LILAH
by
Gemma Liviero
Copyright © Gemma Liviero 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity in any form or by any means, or stored by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Florence Publishing
Email [email protected]
PO Box 547, Spring Hill , Queensland, 4004
Typeset & Graphic Art:
Talk Turkey Print & Design
The characters and their activities are fictional.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance
to actual persons is unintentional.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
PART TWO
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Lilah
My name is Lilah, and barely three months old, on an icy winter’s morning, I was swaddled in goatskin and left in a wicker basket on the front steps of the monastery in Güs. By account, my face was calm and I did not cry out for my mother’s milk, nor did I wear my face in fear. I seemed to know that I would come to no harm there. But of course there is no memory of any of this. My earliest memories were of tall gates, soft voices, warm firm hands holding mine, the smell of lemon trees in summer, and the burnt smell of lye soap in winter, which wafted down the hallways from the curing rooms where, I later learned, the sick went to die.
When I was old enough to understand the complicated world of adulthood, Sister Gertrude would tell me that it was not my fault that I was abandoned – that times had been hard in 1265, the year of my birth, with winters so dark there was barely enough light to call a day. My caul, left also in the basket, was a sign of harsh times ahead when work and crops were sparse, but Sister Gertrude did not know the truth of it. It represented something far more ominous.
When I eventually uncovered pieces from my past I would learn that my parents had fought bitterly about the decision. That my mother had been against the abandonment and father had to prise my tiny body from her arms. Finally, when she had calmed, he had assured her that it was the only way to save my soul. Though had he known that his decision would lead me on the darkest of journeys in self discovery, he may have forestalled the irony, preferring to lock me carefully away under his pious guidance. Many who have lived long enough to recall these times will say that nothing stops us from finding our true selves eventually.
In the monastery, I was fortunate to grow up in a loving world where God was my father, where the Cistercian nuns were my guardians, and where the poor were my companions. The smiles of those nuns in their crisp white linen and black aprons gave me joyous pause and I returned their kindness with loyalty and hard work. It was my earliest desire to be one of them, to wear their flowing garments that caught the breezes from their busy chores even when the summer air was still. Those early childhood years were happy ones. I did not want for food or warmth and it was a mission of the monastery to share what good fortune we had – meagre as it was – with many less fortunate.
At eight years, I was allowed to travel with some of the sisters collecting the infirm from the streets, delivering food baskets to the poorest of families where the children lived in leaking makeshift bark shelters; their frail bones covered in threadbare linen and their faces full of such hopelessness that even our visits were a yard short of comfort. For although we did what we could to suspend their hunger, there were too many to feed, and our visits of goodwill were temporary solutions to more long lasting desperate times. In a week the food we had given would be gone and they would be left to scrounge and beg once more, to scavenge in the forest, to dig in the hard, frozen ground with their hands to search for what was left of the summer roots to boil. And though it would never be openly discussed, we knew that the scrawny rats that hid in the dampest, darkest corners of the town were often their only form of sustenance to nourish them through the season.
Each year these winters came around quickly. The autumn leaves were more magnificent in colour the closer they came to dying; reds and golds littering the ground prettily to later form a blanket of slippery mulch buried beneath several feet of snow. The fragrant sunflower fields, which had been an ally to the homeless on warm nights, became white and desolate burial grounds for loved ones.
In many ways, I told myself at the time, I was one of the lucky ones.
Sister Arianne was my closest friend and confidante. She had joined the monastery by choice at the age of twelve, the year I turned six, to be groomed for the sisterhood. She taught me much about life for there was plenty she knew. She told me things she had learned from her older brothers, from watching her wealthy parents, and from gossiping servants in her former household. She explained the sometimes torturous world of marriage, where babies came from, and the horrible things that people did to one another through greed or jealousy or war. And it was Arianne who told me about the strigoi – stories of gypsy witches travelling around the country changing into beasts to feed on the innocent. Her brothers told of these blood-sucking vile anomalies who breathed in the souls of children for their youth and immortality. Stories passed down over centuries from one generation of story tellers to the next. This imagery stayed with me until eventually these nightmarish fantasies would be overshadowed by reality.
When I came into my womanhood, at the age of fourteen, life changed. But it wasn’t the physical changes to my body that altered my view of the world. It was my witchcraft. Life up to that point was clear and carefree. I was given the holy vows as a novice and my first white garment. It was something I had dreamt about, but looking back, it was a childish fantasy to believe that I was meant for the purity of the monastery.
