by Ann Benson
But by then Janie was at Caroline’s bed, with her head pressed against Caroline’s chest.
“There’s a heartbeat!” Janie took Caroline’s nearly black hand in her own and searched the wrist for a pulse. Thin and thready, it was still there, beating on with a determination Janie would not have thought possible in a body so ravaged by disease.
“Mr. Sarin,” Janie cried, “I’m going to need some things. I’ll need some towels, a pan of hot water, strong soap, and a sharp scissors—”
Before she had finished her list, he interrupted her. “They won’t help.”
She stopped short. “What do you mean, they won’t help? I’m a doctor, and I know what I’m talking about—”
He looked straight at her; Janie could see that he was beginning to come out of his haze. She was astonished at how sharp his stare felt as it burned into her.
“There is nothing you can do to save her. That was supposed to be my job, and I was going about it when my dog died.…” He looked down at the animal in his arms, and fresh tears welled up in his eyes.
“I don’t understand …” Janie said.
Sarin set the dog’s body back on the floor and stroked his head one more time. He rose up unsteadily, with Bruce helping him, and began to explain.
“All my life I’ve been preparing for this moment. It’s been foretold for over six hundred years that a day would come when the scourge would rise up from the ground again and attempt to reclaim the world.” He furrowed his brow. “That was why I couldn’t let you take the soil … I knew it would come to this.…”
Visions of that night came swimming into Janie’s head when she and Caroline had surreptitiously dug up a tube of dirt from the field outside. Feelings of dread, the sense that they were being watched, all the memories returned. She thought, Why didn’t I pay more attention?
“Oh, my God … this is all my fault. I knew it …” she moaned.
Sarin bumbled on, trying to make her understand. “Since that time—oh, dear, my mother told me—there’s been someone in this cottage, watching over this field … she was one of them … someone was always making sure the souls of the departed were not disturbed.”
“The departed?” she said. “I don’t understand—what departed?”
“There was to be another time …” he said, “another time … we’ve been waiting for it, and now it’s come … oh, dear.…”
“What do you mean ‘we’? We who?” she asked, stunned by what he was telling her.
Her questions were confusing him. They were coming too fast for him, he couldn’t seem to make his mind work properly anymore. He began to mumble almost incoherently, and he saw with great fear that the woman was growing more agitated.
Then he remembered. The book.
“Wait,” he said, “I think I can show you.…”
He went to the bedroom; she followed. He picked up the crumbling, musty manuscript, and handed it reverently to Janie.
She turned the pages quickly, trying to make sense of the ancient scribblings, prompting him to say, “Take care with it, please. It was given to me by my mother.” He took the book back and gently turned pages until he came to a specific place. “There,” he said. “Look at these.” He handed the book back to her.
As Janie leafed through the brown ancient pages, he told her the story. His voice grew calmer as he spoke and he seemed more sure of himself. “The last one is my mother. And the one before her is her mother, and before that is my grandmother’s mother. And so on back to the time when the vigil first began.”
The last three images were photographs. Every one before that was either a drawing or a painting, some simple and almost childlike, some exquisitely fine in their rendition. And beneath each one was the name “Sarah.” The very last one, in black and white, showed Sarin’s own mother as a young woman. She was shading her eyes from the sun and smiling; she wore a dress from the 1930s and she was holding a small child in her arms—no doubt Robert Sarin himself.
No men at all, except Sarin, Janie thought.
She began to think Sarin could read her thoughts when he said, “Every one of these women, from the very first, has been ready to give her own life to keep the scourge at bay. They have guarded the secrets of the cure for the time when it would be needed. My own mother died a bitter woman. She was desperate for it to be in her time; she never had a daughter, only me.…”
Janie placed a hand on his arm, stopping him. “The secrets of a cure …?”
He seemed disturbed by her interruption; he’d been reciting the explanation, Janie realized. He may not even understand what he’s telling me, she thought.
He took the book from her hands and went to the very beginning. “See?” He pointed at a page. “Once there was a physician. A very long time ago. This was his book. And what he learned from the very first Sarah he used to work a cure. He wrote everything down and it’s been passed on. Yes, every one taught the next how—”
Again she interrupted him. “Then you know how to cure Caroline.”
He acted surprised that she hadn’t known. “Indeed!” he said, his voice growing more excited. “I was about that very business when I discovered the dog. Look here … it’s all in the book!” His tone grew dark and uncertain, and he spoke in the voice of a worried child. “When I found him I knew it had come back and taken him to keep me from attending to my duties, like it was defending itself by distracting me.”
Janie felt her voice tremble as she asked the next question. “Is it too late?”
Sarin’s head dropped in abject humiliation. “I can’t say … I’m so ashamed. It’s all I’ve ever been trained to do, and I fear I may have failed.”
Janie slowly realized that Caroline’s fate lay entirely in the hands of this very simple man, who had apparently never been entirely right, even before his great age had impaired him further. She felt a discomforting mix of sympathy and rage toward this poor soul. She was sad that he’d lived such a limited life, and angry that he had not managed to do the one thing that he seemed to think would give his life meaning and purpose. Be careful with him, she warned herself—Caroline needs him to survive. She said gently, “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself; you haven’t finished trying! You must go back in there!”
