“Have you convents, then, to one of which you mean to retire?” asked Rowena.

“No, lady, but among our people since the time of Abraham, have been women who have devoted their thoughts to Heaven and their actions to works of kindness…tending the sick, feeding the hungry and relieving the distressed. Among these will Rebecca be numbered. Say this to thy lord, should he chance to inquire after the fate of her whose life he saved.”

There was an involuntary tremor to Rebecca’s voice, and a tenderness of accent, which, perhaps, betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed. She hastened to bid Rowena farewell…

From: Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

* * *

As his new assistant bent over a patient at the other end of the hall, Simon of York asked the good sister beside him to remind him once again of why he allowed that infuriating woman to stay here.

“Because of the endowment she brings us,” Sister Edburga calmly replied. “All hospitals rely on those donations, and she has been more than generous to us. Her money is enough to keep St. Hildegard’s Hospital running, even right outside of York, where everything costs so dear. Without such charitable patrons, all hospitals would be forced to make the patients pay for their own care.”

Tactfully, she refrained from adding that he could be grateful, for once, that their people were regarded as foreigners, no matter how long they had lived here. It meant that Rebecca did not have a legal guardian, who would long since have used her fortune to find her a mate. He would, in turn, have undoubtedly kept her inheritance for himself, as husbands of all nations were wont to do.

“She can afford it,” the physician muttered, into his curly black beard. “Her father left her enough to support this one all by herself, even though we were doing well enough before she came here…and brought her money with her.”

“She brought her own skills, too,” the lady went on. “They were great enough when she went to Spain, and now she has studied with the Arabic physicians as well. What’s more, she is famous throughout the land.”

“I am a great physician too!” he burst out resentfully. “So why is that Rebecca so renowned? Because she almost got herself burned at the stake and was rescued by some idiot knight…Ivanrake or Ivanspade or some fool name like that.”

“Ivanhoe,” the nun answered, turning her head to hide the smile beneath her wimple. “Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe.”

With all the medical facts in your memory, I am sure you recall that famous name, she thought. But you believe that Rebecca remembers it all too well, and that is what makes you angry.

“That was almost a year ago, and she is still mooning and moping about it,” he went impatiently on. “I vow, if she does not stop it, I will give her something to sniffle about. What’s more, I will do the very same thing if she keeps arguing with me about the patients’ care. I am the chief physician here, and neither her money nor her medical skills can give her the right to oppose me.”

His black eyes flashed with fury, leading the good sister to promise herself never to question his choice of treatment.

That dark, sharply angled face, with his hooked nose and high cheekbones, made him look more like a warrior than a surgeon. His curly black beard and full, sneering lips…they make him seem like a dangerous one indeed. He seemed like an Arabic warrior, she decided, with that yellow turban crowning his dark hair.

His long, thin fingers could have helped him play either role...as warrior or healer or both, just like Achilles of old. So could his broad, powerful shoulders, which his flowing blue silk robe could not hide. It was enough to make any man afraid…or, she admitted, to make any woman feel desire, no matter what vows she had taken. She promised herself to make a full confession of her guilty feelings.

In the meantime, she tried to atone for her sin by lavishly praising the other woman who, she felt certain, was the true object of his affections, whether he himself knew it or not.

“Her father died less than a year ago,” she reminded him, in a tone of gentle reproach. “He was her only companion. No doubt she finds it hard to hide her grief.”

“Well, she can try, can’t she?” Simon demanded. “Our patients should see cheerful faces around them…that’s one of the major things I am trying to teach you…and the other good sisters who are studying here. Her sniffling and sighing must be frightening them half to death.”

And your snarling and staring will provide the other half, she thought.

Thinking of that, she went on, “She tries her best to help them and has even stopped wearing those long veils that hide her beautiful black ringlets.”

“Because I told her to!” he cut in, almost making the nun tremble as he turned his angry, piercing gaze against her. “I warned her that I could not teach her surgery if her garments kept drooping onto the patient. And I said that if she wanted to learn to study his urine for signs of his disease, she would have to trade her silken garments for a plain red woolen frock, with a white apron over it, because she was sure to spill the liquid some day.

“You needn’t remind me that she did it willingly…” he said, holding up one of those long, slender hands to ward off the obvious objection. “She has accepted my training as though I were the greatest teacher in Arabia. But keeping the patients in good spirits is a great part of our job…even if she still too busy mooning over Ivanhoe. Here, I will show you.”

