The Cross and the Dragon (26 page)

“But he is not long for this world. Taking him with us will slow us down,” Ganelon said matter of factly.

Gerard’s dark eyes flashed as if a fire had ignited within them. He leapt to his feet and drew his eating knife, gesturing with it as he spoke. “I will not abandon him. If leaving him part of feud, you…” He let out a string of obscenities in Roman, Frankish, and Latin.

If Ganelon had been standing closer, Leonhard was certain Gerard would have stabbed him long past the point of death. Red-faced, Gerard had the look of a madman. Like everyone else here, he was filthy, and his clothes were stained with gore. His hair was greasy and unkempt. Even Ganelon’s soldiers stepped back.

“If you want to end feud, I end it with you,” Gerard said in Frankish, slashing the air with his knife.

Ganelon’s men stared at their master, and Ganelon stared at Gerard. Leonhard saw the old hatred coming back into Ganelon’s icy eyes as Ganelon’s hand went for the hilt of his seax.

“Peace,” Leonhard barked, his voice dripping with disgust for both of them. “We are on enemy land, and we shall not fight among ourselves. You two can cut each other to ribbons once we cross the border. But I have seen enough death among my countrymen to last a lifetime.”

Ganelon took his hand off his seax. “You speak the truth, Bishop Leonhard,” Ganelon said, his eyes boring into Gerard. “I cannot fight a man who is at a disadvantage.”

Gerard muttered something in Roman as he thrust his knife back in its sheath. He wiped his brow with his sleeve. “We take Hruodland with us,” he said in Frankish.

“We have no choice,” Leonhard said calmly. “We cannot bury him, and we cannot leave him to die without a Christian burial.”

Chapter 18

Gerard’s servants carried Hruodland to one of the carts. To make enough room for him and the supplies, they placed him in a sitting position and propped him up with blankets.

There was not room enough for the servants to ride in the cart, and the party could go only as fast as the men who were walking. The dog sometimes walked with them, sometimes rode with Hruodland.

As they wound their way through the gray and green mountains, the smell of death still filled Gerard’s nostrils, and he found it difficult to breathe in the dust. He looked at the other men. They were unshaven and filthy, and Gerard knew he did not look any better. They made camp at sunset. After vespers Mass, Leonhard insisted the men eat.

“I am not hungry,” Gerard murmured in Latin.

“You must keep up your strength,” Leonhard replied. “For your brother’s sake.”

Gerard took a few bites of moistened travel bread, although it had the texture of wet leather and was tasteless to him. Ganelon wolfed down his meal, while even his own men nibbled at their food.

How can he eat?
Gerard wondered.
It is as if he saw nothing.

Ganelon turned toward the physician. “How is the prefect of the March of Brittany?” he asked, his mouth full of salted pork.

“Nothing has changed,” the physician said, shaking his head. “I have never seen anything like this before.”

“What kind of potions do you have to help him?” Ganelon asked. He shoved the last of his food into his mouth and licked his fingers.

“I can show you,” he answered, brightening as he picked up a fallen branch and dipped it in the fire.

Gerard pursed his lips. Strange. Only hours before, Ganelon had wanted to leave Hruodland behind. Why the sudden interest in medicine? Yet Gerard’s own curiosity was piqued. “I would like to see as well,” he said.

The physician led Ganelon and Gerard to the wagon and lifted the leather cover. “Of course, I have wine,” he said, pointing to five clay jugs, “essential for any medicine. There’s garlic for wounds, comfrey roots for broken bones.” He held up another clay jug. “This is the linseed oil and pennyroyal we have been using to repel fleas and flies. I have gathered some herbs during our journey. This,” he said, opening a small sack to reveal shiny green leaves and green berries, “is mistletoe.”

“Isn’t that poison?” Gerard asked, raising his brows.

“Many herbs are poisonous in large doses. But a little mistletoe quiets a seizure.”

Ganelon held up a small clay jar. “What is in here?”

“I use the small jars for my most potent medicine,” the physician said. “What you are holding is essence of wormwood, which makes whoever drinks it not care about pain, and this” he said holding up another small jar, “is hemlock.”

“What do you use hemlock for?” Ganelon asked.

“To induce sleep,” the physician answered, “but if I were to use more than a drop, my patient would never awaken.”

“You will not give that to Hruodland,” Gerard said slowly to make sure the physician understood his Frankish.

“No need, my lord,” said the physician. “His problem is not lack of sleep.”

* * * * *

The next day, the party reached the foothills on Francia’s side of the mountain range. As they made their way toward the road near the ocean, Hruodland sometimes opened his dark eyes, and the physician gave him wine when he seemed awake.

“He is like a dead man,” the physician muttered, “insensible to pain or hunger or thirst. But a dead man would not be sitting in his own waste.”

Gerard looked at his brother. Hruodland’s eyes were vacant, as if he did not comprehend the world around him. Gerard swallowed and draped his medal of Saint Peter around Hruodland’s neck. Murmuring the Latin prayer to the saint, he thought,
End this
.
End his suffering
.

At sunset two days later, they saw the gray walls of Lapurdum. Sitting at the confluence of two rivers near the ocean, the fortified Gascon town accepted King Charles’s rule as grudgingly as the Aquitanians to the north. Gerard welcomed the salty scent of the sea — anything other than the death stench that still clung to their clothes.

