Page 61 of Historical Hotties
They tried. They removed his belt and scabbard, carefully setting aside his sword and purse, and other things that were contained on his belt. With that off, Dacia was forced to cut through the royal tunic. Cassius had finally closed his eyes. He was deathly pale as Dacia and the others rushed to help him, but when it came to his mail coat, they could go no further. It was sticky with coagulated blood and the bolts were pinning it to Cassius’ body.
“I cannot cut through this mail coat,” she said. “We have no choice but to remove the arrows before we go any further.”
Edie had entered the chamber by that point, setting the medicament bag next to the bed. There were boiled linen bandages in the bag, but they were forced to wait until men started returning with the hot water and wine that Dacia had sent them for. She couldn’t start anything without the things she needed. As soon as she had the water, the wine, and the bandages, she nodded to the soldiers hovering around the bed.
“Am I to understand that you have done this before?” she asked quietly.
The older soldiers nodded. “Aye, my lady,” the first man said.
Dacia bent over the gut wound, trying to get a close look at it, but it was difficult with the mail and tunics he had on. Gently, she prodded around, determining where, exactly, it had penetrated.
“If this arrow had been just an inch or so to his left, it would have missed him completely,” she said. “I do not know if it has hit anything vital but I assume that if he was going to bleed to death, he would have already done so. But we must remove them both, so I shall let you take charge. Tell me what you wish for me to do.”
The two soldiers spread out around the bed.
“Removing these requires some strength, my lady,” the first man said. “I’ll yank this one out and Bardo will remove the one in the shoulder at the same time. ’Twill be better for him that way if we can do it all at once. You will hold him still, if you can.”
Dacia nodded, struggling not to feel sickened by the whole thing. She was trying very hard to be clinical about it, to not feel any emotion, but the shock of seeing Cassius impaled had faded, being replaced with a strong sense of horror.
God, help me to help him!
She had to stick to what she’d been taught, to everything the priest had taught her. But it was difficult when her patient was Cassius.
All she wanted to do was weep.
But she fought it.
“Let me douse the wounds with wine first before you pull,” she said, forcing herself to focus. “The wine helps kill any poison.”
Edie handed her a wine jug but before she poured it, she bent over Cassius as he lay there with his eyes closed. She put a warm, gentle hand on his forehead.
“Cassius?” she said softly. “Can you hear me?”
It took him a moment to answer. “I do.”
She stroked his sweaty forehead, smoothing back his dark, dirty hair. “We are going to remove the bolts,” she said. “Please try not to move. We shall be as swift as we can.”
His eyes lolled open, focusing on her. “As you say, Angel,” he murmured, his tongue thick. “I am in good hands.”
Dacia smiled faintly at the man as his eyes shut once more, exhausted from blood loss. She stroked his head one last time before moving to the bolt in his shoulder. Quickly, she doused the wound and the one in his torso with the wine. Alcohol on an open wound was excruciating, but Cassius didn’t flinch.
“Go,” she commanded huskily. “Pull them out.”
They did. Both bolts came out fairly easily, one after the other. As the soldiers took them away, Dacia and Edie went to work.
Quickly, they placed the boiled linen over both wounds, which were now starting to bleed again. Edie held tightly to the one on his shoulder while Dacia held tightly to the one on his torso. They pressed them down, stemming the flow of blood because Cassius had already lost a goodly amount. Dacia had her eyes on his face as she held the linen down and she only saw him twitch once. Considering the pain he must have been in, it was remarkable that he’d not uttered a sound.
As the bleeding lessened, Dacia was finally able to get a look at the wound. As far as she could tell, it was really only as deep as the head on the bolt, which was maybe three inches at most. But the head of the arrow had pushed all kinds of debris into the wound– fabric, pieces of mail, and other things. Dacia knew she had to get those out. When the soldiers returned, she had them strip Cassius to the waist so she could have a clear field to work in. As the men hauled out Cassius’ clothing and armor, including his boots and sword, Dacia had Edie shut the door so they would have some quiet and privacy.
The worst part about wounds like the ones Cassius had suffered was the debris the arrows had pushed into the body. That was where the poison and fever could kill a man and Dacia was only too aware of that. Some of the Arabic treatises that she had in her collection of books had recipes on how to combat those poisons, including one that called for salts from the human organ– the liver.
The physic in Doncaster, Emmeric, had concocted the potion several times, having purchased bile salts from a man in York who harvested such things from the dead. It was probably immoral, but Emmeric still bought the salts because mixing them with wine, garlic, and onion often produced a cure unmatched in fighting fevers and bodily poisons. She knew that he would bring his potions when he came, provided the man could be found. Meanwhile, she would have to do what she could do for Cassius and, at the moment, that meant picking the debris out of the wounds– one piece at a time.
With the man stripped down, the fire in the hearth blazing, and Edie hovering to be of assistance, Dacia went to work on the gut wound with a pair of tweezers. She tried not to look at his naked flesh, how absolutely perfect he was, muscular and powerful and formed like a marble statue.
Interestingly, he had a bigstigmata on his left shoulder, a wolf’s head set within a five point shield in black ink, an unusual marking on a knight but clearly one with significance to him. But she didn’t do anything more than simply glance at it. She kept her focus on the wound and bit by bit, she plucked the debris out of it, which must have been agonizing for Cassius, but he simply lay there.
Not a sound came out of his mouth.
