The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  Now it is later, and I am filled with joy! How I wish de Chauliac was here, for he would rejoice with me! There has just come a message from Chaucer; you have escaped and must now be on your way here!

  Thirty-two

  Lany didn’t understand what Bruce was telling her. “You followed Janie from London?”

  “Well, not exactly. I tried, but I got bounced back to London by U.S. Customs in Boston. I should say we tried, because we were together at that time, as a couple, you know….”

  He paused and took a long breath. “We’d known each other years ago; I hate to tell you how many years. We were students. In the midst of all the chaos we went through in London, we got back together again. Things seemed to go faster with everything coming apart around us.”

  Quietly, Lany said, “They sure did.”

  “I’d been living in England for several years when the first outbreak happened, working for a medical institute there. I should have gone back to renew my passport and make sure all my citizenship issues were in order. But it was so…interesting in London, the way they handled the first outbreak—so different from the States. They put in place all these immigration restrictions and made a real effort to keep out anyone who didn’t have a clear right to be there. Not like the U.S.; anyone could get in, even after we had a grip on what DR SAM was all about. I’ll admit, I wanted to be in the thick of it all. But it cost me to do that.”

  “Too bad they sent you back.”

  “Yeah. Janie had her lawyer—Tom, ironically enough—work on getting me in, but the regulations were so strict after the first round that he couldn’t do it. I guess I should wonder now whether his heart was really in it. I’m guessing it wasn’t.”

  “Tom’s a very good man,” Lany said. “Fair and honest. I didn’t know him as a lawyer, but I can’t imagine him working against the interest of a client.”

  Bruce didn’t comment immediately. “I guess not,” he said finally. “But I wasn’t really his client; Janie was. He married her. You can’t work any more in someone’s interest than that. In any case, I had to go back; he kept working on getting me a visa. It was more than a year before it finally came through, but by then the second round was well under way. I managed to get on the last flight out of London to Boston. I didn’t know what was happening here; we weren’t getting any information in London. And she didn’t tell me about Tom, she just told me that she didn’t think it was going to work for us. If I’d known what was happening between the two of them, I probably wouldn’t have come at all.”

  He gestured toward his scarred face. “But we were already in the air when the controllers in Boston shut things down and deserted their posts.” He pointed at his scarred face. “The plane crashed, as you might already have guessed.”

  “This is so astonishing,” Lany said.

  He told her about the harrowing month they’d spent chasing down plague after Janie had inadvertently dug it up, how it had gotten loose, and how close it had come to working its way into the people of London. She listened in silence as he spoke of Caroline’s terrible illness and their race against time to save her with the ancient remedies they’d found in the cottage in Charing Cross, of her lost toes and numb fingers, and the terrible depression she’d suffered.

  “We burned the place as we fled,” he said. “We had no choice; someone would have taken over the cottage, without knowing anything at all about what was there. When she was well enough, we took Caroline down to Brighton on the English coast to recuperate; she had a rough time of it.”

  He spoke of the journal of a medieval physician, which Janie brought back to the United States.

  “She said she’d seen plague firsthand,” Lany said. “But she never told me the details—no wonder! What a story.”

  “I didn’t really do it justice, and there isn’t time now either. If her boy has been exposed to that bacterium a month ago because of one of our birds, we need to get out there.” He looked down in shame. “If that child dies because of something I did, I will not be able to live with it.”

  “You won’t have to worry about it,” Lany said. “She’ll kill you herself. She has a lot riding on that boy.”

  Now it was Bruce who didn’t understand.

  “Alex,” she said. “Short for…”

  It was a few seconds before Bruce made the connection to Alejandro. “My God. You can’t be serious.”

  “I am.”

  Bruce was very quiet while Lany related what had been told to her about how Alex had come about. When she’d finished, she told him about Tom’s accident, the amputation Janie had done, and the effect it had had on her.

  But he made no comment on Tom; instead, he focused on the boy. “So he’s not their child together…. He’s not anyone’s child, really.” Then, with uncertainty, “Not that it matters.”

  “I don’t think any mother ever loved or adored a child as much as she does that boy, myself included. And trust me when I tell you, I love my son. He’s all I have left, of three.”

  At that point, Bruce drifted off into a private place, where he stayed until he sorted out this thoughts. When he found his voice again, he said, “I wondered if it might be…something like that; I assumed it would have to be an implant of some sort, because she had a tubal ligation, and it would have been impossible for her to conceive in the old-fashioned way. But this—my God, now that I’ve heard it, I’m having a hard time believing it.”

  “No harder a time than I’m having with the story you told me.”

  It was a moment before he said, “We look back almost seven hundred years, through the eyes of someone who lived through a very difficult time, and now we’re living something like it. I can’t even imagine what history will say about us and what we did.”

  “We’re not done doing it yet.”

