A Royal Marriage

“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 the weakness in her voice. She cleared her throat to muster enough volume to be heard. “I shall ride with the king. If I am with him, the hare’s tongue may be applied as soon as it is located—before dark, in time to stop the infection.”

* * *

John studied the face of the princess who spoke with apt appreciation of the situation. Her eyes were still closed—the one being swelled certainly shut, the other swollen as well and lidded out of sympathy. Even slumped in a bundle, Princess Gisela had an air of dignity and the shrewd intellect of her father.

He found himself wanting to save her—not just for Boden’s sake, or her sake, or even to prevent war with the Illyrians, but to save this sensible, strong-willed woman. He wanted to heal her.

But he’d felt that impulse before and still failed. He’d buried his skills since then. What was the use of trying to help someone, of offering them hope, only to have them linger a bit longer and die in pain?

To his relief, the wimpled woman began discounting the idea immediately. “Your Highness, you can’t even open your eyes. How could you ride?”

“It would be a grueling journey,” Urias added. “Surely in your present condition—”

“She is a capable rider,” Boden offered. “But given her injuries...”

Gisela raised her chin with a stubborn tilt. “I could share the king’s horse.”

Her assertion brought a roar of disapproval from the courtiers, and even Boden’s men, who’d silently manned their oars all this time, appeared to have some difficulty maintaining their impassive expressions.

Boden, especially, looked vexed. As Charlemagne’s acting captain, no doubt the man was expected to grant any request Gisela made. As the emperor’s daughter, she was of higher rank than anyone there, except for John himself, and that was only because they were in Lydia and not her father’s holdings. Had they been standing on the soil of the Roman Empire, he’d have bowed to her.

Boden brushed the sweat from his brow. “Perhaps, Your Highness, you could be carried in a litter after the king. Your maid could accompany you.”

“Litters travel slowly. There isn’t time. My maid can follow on another horse.” Princess Gisela spoke in a commanding voice and clearly expected her father’s servants to obey. “Now help me up. We must make haste. Already the day grows long.”

The men laid down their oars and helped the maid from the boat first. Then they gingerly hoisted the princess toward the dock. She stood, half leaning on her maid, her injuries once again covered by the veil.

John felt a sense of relief that the woman was able to stand. Perhaps she could stay on a horse. A litter, as she’d aptly noted, would be much too slow. Nor could he afford to have her ride another horse behind his. If he became separated from her party, especially as darkness fell, they would waste precious time finding one another again in the thick woods.

And one horse had a greater chance of slipping unseen through the Illyrian borderlands. The larger their party, the greater the risk of being spotted. Relations with the Illyrians were fragile enough. He had no desire to strain them further.