CHAPTER 20 - 20: A CURE IN THE PULP

August's first sunrise struck the limestone walls of Jerusalem in copper hues, drawing long shadows across the mill in the Kidron Valley. The waterwheel turned for the first time just before the bells of Lauds, creaking as the stream's narrow flow caught the scooped paddles. Apprentices cheered. The hammers, suspended by notched camshafts, began their rhythmic fall—thud, thud, thud—pulping soaked linen into a fibrous mash in a stone basin, where it would soak with lye and ash.

Ethan stood nearby, leaning against a cane Anselm had crafted for him. The cane's head was a simple bronze cross, more a counterweight than a symbol of power. His left arm, wrapped in a clean linen sleeve, throbbed less now. Gerard had applied a second solution—boiled from bark, mixed with wine and a paste of crushed citrus peel—and the strange mold patch on his skin seemed to stop spreading. Under the magnifier lens, the filaments twisted slowly around flecks of dead skin, forming a strange, translucent crust.

"Containment," Gerard said that morning. "It's no cure—but it fences the fire."

Ethan had nodded. It was enough for now.

Later that day, back within the old audience hall, Balian arrived with the man they had discussed: Sir Hugo de Blanchefort.

He was younger than Ethan expected—no more than twenty-five, with a lean, sinewy build from campaign life and sun-darkened skin that suggested long marches, not courtly feasts. His left hand bore a leather cap over two missing fingers. He wore no ornament—only a faded surcoat with the faint remains of his family's silver crane crest.

He knelt, silent, until Ethan gestured for him to rise.

"You served at Montgisard?" Ethan asked, voice low from fatigue.

"I did, Majesty. Under Sir Godfrey de Montferrat. I carried messages and held the line when he fell."

Balian spoke quietly behind Ethan. "He didn't retreat when the line broke. Pulled three men to safety before taking a javelin to the thigh."

Ethan studied the young man. There was something in Hugo's eyes—not hunger for land, but the wary alertness of someone used to surviving between greater powers.

"I have need of such men," Ethan said. "Nablus is a vital region. Too many eye it as a prize. I see it as a responsibility."

Hugo didn't answer at first. When he did, it was slow and careful.

"If I take it, I serve your peace," he said. "Not just your banners."

Ethan smiled under the mask. "That's precisely the oath I want to hear."

The agreement was sealed with a silver ring etched with the Jerusalem cross, placed in Hugo's hand. Within a month, he would ride to Nablus with fifteen engineers and two scribes—there to oversee the introduction of improved plow designs, irrigation reforms, and the establishment of a second granary.

As the paper mill's pulp fermented and the first paper sheets dried across cedar frames, Ethan turned his attention to the printing press. The prototype, still operated by a team of three, produced only five pages per hour, each laid carefully on drying racks near the bathhouse.

The pages bore a Latin version of the Sermon on the Mount—woodcut letters, reversed and carved by local Armenian craftsmen under Ethan's guidance. Each page required precise inking with a hand-roller made of wrapped wool dipped in soot-based ink. They weren't perfect: smudges, faded lines, and slightly uneven impressions abounded—but it was undeniably printed text.

Merchants from Acre who had seen the sheets were stunned. "Books, like bread?" one whispered, running his fingers over the paper as if it might vanish.

Ethan had nodded. "Cheaper than parchment, durable enough to last seasons, and copied in days, not decades."

The first complete test—eight pages sewn between thin wooden covers—was sent with a courier toward Constantinople, hidden in a sack of dye samples. Another would leave for Venice by sea in two weeks. A third remained in Ethan's study.

Meanwhile, Gerard continued his experiments.

The mold now grew best at body temperature—kept in a warm clay jar near the forge, it produced the strongest reactions. He had begun testing it against old wounds taken from injured soldiers: packing bits of mold paste into gauze, placing it over infected scrapes. Within two days, swelling lessened. Pus dried.

He brought Ethan the results in a small wooden box lined with wool. Inside, three slivers of dried mold sat beside notes written in Latin and Arabic.

"We may need more linen," he said, almost sheepish. "And more wounds."

Ethan gave a tired chuckle. "Unfortunately, war is always generous in those."

They would need to be careful. If the mold worked, it had to be managed—not worshipped. He remembered how antibiotics, in his time, had been overused and abused. But here, now, it was a miracle in a jar.

By mid-August, the streets of Jerusalem had changed.

Sweeping teams now operated on a schedule; refuse bins lined market corners; bathhouse stones were heated with coal and wood from Montgisard, their vents tested by Cistercian architects. Cleanliness began to shape trade—merchants reported faster movement through Jaffa, more coin exchanging hands in Acre. Even the city's smell changed: less rot, more dust, clay, and warm stone.

The paper mill produced 40 sheets a day. The press ran at dawn and dusk. And Hugo, now in Nablus, sent his first message back on a cart of barley: "The people work. They listen. The priests complain—but the fields are full."

That night, Ethan sat beneath an oil lamp in his chamber, mask off, heat rising gently from a brazier. He held a single page in his hand—his own writing, printed by his press.

It read:

"To build is to remember. To remember is to resist forgetting. And memory, written and shared, is a fortress stronger than stone."

He set it aside, let his eyes fall shut, and felt—if only for a moment—not like a sick man hiding in a dead king's body, but a builder laying down the first stones of a new world.