In the Arms of Immortals

by Ginger Garrett

  “Get away from the door if you don’t want a broken back,” someone replied.

  “He is a man of God,” she said. “You’ll bring a curse on yourself for this. Send him away!”

  She heard the stutter and grind of wood on wood, the dry wood door being forced open in little pushes. Gio stepped back and moved down several steps, knowing it was better to keep her distance when this door opened.

  The light was too strong for Gio. She shielded her eyes and turned her face away, dizzy from the intense blast of sunlight.

  “Gio.”

  His voice was manna.

  “Lazarro?” she answered.

  She could hear him sit down on the steps. The guard above him closed the door only enough to let him listen in without giving them room to escape.

  “I heard you were here,” he said. “Selling your herbs.”

  “You cannot believe I would do this. I have given away my medicines for years. I would—”

  “Hush,” Lazarro silenced her. “I have come for these medicines, Gio, not talk of the past.”

  Gio’s eyes were comfortable again in the half-light. She looked at him, her hands open and raised, as if she were trying to explain his answer to herself.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “Give me everything you have. I have made my terms with Panthea,” he said, flicking his fingers at her, motioning for her to move down, out of his way. He wanted to go down into the darkness at their feet.

  “No!” Gio moved to the center of her step. “The sick and dead are there. You are not safe. And I will not let you buy. You do not believe in that kind of healing, Lazarro. You should not be doing this. You should be praying!”

  “Get out of my way,” he said.

  “No! You cannot have them! It is a sin for you!” she said.

  “Then I will take them.”

  Lazarro grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her aside, making her scream and push back, trying to catch him by the collar as he ran down the steps.

  She could hear the guard above laughing.

  At the bottom of the steps was darkness. On the corner columns were the torches, but they were not equal to this void. Some below must have recognized his voice. They were calling out in strangled sounds for water, or prayer.

  “Lazarro?” She could not see him. “Lazarro, what are you doing? Come back up here!”

  Her hands were shaking as she forced her legs to move into the darkness below. Wherever she strained to see him, he was not. The cellar had swallowed him alive.

  Taking a torch off its bracket, she was careful to tip it first so a little tallow would empty out of the well around the wick. Being burned by hot fat was a burn more painful than any other.

  She moved back up to the steps, holding the light in front of her, trying to stare around it. She saw his shoes at the bottom of the stairs; his body was lying at an angle into the darkness.

  “Lazarro! What is happening?”

  She ran down to him, thinking he had been hurt as he grabbed for the herbs. The dying were not always weak.

  Lazarro was sweating in great beads all along his forehead and upper lips. His eyes looked weak, retiring into black sockets, his handsome face puddling under them, swollen from tears and work. She had not really looked at him when he came in; the light had blinded her.

  “Have you anything to drink?” he asked.

  “Only some bad wine they offered me,” she replied.

  “No wine could be bad at this moment,” he said.

  She fetched the green glass bottle and poured a little into a leather cup for him.

  “You did not come to buy herbs from me, did you?” she said.

  He licked his lips and raised his hands to his neck, watching her as he loosened his robes, pulling them down to reveal his chest.

  Gio couldn’t hold her head up; the dizziness made her start to fall forward.

  Lazarro caught her, pushing her back.

  “No,” she said. “No. No. Why would you come to me for this?”

  “My prayers do not work. I have failed them all,” he said. “And now I must die too.”

  Gio pressed her fingertips on the ruthless black blisters claiming his chest. Most of them were clustered near his armpits.

  “Lazarro,” she whispered. His name was the only word she could bear. “Lazarro.”

  He picked up her hand and pushed it away. “You mustn’t touch me, Gio. I am damned.”

  “No, Lazarro. This is not God’s work.”

  “God sent plague on His people when they displeased Him.” His voice was the voice of an old man with white hair.

  “I cannot argue with what you say. But this is not God’s work,” she pleaded.

  He smiled. She knew that look from so many years ago. He was indulging her.

  “No, Lazarro, I have seen God’s work. I have seen sunrises from the volcano’s edge, sunrises no one in the village was awake to see. No one saw it, Lazarro. But still He ringed the sky through with brilliant colours. I have seen His work in the village, too. I have seen babies open their mouths and wail, thrashing in the wonder of a new world. I have seen puppies born to the thinnest of mothers, doomed to die, but then our villagers drop scraps for the dog and croon to it as it feeds in great, frantic rushes. I have seen the puppies pressed up against her for warmth and milk, and her considering the villagers with wonder and suspicion. It is all strange, this is all beyond our understanding, but this disease, it is not God’s work. God’s work is to get as close as we will let Him, and He feeds us. That is all God’s work.”

  Lazarro closed his eyes and took a long breath. “I did not come for Mass, though you give it well.” He laid a hand on her leg and smiled.

  “Why did you come? There is no peace between us.”

  “I came to ask forgiveness. I pledged myself to you once. When I heard you had betrayed me, I was filled with anger and fear. I could do nothing to rescue you from your sins. That is what I told myself. You were lost, beyond my help as a man. It was my excuse.”

