Infinite Sacrifice (Infinite Series, Book 1)

by L. E. Waters

  He brings his hands up under his head, causing his elbow to rest slightly on my shoulder, and sighs. “I, on the other hand, feel like I am waiting for death among the dead.”

  His heaviness feels palpable as we watch the thin clouds drift by. I turn to study his face as he moves his hands nervously to his flat stomach, then leans over me and looks directly into my eyes for the first time. My stomach twists as I watch him reach out and pick up my braid. He runs his fingers up and down the entwined rope of hair. My heart begins to rise in my throat. He lifts the braid up to his nose and breathes it in. Then, just as quickly, he smiles, drops my braid, and falls back noisily to the ground. My heart slams back down to the pit of my stomach. I stare up at the waving wheat tops in silence, thinking of the strange event that occurred, surprised I was disappointed he didn’t try what I’d hoped he was going to. He pulls a shiny red apple from his robe and begins carving it with his folding knife. He offers me the first piece, and I take it, happy for the distraction.

  He begins again after a thick silence, “Do you believe in pledging yourself to something of extraordinary importance?”

  He slips a slice in his mouth on the blade of his knife.

  “Yes, I do.” I think of how I feel about Rowan and Oliver.

  “Do you believe that no matter what temptation might test you, one must stay true to a promise?” He hands me another slice, which I hold on to for the children. He is back to averting his eyes.

  I pause a moment, trying to come up with an honest answer. ”I believe everyone has a path and must use their heart as a compass.”

  He turns to me, smiling. “True, very true, Elizabeth.”

  He hops up but puts his warm hand down to help me. I call for the children, who come running at once with Mousie pouncing behind them. Simon carves up the rest of the apple while the children drool expectantly before he gives it to them. I decide to eat the last slice I’d been saving. Simon runs after Rowan, screaming in delight, grabs him up in one swift movement, and raises him to his shoulders. As we walk back up to the abbey in purple dusk, I wonder what his heart has told him.

  Chapter 9

  The next night, Simon is chopping wood for the fire while the children are collecting kindling.

  I hear Oliver scream, “Elizabeth!”

  My stomach drops at the sight of Simon vomiting beside the woodpile.

  God, please, not Simon.

  I dab off his face with the hem of my kirtle and walk him back inside. We have some fresh beds ready for incomers, and I lower him onto one. He waves his hand for me to leave him, but I ignore the request. I get him a cool rag for his forehead and place a bucket beside him. He lurches to the bucket a few times and empties his stomach completely.

  He’s burning up by the end of the hour, and I go to Emeline to see if she thinks we should make a cold bath for him. As Emeline is drawing the bath, Daniel comes and places leeches at all his pulse points. Remembering the two antidotes I have left, I run up to get one. I come back down to Daniel helping Simon out of his robe and turn away to give him privacy as he steps into the bath. He shakes and his teeth chatter in response to the cold, but his fever won’t break. His shivering gets so intense that the water sloshes out of the basin. Daniel dries him off and slips back on his robe. Simon looks so feeble walking back to his bed—aged decades within hours.

  “E-Elizabeth?” he chatters.

  “Yes?”

  “E-Elizabeth?”

  “Right here.”

  “S-stay with me.”

  I lie on his blanket with him and remember my vial. “Before you rest, swallow this, please.”

  “W-what is it?”

  “It is an antidote all the way from France. My husband gave me a few vials of his antidotes as he left and I want you to take it.”

  “I don’t w-want it.” He shoves my hand away.

  I don’t understand. “It can help you.”

  “If you have s-saved that when others n-needed it, th-then I sh-shouldn’t have it either.”

  I feel ashamed I had selfishly been holding onto these vials in case Oliver or I got sick and watched as others perished. He keeps shivering for hours. I try to keep cold rags on his head, but the fever is so high, they warm up too quickly. Daniel comes to check his buboes and sees he has developed an egg-sized one on his abdomen, above his groin, and a smaller one on his thigh. Daniel became a master at cauterizing without causing the reaction I usually got. But that didn’t seem to help Simon either. Every time I give him the water that he begged for, he brings it up minutes later, to only beg for more yet again. His lips crack severely from dehydration, and I see one of God’s tokens develop on his chest. I know he doesn’t have long. Malkyn comes to sing at her usual time, and I hold on to his shaking hand.

  “E-Elizabeth.”

  “Yes, I haven’t gone anywhere.”

  “W-will you let me have y-your braid?”

  I bend down and let him hold it in his hand.

  After feeling it for a moment, he says, “C-can I k-keep it with me?”

  I realize what he means and say, “Of course.”

  He reaches in his pocket, gets his knife, and tries to open it but can’t manage the skillful movement while his hand is trembling so much. I open it, cut part of the ribbon off, and give it to him. He takes the braid in one hand and cuts into the middle of it. I catch it before it untwines, making the hair above the cut spin out around my shoulders. I tie the piece of ribbon on the top to hold the braid, and he closes his pale hand around it.

  He dies around midnight, still clutching my braid.