He stopped so suddenly in front of a bed that the good sister almost fell into him. Ignoring that, Simon stared down at the tow-haired, freckle-faced fifteen-year-old who cowered before him.

Pretending not to notice, Sister Edburga said, “This physician has come to examine you, Edmund.”

“But he is one of THEM!” Edmund quavered, pulling his blanket from his chest up to his neck, obviously eager to hide beneath it. “Don’t you see his yellow turban?”

“He is a great healer,” she told him firmly. “You would already know that, if you had been here for more than a day. He has come to show me how to train my sisters, so we can care for all of our patients when we open our hospital to everyone. He will make sure that you are soon well enough to return to your weaving trade.”

When he still looked dubious, she went on, “Of course, you are better off being here at this time, because you need not share your bed with another patient. So just be thankful for God’s blessing, and sit up so the doctor can look at you.”

Beneath her calm, stern gaze, he followed her instructions, letting the blanket fall to his waist again.

“Well, then, Edmund,” the doctor demanded, “How are you feeling today?”

“Much better, doctor,” he said. “The good nuns have treated me very kindly. So am I going to live?”

“Why should you not? It was just a simple slip of your knife while cutting the threads and caused a lot more bleeding than damage.” Making an obvious effort to keep the anger from his voice, he went on, “Didn’t Rebecca tell you so, when your companions first brought you in?”

“Yes, sir,” he added feebly. “But she sounded so unhappy when she said it, I found it hard to believe.”

“That woman always sounds sad,” her colleague snarled. “But I tell you that your injury is healing well. Here, she will tell you so herself. Rebecca!”

* * *

The lady in question had been trying to assure another patient that her infant son had not died in childbirth. He was, in fact, back home, where a neighbor woman was suckling him, along with her own child. His own mother was sure to take over that happy task, as soon as the doctors were convinced that her bleeding would not start again. Rebecca tried to manage a smile as she said it, but then she remembered how she had given such reassurance to Ivanhoe and it faded from her lips.

As the patient seemed not to believe her good news, she had to repeat her reassurances again and again. When she heard Simon shout her name, Rebecca called back, in relief, “Could you please talk to this poor woman, and tell her that she will soon be home with her child.”

“Of course you will!” he shouted, from the other end of the hall, as he strode towards them. “I know that our Rebecca looks as though she were hiding some sad secret, but she always seems that way. She might stop it if she had a fine son of her own, as you do, but since she never smiles she has little prospect of that.”

His assistant’s great black eyes flared in resentment for a moment. Then she lowered them in shame, hiding them beneath her feathery brows. While she had no desire for a husband…and had, in fact, taken a vow to spend her life caring for the sick instead…her instructor had a right to be angry.

Wrapped in their own pressing concerns, these sick and injured people were naturally frightened by her sorrow, since they assumed that their condition had aroused it. Clearly, she had to make more of an effort to conceal her feelings from them.

In the meantime, she saw that her colleague’s brusque words had relieved the woman’s fears. For one thing, he was the male in charge. For another, he would not have shouted that way at a mother who had truly lost a child.

“Rebecca!” he called again, striding towards her in a way that almost made her draw back in fear. “You’ve also managed to convince this poor boy that he is not long for this world. Will you try to persuade him otherwise?"

She did her best to smile, knowing what a futile effort it was.

“Simon ben York told you the truth,” she assured him. “You should be home soon.”

“Do you swear it?”

“I do.”

Starting to sit up happily at that, he soon fell back again.

“But you are not a Christian,” he pointed out. “So what can you be swearing by?”

“I am the one who will be swearing in a moment, and not with oaths that are fit for a nun’s ear!” Simon snapped. “I’ve had enough of this questioning. Edmund, we are both telling you that you are getting well. Would I be shouting at you otherwise? And would she be smiling?”

At this cue, she tried even harder to grin, with no great success. Tending these patients only reminded her of how she had cared for Ivanhoe, whom she could never see again. Those memories wiped all smiles away.

As she could tell from the child’s frightened expression, she was not helping matters at all. That knowledge brought tears to her eyes, between her incredibly long dark lashes. The youth’s sniffles soon echoed her own muffled sobs.

“I am sorry,” she whispered up at her colleague. “I seem to be making matters worse.”