  “Lazarro, there are things I did not tell you. I wanted to, but I was afraid.”

  “I should have been a man you could tell those things to. I was pledged to you. I gave you my word. It was wrong of me to run. All these years, I hated you for scorning the Church. Didn’t you understand that? If you had only come into the Church, I could have heard your secrets and given absolution. I could have given you everything as a priest that I could not as a man.”

  She lifted his hand and pressed it to her lips. “Forgive me,” she said, and added a soft word. “Father.”

  His eyes filled with tears. “Ostebde nobis, Domine, misericordiam tuam.”

  Gio nodded. Yes, Lord, show us mercy.

  “Et salutare tuum da nobis,” she said to him. Grant us your salvation.

  “Domine, exaudi orationem meam,” he finished.

  “He will,” Gio said. “He will. The Lord will hear our prayers.”

  Lazarro looked broken.

  Gio said it again, louder, trying to force the words into his heart. “The Lord will hear our prayers!”

  The cellar door opened. “You’ve had enough time, Lazarro! Come up.”

  Gio wanted to run up there, taking the steps twelve at a time, beating this fool about the head until he begged for mercy. Lazarro caught her by the arm and shook his head, motioning for her to stay.

  “I am coming,” he called up. “She had not so many cures as you promised, Panthea.”

  “She has enough for the village.” It was Panthea’s voice. Gio was surprised she would come near the cellar. She must have felt safe if Lazarro was there, as if God would not let a priest die.

  Lazarro stood, a grimace passing over his face, keeping a hand pressing on his back as he
bent. He took the bundles she pointed to. “I am coming, Panthea.”

  “And you will sign the papers,” she called. “If you want out with my medicines.”

  “I will,” he answered.

  Panthea did not sound afraid, Gio thought. Panthea did not know that Lazarro had the swellings, the tokens of this death, growing beneath his robes. Lazarro had brought death to her, and she did not know.

  He was walking to the bottom of the stairs, where Gio sat out of view. Turning his back to the light, he reached a hand for her.

  “What have you done, Lazarro? What are these papers?”

  “These papers opened the door to you. They bought me peace, to see you before I die. They bought medicines to try in the village. All Panthea asked for was wealth, the wealth that dying men had entrusted to me for safekeeping. It doesn’t matter, Gio. Most have no heirs alive now.”

  Gio gathered all the herbs bundled together, pushing them to him. She was pushing him away as she did it, afraid she might grab him and not be able to let go.

  She wanted to press her face into his chest and remember those days once more. How she longed to return, just to taste for one moment those days, to shake off everything she knew now. The sack around his belt was full to overflowing. She began to wrap her arms around his waist, raising her face to kiss him on the cheek before he left.

  He put a hand between them and held her off. “You must not, Gio.”

  Her throat burned. She tried to swallow the pain back down, but she couldn’t. “If I had known that day, if I had known what would come …” she said. She could not look at him. “It was the last kiss.”

  He lifted her face to see him. “No. It was our first, Gio, not our last. If God has mercy, I will see you again.”

  “I wasted my years, didn’t I? There is so much unsaid. Our story is unfinished.”

  “When you finish a painting, do you say you are done?” he asked.

  She frowned. Why did he stop her from confessing her regrets, and talk instead of painting?

  “Yes, I say I am done.”

  “But do you mean it?” he asked.

  She thought about the question for a moment. “No,” she replied. “Nothing seems finished. There is always something more it waits for.”

  “I go to that place you wait for. God will finish all things for us: our unwritten words, our paintings, our half-lived lives.”

  She wasn’t sure if she believed him, but he needed to hear those words. It hurt to talk. Her eyes were burning as badly as her throat. She dug her fingernails into her palms to be able to say those words.

  “He will begin a new story,” he said, and left.

  The deepest blue sky soothed Panthea. The world was unchanged after all. Night was a relief to her, a predictable event that did not fail. Panthea ran her hand over the papers spread out on her father’s table in the study. The room had been cleaned and put into order by one of the servants. She did not know which one.

  The papers were thick and uneven. In days past, the paper from Amalfi had not been perfected. These deeds had been written long ago, some perhaps before the time of her father. All had a new seal, the seal her father had created for Lazarro and the church.

  Panthea pushed her fingernail under one, cracking the wax, peeling it off the paper. It tore the paper, lifting sections of it away as Panthea picked at the seal. She looked round the room, hoping to find something better than her nails for this work. There was a stack of papers to get through before sunrise.

  Her candle blew to one side and Panthea checked the window. It would be a cool night ahead. A wolf bayed in the darkness, his call making her cold. She was not the monster Lazarro and Armando must think her to be. She felt terror and fear, like them. She was not blind to suffering. A wolf in the village meant blood was in the streets. A prayer came to her lips for those people still out there. If they had no one as wise as herself to protect them, they would not last the night.

