'No, no,' he soothed, pressing down firmly with the flat of his hand as the brown eyes widened and the young man fought to rise. 'I am here to help you.' His tone, if not the meaning of his words, was understood, for the wounded pilgrim ceased to struggle and lay still except for the rigours of cold which shook his body.

Faisal eyed the two arrow shafts quilling the victim's tunic, one in the arm, the other in the side, and briefly deliberated whether to remove them, or leave them in situ. The one was likely to cause poisoning, the other excess bleeding, depending on angle and internal damage. He was accustomed to dealing with this kind of injury; he had cut his surgeon's teeth on just such wounds when travelling with Lord Rodrigo's army.

The soldier returned with the blankets. Faisal spread them over the pilgrim's right side, leaving the left bare to the exploration of his knife. The Moor cut away the blood-soaked sleeve, and slit the side seam of the tunic and shirt so that he could assess the damage. The arm injury was obviously a flesh wound. The tip of the arrow had pierced skin and muscle, but Faisal could tell from the amount of blood on the tunic that it was not too serious.

'This will hurt,' he said, and when the young man looked at him with a questioning frown, repeated the words haltingly in the language of the Franks.

The dark eyes flickered, the throat moved in a swallow. 'Do what you must,' the pilgrim said huskily.

Faisal gripped the arrow shaft firmly in his two hands and smartly snapped it off. The young man arched, his breath catching and then hissing raggedly through his teeth. Faisal reached into the pouch at his waist, withdrew a small flask, and removing the stopper, dripped a clear liquid onto the site of the wound which had begun to ooze blood under the movement of the arrow shaft. This time, the injured man's body leaped like a bounding gazelle.

'I am sorry to hurt you,' Faisal said, 'but this will keep your wound clean until I have time to probe the rest of the arrow from your flesh. I must look at the other one now.'

Faisal did not know if the pilgrim had heard him through the pain. His eyes were clenched shut, and his breathing was a series of unsteady sobs.

The soldier who had brought the blankets, a man in his thirties whose name was Angel, squatted on his haunches and looked across the body at the physician. 'Is he going to live?'

Concentrating intently upon his patient, Faisal did not look up. 'It is hard to tell. He is strong to have survived thus far, and he is conscious, he knows what I am doing and he is able to respond. It depends upon how much more punishment his body can take. He is chilled to the bone, and I can do no more for him now except remove the length of these shafts for travelling and keep him warm. I dare not start probing for the arrow heads out here.' Although talking to the soldier, Faisal was also talking out his thoughts for his own benefit.

'Will he be able to sit a horse?'

'He will have to. He is not heavily built. I will sit behind him on the mule and hold him in place.' Faisal's strong, brown hands moved dextrously to the second arrow shaft, buried in the young man's side.

Angel grimaced. 'Is he gut shot?'

'I do not think so, he would be screaming and writhing if he were, and his condition is too good for a man with a pierced belly. I think,' he added slowly, his words keeping pace with his examination, 'that he is very lucky. It is like the arm wound – through the skin and flesh of the side without touching any vital organ.' He broke off the second shaft, and then leaned over to sniff at the site of entry. 'I feared that perhaps the point had entered a kidney, but there is no smell of urine,' he muttered. 'Yes, it may be that he will survive.' Faisal proceeded to anoint the second wound with the clear liquid, and again, his patient reacted strongly, then shuddered and was still.

Angel looked anxiously at Faisal. The physician checked his patient's wrist and then the bare young throat. 'He is merely unconscious, and better so, I think, if we are to journey with him.' He fingered the rich woollen cloth of the pilgrim's tunic, typical of the finest fabric that the northern Franks produced, and then frowned as he felt something flat, hard and round under his touch. It was a token, or a coin of about the circumference of his little fingertip. He found more of them, identical in size, spread throughout the lining of the tunic. Robbers might have seized his money pouch, but it seemed that the young man was still not without his resources, and Faisal was willing to hazard that the coins would amount to a small fortune.

Angel had been watching the physician's exploration with ever-widening eyes. 'I wonder who he is.'