“You certainly are,” he told her, glaring down at her from over his crossed arms. “But that won’t last long. If you can’t stop moping, I will give you something to sniffle about!”

Again, she drew back in fear, without knowing why. Glancing around for a place to sit down, he soon saw that the young weaver still had the bed to himself.

Seating himself on the corner of the bed, the physician reached out for her hand. Sensing his purpose, she tried to pull even further away, but was too late. Grasping her long, delicate fingers, he yanked her across his knee. With horror, she realized that he was dragging her wooden skirt to her waist…and her only consolation was the fact that he left the white linen shift in place beneath it, to shield the little modesty he had left her.

Having lost her mother when she herself was a child, she had been treated as an equal by her father, who was no doubt impressed by her intelligence.

If he had ever punished her, he would not have done it in this shameful way. She could hardly believe that this man was going to do it now…and with their patients watching. Glancing up from the floor, she saw that they were doing it eagerly.

At least he had had the decency not to bare her backside before them. Surely the linen would provide some protection from at least part of the pain, as well as the humiliation of this nightmare scene.

That proved a vain hope indeed. When his hand first struck her backside, she knew that a swarm of bees was striking her, again and again, in mindless, pitiless fury. More and more joined the attack, with every one of his blows.

She knew it was not true, of course…she was merely feeling a man’s strong, skillful hand, reaching the sensitive nerves of her backside and, at worst, reddening the flesh above them. Yet she could not escape the feeling that every insect in England was burying its poisoned stinger in her backside…any more than she could evade the sharp, swift slaps that rained down on it, no matter how frantically she tried to twist away.

As sharp as the stinging was, the shame was even greater. It left her almost stunned into disbelief, that this could be happening to her. She was Rebecca, the famous physician, almost a heroine of legend along with Ivanhoe himself…and she was being punished like a naughty child, in front of a grinning crowd.

Making matters worse, the patients were sitting up to get a better view, while the nuns were making an obvious effort to keep their eyes lowered in their usual studious, silent way. Both groups, she was sure, were enjoying the show all the more, because of who the victim was.

After the tenth sound slap had fallen, he finally let her stand again, so that her gown dropped back down again to cover her shame. The relief did not last long, because the pain grew and spread, even as her hands reached up to rub her injured flesh through the woolen fabric. The area still burned as badly as though it truly had been poisoned.

Tears filled her eyes…she dared not meet anyone else’s…and yet…and yet…she felt a dark pleasure through it all. This man had treated her like an ordinary woman…a female student who had displeased her teacher…rather than a heroine who was noble in her grief. The thought was oddly flattering.

Then, too, by now pain seemed to have spread down from her backside to the opening in the front of her body, flooding it with strange new feelings. Now she was thankful that the onlookers could not read her thoughts, which would have been even more shameful than her punishment.

As it was, the patients were still grinning, as they settled back on their pillows. That included the boy who had been so close to frightened tears a few moments ago. And only a few minutes had actually passed, she realized with surprise, even though they had seemed like hours of torment.

They all seemed suddenly worthwhile, as she realized that that frightened lad was, indeed, smiling. So was the woman who had feared her newborn son had died. Seeing that, Rebecca rubbed her backside with even longer, slower, more dramatic gestures and was rewarded by even broader grins.

“Now will you believe that you are recovering?” she asked the little boy, making her tone sound much angrier than she felt. “I had a sound thrashing for making you doubt it, as you saw for yourself.”

As he nodded happily, she looked up at the surgeon and said, “But you must not use that treatment again.”

“Why not?” he demanded, in a sneering tone. “It seems to have been very effective. So you will get a double dose, if I ever see you frightening my patients again. Instead, you will try to be cheerful instead and smile…like this!”

He pulled his full lips back into a frightening grin. To her own surprise, she could not help smiling in reply. Her grin soon faded as he went on.

“More important, I cheered up the patients by correcting you in front of them,” he mused, in a much more gentle, normal tone. “We should find other ways to entertain them…by paying jugglers and acrobats, perhaps.

“With my money,” she muttered.

“Do you object?” he asked, as though surprised at the very thought.

“How could I? You are known to be a great physician. Why else did I come here, except to assist you? For that matter,” she added ruefully, “Why else am I staying, after the sport you had with me?”

