And crying hurt my nose, if you must know.
And Emile said, ‘Oh, William!’ or something equally lovely.
I looked at her. I considered whether I should tell her …
Bah! When I look at Emile, I do not think well. ‘Your husband … I thought you were dead,’ I managed. Probably the first words I had said in months. I croaked them.
She ran a finger down my hip. I suspect because the doctors had told her it was the only place that didn’t hurt.
‘Hush,’ she said.
Days of Emile, and I was unable to speak. She would sing, or play with her children. Her two girls came with her, and she led one of them about – he was learning to toddle. She had wet nurses for both, and they would come and go, and after a while I decided that I was on the same island as she.
Little by little, I recovered my head. It was scattered at first, and seeing Emile was somehow a blow. Perhaps I lost my wits. Perhaps in all the blows I received, something in my head was broken.
But she was there.
And at some point, I can’t remember when, she brought the King of Jerusalem. He spoke about the crusade. I can’t remember anything he said. Instead, I thought of what d’Herblay had said about Emile …
It was dark, inside my head.
Despite the darkness, I am not utterly a fool. D’Herblay had once told me that his wife had died in childbirth when she had not. He was, perhaps, too weak to torture a man physically, but he was the sort of bastard who enjoyed planting the needle inside, the torment of doubt.
She was there by my bed every day.
Why did I doubt her?
When I had been a month in that bed, I was able to walk. And move my arms. My hands hurt all the time. And everything was stiff – so stiff that I thought at one point I’d never be able to swing my arms again. And then the old monk came.
He didn’t say anything for the first two days.
I was just learning to speak again. My mouth hurt, and my teeth hurt – everything hurt, really, and something in my head was just beginning to heal.
I looked over, hoping it was Emile breathing, and it was the old monk. ‘Who are you?’ I asked.
He smiled toothlessly.
He was perhaps the most devoted torturer I have ever known.
He worked for the abbey, and he trained men and women to go back to their lives. He was a man of few words; not from vows, I think, but inclination, and at some point, when he swore at me in frustration, I knew he’d been a knight. He knew a great deal about pain, and about the way muscles worked.
And at some later point, he appeared with Fiore.
I burst into tears. I was ruined, as a knight. I had no hands, no muscles. My hands were splayed claws with no grip – indeed, I could not close the left at all, the right would not make a fist. Neither hand could hold a sword.
No armour, and no spurs and no horse.
But Fiore, who often missed social cues, held me in his arms for as long as I moaned, and then put me back on my feet.
And the next time he came, he brought two wooden wasters.
The first time, I couldn’t hold one. But the old monk kept it and made me bend my stiff, painful hands around it – some days he dipped my hands in hot wax, some days he nearly boiled them in water: he had a thousand ways to torment me, but he got my right hand closed on the waster’s hilt.