The Burning Road

by Ann Benson

  “Praise God and the Spaniard, he will live.”

  The countess crossed herself dramatically. Mouthing prayers, she clasped her hands together and looked heavenward.

  “But you also have this girl to thank,” de Chauliac said. “She stood over him and cleaned him. Had she not been there for him, he would have suffered terribly. And now she has need of a clean place to bring forth her own child.”

  “Let her bring it forth in there,” Elizabeth said stiffly. “She is surrounded by physicians, is she not?”

  “Countess, the babe cannot be born into a plague room … I myself should not be there, but out of loyalty to you I felt that I must.”

  “She should have considered that before she went in there. And now she should be thankful that I will allow her even that space.” She turned and was about to run off, when Alejandro came to the door. He carried her son in his arms.

  “Countess, please,” he said.

  She continued to depart, with heavy steps.

  “Elizabeth.”

  And at the sound of her name, her shoulders slumped a bit. She stopped and turned back slowly, her head slightly bowed.

  “Look at your son,” Alejandro said. “He lives.” He held the child out, and the pale, weak boy reached toward his mother.

  She glanced briefly at Alejandro. Her green eyes flashed anger and the pain of betrayal. But she would not look at the boy he carried in his arms.

  “Come,” Alejandro said, “take him. He craves his mother’s arms.”

  Finally, she looked up. And when she saw her child, she began to weep. She rushed forward and took the boy into her arms. “He is so pale,” she cried.

  “But in time his color will return,” Alejandro said. “He will thrive again, I know it, because I have seen to him, taken care of him, given of myself to bring him back to you.” He pushed the door open slightly. “Now look within, and see how my child suffers. Will you make it possible for her to be brought back to me?”

  Elizabeth peered hesitantly beyond the door and saw Kate wiping at the blood on her legs with a cloth that was nearing full red, with de Chauliac at her side, holding her steady. The countess blanched and whispered a prayer, then looked at Alejandro fearfully. “It cannot help but go hard when there is that much blood.” She peered back inside the room again.

  “Then please, help—”

  But she interrupted him by raising a hand. For a moment she stared at Kate, and as she did, her expression seemed to harden. “By the grace of God,” she said as her eyes examined the bleeding girl, “Chaucer is right.” She looked back at Alejandro, her face full of accusations. “This daughter of yours bears a most uncanny resemblance to my husband.”

  Alejandro made a nervous little smile, but inside him his bowels were once again churning. “It is nothing more than a coincidence, madame. But her mother was English, so it is only to be expected that she should bear some of that look, with regard to the coloring, especially.”

  He was explaining as fast as he could, but Elizabeth would hear none of it.

  “She bears none of your looks,” she said suspiciously, “but she could be my lord’s twin, were she a man.”

  “But clearly, by her condition, you can see that she is not a man. She is having a most womanly difficulty right now, and you can make her way easier, if only you will. Please,” he begged. “Put these unimportant notions of resemblance aside. It is coincidence, it means nothing. Help me now, as I have helped you. She cannot be taken out of here. It is too late. We must have another room.”

  When the countess looked back at him, her eyes were still full of anger and hurt for the way he had abandoned her. “I do not understand why you came back to torment me.”

  “It was not my intent to torment you.” He reached toward her, tentatively, and when she did not move away he boldly touched her cheek. The skin was soft beneath his fingers, and something within him stirred. “I came to save your son,” he said. “By virtue of the affection I bear you, though you are well justified if you do not believe me. I owe you that.”

  “You owe me that and more,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

  “I know. And I am sorry, truly I am. May God grant that this work of healing I have done for your child will help you to understand that. But we must speak of these things at another time, I beg your indulgence, for now my daughter needs my help.”

  Finally the countess relented. She called for another servant, to whom she handed off the child. The servant scurried away with the little boy in her arms. Elizabeth turned back to Alejandro. “ Follow me,” she said. “You may have my maid’s room.”

