“I’d like one of the custard cups, and one for my friend here,” Johanna ordered. And I’d like some poinstra to drink; Alec do you want any?” she asked.
Alec shook his head. “I’d just appreciate a tumbler of water.” He pulled a couple of small coins out of his pocket, and handed them to the baker, winning the argument with Johanna about who should pay.
They sat out at one of the tables and ate their goods. “Brandeis invited me out last night with him and some others,” Alec began. “But he left on the way and only showed up later, and some of the gossips said he had gone to visit Noranda’s tomb.” He left that statement hanging unanswered for a long moment.
“He seems like a very good person. Was he such a playboy before Noranda ran away?” He tried again.
“He’s always been playful, but he was responsible and reliable before,” she answered. “And I believe he will be again, when his heart heals, if it doesn’t break first,” she added.
“How did you heal me?” she asked bluntly. “Reuchlin hit me squarely on the face. I should be bruised right now; I know how hard he hit me. If I had come home with a bruise like that on my face, there would have been an uproar in the family.”
“You love Durer, don’t you, and he loved you too, before Noranda died?” Alec returned the hard question with a difficult one of his own.
“What makes you say that? That has nothing to do with you healing me,” Johanna replied, also evading an answer.
“Well, it might,” he looked down at the empty table, where their pastries had been so rapidly eaten. “Let me answer your question in a different way in a little while,” he suggested, and stood up. “But now let’s walk about the city and see the sights.
“Show me your favorite place, outside your family’s compound,” he asked.
“I know the exact place that meets that description,” Johanna said as she stood too, and she led him down the street. They proceeded to walk to the bottom of the cla dall in the city, where a botanical garden offered several rare flowers growing in the partially shaded space.
Alec looked covetously at the plants, thinking of the cures he could develop with the blooms and roots he had never seen before. He recognized them from his prodigious, miraculously implanted memories of healing lotions and cures. Without thinking, he spoke aloud, explaining to Johanna the value of the plants. “That flower right there; it’s stem has a fluid that you can extract and add to talc and ginger and balmwort, and you’ll have a tonic to relieve kidney stone pains,” he said, touching the bloom to emphasize his point.
“How do you know?” Johanna asked.
“I learned a lot of healer formulas. There are so many of them that just use ordinary things to make cures, you’d be surprised. But some use items you’d never in a million years guess,” Alec said. “And then sometimes people can cure themselves, with faith and prayer alone, if only they believe in Jesus’ love.”
“Some people can’t be cured though, can they? Some things are just beyond healing?” Johanna asked, stirred by Alec’s animation.
“You would think so, but I’ve seen some things you could only call miracles,” Alec said, vividly remembering the night on the beach when Cassie had suffered a swimming accident.
“Have you performed miracles?” Johanna asked.
Alec was silent for a moment, wondering how to answer.
“You have, haven’t you?” the girl asked further, drawing closer to Alec. “Do you enjoy it? What does it feel like? When you soothed my cheek, was that a miracle?”
“It was a service for you. I don’t know what to call a miracle,” Alec answered. “I have…” he stopped, not wanting to say more. “Is there a children’s hospital in town?” he asked.
“Up on top of the cliff there’s a hospital and an orphanage together,” Johanna said.
“Let’s go there,” Alec said. He sensed something developing, these conversations, actions and happenstance occurrences beginning to lead to something he couldn’t guess.
“Put your climbing shoes on,” Johanna warned, leading him out of the garden and up the long winding series of switchbacks that were heavily trafficked with downward bound traffic, against which Alec and Johanna struggled to maintain progress. Eventually they rose to the top, and were bathed in bright sunlight as they climbed out of the cliffside shadows. Johanna asked a patrol man for directions, and soon they were outside the gates of a large clapboard building, with dingy white siding and many small windows on four floors.
Johanna’s name gained them entrance, and Alec’s familiarity with the orphanage in Frame gained them trust from the staff, so that they were allowed to visit with the children in the hospital wing.