“I can’t,” he said. It was still the voice of a child.
What she needed to do became clear to her. She took him firmly by the shoulders and raised herself up to her full height. Calling on painful memories, she summoned up her most commanding, maternal voice and firmly said, “You must. I’m telling you that you must.”
He stared back at the younger woman who had just commanded him to do what he thought he couldn’t, and said, “All right. I’ll try, but it may be too late.”
She grabbed Sarin by the arm and led him firmly back to the room where Bruce was still watching Caroline. “Bruce!” she said, her voice agitated, “Sarin knows a—”
He cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand. “Shhh!” he said. “Look!” He pointed at Caroline.
Her eyes were open. They followed Janie’s movement as she drew closer to the bedside.
“Caroline? Can you hear me?”
“I don’t think she can,” Bruce said. “I’ve been talking to her while you and Sarin were looking at the book, and she hasn’t responded. She seems to be in some kind of trance.”
Janie looked at Sarin. “Do you know what this means?”
Trembling, the old man approached the bedside. “I think it means that we’d better get to work.”
Twenty-Seven
When Alejandro knocked on the door of Isabella’s suite, the door flew open immediately, and there stood the princess herself, in her magnificent attire, with a look of smoldering anger on her face.
Her jaw dropped when she saw him. “You!” she hissed. “I thought you were the laundress, the lazy wench! But I am not surprised by your sudden appearance. It is entirely meet that you should be here, for this is entirely your doing, and you have much to
answer for!” She pointed to the hem of her dress, which was discolored, and then picked up the skirt slightly, revealing shoes that had obviously been fouled with the contents of some poor soul’s stomach.
So this is how it will be for me here. Still shaking with anger after his frustrating meeting with Gaddesdon, he now faced this unforgiving harridan in her ruined shoes. “I came to seek Adele,” he said finally, “for I must speak with her immediately. And I fail to see how I am the cause of the ill fate that has befallen your shoes.”
“Follow me, then, and it shall be made quite plain to you,” she ordered, and he did, to the sleeping chamber. “Here lies your lover. As you can see, she is unwell, and it is your fault.”
He did not understand what she meant, but there on the canopied bed was Adele, pale and limp, undeniably unwell as Isabella had said she was. As he rushed to her side, the distraught princess continued her harangue, her hands clasping and unclasping nervously as she paced around the room.
“I have loved her well, and I thought her my dearest companion, and now she has betrayed me, deserted me at the hour when I most need her. She threatens to leave my service because of her love for you, a love that has brought her to tragedy! Where is her loyalty to me, and to my family? Can it ever hope to match the loyalty I feel for her?”
Her pathetic diatribe was no more than a dim drone to Alejandro, an annoyance in the background; he was too caught up in his examination of Adele to pay it any heed. It was not until he heard the words lustful misuse and delicacy of her condition that he paid more attention to what was being said behind him. He turned around abruptly and interrupted Isabella.
“What did you say of her condition?”
“Surely, you jest, monsieur. It is you who are the physician. Adele is with child. She claims it is your child.”
Alejandro rose up from his kneeling position and faced Isabella. “She is with child?”
“Aye,” interjected Nurse, nervously keeping an eye on the physician, whose anger was all too visible, “I have determined it myself to be true.” Taking his hand, she led him slowly away from Isabella, away from any possibility of an outburst, and placed it firmly on Adele’s belly. “See how she softens. She will give birth during the frost moon.”
Alejandro looked at her sadly, his face the very image of grief. “Good Nurse, I doubt not that what you say is true, but I fear the lady has a more immediate problem.”
He lifted Adele’s chin gently and pointed to the small but clearly visible bruise. Kate, who had been hiding behind a chair during the whole scene, now rushed forward, and flung herself at Alejandro, who was barely quick enough to open his arms to receive her.
“Oh, Physician,” she wailed. “Please cure her! Cure her as you did me!”
Isabella and Nurse both looked at him, shocked by Kate’s blurted admission, seeking an explanation. Isabella said, “Cure her?” She turned quickly to Kate and said, “Is this true? Were you afflicted, and was the contagion purged from your body?”
Alejandro stood speechless, unsure of what might be safely said. Isabella was already terribly agitated, and he did not trust her to listen to the voice of reason.
But Kate would not wait for him to answer, and cried excitedly, “Yes! Yes! It is true! For a fortnight I lay afflicted, and they gave me a foul-tasting medicine, and see for yourself that I am well again.”
Isabella looked back at Alejandro. “They? Who were ‘they’?”
He hung his head, and answered quietly, “It was myself and Adele, on our journey to see Kate’s mother. The child became afflicted on that journey. While at her mother’s house, we learned of a means of curing the plague, and sought it out. It was by this means that we were able to save her life. It was the reason for our delay in-returning.”
“Adele knew of this, yet she said nothing to me!” She looked at her companion, her girlhood friend, who lay helpless on the bed, and choked back a sob. With tears in her eyes she turned to Alejandro and said, “Was this according to your instructions?”