  She led them up a narrow flight of stairs to the third floor of the château. Alejandro carried Kate, though it took all of his strength, and de Chauliac tried to help, but the passageway was too slim to accommodate both of them at the same time. So they struggled, each one taking a turn as needed, until the stairs were conquered.

  The room she brought them to was much like the one Alejandro had occupied in de Chauliac’s house, with a sloped ceiling, more corners than the laws of geometry would seem to allow, and one small window. The furnishing consisted only of a narrow bed, a table, and a simple chair. The ever-present cross with the image of the bleeding savior was affixed to one wall, probably the maid’s most prized possession. He laid Kate on the bed of straw and started to remove her clothing.

  “I will send my women with the necessities,” Elizabeth said quietly, and with one last mournful look into his eyes she disappeared down the stairs.

  The promised women arrived in short order with linens and swaddling and water. One stout femme carried in a wooden birthing chair that she had hauled up the stairs by herself, but one look at Kate told her that the chair would not be useful. She set it aside, and shoved her way in between Alejandro and de Chauliac.

  She spoke in an accent that betrayed her as an Irishwoman, a native of her mistress’s homeland. “My lady says you gentlemen are physicians.”

  They both nodded.

  The woman laughed aloud. “Then you’ll be useless in the birthing of a child. You’d best stand aside.”

  And to de Chauliac’s protestations of competence, she said, “Has either of you yet looked between her legs?”

  Stunned silence was followed by rapid declarations of propriety.

  The Irishwoman shook her head in disgust through their stammered explanation. “Simpletons,” she said. “You must look to see what needs doing.” And when Kate next moaned out in a wave of pain, the woman leaned forward and stroked her belly. She cooed reassuring words at the panting girl. Then she turned back to the gawking observers.

  “Stay and watch if ye like, and mayhaps ye’ll larn somethin’ of use.”

  They relegated themselves to one corner of the room like useless drones while the women hovered around the bed like a buzzing swarm of bees, their Irish queen at the center of it all. The sturdy redhead was a force quite magic, who with little more than the cajoling motion of her hands was drawing the child into the world stroke by well-placed stroke.

  She urged Kate gently toward release. “That’s right, lady,” the Irishwoman said, “now bear down as if ye were going to fill the pot.”

  “But I shall soil the bed,” Kate moaned.

  “No, ye shan’t” was the reply, “but ye’ll think ye are. It cannot be helped, that feeling. It means the child is near, and crossing your bowels in its passage. And never you mind if you do soil the bed. ’Tis part and parcel. The countess can well afford a new one.”

  Comforted by these reassurances, Kate set about the task of delivering her child with more determination. She pushed and cried and strained and moaned, and finally in another gush of blood a head popped through.

  “Now do that again, lady, and make womankind proud!”

  With a groan that seemed to rise up from the very center of her soul, Kate bore down with all the strength she could find. And with that final push, the child was freed, and lay on the straw between her
legs. The Irishwoman reached inside her and pulled out the steaming afterbirth, then leaned over and bit through the cord with her own teeth. She wrapped the organ in a cloth and handed it to one of her helpers. “Boil it till it is brown,” she said, “then bring it back while it is still hot.”

  She held up the child by the feet and gave it a good whack on the buttocks. The child began to cry.

  The woman wiped the infant and wrapped him in swaddling, then laid him in Kate’s arms. “A fine son you have, lady. And fair. He’s colored just like ye are.”

  Alejandro stepped closer, and gazed in stuporous awe at the child he would henceforth call Grandson. Though only moments old, this babe was the very image of Guillaume Karle. But the Irishwoman was right; he would have the coloring of his Plantagenet grandsire, and his half-Plantagenet mother. And even in his mother’s thin arms he looked so perfect and sound, a marvel of nature, a miracle brought forth by God’s wish that humankind know another hour on Earth. He ached to feel the child in his own arms. So he said gently, “Daughter, may I hold your son?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. And as she watched the child rise away from her, into her father’s embrace, she said softly, “Oh, Père, I have a son … if only Karle could be here to see him, to hold him.”