  He stood. “Well, then I think we should get to it.” He picked up the PDA. “The batteries are pretty low, but now I need you to send that message for me, and add a line. On the first line, send one word: factory. On the second line, send: B+L A2D.”

  Lany peered at him. “Factory I don’t get, but the rest—it’s easy: Bruce and Lany arrive in two days. If anyone intercepts it, they’ll figure it out, you know, as easily as I just did.”

  “So be it,” Bruce said. “If someone in the Coalition intercepts it, they’ll have to find us out there in that wilderness. They’re a little busy with the deltas right now, so go ahead, send it.”

  Lany did as he asked, then put the PDA down on the table and said, “We’ve been sending from this location—anyone with the right equipment might be able to track us.”

  He picked up the PDA, opened the back cover, and tapped it against his hand. The batteries dropped out. “Not anymore.”

  “He’s hot as a pistol,” Janie said to Tom. “His temperature is over a hundred and three.” She shook him gently; he didn’t respond.

  “Alex,” she said, shaking him harder.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. “What’s my temperature, Mom?”

  She almost didn’t want to tell him; he knew too much of what it meant, for which she had only herself to blame. “It’s one hundred and three,” she said finally.

  Alex thought about that for a moment, then said, “Uh-oh.”

  Kristina tapped quietly on the door frame before saying, “There’s another message. For you again.”

  Janie rose up and looked to her husband. To her unspoken question, he said, “Don’t worry. I’ll be here.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Her hand trembled as she clicked on the Open message button.

  B+LA2D

  She managed to close the program before she fainted.

  It took less than an hour to prepare for the journey west, for they’d made a habit of keeping the basic supplies in one place for easy assembly. “You never know when you’re going to have to leave on short notice,” Bruce told Lany. He gave her back her gun and brought out one of his own.

  And then he packe
d up a supply of the serum he’d harvested from the turkey vultures. He held the last vial up to show Lany; the liquid was a light emerald color.

  “Turkey vulture bile,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Turkey vulture bile,” he repeated. “They put out enzymes that can kill just about any bacterium they might come into contact with, and the enzymes can adapt to mutated viruses.”

  “Cut it out.”

  “It works, believe me. How do you think they’ve survived this long on what they eat? Carrion! Loaded with bacteria. This is the best hope we have if he picked up the bacterium from the eagle.”

  He gripped the vial tightly, as if it contained God’s blood. He held it closer for Lany to see. She regarded the green liquid with a look of amazement.

  “Let’s hope it will work.”

  “Let’s hope more that it won’t be needed.”

  Before they left, he surveyed what they’d packed. After a long sigh, he said, “There’s something else we should bring along. I wasn’t sure we’d have room, but I think we do.”

  She followed him through a maze of corridors and pathways until they came to a door with a small block-lettered sign:

  PROSTHETICS LABORATORY

  Inside, they walked through a forest of limbs, all hanging from straps on the ceiling and walls. Arms, legs, feet, hands…in every imaginable size and color.

  “At what point on the leg is Tom’s amputation?”

  “Just below the knee.”

  Bruce rummaged through a series of boxes, finally pulling out three different metal contraptions. “Cups,” he said. “They’ll have to construct the lower part from wood to be the right height, but these will make it more comfortable.”

  An hour later, four travelers left the Worcester Technical Institute on horseback, exiting through the same entrance they’d used to bring Lany’s horse in when they captured her. They took a circuitous route out of Worcester and went a bit south before heading west. They rode on the shoulder of a ruined highway that went straight west without straying off-route to the north or south.

  Early the next day, they crossed the bridge in a group of four. There was safety in numbers, because no one bothered them.

  There was a scrape on Janie’s forehead where she’d hit it on the arm of the chair as she slumped over in a faint. Kristina went to the icehouse and came back with a large chunk, which was pressed alternately on Janie’s own forehead and then her son’s. His fever had remained high all morning.

  All Janie could think as she pressed the ice pack on her head was This cannot be happening.

  She sat at Alex’s bedside, her mind racing back and forth between the uncanny message and her son’s distress.

  You’re not sick, you’re really not sick…. She willed this thought toward him, as if he could pick it up through some form of sickbed telepathy.

  It’s not really Bruce, it couldn’t be Bruce….

  Tom hovered in the doorway, balanced on his crutch.

  “He seems to be sleeping it off,” Janie said hopefully.

  “That’s good,” Tom said. “He needs to sleep; he’s got to be exhausted.” He paused a moment. “Do you want to tell me what happened this morning? Why you fainted? I know you’ve come through a real trial, but…”

  His voice trailed off, as if he didn’t know how to finish.

  She struggled for a moment over what she ought to tell him. It didn’t take long to decide that the simple truth would serve everyone best.

  “There was a message…” she began.

  “From Lany?”

  “No. From Bruce.”

