Chris Karlsen - Knights in Time Read Online Free Page B

slow speed. The abbey bells tolled ten.
    Conquerant’s head dropped and he dozed. Marchand fought to stay awake but lost the battle to
    tiredness. He too dozed. The bells tolling eleven woke him with renewed hope. Within an hour,
    this world would be but a bad memory.
    At midnight the bells rang but the ground beneath him didn’t sway nor did a cloak of
    dizziness settle on him. Calm now, Conquerant’s head bobbed as he faded in and out of a doze.
    The cursed day was ended, but everything else remained unchanged.
    “No.”
    Why had he failed? He sat in the exact spot as that morning. All was the same. All except
    for the English knight. A new suspicion crept into Marchand’s thoughts. Perhaps the day wasn’t
    cursed but the Englishman, who they’d taken away by unholy means. Perhaps this was his
    punishment from either above or below. Fury replaced any sympathy he felt for the captured
    man. The Lord or the Devil had invoked this penance upon the knight, and he, Marchand, was a
    poor soul caught up in the man’s misdeeds.
    A shiver passed over him at the thought of shared fate.
    Chapter Four
    Centre Hospitalier de l’Universite de Poitiers.
    “It is time to wake,” a man said.
    The voices had already woken him. Stephen lay still and said nothing, wanting to ascertain
    what place this was that they’d taken him. He assumed he shared a cell with other English
    prisoners, the dungeon of a local nobleman’s castle most likely. Strange that the room didn’t smell like a dungeon where tortured and injured enemy men were confined or worse, chained. Guy’s
    holding, Elysian Fields, had a dungeon, but it hadn’t been used since before Guy’s father’s birth. In the past, Stephen visited other castles where the dungeons were used and often never empty. The odor of decaying flesh and corruption was potent and unmistakable. A sharp scent, perhaps from
    an herbalist’s vinegar hung in the air here, but the room smelled clean. And, from somewhere to his left came a repetitious chirp, like a bird being poked again and again.
    Puzzling.
    The bed was unusually comfortable and his head lay on a feather pillow. He ran his hand
    along the linen covering the mattress. It felt like a fine weave, not coarse and scratchy like in the barracks of Elysian Fields. He wiggled his feet under the softest of blankets.
    “I believe he’s stirring,” a feminine voice said. The mattress sank with her weight as she
    sat by his hip.
    They’d removed his helm and armor, although he had no memory of them doing so. He
    wore a short surcoat that tied in the back. A light cloth that kept the lids closed covered his eyes.
    They hurt less, but without being able to open and close them, it was impossible to tell if his sight had returned.
    “Are you awake?” the woman on the bed asked and brought his arm from under the
    cover. She touched warm fingers to his wrist. Her fingers were softer than the blanket and she
    smelled like a garden.
    How cunning of the enemy to use a woman as a tormentor. Probably a witch. He’d never
    believed in witches, not since he was a small boy. After the strange business last winter with
    Guy’s wife, he’d rethought the possibility.
    He tried to slide his arm back beneath the blanket. The woman didn’t allow it and laid his
    arm across his waist.
    “The surgeon and ophthalmologist are here to discuss your injury and answer your
    questions.” She rose from the bed.
    Ophthalmologist—another nonsense word . “Where am I?” He croaked out. He longed for
    a cup of cool water to ease his dry throat.
    “I am your surgeon, Dr. Monette,” a man’s voice said. “You are in CHU de Poitiers.”
    “Under whose control is this prison? What noble holds me?”
    “This is not a prison, monsieur,” Monette continued. “This is University Hospital Center de
    Poitiers.”
    He’d heard the term hospital used in reference to St. Giles in Norwich. A priestly place
    that treated the sick, or so they said, although he