Richard I (Lionheart): A Private Life

1199, Chalus

The room stinks of old rushes, wine, poultices, and that sweet turn in the air which tells a soldier the wound has stopped listening to the surgeons. They prod, bind, confer, withdraw, return with the same faces they used around dying men in camp, disciplined, serious, already conceding more than they will say aloud. The bolt is out, but it has left its argument in me. Fever bargains by the hour. I know the signs. Outside, men wait for orders in tones that pretend not to measure whether the next command will be my last coherent one. John waits farther off, which is still too near. So do others who have no love for me but every use for my absence. They will make a song of this if I let them, crusader, king, lion, all the noises men prefer to the harder business of rule. I have been too long among armies not to know what happens when story reaches the field before truth does, and the story is almost here.