  But Panthea did not say the words of the prayer. She turned back to look upon the papers from Lazarro. He had traded all these papers for the cures to save the village. As the priest, he had witnessed the wills, taking many of them in the name of the Church. He would see to it that estates were settled fairly. He had collected papers and deeds from almost every family in the village. The plague moved too fast for the lawyers to keep up with it. Most just turned their property over to Lazarro. If they died, they trusted him to do what was right with their property and their heirs.

  In exchange for these deeds, Panthea had let Lazarro take everything Gio had. No one below had need of them.

  She had what was of true worth, what would outlast this plague. If God did not answer Lazarro’s prayers, herbs were worthless anyway. The people would die. Only one thing would survive this plague, only one thing she would cling to.

  Wealth.

  She set back to work ripping free the seals.

  God was silent. God did not act. He could have stopped her if this was wrong. It wasn’t wrong. It was shrewd.

  She owned it all now. Every home in the village could be hers by morning, every business, every pasture. They were dying out there. Panthea tore away another seal and swept the scrapings onto the floor. She would begin again now, affixing to each the seal of the house of Dario.

  It would be a long, profitable night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mariskka woke and wiped her mouth. She had drifted off without meaning to. Strange, she thought, that her body still had its own rhythms and desires. She did not want to sleep, or eat. She did not even want to think. All that mattered to her was the work.

  Mariskka stretched. Everything hurt and was hard to move; she was stiff with exhaustion. Her back felt like it was made of hot twisting needles. Her eyes were dry and painful. She couldn’t remember if she had taken her contacts out before she had slept that last night, before the Scribe swept her away. Chances were, they were glued against her corneas now. Even if she tried taking them out for some relief, it would only cause more alarm among these people.

  The morning looked different. She could see dim white outlines moving alongside her. They looked like the white misty phantoms she had seen in badly done late-night ghost movies, except that these looked more real the longer she stared. They were made of something like breath against a window on a winter morning. She liked it, liked the way they changed shape, their edges evaporating and returning as another part of the spirit. Mariskka suspected these were another class of angels. Sometimes she heard footsteps but never saw a form. The steps were marked not by the sound of a shoe, but by the shifting of gravel crunching together, as though someone extremely heavy walked over the stones. Mariskka knew the sound of shoes; padding the hospice halls at midnight had sharpened her skill. She knew a doctor from a janitor, a young lift-team kid from a bereaved husband. These steps were a man’s. A man of impressive size, and she guessed he wore soft shoes.

  She couldn’t see the man, but some of the dying could. They would turn and look at her with their eyebrows raised, as if to ask if she saw him too. Mariskka could only smile and nod. He was real to them. That was enough.

  Mariskka’s body was falling apart, breaking under the strain. Her bones were grinding against each other in their sockets, her eyes burned, her lips were cracked, and her tongue was thick and dry. She was aware of all this, but she didn’t feel it, not in her heart. In her heart she was weightless and free.

  Mariskka had never been much in favor of joy; not after she had known grief. But now she felt joy, the real stuff, not the cheap holiday plastic imitation, and was surprised to find it was fierce, defiant, and sweet. It kept her on her feet when her bones were in agony. It kept her serving the dying, wiping brows, hushing men who were humiliated, losing control of their bodies before her, lying there with nothing to do except die. She felt the joy pushing her to
nod briefly at pain and keep moving. She would comfort and nurse and pray right until the moment death claimed them. She would not forfeit even one minute of life to it.

  Joy was stronger than fear. It pushed her on. Everyone knew fear, sinners and saints alike. Not everyone knew joy.

  A boy, no more than seventeen, she guessed, but probably already married, was trying to motion for help. She didn’t see the priest anywhere, so she knelt at the young man’s side. He pointed to the church. He wants to make confession, she realized. He wants the Last Unction. He knows his time is short.

  She pressed her hands together as if praying and then laid them on his chest, nodding. Lazarro would never be back in time. The boy would be dead in minutes.

  He turned his face away from her.

  Mariskka saw the bitter spirits moving between the rows, coming right for this boy, iron fingernails scraping the air in anticipation. This isn’t right, Mariskka thought. They can’t come for a believer. Death can have the body only after he’s gone.

  She couldn’t speak his language. His face was still turned away from her, facing the spirits. He couldn’t see them.

  Mariskka panicked. She craned her head in every direction, looking for someone who could help her, someone who could pray with him. He was dying with something awful inside, something that called the bitter ones to him. He was not a believer. There was no Blood.

  No one was near to help.

  Mariskka grabbed the boy’s face, jerking his neck, making it pop, wanting him to focus on her and not see what was moving in. “Help me!” she screamed. “Someone help me!”

  The boy flinched and tried to pull away from the awful sounds of Mariskka’s voice. She knew what she sounded like. She had done a rotation in the state wards. She sounded like a woman born with no tongue, a woman whose mind was pocked and ruined on the CT scans.

  The spirits were leaning over the boy, running leather tongues over their iron teeth. Something grey dripped down onto the boy’s face and rolled into his eyes.