The Lute Player by Norah Lofts

out of the room and, I thought, out of my life. His forehead was broken and bruised and blood was running down into his eye. His upper teeth were clenched down on his lower lip and all round his mouth there was a wide white band of pain. As I ran forward he looked into my face, loosed his teeth and said with wry humour:
    ‘I told you this place boded me no good!’ And promptly swooned.
    Catherine, Pila and Maria were clutching one another and gabbling like geese. They had been at the bottom of the stairs when he missed his footing on the worn steps on the curve and tumbled down at their feet.
    Blanco laid him down on the divan nearest the window and, rolling his wide-whited eyes, said, ‘Boy wouldn’t faint for knock on head. Other thing.’ He ran his big black pink-palmed hands over the limp body, shaking his head from time to time until at last he said with a certain satisfaction, ‘Ah. Ankle broke. Listen.’
    We could all hear the nasty little grating sound.
    Pila, with a little scream, turned away. Maria said, ‘I’m going to be sick.’ Catherine put her arm around Maria and said to me with a defiance that seemed irrelevant, ‘When he broke his head the blood went on her skirt.’
    I didn’t feel quite steady myself. There is something so completely against nature in a broken bone and the little grating noise had hurt me, driven a pain into the lower part of my body and down the inner sides of my thighs. But I reminded myself that men had their bones broken every day and that I was a soldier’s daughter.
    I said, ‘Run, Blanco, and fetch Ahbeg. Tell him the princess needs him at once.’
    Ahbeg was that Saracen physician whom Father had brought back from Sicily and who had fixed the expression of Berengaria’s eyes for all time. Father had retained him in his service despite the protests of the churchmen and the peculiarities of the man himself. Not young at the time of his capture, he was now very old, almost incredibly eccentric and fantastically dirty. He lived by himself in a small room over what we called the Roman Gate because there were some remains of a Roman fortress in that part of the castle; and there he cooked his own food—people said that Christian babies formed part of his diet—and brewed his physics. Until lately he had always accompanied Father on his campaigns but this year when the Aragon campaign began he had said he was too old to travel any more and he had given Father some pills, which Father called ‘horse-balls,’ to swallow each ninth day. ‘They will preserve your health,’ he said, ‘and should any accident befall you I will be with you immediately, even if it cost me my life.’ Father had gone off contentedly; he really had the most implicit faith in Ahbeg. I had been angry and accused Ahbeg of gross ingratitude; but at this moment I was very glad that he was in Pamplona and not in Aragon where Father, according to report, was enjoying superb health. But the old man would only stir from his cell for Berengaria whom he regarded as part of Father. We had proved that some weeks earlier when Pila had swallowed a fishbone which stuck in her throat. I had been obliged to retrieve that with my scissors!
    So now, remembering that I had demanded Ahbeg’s presence under what amounted to false pretences, I made the boy as comfortable as I could, at the same time trying not to disturb him, since the setting of a bone even by the most skilful hands is a painful business and the best done while the sufferer is unconscious, and then went and called Berengaria. She did not inquire whether the boy had agreed to stay or not, taking it for granted that no one would refuse an offer of such security, and I did not open the subject. She went and stood by the couch and looked down at the unconscious face with a gaze that was intent, if expressionless. Then she glanced round and summed up the situation of her ladies and said mildly, ‘I hope Gaston retires when you marry him, Maria; knights