“Why else indeed?” he demanded. This time it was her turn to be surprised, at the bitterness in his tone.

* * *

“He is a great healer,” Alicia de Bois-Guilbert said hesitantly.

“We have great Norman physicians, too,” her husband answered shortly. “You know I brought one of the finest here, to see you.”

“Yes, and since he was not sure of his diagnosis, he praised Simon of York to me.” When her husband remained silent, she went on eagerly, “He said he was the most skillful surgeon, for cutting out a lump like the one he feared I might be suffering.”

“So I should let this infidel pry into your private parts?”

“To save my life, my lord. I fear I have a growth there, which only the greatest surgeon can remove.”

Her husband had loudly denied it, when this illness began, less than a year ago. Get up, he had shouted, and go riding or hunting to take your mind off your physical ills. Now he knew all too well that she had not exaggerated her danger, as he realized every time he glanced her way.

Their last effort at swiving had shown him how bad it was. Her cunny was in constant burning pain. The last time he had tried to enter her, his thrust had left her bleeding…not as heavily as she had on their wedding night, but enough to alarm them both. He was less and less tempted to repeat the experiment since she smelled more and more strongly of rotting fish.

Even now, in early April, his wife lay huddled beneath the white blankets. In the sun that came through the arched windows, the woolen fabric was not much paler than her own wasted cheeks. She almost never went down to the great room directly below and could barely sit up when her dinners were brought up to her bed.

It was hard to remember how Alicia Fitzurse had aroused him with her beauty, when he had first glimpsed her, at that same famous tournament where his poor brother Brian, the gallant Knight Templar, had first spotted the accursed witch. Even without his wife’s inheritance, Alicia Fitzurse might well have won his heart and even his hand in marriage. Now she filled him only with pity and revulsion.

His disgust must have been evident, as his full lips pressed tight together beneath his curly red beard. At the sight, his wife shrank even further under the covers. Her hands were like claws, pulling the blankets up to her neck, giving her an even stronger resemblance to a wounded wild bird.

Seeing his eyes fill with unaccustomed pity, she dared to go on.

“My own confessor told me that it is not a sin to consult the finest doctor, no matter what his religion is, if it is needed to save my life,” she said. “His Holiness, Pope Innocent himself, has said that we must not oppress them. Our hospitals accept them as patients, so why not physicians as well? Five years from now we will celebrate the year 1200, when we will enter a whole new century, and we may all feel differently then.” More softly, she added, “If I am still alive to see it.”

Now his lips grew soft again, as he said, “We all know that many of them are great healers. They studied with the Arabs, did they not, and have translated their medical textbooks. If you want one of them to treat you, we can certainly find him for you. But not this man.”

“I know who his student is,” she added, her terror once again making her bold. “But she would not be caring for me.”

“I would be forced to look at her!” shouted Sir Louis de Bois-Guilbert, making his wife cower even further beneath the bedcovers. He paused in his pacing long enough to slam his hairy fist on the windowsill. “I would needs must show courtesy to the woman who caused my brother’s death.”

“You certainly do not believe that she bewitched him. We are certainly too modern for that.”

Ignoring that question, he went on, “She was too good to be his mistress, which was the best that a female of her accursed race could hope for. So he refused to fight for her as her champion, when the head of the Templars had condemned her to death for her sorcery. He wound up facing Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, who killed him.”

“In honorable combat.” She barely ventured to whisper the words. He shrugged them impatiently aside.

“What honor could there have been, in fighting for one of those people?” he demanded, his tone dripping with scorn. “No, the Ivanhoe must only have wanted her for himself.”

A grim smile seized his features, as he went on, “No doubt his bride Rowena would not have it, so Rebecca went back to her Mohammedan friends in Spain...no wonder, since those two accursed races are so closely related to each other. Now the infidel witch is back here again, working at one of our own hospitals, to make more trouble for good Christian men while pretending that she merely wants to improve her healing skills.”

“And you still want revenge on her?”

“I do indeed, although I see no way of getting it, since she is such a famed physician now.” Once again, his lips pressed tight with mockery and rage.

But then, as he suddenly realized, his wife might be the means of taking it. In his most gentle tone, he went on, “Of course, if you really wish to consult them.” He was almost touched with guilt as he turned away as she started to stammer her gratitude.

No doubt a romp with Margaret would wash his unpleasant emotion away.