Mel Starr - The Unquiet Bones

“Where are we going?”

“To Lord Gilbert,” Arthur replied. That was helpful.

“And where might he be found?”

“Oh…You don’t know? In Bampton, at the castle there,” he answered.

I’d heard of the town, that was all. “How far must we travel?”

“Fifteen miles…Perhaps sixteen.”

I settled myself as comfortably in the saddle as I could. I had not ridden a horse for many years. I knew that by the time I returned to Oxford in the evening I would be sore in the nether regions. Perhaps, I thought, I should volunteer to walk home.

The first thing I saw of Bampton was the spire of the Church of St Beornwald rising above the fields and forests surrounding the village. The spire was visible before we reached Aston, more than two miles distant. We passed an ancient chapel dedicated to St Andrew, and entered the town on the High Street. I felt at home already. Does every English town have a High Street? At the center of town we took the left fork and followed Mill Street to the bridge across Shill Brook.

I attracted a good deal of attention as we rode through the village. Strangers in small towns tend to do that. The town and people seemed prosperous enough. I even saw a few houses made of stone, although most were wattle and daub, with thatched roofs.

Bampton Castle is an impressive structure, all the more so when one views it for the first time. A curtain wall twenty feet high and six feet thick surrounds one of the largest castle yards in all the realm, for the wall is 360 feet long on each of its four sides. At each corner are round towers three stories high, with arrow loops at each level. Four more towers stand on the sides, and a gatehouse in the west wall permits entry. To the northwest of the castle, near a turf close, is the famous Lady Well, whose waters are of miraculous reputation.

Lord Gilbert’s chamberlain showed me to the solar, where I found my patient. The wound was healed well. There was no pus and, according to my patient, never had been. Some physicians prefer a wound to issue white — laudable — pus, but I hold with Mondeville that, although white pus is much to be preferred over watery, stinking pus, no purulence at all is best.

It was but a matter of minutes to remove the sutures. The seam across Lord Gilbert’s thigh was neat and straight. Not, unfortunately, in a readily visible location so as to proclaim my skills. Word of mouth in this case would have to suffice.

“Remember, no riding for another week,” I reminded him.

Lord Gilbert puffed his cheeks skeptically, glanced at my bag, and said, “I have two villeins in need of a surgeon’s care. Will you see them before you go?”

Clients! Of course I would see them.

The first man brought to me was a simple case. He had a large, fleshy wart on his neck. He had tried the usual remedies: rubbing with the skin of a bean pod; touching the wart with a knotted cord, then burying the cord; rubbing with a slug, then impaling the slug on a thorn bush. These had been unsuccessful. If a wart disappears after such treatment it is, I am convinced, mere happenstance. Such a wart would have faded anyway. I tied a bit of string tightly around the base of the wart, and gave the man another.

“If the wart does not wither and fall away in two weeks, loose the string and have your wife tie this other on, and tightly.”

The ploughman nodded understanding, but turned away with a skeptical expression on his weathered face. This cure was effective, however. I saw the fellow some weeks later, and he was free of the growth. Blood is cut off to the wart. It shrivels and dies and falls away.

The second man I was to see was more seriously afflicted. Arthur showed me to his hut and waited uneasily at the door. The fellow was a large, beefy man, with a broad back and legs made strong following a plow. His brow was crevassed in pain. His wife hovered, fidgeting, near the bed, which sagged beneath his weight.

“He has a stone,” Arthur said by way of introduction. The villein nodded agreement.

“Had one before,” he explained through clenched teeth. “Two years past…at Candlemas. I drank from the Lady Well and the blessed virgin interceded for me. The stone passed after a week or so. But this…since Lammas Day I’m barely able to rise from my bed.”

Nearly two months. This stone was too large to pass. It would become larger, more painful, and weaken the man to an early grave. Well, not all that early. He appeared to be about forty, although the illness might influence his features. He would not expect to live many more years.

“Lord Gilbert’s man said he’d send you. Can you do aught for me?”

“I can remove the stone. But such surgery is dangerous. You might not live.”

“I cannot live in such torment as this. I would rather see God this day than live another hour as I have these past weeks.”

“I will speak the truth — that may happen. And if not today, then tomorrow or next day.”

“But if I live, the pain will be gone?”

“Aye.”

Alfred glanced at his wife. Her pursed lips indicated the decision she would make. But he turned from her and said, “When will you do this?”

“Today. Now, if you are determined.”

He peered at his wife again briefly, then sighed, “I am.”

I had seen a lithotomy performed once, in Paris. That patient did not survive. But he was near sixty years old, and my instructor assured me that many times he had performed such surgery successfully. I was eager to try my skills, and to relieve the man’s suffering. But I will tell no lies: I was anxious both for my patient and for my reputation should I fail. Lord Gilbert’s sound leg would not balance a new corpse in St Beornwald’s Churchyard. It troubled me to think that I was as concerned for my reputation as for my patient’s life, but that was the truth of it. This attitude began to change when I came to know the people of Bampton well. It is difficult to look clinically upon a patient who has been a friend for a year or two.

I heard a voice at the door of the hut, and turned to see Arthur approach through the haze produced by the smoky hearth.

“A message from Lord Gilbert; will you be long here? He would have you join him for dinner.”

Six hours had passed since I ate a crust of bread and drank a half-pint of ale to begin the day. The knot in my stomach might have been hunger as well as apprehension for what I was about to do. If I accepted Lord Gilbert’s invitation, I could put off the surgery. I accepted.

Arthur led me to the castle yard, through the inner gatehouse to the hall. Tables erected in a “U” shape now occupied most of the room. Trenchers and loaves of bread — white bread! — sat, one at each place, on the cloth. Twelve places were set around the tables. I passed a hand over the nearest loaf: yet warm from the oven!

Arthur left me in the hall. As he passed out one door, my dinner companions entered through another.

She was among them: the beauty I had seen on horseback a year earlier. You may wonder that I would remember and recognize her after a year. If you had seen the lady, you would wonder no more.

Lord Gilbert saw me standing alone, probably looking as awkward as I felt, and spoke to his companions. “Ah, here is the surgeon who has put me back together. Master Hugh de Singleton; my wife, Lady Petronilla; my sister, Lady Joan.” I heard other names vaguely, obscured as they were by the lovely Joan — sister, not wife, to Lord Gilbert.

I remember little of the meal. I ate well: even love has seldom been able to suppress my appetite. She smiled at me once. I spent most of the meal trying not to be obvious about her charms and their influence on me. This was most difficult between removes, for there was no food then to occupy my eye or thoughts.