  The Brothers come with their wagon to collect Simon for burial in their monastery’s graveyard. They treat his body with such care and place him in an ornately carved coffin. It is nice not to worry about his dignity in death or handing him over to Ulric’s apathetic care, but I can’t help thinking he would have been embarrassed by all this special treatment.

  Chapter 10

  I try to busy myself to keep my mind off Simon being gone, afraid that if I fall into the hole he left, I will never surface again.

  A nobleman in the midst of great delirium proves a good distraction.

  “I’m filthy! I’m filthy! This whole city’s crawling in excrement and disease!”

  I wipe his perfectly clean brow. Strangely enough, this man had come in cleaner than we’d ever seen a body.

  “You are not filthy at all. Actually it looks like you have scrubbed yourself raw.” I look at his extremely chapped and cracked hands.

  “I locked the house up and deprived myself of every comfort. Avoided all contact with any living creature. Subsisted in utter deprivation! Look at where it got me.”

  I remove the last vial I had left, giving them away the way Simon would have wanted. I empty the amber powder into a ladle of water and bring it to his purple lips to swallow. I stand up and throw the glass into the fire. He quickly falls into unconsciousness, but after three days, he improves.

  Upon opening his ice-blue eyes, he asks, “Am I dead?”

  I reply, “Does this look like heaven?”

  I sweep my hand across the sad scene of people coughing on heaps of rags.

  “Am I cured, then?” He whisks the hair from his widow’s peak back behind his ear.

  “I cannot say if you are cured, but your fever broke, and that is a good sign.”

  “It was all the cleaning I did. I know it weakened the disease.”

  Everyone has their own idea of what saved them.

  “Do you know what is happening out there?” He points to the street side of the abbey.

  “No, I have not been outside the abbey for months.”

  I start to spoon-feed him some soup.

  “It is terrible. I lost my whole fortune. So many people are dying, and they have no one to leave their property to. Half the houses in London are vacant, falling into ruin and neglect.” He takes the spoonful I have waiting and swallows rapidly to continue, “Neighbors are robbing neighbors, and gree
dy peasants are moving property lines with no one to contest. And that is nowhere near as bad as the problems due to the heriot.”

  I have never heard someone complain so soon after recovering before.

  He continues fuming about the death tax, “Normally one gives the king a horse in payment at a death, but there are so many dying, the horses are all running loose in the streets! It has completely ruined the market! All of my herds are worthless now! I cannot even acquire hay to feed them with the scarcity of labor.” He sits up. “Marriage has all but vanished! Society is crumbling. Even the great Edward the III has fled. Animals are dying in the streets and fields because there are no shepherds left to tend to them!” He starts wringing his hands. “I cannot go back! I cannot go back!”

  “If you have survived it, we have not seen one person yet that has suffered a relapse.”

  “It is not the plague I fear but the sounds of the dying and the deplorable state London is in!” He grabs my arm. “Do you know for three nights in a row a man down in Cheapside kept stumbling up and down the streets screaming for his family all night. The lack of sleep I got was probably the very thing that exposed me to the filth. I can still hear it: ‘Christiana! Oliver! Rowan!’—”

  I freeze and drop the spoon into the bowl. He is searching for them.

  “Coughing horribly all the while. It was enough to drive us all mad!”

  Their father must be sick. I get up while Fendel is still ranting and walk out back. Oliver comes up bringing me a bouquet of juniper berries before he runs up to bed. Can I let their father die alone? However, the thought of losing the only two people I have left scares me more than anything could. Nevertheless, he must be brought here, even if he wants them back.

  Emeline tells me she will keep her eye on the children, and I wrap the leather belt Simon wore around me, which holds everything necessary for delivering last rites. I walk down the lanes with lantern lit as a full moon rises. I can’t believe how much has changed. Half the houses have doors wide open, with sows sticking their pink faces out at my approach. Black flags wave from every door, pole, and window flapping down the row like the invading enemy has won. Someone opens a window and screams out in agony, startling me into a run.

  The children’s house looks abandoned, and I almost turn to leave when I hear a rasping cough come from within. The house is in the same condition I left it except that the animals have all gone, turning over the chairs and table in their flight. I walk back to the bedroom where I had found their mother and see a half-dead man in her place. He’s struggling to breathe between harsh, hacking sounds and violent spasms of endless coughing. There’s a thick red pool of blood on the dingy sheets around his head. The most dreaded form of plague. I’m already in danger simply by sharing the same air as him.

  I go to his side.

  “Water”—he coughs—“water.”

  I reach for the bucket by the bed and see stagnant water.

  “I will be right back.” I take the bucket to the well out back and pull up a fresh bucket. He thanks me after he has a few gulps but soon erupts in more coughing and blood spittle. There is a terrible gangrenous smell coming from inside him.

  “Oliver! Rowan! Christiana!” he moans.

  “The children are safe.”

  He stirs. “You have seen them?”

  “Yes, and they are free from plague, happy, and being cared for at the abbey.”

  He relaxes and whispers, “I searched everywhere for them.” He coughs again for minutes. “Tell them that I am sorry.”

  I nod and administer last rites. When I offer him the sacramental bread, he shakes his head, unable to swallow, and convulses again.

