by Ann Benson
She smiled and laughed, sharing his delight. She was young and beautiful, and full of love, all of it for him. She scooped him up in her arms and twirled him round and round, his small legs flying out and cutting through the soft warm air. He closed his eyes, and the light of the bright sun shone through his thin lids, filling his vision with the warm light.
It was the whitest light he had ever seen, the pure light of joy, and he gave himself over to it completely.
Janie shook him harder. “Mr. Sarin?” she said.
Twenty-Nine
Alejandro’s wild ride through the countryside scattered other travelers who were unlucky enough to be in his way. He whipped the horse mercilessly and made the half day’s journey in only three hours, and soon found himself approaching the twisted oaks from across the large meadow. His lathered horse snorted in displeasure, but Alejandro cared only that the animal complete the journey. He shouted aloud to the snorting animal, “If you run your heart out, another horse can easily be found. I will not find another Adele.”
He drove the horse between the venerable trees and followed the path to the clearing. Jumping from the horse, he ran to the front of the cottage and came to a sudden halt. There he stared at the dried-up bed of what had been a bubbly spring on his other visit here; he saw only sludgy mud, with the vile sulphurous odor to be sure, but it was not the cloudy liquid he had seen here before. He ran back to the horse and retrieved his journal from the saddlebag, and began leafing through the pages, desperately looking for guidance in his quest for a cure for Adele.
He heard the old woman before he saw her. Her footsteps, though soft, sounded on the stones behind him.
He turned around to face her, and she smiled at him. “Must I once again steer your hand, Physician?”
The red shawl still tied about her shoulders, even on this warm day, marked her unmistakably as the woman who had eluded him earlier.
“How is it,” he asked frantically, “that you were in London so recently, and here now? It would seem too far for one who travels as slowly as you surely must.”
“Have you time for such idle chatter, or shall we tend to the urgent business for which you came here in such haste?”
She turned and went into the cottage, returning shortly with a bottle of the cloudy yellow liquid, which she handed to Alejandro.
He set down his journal and accepted the bottle from her. “And what of the dust of the dead?”
“I’ve only a small amount of that for you, I was preparing more when you arrived here, and can provide it on the morrow.” She handed him a tiny sack, which he quickly opened. When he saw the small amount of powder it contained, he looked back at Mother Sarah in disbelief.
“What? So little? Then how shall I cure my beloved?”
There was great sadness in the old woman’s voice. “I cannot say how you will accomplish it. Waste not one drop of the cure. Do not let her disgorge even the smallest amount, for all of the medicine must enter her body.”
A foreboding of doom flashed through him, and he thought, This will fail. He staggered with the weight of his realization and swayed slightly as he stood there. Mother Sarah reached out and placed her hand on his arm, and although she could not have supported him, her touch seemed to steady him; he reclaimed his balance.
Her words were as gentle as her touch, and they gave him strength. The stern teacher she had been before was gone; in her place was a kind grandmother. “You have the power to do what needs to be done. Your strength will not fail you when you truly need it. But I would say to you again that you must prepare yourself for what you cannot readily comprehend. Things seldom go as we think they will. I implore you, do not be alone in this. You will need help in order to save this life.”
He examined the two items he held in his hands; they represented his only hope of curing the woman he loved. Then he looked at Sarah and asked, “Will I know success in this endeavor?”
How can I tell him of my own uncertainty? she wondered. Will the medicine be less powerful, without his faith to support it? She lowered her gaze, not wishing to meet his as she told what she feared might be an untruth. “I believe a life will be saved. Now go, and work your own magic. I can help you no more.”
And as he rode away, she saw that he had forgotten his journal at her feet where he had placed it, and wondered if she should follow and return it to him.
No matter, she thought. He would know success or failure without it. She picked it up and carried it with her into her cottage, where she looked at what he had written. She decided that it was best for the book to remain with her.
Few people were about when Alejandro returned to the castle late that evening. A guard was posted outside Isabella’s suite, and when the physician arrived, he was given a key by the man, who then departed in haste, wanting no part of whatever problem lay behind the door.
Entering the anteroom, he found it deserted. Remembering that the king was giving a banquet in honor of the new archbishop’s arrival, he assumed that the entire court would be in attendance. As he himself should have been, with Adele at his side. So much the better, he thought. I shall do my work uninterrupted.
As he used the key to enter the bedroom, Nurse and Kate rushed forward to greet him. While he laid out his necessities Nurse told him what had transpired and of the lie she had heard Isabella tell, having pressed her ear against the wood door.
“What of Adele?” he asked anxiously.
“She moans, and flings her arms about, but she does not speak. There is bleeding from her womanly parts, and I fear that the contents of her womb are dislodged.”
The pain of the loss of his child pierced Alejandro’s heart like the arrows that had brought Matthews down so long ago in Windsor. He struggled to speak, his voice wavering. “Take this vial and the powder contained in this sack and mix the contents together in a suitable vessel.” He handed her the items and added, “Take care not to spill even the smallest amount. I fear we may not have enough; I cannot even be sure we have mixed it in the proper proportions!”
