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having to call out, “Make way.”
    However, I was aware that if the pain in my head grew greater, I would die. And even as I struggled to be courageous, I felt the cold of this new fear seep into my bones. I promised myself that I would not lose consciousness or fall asleep.
    I would stay awake forever.
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    I lay on a cot in our inn, and I slept, only to be shaken awake and offered a white, chipped bowl by Edmund. How he anticipated what I required I could not say, because I hardly knew myself. I disgorged the scanty contents of my belly, a brief bout of vomiting that left me feeling even weaker.
    Edmund held my helmet into the lamplight so that I could see it. The head covering was cut badly, the brass and leather gashed. My head was sorely bruised, but as I searched with my fingers, it seemed that my scalp was intact.
    The high-pitched shrilling in my ears was ceaseless, and I saw a double image of Sir Nigel as he entered the room.
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    Father Stephen, the English priest, paid me a visit, looking so wraithlike that I had to stretch out a hand and feel his arm through his sleeve.
    â€œThe weather has changed,” said the priest.
    I was not reassured by this visit, believing that I was sure to die and that this gaunt man of God was here to provide me with the appropriate rites. He did offer a few remarks on the sanctity of suffering, but then he sighed, and I realized—it had the force of fresh insight—that sometimes a priest needs comfort, too.
    â€œIt will be a blessing to see home again, Father,” I offered, hoping he would allow me to adopt such a familiar tone.
    â€œI dreamed of this,” said the priest.
    â€œYou dreamed of what, Father?” I forced myself to ask.
    â€œMy parents were people of worth,” said the priest.“With scullery servants and a bottler. But do you know, of all that luxury—” He let the word drift in the lamplight. Luxury was a sin, carnal and self-satisfying. “Of all that easeful luxury, do you know what I recall with the greatest joy?”
    I could not shake my injured head.
    â€œThe sound of rain in the thatch,” he rasped.
    The priest and I shared the gentle sound of a downpour, increasing now beyond the shuttered windows.
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    A surgeon knelt before me, smelling of garlic and of sweat. He peered into my eyes, lifting my eyebrows as though he wanted my eyes to fall out so that he could examine them more completely. He put his hands over my head, fingertips pressing, as I cringed involuntarily. It did not hurt, I told myself.
    Not very much.
    He gestured to the crown of his own bald head. “Cerebrum intacta est,” he counseled in elemental, Greek-accented Latin. Sir Nigel and Edmund leaned forward expectantly in the lamplight. “Ossae firmae,” added the surgeon as though delivering good though unexpected tidings.
    â€œHe tells us you have a brain in your skull,” said Sir Nigel, with the sort of forced cheer that good-hearted people use around the sick.
    The surgeon turned down the corners of his mouth, and said something we were all free to interpret as but his condition is not good.

FIFTEEN
    Surgeons dislike hale folk, preferring the ill. My mother cured illness by feeding us feverfew and valerian, and starving the fever out of our bodies.
    And I, in turn, believe illness demands simple treatment, and dislike the guild of medical doctors. Besides, I doubt that surgeons know very much. Most doctors agree that the brain’s function is to cool the blood. What I wanted to inquire was: Why, then, did a man always die if his brain was knocked out of his head?
    But I did not argue with this foreign medical man. Instead I asked him politely,“How long will my head feel like a pail of river stones?”
    Knowing he would not understand a word.
    Osbert crept to my bedside, beaming. “We’re all rich as millers again, my lord,” he said.
    I shaped the soundless