During their three-day stay to rest the animals and replenish supplies, Hruodland’s condition did not change. When they returned to the road, the party traveled through the Landes forest, which was thick with pines. When they arrived at the marshes seven days later, they saw thousands of birds picking tiny fish from the small pools of water in the long grasses.

When the sun was at its zenith the next day, the party saw the Abbey of Saint Stephen, standing on a high spot of the marsh, walled with timber cut from a nearby forest. As he slapped at flies, Gerard’s heart rose to see the abbey’s tenants watching over their grazing cattle, goats, and other animals.

They reached the abbey after crossing a stream. A guard posted on the ramparts descended and ushered them through the gate. The porter, a shrill-voiced old woman residing in a small house near the gate, called out for a blessing, the same thing all porters asked of visitors. By her accent, Gerard knew they were in the southernmost part of Aquitaine.

Leonhard smiled. “
Dominus vobiscum
.”

“
Et cum spiritu tuo
,” she said. “We are expecting you. The king’s army stayed here and left two days ago.”

After translating the porter’s words for his companions, Gerard looked about the abbey. It had a mill, livestock yards, gardens, an orchard cemetery, guesthouses for aristocrats and commoners, two houses for novices, and two dormitories for monks and nuns. The abbess’s residence, connected to the church, was as splendid as any count’s manor.

“Does this abbey have a hospital?” Gerard asked the porter.

“Yes.”

“My brother needs care of sisters,” Gerard said in Frankish. “I must attend to him.”

He dismounted and handed the reins to a servant, who led the horse to the stables. A boy, apparently drawn by the noise near the gate, approached Gerard and his party. Gerard gave the child a coin and asked him to lead his party to the hospital. He ordered three of his menservants to accompany him as the cart carried his brother. They stopped in front of a door to a large, one-story wooden building with many windows.

Gerard’s nose wrinkled at the smell of urine when the servants lifted his brother’s shoulders and legs. Servants had washed Hruodland, his shirt and drawers, and the cart as best they could whenever they were near a stream or pond, but they could keep neither him nor the cart clean.

“You will clean this cart before we continue our journey — and see if you can pay a laundress to wash the blanket,” Gerard told a servant, handing him some coins. “His clothes are ruined. Cut them off him and burn them.”

Gerard gingerly removed the iron dragon from Hruodland’s neck.

“Which hospital ward should we take him to, Count Gerard?” one of the servants asked, cutting off the soiled shirt.

Count Gerard
. It echoed in Gerard’s mind. He did not bother to correct the servant. Gerard stared at the dragon in the palm of his hand and swallowed. He gazed at his elder brother. Hruodland still had that empty look in his eyes, and he had become even thinner. Gerard shook his head, unable to believe what he was about to say.

“Take him to the ward for the dying,” Gerard answered, his voice cracking.

* * * * *

The boy ran into the hospital. “Sister Elisabeth,” he called in Roman with an Aquitanian accent Gerard could not place. “Some people are bringing a new patient.”

A plump woman of about fifty years turned when the boy called to her. Although she wore the same black habit and veil as the other sisters, Gerard could tell she was the mistress of the hospital. Walking toward him, she had a regal bearing.

Sister Elisabeth brushed back a strand of silvered hair as she greeted Gerard at the door and bade him to follow her inside the ward, a small, clean room with five cots. Open windows let in the late summer light, and a sea breeze billowed the curtains covering a doorway at the far end. Sister Elisabeth’s habit brushed the floor, which was covered with dried tansy, wormwood, and mint.

“Why doesn’t he have any clothes?” she asked. She sounded like she was from Bordeaux.

Gerard blushed.

“Tell me.” Her dark blue eyes met his gaze. “My work has been in this hospital for,” she paused, thinking, “more years than you have walked about this earth. There is nothing I have not seen.”

“He ruined his shirt, and he will ruin whatever cot my servants lay him on. He is unable to tell you when he must answer the call of nature.”

“Put a sheet on the cot, Illuna,” Sister Elisabeth said to another nun, a younger, taller woman. When that was done, she said to the menservants, “Lay him there, gently, and be careful of his leg.” She put her hand to her chin. “He needs a bath and fresh dressing for his leg and chest. Illuna, fetch a tub and have another lay sister help you get some water from the stream.”

“You are going to bathe him?” Gerard’s blush became a deeper red.

“We have bathed men before. It is like bathing a child.” Her face became somber as she touched Gerard’s shoulder. “We will do our best to make him comfortable in his final days.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, staring at the iron dragon he still held in his hand.

“What happened to him?” she asked. “Did he fall from a horse and land on his head?”

“I do not know. We found him this way at Roncevaux. The Lord should have taken him on the battlefield, but his soul is lingering. He is a great hero. Will you watch over his body and give him a Christian burial?”

“Of course,” Sister Elisabeth said gently. “It is why we are here. What is his name?”

“He was my brother, Hruodland, prefect of the March of Brittany.”

Two sisters brought in a wooden tub and placed it beside the bed. They fetched buckets and walked toward the stream.

“Speaking of baths,” Sister Elisabeth said, “you should see the abbess. She no doubt will have ordered her servants to prepare baths for you and the nobles in your party. She always treats her noble guests well.”

Gerard could not help but notice the bitterness in Sister Elisabeth’s voice when she said “noble.”

* * * * *

Gerard found Leonhard, Ganelon, Beringar, and the abbess chatting in front of her residence. It had been a few years since he had last seen her, but Gerard recognized her instantly.