She returned a short time later with a bowl filled with the yellowish slurry, wrinkling her nose at its foul odor.
Alejandro gently wiped Adele’s forehead with a cloth, then accepted the bowl from Nurse. He looked at the vile concoction, which he would soon try to force into Adele’s mouth, a thought that horrified him. He leaned close to his ailing lover and whispered in her ear, “When you are well again, my love, we shall feast on the sweetest delicacies, and you shall forget this horrible stuff. But now … now you must take it without complaint.”
He turned to Nurse and said, “You must help me now. I will place the medicine in her mouth, and you must hold her mouth closed. No matter what she does, do not let her open it until she swallows. Not a drop must be wasted.”
She nodded nervously, her face full of fear.
“Are you ready to proceed?” he asked.
At her nod he placed a spoonful of the viscous liquid on Adele’s tongue. Together they held her mouth and nose closed. Adele struggled with surprising strength to free herself. Old Nurse was no match for Adele’s youth, even in its weakened state, and was soon flung away. As soon as Nurse’s hand left her mouth, Adele spit all of the revolting medicine out onto the bedclothes, and only a few morsels remained on her protruding tongue. A small yellowish trickle of saliva dripped from the corner of her mouth and sullied the white linen of her gown.
“We will try again,” he said.
This time they managed to get her to swallow a small amount, but not a minute later she vomited the entire dose back onto the coverlet. Exasperated, Alejandro ripped off the coverlet and tossed it aside. Her thin shift was soaked in sweat, and the delicate curves of her small body showed clearly through it. He thought of the last time he had seen her so exposed. Perhaps it was when the child was made, he thought, his heart aching.
Time and again they tried to force the thin curative porridge into her mouth, and at each attempt she rallied her unconscio
us defenses to resist their ministrations. Frantically he spooned dose after dose onto her tongue, but as soon as he removed his hand from her mouth, she ejected each one.
He slumped down in a chair by the bed, defeated and hopeless. He sat by her side, waiting impotently, hoping against all reason that she would somehow survive. He held one of her hands in his own and felt the burning heat of her flesh, and tried to will her back to health by the immense power of his love for her.
The moon had long since risen when Adele finally breathed her last and lay still on the bed, the pain of her affliction finally replaced by the calm of death. He sat there for a long time with Kate in his arms, once again a solitary man with a broken heart.
Thirty
Rosow led his exhausted team of Biocops back down the hill a short way, and directed them to search the same alleys once again. They’d followed up on every lead given to them by the fearful residents of the area, but not one had panned out; nothing of any use had been developed from the information they’d received. They’d even taken a couple of Marginals into custody briefly, then let them go again when it became clear that nothing would come of keeping them captive. Rosow got the distinct impression that one of those Marginals was toying with him, teasing him off in another direction. He’d had a notion to keep that man for further questioning, but he didn’t like the looks of him. He was skinny, all right, as one witness had described the man he’d seen pushing the cart. But this one was weak and rheumy and couldn’t possibly have pushed a loaded cart up a hill. Rosow noticed that the man was unsteady and had difficulty even walking. Probably drunk, Rosow thought to himself, and pickled with cirrhosis. Reluctantly, he let the man go.
Adding to his frustration was the fact that no Biocop was allowed to spend more than eight uninterrupted hours in a green suit. Bloody Coalition rules, he muttered in frustration as he watched the team members remove their heavy green uniforms. Bloody knights of old wore their bloody armor till the king said they could bloody well take it off!
So when the contract-mandated rest period finally came to an end, they took up the search where they’d left off, but by then every trail had gone completely cold. There were no wheel tracks, no footprints, no scraps of newspaper left uninvestigated. Every suspicious rock had been picked up and examined for signs that the Marginal with the cart might have passed by it. Perhaps they’re hiding in one of these houses, Rosow thought, scanning the neat rows of bungalows and cottages that lined both sides of the hill, but with further consideration, the idea seemed ludicrous. Sheltering Marginals was heavily frowned upon, and although it wasn’t exactly illegal, Rosow was certain that very few “normal” people would take the risk of doing so. But they tried a few homes anyway, frightening the residents; they found absolutely nothing.
He didn’t even know if the pair he sought knew they were being pursued. One was a being on the edge, perhaps over it, completely unsuited for the complications of modern life, a natural-born fugitive. One was probably deathly ill and, if so, was by now helpless, maybe even dead. Shame she has to die, beautiful young woman like that! he thought. He considered it unlikely that the Marginal pushing the cart would have the mental faculties to know the difference between a dead passenger and a very sick one, or an interest in knowing the difference. But Rosow had no choice; whether they were aware of his existence or not, he had to find them and examine them and then decide what to do with them. Many lives would depend on how well he fared in his pursuit.
So, near dawn, the exasperated lieutenant led his weary team up the hill again, back to the field where the tracks ended. He split them into two groups and sent one group around the perimeter to the west; the other he himself led east. As they started their search the sun was just breaking over the horizon. It had been a long night, and he hoped the day would go better.
They stood like a pair of nervous parents over the childlike old man sleeping in the chair between them.
