The Unquiet Bones Read Online Free PDF

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.
    Lord Gilbert placed me beside a guest, Sir William Fitzherbert, but two places removed from himself at the high table. I was cognizant of the honor.
    “Are you able to relieve my villeins?” Lord Gilbert asked, between the first and second removes. I told him what I had done for the first, and what I proposed for the other. I did not think it the proper time or place to explain the procedure in detail, however.
    “I pray you succeed. Alfred has been in torment for months, and he’s no good to me as he is.”
    “He may die,” I warned.
    “So may we all,” Lord Gilbert laughed.
    “The surgery may not succeed.”
    “Alfred knows this?” Lord Gilbert frowned.
    “He does.”
    “Yet he desires you to proceed?”
    “He said he would rather see God this day than live longer with his pain.”
    Lord Gilbert toyed with a crust from his trencher: “Well, it must be his choice. Will you need assistance?”
    “Some strong lads to hold him quiet; four, I think. Some hot water, ale, and a flagon of wine.”
    “Wine? Will not ale suffice? A man may be made as drunk on ale as on wine.”
    Lord Gilbert, I was to learn, is a bit miserly. Ale is cheap, wine is expensive.
    “To wash the incision. Do you remember how I cleansed your wound?”
    “Ah…yes. Well, you shall have your wine.”
    I caught one last glimpse of Lady Joan Talbot as she left the hall for her chamber and I departed the room through the entry hall to make or mar my reputation.
    Lord Gilbert acted quickly on my request. I had but stepped through the door of Alfred’s hut when four men arrived: two valets I had not seen before,