Warrior's Song (Medieval Song 1)

“It is better to die a Christian than let a heathen save you.”

“I have never heard greater nonsense,” Eleanor said, raising her head to look at the man. “If the devil himself would save someone I loved, I would do it.” Wisely, Geoffrey Parker held his tongue.

As for Eleanor, she was now oblivious of them and all their muttering. “Nay, Chandra,” she said at last, raising her head, “I cannot leave my lord.” She shuddered, wiping her hand across her mouth. “I tasted the poison. It was awful, like decaying flesh.”

Chandra quickly poured her another goblet of wine. “Here, Eleanor, you must wash out your mouth again. I don’t like it that you can even remember the taste of that horrible poison.”

Jerval and Payn shoved aside the bickering physicians. Chandra helped Eleanor to her feet, and they watched silently as the two men vigorously rubbed Edward’s arms and legs.

“By all the saints,” Payn said, “he should not remain unconscious so long.”

Eleanor sat beside her husband and lightly slapped his face. “My lord,” she whispered. “Please, my lord, open your eyes. Come back to me. I refuse to tell our little daughter about you. You must see her for yourself. Open your eyes else I will be very distressed.”

Edward’s fair lashes fluttered. He heard Eleanor’s voice from afar, vague and distant, and he was suddenly frightened that she needed him. He heard her voice again, closer now, and with a great effort, he forced his eyes to open. He felt light-headed, and the wound in his arm was a raging pain, so great that he clamped his lower lip between his teeth to keep from crying out. When he focused his gaze, it was not Eleanor he saw above him, but the dark-seamed face of Sir Elvan, the Templar physician.

“Hold still, sire.”

Sir Elvan nodded to Jerval and Payn. They sat on either side of Edward and held him firmly.

Edward scarce felt the knife plunging into his flesh. He heard Eleanor telling the physician to go more easily. He wanted to soothe her, to tell her he didn’t feel much of anything, but no words came to mind. A fiery liquid followed the path of the knife, and Edward lunged upward with a cry of agony.

“Payn, hold him!” Jerval shouted. It required all their strength to keep Edward down as Sir Elvan opened the wound still wider and poured more of the dark liquid into it.

Sir Elvan slowly straightened. “The poison should have bubbled up from the wound. It may have worked so rapidly that my remedy will have no effect.”

Jerval smiled toward Eleanor. “I believe, Sir Elvan, that there is no poison because the princess sucked it from the wound.”

Sir Elvan’s expression did not change. He looked at Eleanor, still speaking to her husband, stroking her palm over his forehead, her black hair straggling about her pale face.

“My lady,” he said very gently, “I believe you have saved your husband’s life. Well done. You are very brave.”

Edward heard his words, and gazed up vaguely into his wife’s face. She was smiling.

“I am so blasted weak. Damn, but this is ridiculous.”

“And ill tempered, and impatient to be well again,” Jerval said, standing over Edward. “At least you are no longer worried about making out your will.”

“You make my neck sore, Jerval. Sit down.”

Jerval sat. “Eleanor is suckling her babe and will return to you soon.” Jerval smiled suddenly, his white teeth gleaming. “Now, sire, both you and I owe our miserable lives to our wives.”

“Aye,” Edward said slowly, “it is a strange and daunting thought.” His brows lowered. “Why did you not stop her? The poison could have killed her.”

“It did not occur to me to stop her. Indeed, I believe if anyone had tried, she would have killed him.”

“That is likely true,” Edward said, and smiled. “She has been like a clucking mother hen, just as Chandra was when you were wounded at Nazareth.” He shook his head. “Geoffrey Parker now meets with Sir Elvan daily, to learn from him. At least he will return to England with something.”

Jerval looked at Edward steadily, saddened at his bitterness.

Edward laid his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes. “I wonder what would have happened had King Louis not died. He would have added another ten thousand men to our cause.”

“As pious and well meaning as Louis was,” Jerval said quietly, “he still fancied himself a leader of men—”

“Which he was.”

“Not in battle. It would have been up to you to lead our armies in battle, sire, not Louis. I wonder, after seeing all the bickering among Christians here, if all would have gone as we hoped.”

“I remember so clearly feeling that God himself laid the cross of his holy cause upon me,” Edward said slowly, “that I was to be the instrument of his hand, to free his land of the Saracens. Even after hearing of Louis’s death, I still believed that I was chosen to take Palestine.”