  For the next several hours, as her son sank into a deep sleep, Janie did not move from the bedroom. Food was brought to her, but she barely touched it. Both Caroline and Kristina offered to take her place in the vigil, but she turned them away.

  It’s my fault, she told them. God is punishing me. My will be done, she said. I brought him here, and now God is going to take him away from me. It’s all my fault.

  No one could convince her otherwise. They all watched with terrible sadness as Janie bathed and cleaned her son. She checked every few minutes to see if the dark discolorations that were developing under his chin had grown any larger. She spooned broth into his mouth, only to see it dribble out again. He was pitifully small in the large bed and seemed to grow smaller with every minute. She tried now and then to wake him, but he would not come around to consciousness.

  There was nothing she could do; a sense of total helplessness overwhelmed her. Finally, in desperation, she rose up and rushed out of the room, brushing past everyone else without a word.

  She came back with Alejandro’s journal in her hands. With trembling hands she opened the fragile binding and set the book on her lap. As Alex moaned and writhed in pain, she read steadily, page after page, revealing to him the life he had once led, hoping it wasn’t too late. She didn’t know if he could hear her and, if he could, whether he would understand.

  Shortly before dawn, Alex came back to consciousness for a short while. As Janie clutched the shivering boy in her arms, he whispered into her ear, “Who is Kate?”

  She pulled back and smiled at him, hoping he would not see her tears. “Someone you will love very much someday.”

  May it please the—

  She stopped herself in mid-thought.

  No. God willing.

  Thirty-three

  While struggling over a line of poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer was interrupted by an unexpected knock on his door. He opened it to see one of his fellow pages, a young boy still in training, who held an envelope in his hand.

  “From your banker in London,” the boy said.

  Though he was confused because he had no such acquaintance, Chaucer took the letter with thanks. After the boy had gone, he examined the seal; it bore the crest of a well-known London banker.

  “Well,” he said as he tore it open, “perhaps I have an anonymous patron somewhere….”

  The letter contained no advice of good fortune but something Chaucer craved even more.

  My Dearest Geoffrey,

  No doubt you have wondered what has become of us; I will tell you what I can without revealing too much. We are assured that the man who will forward this letter to you is very discreet, as befits the stature of his customers, one of whom happens to reside in Paris.

  By now you must know that Sir John Chandos returned to Windsor without us, unless by some stroke of good fortune you have managed to get away from that vile place and are thus blessedly ignorant of its intrigues. The good knight caught up with us in a town called Eyam, well to the north, where we went in the hopes of confounding our pursuers. Benoit was with him; I cannot say what happened to him in this letter for fear that it might one day come back to haunt me, but I will say that the man suffered an appropriate fate.

  Chaucer skimmed through the details of the events that transpired in Eyam.

  We escaped from Chandos and traveled south for many days. On the Salisbury Plain we came upon a group of travelers, pilgrims en route to Canterbury. We had intended to continue all the way to Southampton, but one of the travelers advised us that we would not find easy passage there, as the ships were mostly given to cargo, and those seeking only personal passage might be looked upon with interest. Though we feared Dover, we did not think it wise to risk the southern ports and decided it would be best to travel with these people, realizing that we would not seem so notable in such a group. We did not tell them anything of our own history, except that we are father and daughter, returning to our home in France after staying a time with relatives in England. It is for the most part the truth, and no one seemed to feel a need to question us further.

  They were an affable and interesting group, among them a priest, a nun, and practitioners of many professions: miller, reeve, carpenter, and more. There were women as well, one of particular note, for she was large both in girth and in personality. She had a singular wit about her, and she could always pull a laugh out o
f me. Her opinions were many and strong, and she required little prompting to reveal them. Also in the company was an elderly knight, a gentle, quiet man, whose last desire in life was to say prayers in the holy cathedral for the soul of his daughter, who had just passed to God. Though he was kind and thoughtful, he seemed sometimes to be entirely devoid of spirit, and when asked of his daughter’s demise, he would withdraw into some terrible place of sadness, and none of us could bring him around again.

  Despite this one darkness, our journey was uneventful, perhaps even of a quality that one might call good! These people, with their joys and woes and opinions, made the long ride far more tolerable than it might otherwise have been. I shall always remember them and all the tales they told to entertain one another.

  I have never seen my father so spirited and happy as he was on that part of our journey. He has a lady love who awaits him in France, and he brightened a bit each day that we came closer to our passage. When we reached Canterbury, we parted ways with this jovial group, quite tearfully, and headed by ourselves to Dover.

  But before we left Canterbury, we sought out the grave of the lady Adele de Throxwood, who was my sister’s woman when she was of a younger age than I myself am now.

  Chaucer thought back to the day of the masque, when the shade of a woman had appeared to him in the woods of Charing Cross. Perhaps it was she.