Bruce lifted one of his eyelids and saw the pupil contract in reaction to the incoming light. “He’s out cold,” he said. “It’s like he just shut himself down. I don’t get it.”
“I don’t, either, but I think we’re going to have to finish this on our own.”
“Maybe we should wait until he wakes up. He said he just wanted a rest.”
“Who knows what he’ll be like when he comes to again. He’s been going in and out of lucidity all through this thing,” Janie said. She glanced over at Caroline and then back at Bruce, a look of fearful urgency on her face.
“We’ve got the book,” she said. “He’s been using it all along to do this stuff. Like a recipe. He said there’s only one more thing to use, and we can read what it says to do with it. That’s all he’s been doing. Reading it.” The tone of concern in her voice rose a notch. “It’s not like he has some magical power that we don’t have.”
“Janie, we don’t want to do anything rash.… What if we make a mistake with this stuff?” He looked over to the bedside table, and was suddenly very quiet.
“What?” Janie said.
He pointed. “There are two things left.”
One was a bottle of cloudy liquid, yellowish in color; it was stopped with an old, desiccated cork. The other was a small sack containing some kind of powder.
“There’s not much of either of them—what if we make a mistake?”
“If this senile old man didn’t make a mistake, do you think we will? He can barely read, for God’s sake.”
She picked up the book and looked at the page to which it was opened. There were two sets of writing on the yellowed sheaf, one faded and ancient, executed with spidery strokes and uneven pressure. Janie scanned through it, and began to feel terribly disheartened. “Oh, God, maybe you’re right—part of it’s in French, I think.…”
Then her eyes moved to the other writing, clearly the work of a more modern hand. There, the letters tiny but legible, was a passage in English. It wrapped around the old French, and here and there Janie recognized words that were common to both passages. “This has to be a translation,” she said. With hope building in her again, she read the small words and recognized that they were instructions for the things they had already done. Her excitement growing, she pointed to a specific part in the English passage. “Look, this is where we left off.”
Bruce read it over her shoulder. “The flesh and bones of those long dead,” he said aloud. “The hair of the dog …”
She put the book in Bruce’s hands and picked up the small sack of powder. Bits of it floated up as soon as she spread the drawstring and she sniffed the air above it, then turned her head away and sneezed violently. “It smells vile,” she said, grimacing and rubbing her nose. But then the grimace changed slowly to a smile of excitement. “But you know what? This is ‘the hair of the dog that bit you.’ Antibodies. This could actually work!”
“Sweet Jesus … you’re right …” He looked at the page before him and started reading again. His eyes darted back and forth from line to line, sparkling eagerly. “Let’s get to it, then! It says here that we have to mix the liquid and the powder together. Then we’re supposed to take some of this stuff ourselves. Says it will ‘protect us from the ravages of the scourge.…’ ”
“I’ll get some mixing stuff from the kitchen.” She ran off while Bruce continued reading and returned a few seconds later with a spoon and a small bowl.
“Okay,” she said, almost breathlessly, “how do I mix it? Does it give proportions?”
“Yeah, hold on, I’m coming to that part.…” He began to read aloud. “Join together four knuckles of powder to a cupped hand of liquid—”
“Four knuckles? A cupped hand?”
“Janie, I’m not making this up. It says right here”—he held the book in her direction—“if you want to read it yourself.…”
“Never mind. I believe you. I’ll believe anything right about now.”
With unsteady hands she poured a small amount of powder into the bowl and then held her hand next to it
, one finger bent slightly, and decided that the amount she’d poured would suffice. When she tried to remove the stopper from the bottle, it began to crumble, and she had to dig it out in two pieces with her fingernail. She filled the hollow of one hand with the yellowish liquid, which had the smell of swamp water, and then poured the handful into the bowl with the powder. She stirred it with the spoon, and the resulting mixture was a loose slurry not unlike corn-bread batter.
“How much are we supposed to take?”
He scanned the book again. “It doesn’t say.”
“We’ll have to guess, then. Okay, we’ll each take a spoonful.” She scooped some of the slurry into the spoon and held it out for Bruce. “Open wide,” she said.
He cast a wary glance at the gritty mess on the spoon, then gave Janie a look of uncertainty.
“Open,” she said, and when he did, she shoved the entire bowl of the spoon into his mouth.
“Ugh,” he grimaced. He swallowed hard and then wiped his mouth with one hand. “This stuff tastes like liquid skunk!” He put his other hand on his stomach and said, “I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to keep it down.”
Holding her nose, Janie took her own dose; it tasted every bit as bad as Bruce had claimed, and left a gritty aftertaste.
“That was awful,” she said. “How the hell is Caroline going to keep it down?”
“I think the bigger problem is going to be getting this stuff into her. I don’t know if she’s still capable of swallowing. And even if we had a syringe, there’s no way we can dissolve this stuff into any kind of solution. It’s just way too granular. She’s going to have to swallow it.”
Bruce stirred the mixture again and tried to place a spoonful in Caroline’s mouth. He rubbed her lower lip with the tip of the spoon in the hopes that she would open it, but she didn’t. After a few frustrating attempts he looked up at Janie and said, “I don’t think this is going to work.”
