Page 15 of My Hero
“Accident?” She straightened.
Garth’s eyes fastened on the steward, suddenly alert.
“It’s Will, my lady. He fell from his mount in the lists. He’s howling something fierce. I think his arm is broken.”
Garth set his mouth. He’d never broken a bone, but he’d watched the physician at Castle de Ware set his brothers’ a few times. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.
“Go and fetch my bag, Roger,” Lady Cynthia said, pulling her hair back and tying it up with a leather thong she dug from her pocket. “And find me wood and linen for a splint.”
Garth stared at her, astonished. Certainly she didn’t intend to treat the lad herself. Setting bones required a strong back. And a strong stomach. It wasn’t work for a gentlewoman.
“This may take a while,” she explained as a small furrow of worry creased her brow. “Please make yourself welcome.”
And before he could incline his head to acknowledge her, she whirled and was off in a whisper of velvet.
All his priestly instincts told him to remain in the chapel. It was where a man of God belonged, after all. This was Lady Cynthia’s castle, and if she was in the habit of playing physician, what business was it of his to interfere? If she could endure the gruesome sight of a fractured bone, if she had the strength to wrench a man’s arm half out of its socket while the wretch thrashed about, if she could turn a deaf ear while he screamed in agony…
With a self-mocking grimace, he bolted out the door after her.
He could hear the boy halfway across the yard, his low bellows of pain cracked by the unfortunate yelps of youth. Four of his companions huddled over him, shifting anxiously from foot to foot, but when Lady Cynthia arrived, they made way for her.
“What happened?” she asked the squires.
They all replied at once, but the gist of it was that the boy had been thrown or fell or leaped from his horse and landed on the hard-packed sod of the list. She knelt beside the victim.
“Can you sit up?”
The boy gasped in pain, but his friends managed to right him.
“We’ll have to remove your—” she began, halting as Garth caught up to her and seized her shoulder.
He hunkered down between Cynthia and the youth and unfastened the lad’s swordbelt and the buckles of his breastplate. They slipped off easily enough, but the mail hauberk beneath would be difficult. Beckoning with his hand, he summoned two of the squires forward to support Will’s broken arm. While the lad clamped his teeth against the pain, Garth slipped the heavy chain mail off his good arm and over the top of his head. Then, as the boys carefully lowered Will’s arm, he guided the hauberk off the injured limb. The brave lad made no outcry, but beads of sweat stood out on his brow.
“Thank you,” Cynthia murmured as he dropped the chain mail to the ground. “Now, Will, let’s find out where the break is.”
She pressed her thumbs along the boy’s arm, working her way up under his sleeve. Halfway up his forearm, he gasped sharply, and she halted.
“All right. I can feel the break. Just rest for a moment. Roger will be along with my medicines soon.” Then she sat back on her heels, closed her eyes, and began rubbing her hands together as if warming them by a fire.
Garth scowled. What was she doing? The boy was suffering. The steward might not arrive for another quarter of an hour. The longer the delay, the more difficult it would be to snap the arm back into place. Something should be done…now.
He watched the lady for a moment more as she bowed her head over her hands as if in prayer. Then he made a decision. While she continued with her meditative ritual, he wiped his palms on his cassock and handed the boy his swordbelt, directing him wordlessly to clamp it between his teeth. The lad screwed his eyes shut and bit down hard.
Garth blew out a sharp breath. He’d watched the physician at de Ware set bones. How difficult could it be? The trick, he remembered, was distraction.
He braced his foot under the boy’s upper arm and adjusted his hand around the boy’s wrist, preparing to pull it. But just before he yanked, he raised his left hand and clouted the lad smartly across the face.
Gasping in shock from the blow, Will had no time to yelp as Garth hauled hard on his arm. In the wink of an eye, the bone popped back into place.
Garth’s satisfied smile lasted exactly two heartbeats before a female fist cracked it from his face and he rocked backward into the dust.
Cynthia couldn’t believe she’d hit him. But then she couldn’t believe what he’d done. Priests were supposed to comfort the sick, not pummel them. And if she’d knocked Father Garth onto the ground with the full force of the power she’d summoned for healing, it was no less than he deserved.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” she cried as he stared at her in stupefaction.
With a groan of frustration, she turned her attention to poor Will, who lay as pale as linen on the cold ground. She shook her hands. There was still a vestige of energy remaining in her fingertips, but it felt scattered. She’d wasted most of it on that punch, and she knew her knuckles would be bruised tomorrow. In fact, she doubted she could harness the power now at all.
“Are you all right, Will?” she asked, bending near.
