“Who put the tourniquet on his arm, Bass, you?” Krystal bent over the still, fair-skinned body of Egon von Hirschburg, mercifully unconscious again. At his nod, she added, “Damned good thing you did, too. The arrow nicked an artery and he’d’ve been dead long before you got him here, otherwise.”
She straightened and brushed back her hair with her wrist, carefully keeping her bloody fingers out of contact with it. “Bass, this boy means something to you, doesn’t he? I mean, more than just because he’s the godson of your big German friend?”
“Yes, Krys, he does,” answered Foster soberly. “Egon served under me during the closing segments of that hellish extermination of the Irish Crusaders. He’s . . . well, he’s what Fd have wanted my own son to be, if ever I’d had one, pure guts from breakfast to sundown and a mile wide, energetic, nervy, and knowledgeable, proud to the point of seeming stiffnecked, but withal very conscious of the responsibilities as well as the privileges of his station.
“And now this.” He shook his head in wonderment “Can you imagine what it must have taken, what it must have cost in terms of determination for Egon to have ridden up hill and down dale for God knows how many hours with a damned iron arrowhead grating on his hipbone? But, Krys, he sat that scrubby horse so naturally that we never even noticed the old wound.”
“It is old, Bass, perhaps as much as three days old. And, she announced grimly, choosing to not meet his eyes, “he may very well die of it. I’m sorry. The surrounding area is terribly infected, verging very close to gangrenous, so the arrowhead must come out at once, along with a good bit of tissue.
“But he’s weak, Bass. There’s precious little vitality left to him. I don’t think he would survive the type of procedure indicated, even in a modern O.R. with sterile surroundings, anesthetics, whole blood, and antibiotic I.V.s. Here and now, with my make-do equipment, nothing but brandy to ease his pain and the pitifully few penicillin tablets to retard the infection . . .” Her voice trailed off into a long sigh and her shoulders slumped in defeat “Perhaps we should let his godfather decide?”
“No, Krys, poor old Wolf has enough to weigh him down just now, and there’s really no choice. The young man is all whipcord and sinew, so it’s possible he can live through the operation, but he certainly can’t survive gangrene. So go ahead, sweetheart, tell me everything you need.”
The surgery was performed in the kitchen of Foster’s home, on the heavy butcherblock table. Dr. Kent was ably assisted by Carey Carr (who had had army medical training and had worked several years with a rescue squad), the hall-village midwife, and Arabella Whyffler, with Foster and Webster on hand to hold the patient down, should such become necessary.
For all the brandy poured down his throat before and during the bloody business, the boy’s agony must have been indescribably obscene, but only once, at the very beginning, did he courteously ask that Webster restrain his arms. With deft fingers carefully flying, Krystal Kent performed as rapidly as she could, steeling herself to not flinch at the screams.
But, miraculously, the screams never came. Egon’s body ran with sweat, his face with tears, his high-bridged nose gushed mucus, and his even white teeth met in the half-inch-thick strip of leather between his working jaws. His rectal sphincter failed him and his urethral, his nails sliced deep gashes in his callused palms, but no single sound louder than a gasp did Egon von Hirschburg emit, from start to finish. Foster could have wept his pride in the boy.
Since, Arabella Whyffler had virtually lived with Egon, and all concerned considered the young nobleman the primary reason she refused to leave Whyffler Hall.
Foster sought out the Reichsherzog on the day before his departure with the York-bound wagons, offering to delay that departure for a few days on the chance that the young convalescent might regain strength enough to accompany him out of danger.
“Nein, danke, gut mein Herr Hauptmann Forster” the Emperor’s brother had replied. “Enough for my house you have already done and repaid in time you vill be. But the vinter mild hass been, und the whoreson Scots anytime could march. Important it iss that your train reach York.