  “I shall hold him so he thinks it is his own father,” he assured her.

  De Chauliac, left behind in the corner, now stepped forward and looked over Alejandro’s shoulder. “He seems a handsome lad,” the Frenchman observed with his customary distance. “But I cannot see him well. Bring him here, to the light of the window. I would see the details to know that he is sound.”

  But the light had moved away to the other side of the château, and there was little improvement near the window.

  “Take the babe out into the hall and carry him to the west window,” the Irishwoman advised. “There will be light aplenty there. I have work to do on the lady, and she will want privacy for it.”

  “May I, then?” he said to Kate.

  “Go. But bring him back soon.”

  With slow and careful steps, for he carried a load far more precious than all the gold he had seen in his life, Alejandro took the child out of the room, and headed down the long hallway, then around a corner to the window the Irishwoman had spoken of. De Chauliac followed for a few paces, then stopped and said haltingly, “You will know well enough yourself if the babe is sound. Perhaps I should … leave now.”

  Alejandro turned around. “No,” he protested, “stay, unless you have a reason to depart.”

  “But I am not needed here.”

  The Jew said to him, “Necessity is not always the binding between men.”

  “It has always been so between us, colleague.”

  “Not at this moment.” He motioned with his head toward the window, with its greater light. “Come,” he said, “and regard my grandson. For once, let there be something good between us.”

  They stayed there admiring the child, waiting for the midwife to announce that Kate’s womanly parts had been properly seen to, and that the infant should be returned to taste his first milk and know the arms of his mother again. But time passed and the light began to fade, and soon they began to worry.

  “I begin to wonder if something is amiss,” Alejandro said.

  “I shall go ask,” de Chauliac offered.

  But the Irishwoman would not let him in the room. “She bled a bit, but I have packed her birth parts in the proper herbs, and it seems to have stopped now. But she wants total rest and should not be moved for the moment.”

  “Then what shall we do?” Alejandro asked nervously when de Chauliac returned with this news. “The countess will not want me here a minute longer than necessary. And she will want my daughter moved.”

  “Surely she will not object to Kate staying,” de Chauliac said. “This woman may be angry at you, but she is not a monster. There is a kind and gentle heart beating in her breast. She will allow her to stay and recover. I shall insist.”

  “I am loath to leave her behind,” the Jew said. “I gave her up once, and it came to no—”

  He stopped speaking because he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Heavy, masculine footsteps, not the dainty tread of the countess and her ladies. And voices—the deep sounds of men with firm purpose. His heart pounding, he slipped around the corner and leaned against the wall, clutching the child to his breast. He glanced at de Chauliac, his eyes full of fear.

  The voices and footsteps reached the top of the stairs, and de Chauliac leaned out around the corner just enough to catch a quick look at the arrivals. He swore under his breath and hid himself back behind the corner again.

  “It is Lionel himself. And … and …”

  “And who?”

  “… and Charles of Navarre, I fear.”

  “Elizabeth!” Alejandro hissed. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. “She will have her revenge on me.” He clutched the baby closer to himself. “She must have sent word to him as soon as we arrived—and the fiend has been biding his time, until the boy was cured. Well, he shall bide the rest of it in hell.”

  He tried to shove the child into de Chauliac’s arms, but the Frenchman would not take the wrapped and helpless thing. Instead he grabbed Alejandro and restrained him from the madness he was thinking to do. He whispered urgently, “No! Do not go out there!”

  “But I would kill this rogue …”

  “Do you forget that you carry the grandson of the king of England in your arms?”

  He had forgotten. He looked down at the child, his grandson, and God curse anyone who tried to separate him from either the child or his mother.

  They heard voices from the small room. “I have come to claim this nephew of mine, in the name of my father,” Lionel said with great conviction, “and to speak with my long-lost sister.”

  Alejandro’s heart was pounding in his throat.

  “Where is the child?” they heard.