The first time I performed my skill of healing was at the beginning of autumn after discovering a broken butterfly. One of its wings was bent back awkwardly and a small piece missing. I had picked it up to examine the colour of its one beautiful wing with blues and golds when I felt heat rising within my body. I watched its wing flutter and thicken before me. At first I thought I had imagined it – that the butterfly had not been badly injured at all. But then came many more of these incidents as my obsessive curiosity – perhaps to try and dispel the truth – took over all other thoughts and I sought every insect or creature that had the hint of impairment.
To heal sounded simpler than it actually was; it would take much strength from my own body. Heat would transfer from my hands and into the broken bodies of insects and birds. I can describe the initial sensation as drinking heated milk: a warmth in my chest and a feeling of lightness as the decay within the injury begins to break apart. I am at first one and the same as the patient.
The after-effects are a different story. It is as if someone has then poured boiling water down my throat, which slowly seeps into my lungs. The forces gradually grow in intensity, travelling down my arms and into my hands, conducting the health of my own body into the broken or sick one, and transferring the illness back into my own; sometimes leaving my own body to fight the illness over several days.
These effects did not deter me. I continued my experiments on fallen lifeless leaves also. They would un-crumble, their dried and twisted remains uncurling and changing into their former shades of green. Though it seemed cruel to do such healing, for my expe
riments would be left to die again.
I can improve what is there already, but I cannot replace limbs, nor can I reverse age. And a damaged soul is irreversible. It would be some time yet for me to recognise those afflicted with such condition.
I was grateful and prayed often; helpful with chores and never complaining about the hardness of my bed or the cold stone beneath my feet. The same could not be said for a few of the sisters there who could only equate disease with sin, and their own discomforts with disdain. One such sister, I will name later.
By the time I had discovered my skill, Arianne, showing great devotion to the work required, had become a favourite of the abbess. Arianne had grown attached to me and was inspired by my curiosity. Sometimes in the dead of night I would appear in her room like a ghost to wake her with a question. I would give her such a fright. She had her own demons to deal with of which I would later learn. My questions would be beyond my years, such as: ‘do the dead crumble away to become part of nature while they await a new soul?’ or ‘do we live for as long as God thinks we are useful?’ or ‘can one still be Christian if one does not practise Christianity?’
She said that I thought too deeply about things yet at the same time showed no fear, especially about my own mortality. She said my belief was stronger than many in the cloister; accepting the formalities of living as a prelude to far greater reward.
It wasn’t only Arianne who had noticed there was something different about me. The abbess, Sister Gertrude, had caught me once at my secret task. I was fearful at the time that this had killed my dreams of becoming an angel in white; but I don’t believe she understood what she was seeing as I bent over the body of a lifeless bird seconds before it took flight.
Sister Gertrude was very fond of me, and if she was convinced that I possessed such a craft, and given that no-one else saw, I have often wondered whether she would have overlooked these particular skills. When I turned to face her that day, there was a measure of concern in the expression of the woman who had made an irreversible vow to serve God. In any case, I had evoked some suspicion and she viewed me carefully after that with a gentle frown – a mixture of disappointment, obligation and love.
Gertrude had asked Arianne shortly afterwards whether I had developed any strange habits or perhaps dabbled in magic of the darker kind. The question had confused Arianne who was yet to learn of my practice. She assured the abbess that I was always under her watchful guidance and she would make sure I practised the ways of Christ and not of Satan. But even Arianne could not stop a child from dying. It was in fact she who encouraged the craft, which would ultimately seal my fate.
And it was after she returned from this conversation with her superior that I spilled out my soul, telling Arianne everything and warily showing her my experiments. Not once did she look upon me with repulsion but I had grown to such a stature in her eyes and she began following me everywhere. She then asked me to cure the unsightly bed sores of the children while they slept and although it seemed novel and harmless at first, in hindsight, I should probably have rejected her suggestions from the beginning.
This obsession seemed to transfer to Arianne. She made it her mission to find conditions for me to cure at night, and afterwards I would sleep away my voluntary ailments. I was too young to notice that in her personal quest, I had somehow been forsaken.
Chapter 2
Lilah
One night, a year after my self-discovered craft, I was woken in the early hours. Arianne was crying and I had never seen her so distraught.
‘Claude is dying. He will not see out the night,’ she whispered. ‘Please help him.’
As I intimated, I had already dabbled in the weakened hearts and tattered wings of birds, sometimes curing them as the life within had faded to nothing, as well as the sores, grazes and other surface wounds of children. And even more recently, I had extended my skill to cats and small forest animals in need of attention, some badly broken. But internal human conditions were quite a new idea altogether and I was both exhilarated and frightened at the thought. Still drowsy from sleep and unclear of her expectations, I did not question Arianne’s plea but simply nodded to follow her.
Claude had been brought in from the streets the previous winter with his two brothers. At six years he had been the elder of the three until his siblings had died through malnutrition and infections.
