03 - The Islands of the Blessed

by Nancy Farmer

  Someone groaned not far away. Jack and Thorgil ran from the chapel and looked into the cells they had believed empty. In the third one they found a woman lying in a heap of filthy straw. “Wulfie!” cried Thorgil.

  Jack could hardly recognize the large, healthy nun he’d seen before. She had wasted away, and her skin was gray with illness and dirt. “Water,” whispered Sister Wulfhilda. Thorgil grabbed her cider bag and dribbled a few drops into the woman’s mouth.

  Sister Wulfhilda coughed but managed to swallow. Thorgil gave her more. “We’ll build a fire and cook you something,” the shield maiden said. “All we have is dried fish, but if I can find a pot, I can make soup.”

  “Pots,” croaked the nun. “Storeroom.”

  Jack and Thorgil pulled away the filthy straw and substituted fresh from the other cells. Thorgil cut an apple into thin slices and placed it in Sister Wulfhilda’s hands. “Eat if you can. We’ll be back.”

  They found the storeroom. It was an impressive structure made of stone with a thick wooden door that took both Jack and Thorgil to drag it open. Pots, cups, and wooden trenchers were stored on shelves. Firewood was stacked by the door. High on a platform were bags of grain and beans, while beneath were chests full of cheese wheels, bacon, and smoked fish. Crocks of honey and oil as well as a good supply of candles were in a side chamber. Eggs were stored in buckets of fine ash. A trapdoor led down to a cellar where they found onions, turnips, and kegs of ale and cider.

  “Imagine!” cried Thorgil. “All this food and poor Wulfie was too weak to reach it.”

  “Where are the other nuns?” Jack said uneasily.

  “One step at a time,” the shield maiden said. “First, we have to get her strong enough to talk.” They built a fire in an outside hearth, and Thorgil fetched water from a stream running into the lake. “I’ll cook,” she said. “You feed Wulfie cider mixed with honey. Not too much at a time. After famines in the Northland, people had to eat slowly or they would die.”

  Jack sat beside the nun and felt her head. It was cool. If she had suffered from flying venom, she no longer had it. He moistened her lips with the sweetened cider. “Good,” Sister Wulfhilda whispered. She hadn’t touched her apple slices. They had fallen into the straw.

  Jack gave her cider until Thorgil returned with a cup of soup. She had boiled bacon in water to make a fragrant, salty broth with beads of oil on top. Sister Wulfhilda accepted this new dish with enthusiasm. “Goooood,” she crooned.

  Little by little they fed her, and little by little her strength returned, until she was able to speak. “Flying venom. All are dying or dead.”

  “All?” said Jack, fear quickening his heart.

  “Father Severus ordered the nuns into the monastery,” said Sister Wulfhilda. “He said we were doomed, but if we kept to ourselves, we could save the town from the disease. God would see our sacrifice and forgive our sins.” She had to rest a moment before continuing. “He made everyone fast.”

  “The idiot,” said Thorgil. “Everyone knows starvation is the brother of death.”

  “What about Ethne?” Jack said.

  “I wasn’t allowed to go near her. I tried.” Tears began to roll down Sister Wulfhilda’s cheeks. Gradually, the story came out. As Thorgil had guessed, the first case of flying venom had been Mrs. Tanner’s brother. He had fled to the monastery for help, and when Father Severus realized what a dangerous disease the man had, he sent monks to burn the tanner’s hovel down.

  First, the infirmary monks became ill and then the men who had contact with them. That was when the abbot brought the nuns in, for they had been exposed when they washed the monastery’s clothes. To add to everyone’s torment, fleas multiplied in the late-summer heat. It was much worse than the usual lice and fleas that pious people welcomed in order to offer their sufferings to Christ. Fleas infested everything, making everyone itch so much, their robes were spotted with blood from scratching.

  That was when Father Severus had ordered the fast. After three days one of the monks, Brother Sylvus, came to Sister Wulfhilda and told her to bring food from the storehouse.

