MILES CHRISTI

Chapter Nineteen

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MILES CHRISTI

Chapter Nineteen

Aile face down on the reeking mud. Her head filled with sound. Wailing by those with breath enough to wail. The rest gurgling. Some rattled like a demon trying to come out. The wounds now worse than the chops that made them, the pain more intense than the blow. They juggled their innards with their fingers till their fingers moved no more. And the guts sagged, and curled, bloody and sopping. Many without faces . . . These will live . . . for a week, for a day, or for a short, natural life till infection takes them. Lucky dead. Frozen in the moment their spirits left their bodies. Their eyes open. Are they in the many mansions? Is Hell filled with the burning enemy? Or are they in Paradise fukking their seventy-two as mentioned in some alleged hadith (but there are no virgins in Paradise only hoori, heavenly creatures so pure they cannot be touched) . . .

And Aile . . . She dying?

She saw the world sideways; a bloody finger touched the tip of her nose. Across the open palm the hilt of a sword it had gripped. She turned away to find another rigoured hand up on its fingertips like a spider – it and nothing else.

She sat up.

The arrow in her right breast, a bullseye to the center of her pilgrim’s cross. She swallowed hard. The world spun.

A hand grabbed her shoulder, startling her. Her wound sung . . . Fulk, bloody Fulk, a fright in dirt and crimson, full of cuts. “Dómina.” He looked her over, his cheek bleeding. “Can you walk?”

“I don’t know,” her voice cracked. She’d rather sit.

“This must come out now,” he said of the arrow. “Get this hauberk off.”

He pulled her to her feet and she tottered. He held her, and though she would push him away, latched hold his arm. About her the carnage like the shocks of grain in the fields of Sainte Cecilia. That the villeins come to carry it away . . .

Priests moved about the slaughter, stepping wide, stepping over, only to crouch beside a dying pilgrim. Absolution to those who could speak. The Sign of the Cross to those who couldn’t. Marin like a seraph to them in their last moments holding their hands. Esmé along with the other women with water and cups and cool cloths. When the rags became so bloody, they’d wash the soldiers’ face with their wet hands. Seljuk wounded cried out too in a language the priests could not speak, calling to God for His mercy, for their holy men, but none were there. Some priests gave them water and prayed for them. “Come to Christ,” they whispered in Latin. Some Saracens nodded in a fright not knowing, but the priests’ faces were gentle and besides, they were People of the Book . . . Most died alone and slow. Some women took pity and killed them quickly, while others pillaged them as they gasped. A spit in their dying eyes, a piss on their face – there’s coolness for you. No victims here. Which one took Ysobel’s arm? Who wouldn’t rape us if you’d won and send us into slavery? Where’s the one Aile had split open? But they’re all split and cut up.

Lines of wounded made for the camp where the Byzantine practitioners had set up their medical tents.

Fulk took Aile back and laid her near a fire pit.

“Where’s Tìbald?” her voice quivered.

Fulk unbuckled her belts. He touched the shaft and she jerked. The Seljuk must’ve been on top of her when he shot the arrow. He touched it again and she slapped him.

“Where’s Tìbald?” her feeble voice rose.

“It must come out now,” he said.

She shivered, then asked again.

“I don’t know, dómina. He was in the charge.”

The charge? The charge? What charge? Is she widowed? Abandoned? Doomed? Is he a wreck somewhere, cut to pieces? Some Saracen woman piddling on him? . . . Is he . . . is he in Heaven? . . . Tìbald fils de Goselin pray for me . . .

The lines to the medical tents did not move, the wounded groaning. Yet better a Byzantine healer than a barber surgeon, but their lines were just as long. Many would not make it.

Then Esmé again, that secondary character, popping back and forth like some . . . some jinn on demand.

She stood near the firepit at Aile’s back. Behind her, resting against a tree trunk, Ysobel, dazed, with the stump of her arm cauterized and bandaged. “You’ll be born again in a small manner,” Esmé had said to Ysobel while tending her. “As our Lord said, ‘Better to lose a hand than have the whole of you cast into Hell’ . . . God put His stamp on you . . . When you feel the ghost of your arm, know you are bound for heaven.”

She patted Aile’s arm, her hand only moments ago awash with blood that still grimed ‘round the fingernails. How dare her? Amidst the blood and guts, how dare her?

“Dómina, if you wish, I can take that out.”

And Aile glared at what she perceived were Esmé’s clumsy and unskilled fingers.

In the medical tents an uproar – the knitting back of bone and tissue, and reconstruction of the human form. Kyrie eléison. Christe eléison. Kyrie eléison.

Esmé’s touch was gentle on her arm.

“It must come out as soon as possible,” Fulk said.

Aile nodded reluctantly.

Fulk to Esmé: “We’ll need more hands.”

Then Marin came.

Another contrivance. God on her side while the masses on the field were butchered. Does life fall together so? That we may be the one. The one of five. The one of a hundred . . . of a thousand . . . a million . . . of millions upon millions upon millions . . . God and us . . . Me . . . God and Me?

They rolled the hauberk up her back and held her down. Esmé wrangled the arrow point off the shoulder blade and pushed it out. How Aile cried, but a clean hole from front to back. But not over yet, they moved quicker – stripped her naked on the top, washed her out, and Esmé cauterized. A scream to rend the sky. Heads turned. No sounds from the tents could match. And when finished, Aile salved and wrapped and dosed with hemlock, henbane, and opium poppy.

She sat heaving and bent over, the drug working fast – that gauzy blunting – too much may well kill her. But a light touch Esmé’s hand, judicious with the mix. A little pain is good. Aile lifted her head and the three of them staring back. Never had she been so handled, not as the dómina of Sainte Cecilia. Kyrie eléison. Christe eléison. Kyrie eléison. Who are these three? Angels?

“Thank you,” she said sleepily and closed her eyes.