Rise

by Rachel Starr Thomson

* * *

  It took Teresa and the servants two days to finish scouring both of the sick halls, work that was considerably slowed by the necessity of simultaneously looking after the sick themselves. This task was made even more demanding in that Teresa actually required it to be done: she gathered, from the comments she heard and the response of those among the ill who were still verbal and conscious, that the care had been only intermittent before her coming, and that some had been lucky if anyone tended to them at all. Tildy continued to work near her, though the hoped-for opportunity to speak with her about the Spirit did not come. They worked until late into the night, and by the time Teresa retired, bleary-eyed and aching in every bone and tendon, Tildy had already disappeared.

  By the end of the second day, she had decided that more drastic changes had to be made.

  “We must move them,” she announced to Franz Bertoller, whom she hunted down after spotting him across the room in the second of the sick halls. It was the first time he had come down since escorting her there on her first day, and he disappeared quickly, but she managed to find the exit he had taken and follow him into an upper chamber.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said.

  “It is no good, their being underground. The air is intolerable. We must bring them above ground where they can breathe, and where those who tend them can breathe.”

  “You had them all in a hall at the abbey,” Franz said.

  “But the abbey was open to the air!” Teresa said.

  “In your country it is warm,” Bertoller said. “You can afford to be open to the breezes. But here it grows cold, and we face other threats as well. You do not know what you are asking for.”

  “It is not cold yet,” Teresa said. “Put up tents in the courtyard, if there is nowhere else, where they can be shielded from the extremes of sun and rain. I feel it is needed.”

  “And yet you have not painted even one picture,” Bertoller said, “and in all this time you ignore my wishes in order to crawl around in the muck.”

  She kept her anger down. “There would be less muck to crawl around in if you would heed my advice, or if you had required your servants to quit themselves as human beings.”

  “You think this is my fault?” he asked, a dangerous tone creeping into his voice. “May I remind you that no one required me to bring the sick here? That most lords would have left the people in the country and towns to die and be burned in rubbish heaps along the roads, and to dig their own graves while their nobles hid in their castles? I have opened my gates and done more than any noble within a hundred miles would do. Give me some credit.”

  “I do,” she said, her tone genuine. “I do, my lord. But why do something only halfway? I tell you, the air will help them. And will make the work far more tolerable for your servants. You have gone to trouble and expense to bring the sick here. Why not give them a better chance, when there is a way for you to do so? Why let them all die under your doorstep?”

  He stared hard at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Very well. I will send you men with the authority and resources to put up your tents. Direct them as you see fit.”

  “Thank you,” she said, inclining her head slightly.

  “On one condition.”

  “And what is that?”

  “That you do what I called you here to do—paint.” He lowered his voice, softening it. “Though few would do it with such passion, there are hundreds of women who can clean and give orders and tip water into the mouths of the fevered and dying. There are not hundreds of women who can do what you can do—who can paint visions. There is power in that, my lady, just as there may be in fresh air.”

  She found herself blinking back sudden and entirely unexpected tears.

  He might have been Mother Isabel, speaking to her.

  She received the correction as though he had been.

  “I shall,” she said. “You are right, and I shall. Only let me get operations in order first. The needs of your people are desperate, and I cannot leave the servants without direction.”

  “As you say,” he said. “I told you I would send you the men you need, and you may direct them. Only do so in such a way that your attention becomes free to divert to your own gift.”

  She mulled over his words as she descended again and began to share the plans with the servants, alerting them to the change to come. Their expressions ranged from relief to skepticism—often on the same face.

  “Do you really think fresh air will make a difference to the sick?” Tildy asked. “My mother always said it would make a body worse, and the wild air should be shut out as much as possible.”

  “I do think it will,” Teresa said. “I cannot tell you why. But in the Oneness, we say that the Spirit is in the wind. I think it will do us all good to be able to feel that wind—the breath of heaven on our faces.”

  “It will help us all to breathe, that is for certain,” Tildy said. “We should thank you for that, even if your ideas are cocked.”

  She gasped at the end of her sentence as though she knew she ought not to have said it.

  “Quite all right,” Teresa said with a smile. “You have not offended me.”

  “You speak of the Oneness,” Tildy said slowly.

  “It’s what you’ve been feeling,” Teresa said, “from the time I came into this house. The Spirit is drawing you into a family, Tildy.”

  The thin-faced girl trembled. “I do not deny feeling powerful strange ever since you walked in. I’ve felt like someone hidden in a cave, and you have been calling me out.”

  “Not me,” Teresa said. “The Spirit. God. The powers of heaven. The Oneness are his people. He makes us a part of each other—a single body, though we are all individuals. He arms us in the struggle against darkness and chaos.”

  “And disease,” Tildy said.

  “The very truth.”

  Trouble haunted her eyes. “Some have talked like you in this land before,” she said. “My mother told me of them.”

  “It’s true,” Teresa said. “At least one kept the chapel next to the castle, in the elder lord’s days.”

