Harlequin - Grail Quest 01 by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-01-29T20:37:47+00:00

is no better sign of good health. Alas, it is not yours.” The doctor pushed open the window and poured the urine away. Swallow,” he instructed Thomas.

Thomas’s mouth was dry, but he obediently tried to swallow and immediately gasped with pain.

I think,” the doctor said, that we had best try a thin gruel. Very thin, with some oil, I believe, or better still, butter. That thing tied about your neck is a strip of cloth which has been soaked in holy water. It was not my doing, but I did not forbid it. You Christians believe in magic, indeed you could have no faith without a trust in magic, so I must indulge your beliefs. Is that a dog’s paw about your neck? Don’t tell me, I’m sure I don’t want to know. However, when you recover, I trust you will understand that it was neither dog paws nor wet cloths that healed you, but my skill. I have bled you, I have applied poultices of dung, moss and clove, and I have sweated you. Eleanor, though, will insist it was her prayers and that tawdry strip of wet cloth that revived you.

Eleanor?”

She cut you down, dear boy. You were half dead. By the time I arrived you were more dead than alive and I advised her to let you expire in peace. I told her you were halfway in what you insist is hell and that I was too old and too tired to enter into a tugging contest with the devil, but Eleanor insisted and I have ever found it difficult to resist her entreaties. Gruel with rancid butter, I think. You are weak, dear boy, very weak. Do you have a name?”

Thomas.”

Mine is Mordecai, though you may call me Doctor. You won’t, of course. You’ll call me a damned Jew, a Christ murderer, a secret worshipper of pigs and a kidnapper of Christian children.” This was all said cheerfully. How absurd! Who would want to kidnap children, Christian or otherwise? Vile things. The only mercy of children is that they grow up, as my son has but then, tragically, they beget more children. We do not learn life’s lessons.” Doctor?” Thomas croaked.

Thomas?”

Thank you.”

An Englishman with manners! The world’s wonders never cease. Wait there, Thomas, and do not have the bad manners to die while I’m gone. I shall fetch gruel.”

Doctor?”

I am still here.”

Where am I?”

In the house of my friend, and quite safe.”

Your friend?”

Sir Guillaume d’Evecque, knight of the sea and of the land, and as great a fool as any I know, but a good-hearted fool. He does at least pay me.”

Thomas closed his eyes. He did not really understand what the doctor had said, or perhaps he did not believe it. His head was aching. There was pain all through his body, from his aching head, down to his throbbing toes. He thought of his mother, because that was comforting, then he remembered being hauled up the tree and he shivered. He wished he could

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