  “The physicians took him away,” the Irishwoman said. “I know not where. Perhaps they went down the stairs before you came up.”

  Good, kind woman! he said silently, blessing her.

  “The Jew physician, or the French one?”

  “I know not which,” the Irishwoman said. “I took neither of them to be Jews,” she added. “But both might be, for all I know.”

  De Chauliac put a hand on Alejandro’s arm and said quietly, “You must take the child and go.”

  “But I cannot leave her behind …”

  “Her fate is out of your hands. I will return to the room—I have nothing to fear from these men—I know too many of their secret deficiencies. I will distract them while you make your escape with the child.”

  “But Kate …” he moaned.

  “Save her child,” de Chauliac said, “or lose both. It is your choice. But if you go I will try to look after her, I promise.”

  “But what can you do?”

  “I know not yet,” the Frenchman said, “but whatever is in my power, I shall do it. You have my solemn promise, by the great affection and respect I bear you.”

  Alejandro looked into his former mentor’s eyes, and saw a friend. He would not have believed it a fortnight earlier, but he believed de Chauliac’s promises now.

  “Go,” de Chauliac said, “run to my manse, take a good horse, and leave Paris. Your bag of gold is in my study, behind the book of Greek works I lent you.”

  Where could he go? Where, in the dark world, was safety to be found?

  “Are there Jews yet in Avignon?” he asked.

  “Aye,” de Chauliac said. “Clement’s edicts have left a strong mark. There is a flourishing ghetto there. You will be welcomed.”

  Alejandro’s mind raced with details that begged to be spoken before he left. “Then I shall go there. Where there are Jews, one can always find a rebbe. Send a message to me through him.”

  “As soon as it is safe to do so, I shall.” He embraced the frightened Alejandro and the infant together in hi
s long arms. “Godspeed, colleague. And may He grant that we meet again, in better times.”

  Then the tall Frenchman let go and slipped around the corner. He stole quietly down the hallway. Alejandro stuck his head out from behind the wall and watched as de Chauliac entered the small room and closed the door behind him. The sound of men’s voices, rising in distress and agitation, came through the door as Alejandro slunk along the hall and down the stairs. Clutching the baby, he slipped down the main staircase of the château and out the door, into the cold dark Paris night.

  36

  Janie made her way out of the real world in the sweet grip of one of her fondest fantasies, a dream that had gone unfulfilled until that moment, when the end of the real world seemed too much a possibility. With a cop in the car, she finally had carte blanche to put her foot to the floor and drive as she always wanted to—like some maniac roadrunner with the wind at its tail. Not that the road cops of western Massachusetts would be bothering with speeders that night—they had more pressing duties to see to, obligations more urgent than pulling over an ancient Volvo pushed to the limit on its last journey before retirement. The venerable car would spend its dotage nestled under a camouflage tarp in the New England woods, its gas tank drained, as an archaic symbol of how the world used to seem: dependable, sturdy, eternal. Janie reminded herself as the trees whizzed by that there was a Maria Callas disk still in the player, and that she should remember to remove it before she put the car out to pasture.

  Wouldn’t want to disappear from the face of the earth without that.

  Oh, God, is there anything else I forgot? There must be.

  Brights blaring, almost thirty miles over the posted speed limit, she careened down the narrow country highway toward her life’s next phase with Michael in the front passenger seat and Caroline in the back. It was gulp-and-tremble time, What are we going to do? time, when “Take to the woods” seemed the best answer from a short list of bad choices.

  They passed darkened houses, cars abandoned on the side of the road, pairs of red eyes peering out from the underbrush. They were less than twenty miles from safety when a little girl of maybe seven or eight showed up suddenly in the headlamps. When they first caught a glimpse of her she was sitting on a boulder by the side of the road, unkempt and thin as a rail, but as soon as she saw them, she started to jump up and down frantically on the rock and wave her skinny arms. Her movements were mechanical, as if someone behind her had pushed a button to get her started.