  The trouble deepened. “Aye, the priest. All called him Father, and no other name.”

  “What happened to him?” Teresa asked.

  But at that, something in Tildy’s expression closed off. “He died,” she said, but her voice strained, and Teresa knew she was lying. “He died as all old men do.”

  They were interrupted by the arrival of the men Bertoller had promised, both dressed in guards’ livery. Tildy vanished while Teresa held conference with them, until at last she was satisfied that preparations were underway to move the sick above ground and shelter them adequately there.

  She cast about for the girl when the men had been dismissed, but the wiry red hair and thin frame were nowhere in sight.

  And it was time, Teresa knew, to keep her side of the bargain.

  To obey the lord of the castle as she would have Mother Isabel—not, this time, because of any binding vow, but because he was right.

  All the old trepidation returned as she made her way to her quarters. She had argued unsuccessfully with the lord over the choice, wanting to be moved to another chamber that was simpler and not so lavishly furnished. She felt like a pretender where he had placed her—or a mistress.

  The latter thought made her feel sick.

  She could not paint here, she decided as her feet touched the threshold of her room. He might force her to sleep in these chambers, but awake, the place would distract her far too much. So she took up panel and easel and paints, as much as she could carry at one time, and made her way out to the chapel.

  She nearly bumped into Franz Bertoller himself in the corridor on the way out, but she only mumbled an apology—she was holding several paintbrushes in her mouth—and pushed by him.

  In daylight, the chapel was far dustier and less mystical than in the dark hours of the morning. The brass etchings were more visibly tarnished and the altar flecked with brown—mud, she tho
ught. She had noticed it the first night, but it was only barely visible in the shadows. Even so, the place felt like home. She imagined the cloud were here, invisibly, those who had prayed and worshipped before her cheering her on. A single piece of stained glass, fitted above the altar, glowed blood-red in the daylight.

  Laying aside her brushes and dye jars, she set the easel up to face the altar and the shining glass, and she set about cleaning a bit—dusting, de-cobwebbing—while she began to say prayers and to wonder what she would paint.

  As a young woman, new to the Oneness and not yet reticent about her gift, she had imagined that in her older years she would be able to paint anything, anytime, and it would always be the perfect thing; years and practice would teach her to skip the awkward blank and lack that always came before trying to make art. That dream had never been realized. If anything, it had gotten harder, and with every successive painting, she felt more and more like she would never be able to do it again. The power evident in her paintings only made that worse; she desired that the Spirit would use them, that he would pour himself through her brush and create objects that truly could, as Bertoller seemed to expect they would, work miracles. But with the exception of that single vision that had painted itself through her at midnight in the abbey, with every new piece of wood she felt like a novice painting some clumsy device all her own. And when, after the fact, they proved to be usable in some way by the Spirit—which they all did—it was a surprise every time.

  She did not know how the Spirit did it.

  Which made it impossible either to force his hand or to duplicate her own efforts.

  She lit candles all around the chapel even though it was daylight—because it felt fitting that they should be lit, and perhaps because she was stalling.

  At times, while she put paint on treated wood, she felt the most alive that she ever did.

  But this great lump of uncertainty and insecurity and directionlessness beforehand, this made her want to go back to scrubbing the hall floors and daring the mockery of the more surly of the servants. On her hands and knees scouring floors, the humiliation was far more controlled.

  “Come, Holy Spirit,” she prayed as she lit the last of the candles and turned to her paints, mixing them absently and desiring inspiration to strike. The deeply wooded hills she had come riding through offered possibilities; in their darkness and danger there was yet great beauty.

  But then she was mixing yellows and reds, and the form she began to put on the thin panel, almost in spite of herself, was Tildy’s face.

  She smiled when she realized what she was doing, and when she began to outline high cheekbones and large eyes.

  “You’re a part of the story now,” she said. “And a thing of beauty. Truly.”

  Something about Tildy’s features, here only hinted at, reminded her of Niccolo’s, and for a moment her hand faltered. The notion that she ought to paint him, to perhaps speed his way to her and call out to his heart, tempted her.

  But no, that was not the way. It was not Niccolo the Spirit wanted in this picture.

  She did not know when Bertoller entered, nor how long he had been standing there when she turned to wash her brush and noticed him.

  “Oh!”

  “I’m sorry to startle you,” he said. Without waiting for answer or invitation, he strode forward and peered closely at the painting. “I have seen that face before. One of my servant girls, is it not?”

  “One of the best,” Teresa said. “She has been my right arm below.”

  “You will be glad to know progress is being made in the courtyard,” Franz Bertoller said. “Soon we shall bring the dying forth for all to see, like a festering secret dragged into the light.”

  “It is not a flattering simile,” Teresa said.

  “Nor should it be. The dying are not a pleasant household.”

  “Yet they are men and women, and children, just like us.”

  He peered at her. “I am not suggesting otherwise. Forgive me—I think you took my comment in the wrong light. I meant only that what has been hidden will now be made known. No visitor to my house will be able to avoid them, and the plague will be seen for the immense threat that it is. I think, in a way, having them tucked beneath the castle has made it seem less a danger.”

