"Do you know who I am?" she cried out, stopping him in midturn. "I am Jilseponie Wyndon of Dundalis, friend to Avelyn Desbris, friend to Braumin Herde, wife of Nightbird! I am she who destroyed the demon of Father Abbot Markwart!"
The monk walked back to the edge of the wall and leaned out through the break in the batdement, peering at her intently.
"Tell Father Abbot Agronguerre that I have come bearing the most urgent news," she went on. "The most urgent."
"Tell me, then," the monk replied.
"Bid him meet me by the tussie-mussie bed," Jilseponie continued, ignoring the man's command. "If you wish to hear my tale, then join him. I've not the time to tell it more than once." Then she turned away, gathering the one-eyed woman and Dainsey in tow and walking toward the other peasants.
The monk called out several times to her then, mosdy cries for her to stop and explain herself and a threat or two that he would not bring Agronguerre to meet with her.
But Jilseponie wasn't playing that game with him. Not then. Not with so much obviously critical work right before her.
"Tell me your tale," she bade the one-eyed woman, for she knew that this one had somehow survived the plague and had, subsequently, come to be the leader of this tent city.
Soon after, while she tended yet another in the long line of plague sufferers that Merry Cowsenfed had ordered for her, the great gates of St.-Mere-Abelle swung open. In the archway across the tussie-mussie bed stood several brothers, flanked, Jilseponie noted, by monks armed with heavy crossbows. She motioned for Merry Cowsenfed to join her.
"Keep them quiet and in line," she explained. "I will be back soon enough."
"I seen them that ye healed," Merry started to spout, so obviously thrilled.
"Not healed," Jilseponie quickly corrected, "no, not that. That will come later, as I told you, and from one much greater than I." She patted the woman on the shoulder, then motioned for Dainsey to follow her and strode over to her side of the tussie-mussie bed.
"We have heard much of your good work, Jilseponie Wyndon," greeted the largest man there, an older monk who seemed to Jilseponie as if he could be Belster O'Comely's father. "I am Father Abbot Agronguerre, formerly of St. Belfour. It pains my heart gready to learn that you are with plague."
"Not I," Jilseponie replied immediately.
"But you tend to the victims," the Father Abbot reasoned.
"And soon to find the same fate as Francis, no doubt," the one-armed monk beside him remarked.
"The plague cannot touch me," Jilseponie replied, "for I have tasted of the blood of Avelyn's covenant. Thus I can tend them with the soul stone without fear that the plague demons will attack me, and thus am I more effective in the tending."
"You will heal them all?" the one-armed monk asked, his tone half skeptical and half sarcastic.
"I will heal none, likely," the woman replied, "but I will make many strong enough for the road, for the journey they must now undertake." She paused, trying to measure the level of interest as it crossed all their faces. "To the Barbacan, to Avelyn," she explained. "There they will be healed."
The one-armed monk snorted and started to respond, but Agronguerre put his arm up before the man, silencing him.
"It is true, Father Abbot," Jilseponie went on, staring at him. "This woman-" she pulled Dainsey forward "-is my living proof. I took her to the Barbacan. She was no better off than was Francis when I came upon him on the field. I thought her death imminent, but then-"
"But then I kissed the bleeding palm," Dainsey interrupted, "and it was like all the angels o' heaven came down and burned the plague from me body."
"Francis is dead," the one-armed monk remarked. "You did not save him."
"He could not make the journey," Jilseponie replied. She turned and looked back to the hundreds at the tent city. "Nor will many of them," she admitted. "But many others will, and there they will find healing. And those who go though they have not yet been touched by the plague will find armor against it."
The monks didn't immediately respond, and when Jilseponie turned back, she found the Father Abbot stroking his chin pensively.
"You wished to speak with me, and so I assume that you believe that we have a role to play in this," he said. Again, the one-armed monk snorted.
"Preposterous," he muttered. "No doubt you wish us to come out on the field beside you, to work our sacred stone magic to help the peasants, that we might all die of the plague together."