  “Brother Sylvus is a good man,” said Sister Wulfhilda, “not like most of the scum in there. He’s genuinely kind, and it hurt him to see the weaker monks and nuns suffer. He let me out of the lych-gate and I ran here. I loaded up with as much as I could carry, but by the time I returned, the door had been locked.” The nun wept silently for a moment. “I went round and round, begging to be let in. No one answered. Day after day I tried. Then my head began to hurt.”

  Sister Wulfhilda had come down with the flying venom. She had no idea how long she had been ill. At first she’d had the strength to crawl to the stream to fill her pitcher. Later her thoughts became too confused.

  Jack saw the pitcher in a corner. It was dry, and a spider had spun a web over the mouth. “If you survived, others may have too,” he said. “How can we get inside?”

  “I don’t know,” said the nun, weeping. “Father Severus reinforced the doors and windows.”

  Jack and Thorgil walked around the monastery walls again. He attempted to call up fire again. He even—by now he was seething with anger—tried to create an earthquake, without results. It occurred to him, as he pushed fruitlessly at the bricks filling the windows, that the abbot really might have saved the town. Hundreds or thousands could have died if the flying venom had escaped. In that case, Father Severus was a hero. Or a saint. Could a man be a saint if he forced his companions to die with him?

  “Let’s eat some of that bacon soup,” said Thorgil. “The smell is driving me crazy.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Jack, halting in his tracks. He sniffed. The rich odor, even at this distance, made his stomach rumble. “That’s it, Thorgil! You’re brilliant!” He ran back to the nun’s cell and roused her from a half sleep. “Which is the easiest door to open?” he asked.

  “Why…” She struggled to remember. “The front and back gates are so heavy, it takes two men to move them. The garden door has been bricked up. The lych-gate, when it’s unbolted, could be handled by a child.”

  “Thank you,” said Jack, squeezing her hands. He ran back outside where Thorgil was wolfing down broth. “Find me a bigger pot from the storeroom,” he ordered. “Bring cups and spoons. I’m going to make a stew fit for the saints in Heaven.”

  Thorgil fetched water while Jack went into the cellar for turnips, onions, rosemary, thyme, and garlic. He cut up an entire flitch of bacon. He built a new fire right outside the lych-gate. Watching Pega had taught him many things about cooking, and now he made a stew that not only tasted wonderful, but also smelled good enough to raise the dead.

  “Wonderful!” said Thorgil, sniffing with appreciation. “I feel like diving into the pot.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jack said. “Now, let’s see if I can get St. Columba’s staff to behave.” He held it over the bubbling cauldron. Words came to him in a language he didn’t know, but he understood their meaning:

  Rise like the sun,

  Bring warmth to world.

  Bend like a branch,

  Heavy with harvest.

  Waken the woeful.

  Heal heart with hope.

  He repeated the charm three times, and the fragrant steam rose like a fountain and poured over the wall. For a few moments nothing happened. “Put your ear to the door,” Jack said. “Can you hear anything?”

  “I hear something dragging along the ground. And weeping,” Thorgil reported.

  “Someone’s alive.” Jack waited tensely. Presently, he heard feeble thumps against the door. A bolt was pulled back. After a long pause another bolt was slowly dragged out of its holder—ih ih ih. “If only we could help,” said Jack, but there was nothing either of them could do. After four bolts the wooden door began to move.

  “Stand aside. We’ll do the rest,” called Thorgil. But the person on the other side collapsed instead, and they had to push both him and the door back. The shield maiden managed to s
queeze through the gap and drag the monk out of the way. Jack knelt beside him and felt his head. It was cool. He no longer had the illness.

  “I’ve failed Father Severus,” the monk moaned. “I smelled the food. I was weak. I opened the door.”

  “I’m sure Father Severus can come up with a penance,” Jack said, irritated. The abbot had clearly meant his flock to starve to death, if they were lucky enough to survive the plague.

  “Oh, no. He’s already gone to God,” the monk said. “In the middle of the night Sister Brecca saw his soul drawn up to Heaven by golden cords.”

  “Good for him. Where are the other people?”

  “In the chapel,” the monk said, gazing with undisguised longing at the cup of stew Thorgil carried.

  She placed his hands around it. “You can have a little now and more later,” she instructed.