‘Please hurry,’ she pleaded, pulling me gently by my arm. ‘I fear it may already be too late but I must believe that you were sent here for a special purpose.’
I could hear Claude’s wheezes before we arrived at his bedside. Several others shared this room sleeping on mattresses not with straw, but with feathers donated by patrons of the Church. They were well cared for with warm broths and shelter; though the limestone walls could not shield the children from the extreme cold when there was no wood to burn.
Arianne held her candle above the sick child. His face was grey and speckled with red spots, some of which had turned to scabs. Weak lungs – caused from working with his father in the tanneries from the moment he could walk – had shortened his years. His father had died from this very ailment leaving the boys to fend for themselves on the streets. By then the damage had most likely been done to his underdeveloped body. Claude could not remember his mother who had abandoned her children years earlier.
Behind me, I could hear Arianne suppressing her sobs. She had grown fond of Claude. He was an intelligent boy and Arianne said that he was diligent and quick to learn. She felt he had been destined for an intellectual life of some kind; his ability to count and divide was well ahead of many of us.
His hand was cool to touch but his brow was hot and damp. He smiled when he saw us both, and muttered that he was seeing angels. I could not help but wonder at the sweetness of him for someone so young who had started his life with setbacks and loss. Claude was delirious just as I had seen others prior to their deaths.
With animals it had been more objective, more experimental, but with Claude it was too close and there were many doubts. What if I somehow made him worse? Would God punish me for this?
Arianne saw my hesitancy and touched my shoulder. ‘Please,’ she whispered.
‘Arianne…’ It did not seem right somehow. I was interfering with the decisions of God. But I had no time to consider any consequences. Arianne’s eyes were puffy. She had given this a lot of thought already and I had to trust her. After all, she could do no wrong in my eyes.
I placed my hands firmly on Claude’s shoulders and closed my eyes. Through my hands I could feel and hear the slow drumming of his heart, the sound drowning out everything else around me. I felt my warmth pass through his body until it reached his heart. Like a gentle wind this heat circulated through him clearing out the milky substances that consumed his insides. As I released the pressure and withdrew the heat, dark clouds seemed to follow my withdrawal, some of which passed through my hands and breaking apart until there was nothing. However, a small portion of this infection clung to my retreating forces – that part of my essence I had used for curing – leaving me with nausea and experiencing the pain that Claude had been enduring.
After I released Claude, his body convulsed and he screamed. Arianne pressed his now limp form against her breast briefly before laying him back down.
At first I thought I had killed him, and felt intense chest pain from the effort of curing, the lingering infection inside of me, and from the guilt of my deed. I was bone-weary and my legs were ready to give way beneath me. Tears filled my eyes. The thought of Arianne’s sadness was nearly as bad as my own.
I sat with closed eyes at the end of Claude’s bed and listened to Arianne fuss with his sheets. Then she startled me by kissing my cheek. ‘You are indeed an angel in human form,’ she said. ‘What I wouldn’t do to have your gift.’
Claude was sleeping and very much alive. His rasping breath was gone and he was healed. I put my ear close to his mouth so I could feel his breath.
We left Claud
e sleeping and as I turned to go I thought I heard him say thank you. But his chest had the steady rhythm of sleep.
I would like to say that this act of healing humans would be my first and last, and only the right of God to perform at will. But it wasn’t.
After Claude other curings were conducted secretly in the dead of night. Only Arianne had unlimited access to the infirmary, which allowed for our forbidden deeds. It became an obsession for both of us – to beat the illness before it wasted the child.
We cured two children in one night and a week later healed a nine-year old gypsy girl with rotting flesh disease. The sisters had been expecting her to die before the end of the week and had taken her in to make her last days comfortable and warm. When she skipped into the meals room at breakfast the next day one sister was said to have thrown herself on the ground and given praise. Others were pleased but more skeptical. Some believed the girl had put on her illness – creating wounds to her own flesh with hot irons – to be fed in the monastery. I was sad to hear that the abbess had told the girl to leave the following day. Arianne had argued with her senior only to be sent to prayer for several days and reflect on her outburst. But not before she had wrapped up large pieces of cheese and half a loaf of bread in a shawl of her own and passed these to the girl at the back entrance.
Sister Gertrude said, at an assembly in the chapel, that miracles were happening: that our Heavenly Father was indeed watching them. From the pews, I had stolen a look at Arianne who had her head bent in secret smile and when she winked at me I had to suppress a giggle. Gertrude looked directly at me then, just as quickly, turned elsewhere drawing the attention away from us. Something about that look had tightened my chest but noting Arianne’s beaming profile, her head titled towards the heavens, such feelings of dread dissipated.
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