  He dies before dawn. Covering him with a shroud, I tuck a coin in his hand for burial. I take a black flag from a vacant house to signal Ulric. Instead of returning to the abbey, I walk down to the river to watch the sunrise. A cold breeze blows, and I pull my hands within the fluted sleeves of my cloak. The giant sun breaks the horizon with an ember glow, causing everything around me to burn red. Even the river shimmers crimson. Something catches my eye—objects drifting on the surface, breaking the reflection of the water in flashes. I bring my hand up to shield the glare, and I’m horrified to see dozens of naked, bloated, blue bodies floating down the Thames.

  I turn to walk home as someone screams out, shattering the silence of the city, “The Apocalypse is here!”

  He might just be right.

  Chapter 11

  I have a fever by the time I return to the abbey. Emeline makes sure I am comfortable.

  “Keep the children away from me.”

  She nods. By the middle of the night, the coughing begins. The other sick shush me as I cough uncontrollably. Feeling embarrassed of the terrible hacking, I pull myself up, walk out the back, and cough, hunched over in the entranceway. By morning, I’m coughing up blood. I’m so tired I begin to sleep through my coughing. When I open my eyes again, I’m shocked to see a familiar form kneeling on my makeshift bed.

  “Hadrian?”

  He reaches into his bag for something. “Lucky for you, I came when I did.”

  He holds his apple up by his mouth. I laugh weakly, thinking about how silly I must have looked to those dying with that apple up my nose, but end in a coughing fit that shakes my whole body.

  “Here, take this.” He holds out the green, sparkling vial.

  “You are going to waste that on me?”

  “Waste it? Do not be foolish, Elizabeth.”

  Daniel comes burning a bunch of juniper and rosemary over my head, and when Hadrian sees his Jewish hat, he barks, “Get away from her!”

  I put my hand up for him to stop as I cough up in my rag. He bends down and pours the vial in my mouth. As I swallow, it feels like I’m gulping down sand.

  “Water,” I croak.

  Emeline is right there to give me some. She looks distrustful of having Hadrian there.

  “What is a Jew doing in a house of God?” Hadrian demands.

  “Saving lives,” Emeline answers. “He is a surgeon.”

  “A barber surgeon is not the same as a surgeon. They cut hair and pull teeth, for Christ’s sake.”

  Emeline steps forward authoritatively in response to Hadrian’s cursing.

  “Daniel has been very helpful,” I try but cough yet again.

  “I see those children survived after all.” He settles back down.

  I nod thinking, with no help from you.

  “When you get better, we will take them back with us to Windsor. Your mother is sick with worry. Your place is with us.”

  I suddenly feel worried that I will survive. I don’t want to go anywhere. This is our home now. I ask Hadrian to go and fetch me clean rags and hand him the bloodied ones for cleaning. He holds them far away as he takes them outside.

  “Emeline!”

  She’s at my side. “Yes.”

  “You must promise me something very important.”

  “I will see if I can, after you tell me what it is.” She smiles a little smile.

  “Hadrian cannot take the children if something happens to me.”

  She agrees immediately. “I can promise that.”

  Hadrian is back now and hands me the clean rags.

  Within hours I’m struggling to breathe. Malkyn gives me my last rites as Hadrian sits next to me. Emeline and Daniel stand in the far background.

  “Tell the children that I love them,” I cough out. “Make sure they know their father was searching for them.”

  Malkyn promises.

  “He wanted them to know he was sorry.”

  I hear the cries of Rowan and Oliver coming from the chapel as they run to me, throwing their arms around me and wetting me with their tears. I feel warmth spread all throughout my body from their embrace. I let out one life-long breath and close my eyes.

  * = Not present in that life

  Epilogue

  “Come back,” Zachariah says out of the foggy distance, bringing me back to the c
hair on the beach. I look over to see Zachariah still holding my arm, the waves endlessly rolling in.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  I don’t say anything for some time.

  After some silence, Zachariah tries again. “I’m here to help you make sense of everything.”

  I finally release the breath I’ve held inside me since the viewing. “I don’t know what to say. This isn’t what I expected at all. I don’t even know where to start.”

  I suck in a heavy breath of ocean air, charged with salty ions created from so much forceful motion of water and wind.

  “First, we need a little change of scenery,” he says with a smile.

  Instantly, we’re sitting in the front seat of an old blue Chevy truck. The smell of damp beach blankets, salty fishing rods, and warm vinyl engulfs me.

  “Isn’t this better?” He pushes back on the benchseat next to me, the old leather crackling in protest.

  He leans over to check. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, but it’s getting harder to watch with each life.” The tears roll down my cheeks and I wipe my nose on my sleeve, only to see him offering a tissue.

  “Because you’re starting to care about people.”

  I nod. “Who are they in my life now?”

  “I can’t tell you that. You will have to see them progress as time goes on. It’s important to see each of their journeys as well.”

  “I think I can guess, though,” I say, remembering Ellie’s scar and Finn’s familiar slight gap in his teeth. I knew they’d been with me since the beginning.

  “Maybe this will make you feel better.”

  I open my eyes to torrential rain hitting the Chevy; a thunderstorm rumbles a safe distance away.