Alec looked down the roof beds, with Johanna and a nurse beside him. He walked to the first child, a boy of about eight, who had a broken leg. “What happened to you? Did you try to jump out a window?” Alec asked the boy.
“No, I fell down the stairs,” the thin boy replied. “I want my leg to heal straight so that I’ll be able to run again.”
Alec looked at the leg, and placed his hands on it to pray for healing, as he exerted a moderate flow of his healing energy into the limb. “He needs to drink milk, and take a tonic from sugar root, umber seeds, and church stem sap twice a day for a week,” Alec told the nurse. “Good luck on that running. I want to hear that you’re winning races soon!”
Johanna stayed a step or two behind as Alec moved to the next child in a bed, a very young girl who had tipped a pot of boiling water on herself, scalding her chest and legs severely. The girl was is tremendous pain despite being sedated.
Johanna sharply drew in her breath in horror at the sight of the damage to the girl when Alec pulled the sheet back. As she watched, Alec studied the girl for several seconds, then placed his hands on her torso, closed his eyes and bowed his head. His lips moved silently, and his brow furrowed in concentration. Johanna’s glance lingered on Alec’s face for several seconds, then shifted down to his hands on the girl. Her skin was virtually healed, showing a bright pink color that faded as Johanna watched.
The girl’s labored breathing eased, and the soft moaning ceased as she settled into a deeper sleep.
The nurse let out a loud sob. “This is a miracle! You are a man of God, the greatest healer I’ve ever seen! How did you do that?” she exclaimed.
“I prayed, and I used the gifts that Jesus has given me,” Alec replied. “Be sure to rub oil into her skin every three hours for the next day, and then she will be free to go back to being a little girl.”
Without further comment he turned to the bed on the other side of the aisle, where another girl with a sweaty scalp lay still. Alec touched her after a moment’s study. Then he told the nurse, “Give her buttermilk with willowbark and bitterroot finely powdered and Gillette’s rose hips soaked in sap from a greennut tree. Two small doses each day for three days will cure her.”
They walked down the center aisle, Alec looking at each child, talking to a few, giving directions to the nurse, and another nurse who joined her, while sometimes he stopped and laid his hands on a few children to heal them directly. At the end of the room was a little boy separated from the others by several empty beds. “He has consumption very badly. We think he only has a few days left to live, poor boy. He’s a very sweet child; he’s been our favorite, although we don’t really have favorites, of course,” the nurse said with a smile. “Can you do something for him?” she asked after a pause, clearly afraid of the answer he might give.
“Let me look,” Alec told her. Johanna thought he was starting to look tired; his face was pale and dark rings were under his eyes.
He stood be boy and held his hand, then stood still as he prayed and let his healing powers run through the small invalid’s flesh.
Alec turned to his followers. “We can certainly heal this boy, but not completely today. He’ll rest comfortably tonight, and tomorrow you will need to add several ingredients to boiling water,” he rattled off a list, “and let
him breathe in the vapors each day for several days.”
“Have faith,” he said with a gentle smile. “We need to be going now,” he said with a nod to Johanna. “Here,” he pulled some coins from his pocket and gave them to the nurse, “use this to buy some of the items I told you about at the market.”
With that Alec turned and walked back through the hospital, and out onto the street with Johanna. “Let’s find a place to sit and rest. Do you know of a place nearby?” he asked carelessly.
The cousin of the girl he had come to heal looked at Alec with awe. She could see clearly how much Alec had drained himself in healing so many children. She was startled by how much older he looked now, his skin had turned gray and there were dark rings under his eyes. More than anything though, she was unable to grasp how a seemingly ordinary-looking person could so casually carry out such miraculous actions.
Not far down the street she saw tables on the sidewalk, signs of a café. “Let’s go right down the street to have a bite of lunch,” she suggested, and led Alec through the traffic to a table, where she ordered two glasses of juice, two cups of poinstra, and some meat rolls.