  “There is danger of its own in that,” Teresa observed, “for it is a lie. Little good comes of tucking darkness away; it is like hiding a wound and hoping it will heal itself.”

  “Wounds sometimes do.”

  “Perhaps.” She picked up her brush again to resume work but found that she could not with him standing there. He was looking around the chapel now, taking in the burning candles and the neatness she had tried to bring to some of the chapel’s messier corners.

  “I have not seen so much life in this place in many years,” he said. “Not since I was a much younger man. But this is not the place I set aside for you. Are your quarters not to your liking?”

  “They are too grand for me,” Teresa said, “as I have already told you. I am grateful for the honour you pay me, my lord, but I would rather you allowed me to move down with the servants. Or at least to more humble apartments than what you have allotted me. I am not used to it.”

  “That is a pity,” he said, a forced lightness in his tone. He had moved closer to her, and she took a step back, suddenly aware of the small space the chapel afforded and of the fact that they were alone. Remembered danger recalled itself—the young nobleman in her chambers at the abbey, threatening her in manner and word.

  Why hadn’t Niccolo come?

  “Hardly a pity,” she said; “I need no more than a simple room and enjoy the life I live.”

  “Only because you know no better,” the lord said. “I confess I hoped to show you a better life here. You turned down my offer, many years ago, to bring you into the royal courts and make something great of your gifts. Those offers are not yet closed to you, though age will soon shut doors.”

  “The greatest painters are old men,” Teresa said.

  “Yes,” Bertoller said, amused, “old men. For an old woman there is no place to advance. But then, you are still far from being an old woman.”

  How he moved so fast and so close she didn’t know, but she found herself suddenly trapped between the easel and himself. “You are not yet old,” he said, his voice lower now, “and you are as beautiful now as you were a decade ago.”

  “Step aside, I beg you,” she said. She straightened her shoulders. “No, indeed, I command you. I am not your subject, Franz Bertoller; I tell you, step aside.”

  He raised his eyebrows, but to her immense relief, he did as she said. She removed herself from the trap and stood ready to flee out the door.

  But his manner had changed—the threat was gone. She almost thought she had imagined it. His eyes turned back to the canvas, and he said, “Though I might question your choice of subject, I see you have lost none of your skill—even none of your magic. I will leave you to your work, in whatever place you choose to practice it. I am eager to witness the results.”

  So, she had to admit, was she.

  Chapter 13

  Andrew came down early intending to go for a run through the neighbourhood. He needed to work off steam. Besides, all the trouble lately had him way off his routine. If he didn’t get himself back in shape, before he knew it he wouldn’t just be a normal suburban father dealing with suburban teen problems, he’d also be fat.

  He had moved back upstairs after Julie decided to move in with Miranda—neither of the girls felt it was right that he keep sleeping on the couch.

  He moved quietly through the house, not wanting to wake them up. He wasn’t expecting to find Julie already awake.

  She had positioned herself by the lamp in the living room, and she was on her knees, praying.

  At first he assumed she had heard him, and he was going to apologize, but then he realized she was more intently focused than he’d given her credit for. She didn’t know he was there.

&
nbsp; For some reason he stood there and watched her, overcoming his initial desire to interrupt and finding it quickly replaced by a fascination that surprised him and held him riveted to the floor.

  This was it right here. The heart of all the trouble. Of everything that had changed his life. Julie and her faith.

  Fifteen years ago, the faith had been badly misplaced.

  This time, he had to admit he didn’t think it was.

  The power that lived in Julie was real. There was no point in even trying to deny that. It had raised her from the dead. It had killed others in the cemetery. He had seen it blazing with his own eyes. And it had helped Miranda through April—even though his daughter was still doing things her own way, the encounter she’d had with April had broken through something that had not come back.

  So the question wasn’t whether Julie’s faith was a lie. This was real. The question had to be whether the object of her faith this time was good or not.

  And he still wasn’t sure he could answer that question.

  But standing here watching Julie in the lamplight, he knew with a hard knowing that it was good for her. That this place of faith was the right place for her to be—that she was home. That she was loved. That something was working in her he didn’t understand but had to honour.

  Quietly, he slipped away from the living room door and headed out into the cold to run. But what began as a jog, on the frosted sidewalk, soon slowed to a walk. Stars shone overhead, twinkling above the streetlights. He found himself staring up, pondering the sky, wondering about this world he lived in. Where it had come from. What it all meant. He blew out breath in the frosty air and thought about life and the air in his lungs. He wondered what a soul was and what his looked like, and Julie’s and Miranda’s. These women who were the most important thing in the world to him, and yet he barely knew them.

  He wondered if a lifetime would be enough to know them, or if they would always be strangers to a degree.

  Eventually his thoughts forced him to the other Presence, the fourth personality in the house. Julie’s God.

  The only one residing in his home whom he did not know at all.