  Jack saw the graveyard clearly for the first time. Once it had been a grassy field with a few sad tombstones. Now it was filled with many, many fresh mounds. Some bore wooden crosses. Most didn’t. The extent of the destruction appalled him. Jack braced himself to encounter unburied bodies in the halls, but there weren’t any. The monks and nuns, feeble as they were, hadn’t neglected their comrades.

  The stench from the chapel hit him before he saw it. The sick must have fled here, he thought. It made sense, because none of them expected to survive, and what better place to die, for Christians, than at the heart of the church? Straw, now filthy and crawling with vermin, covered the floor. In the midst of this desolation, three emaciated monks and two nuns crouched around a body. Is that all who’ve survived? Jack thought. Seven out of a hundred?

  The body was laid out more carefully than he would have expected, given the weakness of the survivors. She was lying on a deep bed of straw covered by a sheepskin, and she wore a crown of flowers on her head. The Bard’s forget-me-nots. They had not withered in all this time.

  Beside Ethne, the great cat Pangur Ban stretched out with one paw on her breast.

  Chapter Forty-four

  THE RUNE OF PROTECTION

  “Oh, Ethne,” whispered Jack, shocked to his very core. He saw the door of her cell beyond, chopped open. Someone had used an axe to get inside. Unable to speak, Jack automatically felt the heads of the monks and nuns for fever, and they gazed at him from somewhere far away, as though they couldn’t believe he was real. None of them had a fever. They were going to recover. Next, he touched Ethne and recoiled. Her skin was hot!

  “She’s alive,” he cried. Pangur Ban lifted his head and keened his sorrow.

  “She is dying,” one of the nuns said.

  Thorgil came in, dragging the pot. She went back for the cups and passed them around to the survivors. She squatted next to Ethne and moistened her lips with sweetened cider.

  Ethne’s eyes opened. They were a beautiful blue, the blue of Elfland, and her face had the perfection of a white rose. Only the spots of red on her cheeks showed the fever that was raging within.

  “I see you managed to comb your hair,” the shield maiden said. “It’s a definite improvement.” Ethne wiped the cider from her lips with one delicate hand. “What’s the matter with you?” Thorgil demanded.

  “She has chosen to fast,” the nun said. She paused from wolfing down stew.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” said Thorgil. “I come all this way to save her, and she can’t be bothered to eat?”

  “She is giving her life for us,” said the first monk, who had managed to totter from the lych-gate. “It’s how Lady Ethne plans to gain a soul.”

  So it’s “Lady Ethne” now, Jack thought. No one at the monastery had been fooled into thinking she was a real nun. He felt angrier than he could ever remember. Father Severus’ foolishness had talked her into this mess, while the Bard had wanted her to go out into the world. Embracing life was the best way to gain a soul, the old man had said.

  Now he was dead and his last wish had been for them to rescue his daughter. Well, Jack would do it—by all the gods, he would!—even if he had to cram stew down Ethne’s ungrateful throat. St. Columba’s staff thrummed and the earth trembled. The monks and nuns grabbed one another. “It’s an earthquake!” one of them cried. Pangur Ban rose to his feet, came over to Jack, and sat down in front of him. The cat’s wise blue eyes observed him, and the boy suddenly felt ashamed.

  Never use anger to reach the life force, Jack heard in his mind, clear as clear. It always turns on you when you least expect it. And he remembered that Pangur Ban had been at the School of Bards, even though he’d failed the final exam.

  Jack sat down on the vermin-infested straw. All the survivors were eating as rapidly as they could, something that might actually kill them. He found he didn’t much care. “Please explain to me why Ethne has to die,” he said.

  The monk who’d opened the door was called Brother Sylvus—one of the good ones, according to Sister Wulfhilda. The nun who had said Ethne was dying was Sister Brecca. Between them, they unfolded the tale of what had happened after Sister Wulfhilda had been locked out.

  When the ex-felons realized that they were trapped, Brother Sylvus said, they mutinied. They armed themselves with knives and raided the treasure room. Then they took hostages and threatened to kill them if Father Severus didn’t give them the keys.