“You really can perform miracles, can’t you?” Johanna asked Alec after he had gulped down a large amount of juice. She remembered the conversation they had started in the morning. “I thought this was going to be an unpleasant morning taking you around the town today because Brandeis was too drunk to get out of bed. But you have made this one of the most meaningful days of my life,” she said, ending with her voice in a virtual whisper.
“Can I learn to be a healer like you?” she asked.
“Not exactly like me, perhaps,” Alec told her. “I have a gift, a blessing from God, and it is very rare. I am thankful beyond measure for what has been given me, and I want to use it as wisely as possible,” he replied. “You cannot do all these things, but you could learn a variety of remedies and cures that would bring great relief to many people. It would take training and study,” he finished, remembering Leah’s knowledge of cures.
“Will you teach me? I want to do something like that. I’ve never had any plan of what to do with my life other than get married, but now I know that I want to do this, to be a healer,” Johanna asked, reaching across the table to take Alec’s hand pleadingly.
As she spoke Alec felt another wave of her emotions sweep through him, and he sensed her sincerity as well as her continued longing for marriage to Durer; both the healing and the love would satisfy her soul, he could sense. He was astonished at how readily her feelings were apparent through his spiritual abilities, powers that he had had no training in and which he had only experienced one or two times previously.
“I don’t think that this visit to Stronghold will last long enough to really train you,” Alec told her. “I could train you, and I would like to train you. But now is not the right moment.”
“You have plans to leave Stronghold already?” Johanna asked, suddenly feeling despair at the thought of his departure.
“Sometime soon, probably. I don’t know when, precisely,” he replied. Their food arrived, and Alec bit hungrily into his food, then ordered another plate of meat rolls.
“When did you learn you had this ability, and why were you only in a carnival with such powers? How far can your healing go? What is the greatest injury you’ve healed?” Johanna asked him as he ate his food. She could see the color returning to his complexion as he rested and ate and restored his energy.
“I had a visitation, I guess you could say, that gave me these special abilities. I know there are things I cannot do. Death is virtually impossible to overcome, and some injuries can be eased but not completely reversed; but many illnesses and injuries, especially if discovered early, can be treated. Prayer and medical care can do much together,” Alec answered. “I’ve learned to do more as I’ve practiced.”
“We have a family priest at the compound, but I’ve never spent much time with her,” Johanna admitted. “Lately life didn’t seem to show much of God’s love to our family,” she said with wistfulness.
“There is a God and he has a plan for all our lives,” Alec told the girl. “I don’t understand the plans, but I have faith that doing the right thing will be part of his plan at the end of the day.
“Shall we go downhill?” Alec asked. “I think I’d like a nap to recover. That, and going to bed early tonight will probably do wonders for me.”
“I forgot that you were part of that crowd that caroused last night,” Johanna said as Alec stood. “You seem far too responsible to be the type of person who drinks all night. I probably got you up a little early, didn’t I?” she asked with a mischievous grin.
Alec was glad to see her smile, and realized that she had accepted him as a friend, something he realized he wanted from this girl. They walked back down the cliff trail and returned to the Locksfort compound.
As they entered the gate, one of Johanna’s cousins caught her in the courtyard. “Your father’s boat has been spotted down river! He should return tonight, Johanna!”
Alec felt an alarm go off in his mind. Who was her father? He knew he had heard something before, but he couldn’t remember what. “I thank you for your time this morning,” he said to Johanna. “I’m going to run along now.”
“Can I join you in the morning back at the hospital?” Johanna asked as Alec started to walk away. When he replied affirmatively, Alec overheard her telling her cousin about how many children would be healed.
He worried, wondering if word of a healer ingenaire had traveled upriver to Stronghold, and whether anyone would suspect him of anything.
Alec wandered through the hallways, looking for the way back to his room. He entered a courtyard that looked unfamiliar, with only one other doorway. He passed through the dim, shadowed yard, and found a stairwell that led downward. Alec faintly perceived a torch at the bottom of the stairs, and he climbed cautiously down. At the end of a short hall was darkness, which Alec’s eyes could not penetrate, so he removed the torch from its wall ring and walked forward.
