He looked at me, then turned his attention to a pair of guards who entered with the stretcher.

“Put him on my bed,” he said. Then, “Roderick, tend to him.”

His physician, Roderick, was an old guy who didn’t look as if he would do much harm, which relieved me somewhat. I had not fetched Lance all that distance to have him bled.

Then Ganelon turned to me once more. “Where did you find him?” he asked.

“Five leagues to the south of here.”

“Who are you?”

“They call me Corey,” I said.

He studied me too closely, and his worm-like lips twitched toward a smile beneath his mustache. “What is your part in this thing?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

I had let my shoulders sag a bit. I spoke slowly, softly, and with a slight falter. My beard was longer than his, and lightened by dust. I imagined I looked like an older man. His attitude on appraisal tended to indicate that he thought I was.

“I am asking you why you helped him,” he said.

“Brotherhood of man, and all that,” I replied.

“You are a foreigner?”

I nodded.

“Well, you are welcome here for so long as you wish to stay.”

“Thanks. I will probably move on tomorrow.”

“Now join me in a glass of wine and tell me of the circumstances under which you found him.”

So I did.

Ganelon let me speak without interrupting, and those, piercing eyes of his were on me all the while. While I had always felt laceration by means of the eyeballs to be a trite expression, it did not feel so that night. He stabbed at me with them. I wondered what he knew and what he was guessing concerning me.