"I wished to tell you of the miracle at Aida," Jilseponie explained to Agronguerre, again trying very hard to ignore the unpleasant one-armed monk. "You and all of your brethren must make the pilgrimage there, and with all speed, to enter the covenant. Only then can you truly begin to help the plague sufferers. Before you make such a journey, I would not even want you to try to tend the sufferers, for your brethren will prove vital in the long battle we must wage against the plague."
Agronguerre didn't immediately reply, but Jilseponie saw his emotions clearly. He didn't believe her, but how he wanted to!
"Take not my word for it," she said sharply, even as the one-armed monk started to jump in with another negative remark. "Go out with your soul stones. To Palmaris, where you will learn that the whole city is on the march to the north, Duke Tetrafel's soldiers and your brothers of St. Precious with them. Go out farther to the north, and see the lines of those living in the towns in and about the Timberlands, well on their way to that most holy of places."
She paused, just to see if the monks would try to interject anything, but she saw from their dumfounded expressions that she would not be interrupted.
"Go all the way to Mount Aida with your gemstones, Father Abbot," she finished. "See that holy place for yourself, if you must. Go and be convinced, and then send your brethren, all of your brethren, there in body that they might taste the blood of Avelyn's covenant and know the truth. Your aid will prove critical in healing the world."
"You ask much of us," Agronguerre remarked quietly.
"I tell you the truth and pray that you will choose correctly," Jilseponie replied.
"This is nonsense," claimed the one-armed brother. "Your friend survived the plague, but so have others. The ugly scarred woman on the field with the sick so survived. We did not cry miracle and send the whole world marching to the spot where she happened to be when her illness relinquished its grasp upon her!"
Jilseponie shrugged. "Believe what you will, or close your heart to the possibility of miracles and hide behind your walls," she said, and she gave a chuckle as the irony of her own words hit her. "I can do no more than tell you the truth and then pray that your faith is a real thing and not some mask for you to hide behind."
The one-armed monk scowled.
"For if you do not believe in the possibility of miracles, then wretched creatures you are indeed for hiding within abbey walls." And she turned and walked away. Dainsey, after a helpless chortle, followed.
"Those gemstones you carry!" the one-armed monk cried after her, and Jilseponie wheeled about.
"My gemstones," she said.
"They are the province of the Church," the monk corrected.
Jilseponie narrowed her eyes and glared at the man. "Come and take them," she challenged, and when he made no move toward her, she walked away.
She almost expected to take a crossbow quarrel in the back.
But nothing happened, and Jilseponie moved back to the line of patient sufferers again and went back to her duty, working tirelessly with the soul stone. Merry Cowsenfed directed the procession to Jilseponie and then to work gathering supplies.
They left in small groups, feeling better than they had in weeks, and moving with all speed for Palmaris, and for the north. If all went well, Jilseponie explained to them, they could expect to find soldiers guarding the road north and monks ready to give them more healing all along the way.
"At least we'll no longer need suffer the wails and the groans, and the stench," Fio Bou-raiy said to Glendenhook as they
watched the spectacle of the thinning crowd. More sufferers continued to stream in, of course, but Jilseponie continued her work, and Merry sent them right on their way.
"Perhaps there is value to Jilseponie Wyndon after all," Glendenhook replied.
"Her words were correct," said Father Abbot Agronguerre, coming over to join the pair. His arrival made Bou-raiy and Glendenhook shuffle embarrassedly, given their previous callous remarks. "All of Palmaris, it seems, is on the road to the north."
Fio Bou-raiy threw up his hand in disgust.
"Suppose she is right?" Father Abbot Agronguerre asked. "Suppose there is a miracle to be found and we are too cynical even to look."
"And if she is wrong? " Bou-raiy came back. "Are we to send out all the brethren, as she bade us, only to have half of us die on the road and the other half return to St.-Mere-Abelle ridden with plague?
"
"Her work with the gemstones seems nothing short of miraculous," Agronguerre remarked.
"She is not curing them, by her own admission," Bou-raiy reminded him.
Agronguerre turned and walked away.
Back in the abbey, the Father Abbot played all the possibilities about in his mind. Was he pragmatic or cowardly? What might be the cost of guessing wrong?
