to the waist so she could have a clear field to work in.
As the men hauled out Cassius’ clothing and armor, including his boots and sword, Dacia had Edie shut the door so they would have some quiet and privacy.
The worst part about wounds like the ones Cassius had suffered was the debris the arrows had pushed into the body.
That was where the poison and fever could kill a man and Dacia was only too aware of that.
Some of the Arabic treatises that she had in her collection of books had recipes on how to combat those poisons, including one that called for salts from the human organ – the liver.
The physic in Doncaster, Emmeric, had concocted the potion several times, having purchased bile salts from a man in York who harvested such things from the dead.
It was probably immoral, but Emmeric still bought the salts because mixing them with wine, garlic, and onion often produced a cure unmatched in fighting fevers and bodily poisons.
She knew that he would bring his potions when he came, provided the man could be found.
Meanwhile, she would have to do what she could do for Cassius and, at the moment, that meant picking the debris out of the wounds – one piece at a time.
With the man stripped down, the fire in the hearth blazing, and Edie hovering to be of assistance, Dacia went to work on the gut wound with a pair of tweezers. She tried not to look at his naked flesh, how absolutely perfect he was, muscular and powerful and formed like a marble statue.
Interestingly, he had a big stigmata on his left shoulder, a wolf’s head set within a five point shield in black ink, an unusual marking on a knight but clearly one with significance to him.
But she didn’t do anything more than simply glance at it.
She kept her focus on the wound and bit by bit, she plucked the debris out of it, which must have been agonizing for Cassius, but he simply lay there.
Not a sound came out of his mouth.
Dacia got a good look at the wound between washing it with wine and picking out the debris, and it didn’t seem to her that it had hit anything vital.
It had passed through skin and fat and muscle, embedding itself about three inches into the side of his torso.
It was a miracle it hadn’t done more damage.
Even so, it still took Dacia a couple of hours to remove every particle she could find and when she was certain there was no more, she stitched him up with her careful, tight stitches and applied a wine-soaked chamomile poultice to keep any swelling at bay.
As Edie bandaged up the wound with more clean linen, she moved to the shoulder wound.