The darkness resolved itself to be a door. Alec stood before it, uncertain of whether to go any further. He was trying to find his way to his own room, and he knew that this was not the way. But he felt an impulse to open the door, an impulse from no source he could imagine. There was not bound to be anything here of interest to him in the deserted bowels of the compound.
He looked down on the floor, and saw a thick layer of dust, through which no feet but his had walked in a long, long time. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see no faint glimmer of sunlight reflecting down the stairwell from the empty courtyard above.
Alec found his hand turning the door knob, and glanced forward to see the opening door. As the door swung inward, the sound of falling water came to Alec’s ears.
With a revelatory flash that made his knees buckle, there came to Alec’s memory the day he had entered the Cave of John Mark.
He stepped slowly forward, and the flame of his torch fizzled and dimmed momentarily as he advanced, then Alec felt the thin shower of water falling upon his own body as he entered the chamber. The flame steadied, then brightened, and as it did, its light was reflected off the glistening wet walls of a perfectly round room. In the center of the room was a floor opening through which the streams from the walls were flowing downward.
Alec advanced towards the center of the room, and looked down the well. There was no other opening in the room beside the door he had just entered. There was not even any means for the water to come streaming in other than simply penetrating through the stony walls themselves, yet somehow a constant sheet of water continued to fall.
He knelt on the wet floor and peered downward. In the wall of the descending cavity below he saw incised bars, just like the ones he had climbed long ago in the Pale Mountains.
Alec knew that he now must climb downward. He carefully balanced the torch on the floor at the edge of the well, turned and slipped a leg over the edge, and began to cautiously
clamber down. He reached up and grabbed the torch with one hand, pondering how to carry it and climb one-handed. He noticed a hole on the wall and crammed the torch handle into the perfect fit, then climbed down two more rungs, and found another apparent torch hole.
The slow repetitive process continued, his muscles growing sore as he climbed down the well, water gurgling and dripping all around him in the close confines of the narrow space. He had no concept of how mustre passed, but he grew achingly, physically tired while he also felt an overwhelming curiosity, mixed with fear, growing within him.
He heard the echoes in the well change in tone, losing their hollow character, and then feeling pinched in upon, just as his foot hit the surface of the water collecting in a cavity at the bottom of the well. He stepped down through the surface and found the water only came up to mid-thigh despite the unending flow coming from above.
Turning, and holding the torch high above him, Alec saw an opening in the far wall, set like a window, through which the water was escaping. Alec moved towards it and climbed up onto the window ledge, crawled forward a foot or two, then felt no further ledge, and he tumbled forward out of the well.
He turned and slipped down a chute of flowing water. He felt his body thump against the stony sides of the waterway as it descended further down below the ground. The flame of the torch was snuffed, and he continued to fall in the darkness.
There came at last a moment when he stopped making contact with anything but water and air, and then he was plunged a moment later deep under water. He sputtered and hit bottom, then pushed off and breached the surface, taking a quick breath. Alec found that he could stand on the stony bottom of the pool and almost keep his chin out of the water.
All this water would probably make a water ingenaire feel comfortable, Alec thought miserably to himself. He thought then of Bethany, and as he did, there came into his heart a dark shaft of certainty that she was no longer waiting for him. He wondered if some sense of intuition was guessing, or if a fact had just been revealed. Alec remembered all the letters he had not written, and the one he had written, probably too late, as well as the times he had not tried to return to visit her. He had not shown her love, and he knew that now, after many months of separation, she had stopped looking for some sign from him. She is going on with her life, he thought. Amidst the water all around him, Alec felt tears well up in his eyes, tears of disappointment that he had let such a perfect partner escape him, and disappointment that he had caused her pain in his long quest for something else.
The Lifesaving Power: Goldenfields and Stronghold Page 10
