LITMIR.BIZ

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himself and vested with a mission of the utmost importance—to carry the emperor’s most precious cargo. But we were attacked at sea by Saracens, and my father died defending his ship.” Boden’s face blanched as he spoke.

      “You have done well to continue on his mission.” John hoped his words would provide some comfort to the youth.

      But Boden only shook his head. “I implore thee, Your Majesty John the healer. You are our only remaining hope that this mission might succeed.” He raised his hand toward the boat.

      The wimpled woman had quit her moaning and now peeled back the silk veil that covered the face of the bundled figure the men had so carefully loaded onto the boat.

      John saw a flushed jawline and rosy lips that could only belong to a woman. So Luke had been right. This was no boy but a female of about twenty years of age. In fact, whoever she was, her features were beautiful, her complexion pale, save for a flush John recognized all too well.

      Fever.

      Her drawn lips confirmed it. The woman was suffering. No wonder Boden had twice referred to him as John, the healer. It was a title he was loath to use, but one which desperate men rushed to give him, especially when they had need of a man to stand between their loved ones and the advancing scythe of death. Yes, he’d been trained by his mother as a healer—a practice her family had observed for generations. When he’d taken to his studies with far greater success than his brothers, some had said he had a gift.

      Now he considered it a curse. He hardly considered himself worthy of the title healer. Not when he’d failed to save his own wife or the mother who’d trained him.

      Boden nodded to the lady in waiting, who peeled back more of the cloth.

      “Ah!” Urias and Eliab recoiled at the sight of the infected gash above the woman’s right eye, which followed the curve of her eyebrow. The angry wound had swollen her eyelid shut, festering across her face in fever-reddened waves.

      John understood immediately. He’d seen injuries that had deteriorated to a similar state before. Rarely had the sufferer survived. Rather than ask the men to lift the young woman, John lowered himself into the boat and approached her. He could smell the rancid scent of the infection and recognized with dismay the golden yellow crust that seeped from the gash.

      The sight and smell carried as clear a message as any tolling death bell.

      The lovely woman had less than a day to live.

      And the herb that could save her grew half a day’s journey into the mountains, in the borderlands Lydia shared with the Illyrians. John’s father, King Theodoric, had died defending those borderlands. And yet, as John observed the woman’s fever-flushed features, he realized she’d have to have crushed hare’s tongue leaves applied to her injury by nightfall. Even then, it might be too late to save her.

      He turned to Boden. “Was she injured two or three days ago?”

      “Three days,” Boden answered. “How did you know?”

      Relieved that the Saracens hadn’t attacked closer to the Lydian coast, John nonetheless felt the weight of the young woman’s grim prognosis. She’d already gone too long without treatment. “Infections of this nature always run the same course. Once the secretions turn yellow, the sufferer has less than a day to live.”

      Boden’s face blanched, and his men at the oars hung their heads.

      John didn’t doubt the sailors had been at the oars to bring the ship to Lydia—with her sails rent and patched, they’d have rowed in desperate hope of saving the woman’s life. Obviously the woman must have meant a great deal to them for the men to take on such a strenuous task. John wished he could tell them their efforts hadn’t been in vain. “You mentioned the emperor’s precious cargo.” He began the question slowly and found his throat had gone dry.

      As he’d feared, Boden pointed to the woman. “She is the precious cargo—Princess Gisela, one of Charlemagne’s daughters. She has been pledged to marry an Illyrian prince. We were to have her delivered by Christmastide.”

      “You were running ahead of schedule.”

      “That we were,” Boden acknowledged with a bittersweet smile, “until the Saracens found us. If she dies, there will likely be war.”

      “War!” Urias exclaimed.

      “And you’ve gotten us involved in it?” Eliab added.

      John raised a hand to quiet the courtiers. “Boden made the right choice.” He looked at the flushed face of the princess and felt sorrow rise inside him. Such a beautiful young woman. It would be tragic for her to die so young. His heart beat out a desperate prayer that somehow, in spite of his failures as a healer, God would see fit to spare the princess from death.

      * * *

      Princess Gisela felt the boat rock as someone stepped out from it. The sun burned hot against her face, even hotter than when the stifling veil of silk had covered her. Or perhaps her fever had grown that much worse.

      “Can you save her?” Hope sprang to Boden’s voice.

      “I could.” The voice of King John, the healer, followed him as he climbed back onto the dock. “Hare’s tongue leaves have proven an effective cure against this type of yellow secretion. But the leaves must be freshly picked, and the nearest plants grow in the mountains on the Illyrian borderlands. A swift rider could reach them by nightfall.”

      “Then send your swiftest rider,” Boden insisted. “We will pay the expense—”

      “It is not the expense that worries me. The rider must know what he is looking for.” King John’s tone grew pessimistic. “And have daylight enough to find it. Besides that, if the hare’s tongue leaves are not applied today, there won’t be time to stop the spreading infection. She’ll be dead by morning.”

      “She is a vigorous one,” Boden insisted. “There is fight in her.”

      “I can see that. Otherwise she would be dead already.”

      “Oh!” Hilda, her maid, who’d been simpering through the conversation, sounded as though she might faint.

      Another voice, similar to the king’s, spoke with challenge. “You could find it, John.”

      Gisela noted that the man hadn’t addressed the king with his title. A peer of some sort? Perhaps a brother or uncle.

      The king didn’t chastise the man for his familiarity but answered his question. “If God is with me, yes, I could likely find the hare’s tongue by nightfall. There is, however, the matter of bringing it back in time to save the emperor’s daughter.”

      “It would be dark out by then, Your Majesty,” one of the earlier naysayers cautioned. “A dangerous time to ride through the mountains.”

      “And it would be too late,” another naysayer noted. “You said she has to have the hare’s tongue by nightfall. You’d have to ride through the night to bring it back by dawn.”

      Princess Gisela thought quickly. She hadn’t faced a long journey and Saracen pirates just to be defeated by a horse ride. If she could have opened her eyes, she’d have taken a good look at the naysayers and had them chastised after she recovered. She had no intention of dying—not this day, nor any other soon to come.

      How could she make them understand she would do whatever was necessary? Already the hot fingers of fever clawed their way across her face. If the king’s herb could stop the pain, she’d make the journey herself. As for the expense, her father was a generous man. The Emperor Charlemagne would see that King John was handsomely rewarded.

      Princess Gisela licked her lips and tried to find her voice.

      Young Boden spoke first and sounded as though he might cry. “Then it has all been for nothing. My father has died, and we will lose the princess, too.”

      “You shall not lose me.” Gisela resented

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