“We agreed between us that it was best to remain silent. We feared for the safety of the child.”
Deep pain was etched on Isabella’s face. “Oh, what cruel duplicity,” she said bitterly. She looked at Alejandro, her own beautiful face now almost as pale as Adele’s. “You were wise to conceal it, for had my father known of her affliction, she would not have been allowed to return. And now I am afraid I must speak with him about what is to be done.” She looked at the child and said sternly, “You are not to leave this room until the matter is settled.”
Nurse, who had been speechless with shock from the tale she was hearing, finally found her voice again. “Can you now cure the Lady Adele?”
“God alone knows, good woman, if I am already too late. I will go to my death trying.” He turned back to Adele and placed his hand tenderly on her belly. “But I fear she will not keep the child. This illness kills all that is good and holy.”
He looked quickly around the room for a flask or vessel to carry the precious water back from the spring by the cottage, and saw a large vial of perfumed water, scented with Isabella’s favorite flower, the lilac. He overturned it, and the contents splashed wildly all over the stone floor.
“Perhaps this stinking stuff can eradicate some of the foul smell in this room,” he said angrily. “I will need this vessel to carry the mineralized water that is part of the cure. I do not have what I will need with me; I will have to ride out in haste to obtain it. I shall return as soon as possible.”
And before opening the door, he turned and said to the tearful princess, “Pray God that she lives to conceive another.”
After Alejandro’s crazed rush through their midst in the anteroom, Isabella’s other ladies buzzed with curiosity. Isabella herself soon came out of the bedroom, and closed the door behind her, leaving Nurse and Kate alone with Adele. She shrugged her shoulders, saying, “See how men run from the slightest hint of women’s troubles, even this learned physician!” Then she admonished them, “Say nothing to anyone outside this room. I would not embarrass Adele or upset my father on this important occasion. I will be mightily displeased if this private matter becomes idle gossip. Now see to your tasks, and forget what you have seen just now!”
The princess returned to the bedchamber, where she found Kate and Nurse sitting together on a bench near the window, crying and holding each other for comfort. She moved along the edge of the room, staying as far away from Adele as she could, until she came to the window. She spoke first to Nurse, her tone dark with suspicion. “Were you privy to this betrayal of my trust?”
The frightened woman replied, “On my soul, Princess, I knew nothing of it!”
Kate supported the old woman’s claim of innocence. “It was only myself, and the physician, and Adele who knew.”
“You shall remain here with the child,” the princess said to the woman who had attended her from her birth. She flashed the trembling servant a threatening look. “You will help the physician when he returns. I and my other ladies will hasten from here; they shall not know of these events. It is best if they do not find out, I think, so you had better hold your tongue. And should you, too, become afflicted, it shall be God’s just punishment. Tonight we shall see what my father has to say about these unhappy events.”
She took a key from a small box on the mantel, and locked them in as she left.
Twenty-Eight
Janie and Bruce did everything Sarin told them to do as he went through the ritual page by page. One after the other he’d used each of the items he’d laid out on the small table, except the last. Despite the oddity of his actions Janie and Bruce never questioned his foul-smelling potions and poultices. They cast occasional uncertain glances at each other, but did as they were told. Janie watched in complete fascination as the feeble old man rose above his own sorrow and fear in a virtuoso performance on behalf of his frail patient.
But as the candles burned down and the sun came up, he neared the end of what he c
ould do for her. Caroline’s eyes remained open, and although she blinked occasionally, she did little more. It was painfully obvious that her condition had not improved much, if at all.
Sarin slumped down into his chair again, and Janie saw both frustration and shame on his face. “It doesn’t seem to be working,” he said. “I don’t understand.…”
“But you’re not done,” Janie said anxiously, “are you?”
He was immensely tired; his aching body wanted only to sleep, and had Caroline not been lying on the bed, he would have stretched out there himself. Sweet rest, he thought dreamily. How good it would feel! Somehow he managed to shake his head no. Then he closed his eyes and said, “There’s one thing yet to do, but I must just rest for a moment.…” All through the first steps he had felt the energy flowing out of him, and he was in desperate need of renewal, however small, before he continued. “Just a minute’s rest, then we’ll finish it.”
Janie shot a silent, worried glance at Bruce. She reached out her hand and touched Sarin’s shoulder. “Mr. Sarin … I don’t think we should stop now—there’s only one thing left to do. Then you can rest as long as you like, and you won’t be disturbed.”
He didn’t respond. “Mr. Sarin …” she said, touching him again.
He drifted; he felt a soft touch, but it did not last and he moved away from it. He was out on the field, playfully following his mother as she gathered herbs in her apron. The sun was well up in the sky and very bright, for it was high summer, and life was lush. Insects buzzed lazily around them, and he reached out his hands to catch one as it winged by. Laughing gleefully, he cupped his hands around the small white butterfly, then ran to his mother, telling her she must stop and look at what he had. He opened his hands and the butterfly flew off lazily, as if it had not been aware of its own captivity.