  “They underestimated him,” said Brother Sylvus. “Our abbot was like Samson, who brought down the temple upon the Philistines. He gathered the rest of us together and said that God would welcome us into Heaven if we died. Then he armed us and we fell upon the rebels. Our hearts were as strong as an army splendid with banners. Our blows were as the hooves of warhorses trampling a field. We slew them one and all.” Brother Sylvus’ face was filled with joy.

  “I saw angels fighting on either side of Father Severus,” added Sister Brecca, “and when he slew one of the enemy, a tiny imp came out of the man’s mouth.” The other monks and the nun nodded agreement.

  “What happened to the hostages?” asked Thorgil.

  “The evildoers cut their throats,” said Brother Sylvus. “Father Severus said that was unfortunate, but you have to remember that all who live are doomed to die. Holy martyrs are assured a place in Heaven. He said you could argue that the hostages were actually lucky.”

  Jack rubbed his eyes. A sense of unreality crept over him. He could almost be listening to a group of Northmen explaining why it was good to die in battle and go to Valhalla.

  “We had a grand funeral,” said Sister Brecca. “The martyrs were buried in consecrated ground, and the evildoers were buried next to the privies.”

  “I suppose they’ll go to Hel,” said Thorgil.

  “You can count on it,” Sister Brecca said with shining eyes.

  But unfortunately, things began to go downhill after the victory. The flying venom spread, and soon the dead outnumbered the living. Father Severus worked to the last, hearing the confessions of the dying and forgiving their sins. Then he, too, became a victim.

  “He chose to fall ill so he could show us the proper way to die,” insisted Sister Brecca. “He was always thoughtful. Always. That dear, kindhearted, saintly man.”

  Kindhearted except when he made Sister Wulfhilda carry a glowing piece of iron, Jack thought.

  “I saw his soul pulled up to Heaven with golden cords,” said the nun.

  Brother Sylvus took up the tale. “He gave me the keys, all except the one for Lady Ethne’s cell. He said that was not my concern.”

  So he meant her to die, thought Jack, with a return of his former rage.

  “Father Severus ordered me to protect the sanctity of the monastery. Gradually, a few of us began to recover. This was not due to any goodness on our part, of course, but to teach us humility. We were not yet worthy of glory.”

  And, of course, they were very, very hungry. They had water from a well, but no food—unless you counted the rats. Rats they had aplenty, great, swaggering, confident beasts that came within reach of your hand. “But we never cons
idered such unclean food,” Brother Sylvus said hastily.

  “Why didn’t you just make a quick trip to the storehouse?” Jack asked wearily.

  Oh, no. Never. They would never do that. Father Severus had told them with his dying breath that they were not to go outside until spring. Fortunately, Ethne came to their rescue. She called to them from her cell. She had food enough for all. Brother Sylvus didn’t have the key, but he still managed to open her door.

  Jack looked at the door, hacked and chopped in a perfect frenzy.

  All the packets of dried meat, cheeses, and Pega’s special scones that Thorgil had smuggled in had gone to feed this lot.

  And when these were gone, the monks and nuns had begun to starve again. Ethne had never touched a morsel. She had continued to live on the watery, gray gruel handed through her window, though toward the end she ate nothing at all.

  Once outside, she quickly fell ill. She sweetly refused any help, saying that it was her penance to gain a soul. She welcomed suffering. “She’s giving her life for us,” said Sister Brecca, reverently.

  “Excuse me!” shouted Thorgil. “Excuse me, but you’re all alive! She’s already saved you! Why does she have to die now?” Jack had rarely seen her in such a towering rage, and he’d seen a lot of rages.

  “She’s an elf,” said Brother Sylvus, cowering away from the shield maiden. “Father Severus explained it to us. Elves have to make their souls, and it isn’t easy for them. They have no regard for anyone except themselves. They can see a child drowning and never think to stretch out a hand. Lady Ethne did stretch out her hand.”

  “Which you bit, thank you very much,” snarled Thorgil. “I don’t know anything about Christian souls, but I know ingratitude when I see it. She’s proved her worthiness for whatever moldy afterlife you oath-breakers inhabit. I intend to see she inhabits this world.” She bent over Ethne and tried to pry open her mouth. The elf lady turned her head aside.

  “Thorgil, don’t,” said Jack.