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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