And what might be the cost of guessing right but not having the courage to act on that guess?
Inevitably, the Father Abbot kept coming back to the image of a brother dying on the field before the impenetrable walls of St.-Mere-Abelle, a brother whose courage surely humbled old Agronguerre.
"Ah, Francis," he muttered with a sigh. He remembered the night when Francis had gone out to the sick, the eve of the New Year. Not only had the man put himself in obvious physical jeopardy, but the action had brought him only snickers of derision from many of his so-called brothers.
That image haunted gentle Agronguerre as he walked slowly up to his private chambers, and it stayed with him all the way back down the circular stone stairwell.
Down, down, to the first floor of the abbey, he went, and then down again, until he stood before a little-used but extremely important doorway, ornately decorated-so much so that the great latch that secured it could hardly be noticed unless one looked at it carefully.
Agronguerre fumbled with the keys, wanting to get through the door and get done with this business before anyone could persuade him differently. For though his heart was strong now in his decision, bolstered by the image of poor dead Francis, his mind was filled with fear.
He turned open the lock, lifted the latch, and pulled the door open, but only an inch, for another, stronger hand came against the portal, pushing it closed.
Abbot Agronguerre stepped back and turned to see Master Bou-raiy, the man fixing him with a cold glare, a lock of eyes that would have gone on for a long while had not the two men heard the sound of footsteps descending the staircase back down the corridor.
"Live a long time, old man," Bou-raiy warned ominously. "For, if you do this thing, you must know that when you die, the Abellican Church will be thrown into turmoil beyond anything it has ever known."
"Is that what is honestly within your heart, Master Bou-raiy? "
"That is what I know to be true."
"Would you have me preside over a Chu'rch that turns its back on the agony of the common folk? " the Father Abbot asked.
"The plague will pass in time," said Bou-raiy, and he lowered his voice as Master Glendenhook, with Master Machuso right on his heels, appeared a short distance down the corridor. "The Church must be eternal."
Master Glendenhook walked over to stand equidistant from the two men, glancing curiously back and forth between them. "Pray, brethren," he asked, "what is it that so troubles you? "
Father Abbot Agronguerre turned a skeptical look on the man, then stepped back from Bou-raiy. "You know our viewpoints," he replied. "You have heard the tale ofJilseponie and thus have seen the drawing of the line. On which side of that line does Master Glendenhook stand? "
Glendenhook's shoulders sagged a bit at the blunt question, a reflection of the fact that he did not want to be so drawn into any open argument. He looked at Agronguerre sympathetically, then turned to Bou-raiy, who fixed him with an unyielding stare-one, it seemed to Agronguerre, that demanded the man take a definitive stand.
Glendenhook put out his hand to pat Agronguerre on the shoulder, but then stepped away from the Father Abbot, to Bou-raiy's side. He faced Agronguerre and bowed. "With all respect and honor, Father Abbot," he said, "I fear the plague and heed well the old words written about itwords penned from the bitter experiences of those who have suffered through it. I fear sending the brethren out from St.-Mere-Abelle, and I fear even more the release of the soul stones into hands untrained and undeserving."
"The brothers will carry the stones," Agronguerre replied, not understanding that second point.
"And what of the brothers who will surely die along the road? " Bou-raiy asked. "They will fall while carrying soul stones, and those stones will, inevitably, fall into the hands of the undeserving and untrained."
"Jilseponie will train them," Agronguerre argued, his tone sharp, for the way in which Bou-raiy had said the word "undeserving" had struck him as very wrong.
"And that, Father Abbot, I fear most of all," Master Glendenhook remarked.
The words hit Agronguerre as surely as if Glendenhook had just punched him across the face. The Father Abbot felt so old at that moment, so defeated, and he almost threw up his hands and walked away. But then he turned to see the face of Master Machuso, the kindly man who oversaw all the secular workers at St.-Mere-Abelle, the gentle man whom Agronguerre had caught on several occasions stuffing extra supplies into the loads sent out to the sickly masses.