'If Allah wills it in his mercy, he will live to tell us.' Faisal rose to his feet, and tugged thoughtfully at his beard. 'He looks to me like a Frankish merchant, and a wealthy one. Nor would I say that the pilgrim road was his only business in our country. A handful of silver would be more than enough to see him comfortably to Compostella. I think that Lord Rodrigo should involve himself with this one.

Benedict tried to move and found that he could not. Someone had taken two nails, each a foot long, and driven them through his body, pinning him to the ground. He could hear shouts and screams, cries choked off in blood as those around him died. He tried to shout for help, but his voice remained locked in his throat. Gisele fell beside him and he saw her die before he died too, and woke to find himself in hell.

There was a devil with black eyes and a trim, grey beard who kept poking and prodding at his wounds with a sharpened knife, and muttering to himself in a strange language full of hawkings and words that sounded like 'Beelzebub!' Sometimes the devil would attempt to communicate with him by speaking in halting French, but Benedict would pretend not to hear, and close his eyes. There were others, his minions, who came and went. On several occasions, Benedict was visited by a priest wearing a dark brown habit, a heavy silver cross hanging upon his breast. The priest urged him to repent of his sins so that he night be shriven. Benedict could not remember revealing any-thing to him, but he must have done so, for he could still distinctly feel the slick anointing of the holy oil between his brows. Were there confessions and anointings in hell?

Cautiously he raised his lids and looked around. On this occasion, no-one leaned over him to pronounce judgement, -his eyes met cool, whitewashed walls and a high, wooden ceiling, a cupboard of dark oak, and an arched aumbry above it n which stood a terracotta oil lamp. A path of sunlight streamed through the shutters of an open window and traversed the foot of his bed, brightening the colourful stripes on he coverlet of woven linen. Three ripening oranges glowed on he sill, drawing his eye with their intensity of hue. He frowned. Wherever he was, it was certainly not the hell of his fevered dreams; nor yet was it heaven. And there was pain. His entire left side from armpit to groin felt like a bar of red-hot iron.

He strove to sit up, and quickly discovered himself so stiff and sore that he was as stranded as a beetle cast over upon its back. Then, right-armed, he eased back the sheet and coverlet o look at himself. Layers of linen bandage were wrapped round his upper left arm and secured with a small cloak pin. On his torso there were livid bruises, and another wad of bandage which covered his left side from his lower ribcage to his protuberant hip bone. He had never carried much meat on his body, but now there was scarcely enough for a vulture to pick lean.

The thought of a vulture sent unpleasant images jolting trough his mind. Bodies strewn on a river bank, and huge birds descending to feast, while he watched, powerless to love. Human vultures stalking among the dead, knives like beaks rending and tearing.

The door opened, and amidst a rustling whisper of silk robes, le devil of his dreams with the hawk nose and black eyes of a bird of prey stood over him. This time, however, Benedict was lucid enough to see that he was a man of Moorish extraction in his early middle years, slender and small. His loose tunic was of striped silk in deep citrus shades that complimented his dark skin.

'Ah, you are awake,' the Moor said in careful French and smiled, revealing a gleam of white teeth. 'I was beginning to think that I might lose you. You must be wondering who I am and where you are?'

Benedict swallowed. 'I thought I was in hell at first.'

The smile became a wry chuckle. 'You would not be the first. My name is Faisal Ibn Mansour, and I am a physician in the employ of Lord Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, who is also known among my people as El Cid, the Lord – may Allah grant him many blessings and a long life.'

Benedict struggled with the names. The Moor was watching him as if expecting the titles to mean something. He thought that he might have vaguely heard of Rodrigo Diaz in a hostel along the way, but at the time he had taken small notice.

'You are in one of Lord Rodrigo's castles on the road to Burgos,' the Moor continued, and the black eyes softened. 'We brought you out of the river beyond Roncevalles, half-dead with cold and suffering from arrow wounds. You were the only one of your company to survive. I am sorry.'

Benedict drew a deep breath and released it shakily. So that part of his nightmare had been true. 'My wife,' he said. 'She was in the river with me, filling our water bottles.'

The physician shook his head sorrowfully. 'She was shot to the heart. One arrow. It is a dangerous road through that pass.'