"My young brethren spend too many days looking into old books," Machuso said, managing a smile, "and too many hours on their knees with their arms and eyes uplifted to the heavens."
"We are Abellican brothers!" Master Bou-raiy sharply reminded him.
"Who would learn more of the world if they spent more time looking into the eyes of suffering folk," Machuso was quick to reply. "Abellican brothers who are so wrapped up in their own rituals and own importance, who are so determined to elevate themselves above the flock they pretend to tend that they cannot see the truth of the opportunity presented to us this day."
"By a laywoman," Bou-raiy remarked.
"A false prophet," Glendenhook echoed.
"She who destroyed the dactyl with Brother Avelyn at Mount Aida!" Machuso shot back. "And who defeated the demon spirit within Father Abbot Markwart, by Markwart's own admission to Master Francis at the time of his death. And now she is showing us the way again, Father Abbot," the suddenly energetic Machuso went on, turning to aim his words directly at Agronguerre, "the way to Avelyn, in body and in spirit."
Agronguerre reached for the door again, and so did Bou-raiy, but then the Father Abbot fixed him with such a stare that he backed off.
"Do not do this," Fio Bou-raiy warned. "You are condemning us all."
"I am damning myself if I do not," Agronguerre answered firmly. "Send word throughout the abbey, Master Machuso," he went on. "This is a choice and not an edict. All who wish to join the pilgrimage should be ready to leave within the hour."
"The hour?" Glendenhook said, as if the mere thought that hundreds of brothers could be packed with wagons readied within that time was preposterous.
"It will be done," Machuso answered with a bow. "And I doubt that many will choose to remain." "And if the hope is false? " Bou-raiy had to ask one last time. "Then better to die trying," Father Abbot Agronguerre said, putting his face only an inch from Bou-raiy's.
He pulled open the door, the portal that led into the gemstone treasuryof St.-Mere-Abelle, where more than a thousand soul stones waited.
Chapter 43
Fulfilling Auelyn's Promise
When Jilseponie returned to the Barbacan near the end of summer, she found that her call to Vanguard had not gone un
heeded. Led by Brother Dellman and Abbot Haney, the procession from the northernmost Honce-the-Bear province had nearly emptied the place.
The woman saw them up on the plateau, hundreds and hundreds milling about; and she went straightaway to find them, anxious to see Dellman again and Abbot Braumin, who had become the caretaker of the arm itself, the guide to any and all who came to enter Avelyn's covenant.
She found Dellman first and shared a great hug with him on the rim of the sacred plateau, then made her way through the crowd, toward the arm and Braumin. She was surprised, then, to find a pair of faces that she recognized.
"Andacanavar!" she cried. "Liam O'Blythe!"
The huge ranger wheeled, his face beaming with a great smile. To Jilseponie's surprise, though, another man off to the side, his hair bright red, his face covered in freckles, also turned to her, beaming.
"Do I know ye, beautiful lady? " the red-haired man remarked.
Jilseponie looked at him curiously as she made her way toward the ranger and the man she thought to be Liam. "I think you do not," Jilseponie answered politely.
"But ye're knowin' me name!" the man protested.
Jilseponie looked at him hard, then turned to see Andacanavar's companion, the man she had thought to be Liam, blushing.
"You are Liam O'Blythe? " Jilseponie asked the red-haired man.
"Anybody tellin' ye different? " he inquired back.
"Telling all the world different, and stealing your good name, I fear," Jilseponie said, staring hard at Andacanavar's companion.
"Then gettin' in trouble, not to doubt!" Liam O'Blythe roared, pointing his finger at his friend.
"I preferred to travel anonymously," the exposed liar explained. "To do otherwise might have invited trouble."
"A renowned thief, are you? " Jilseponie said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Or just a thief of people's names?"
"A prince, actually," Liam O'Blythe answered for Midalis. "Brother o' the King, he is, and Prince o' all Vanguard."
Jilseponie's jaw dropped open, her eyes going so wide that it seemed as if they might fall right out of their sockets. Now that the man's identity had been clarified, she could see the resemblance he bore to Danube, a younger and thinner version of the King.
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