‘Alas, my friend,’ said Palinor sweetly, ‘there is a flaw in your reasoning. I would say rather, if there is anything true, there must be truths. A very different statement from yours.’
‘Surely for a statement to be true, it must partake of the truth?’
‘I would not put it that way, Beneditx, and some of our difficulty in agreeing arises from the fact that we put things differently, and how you put things makes a considerable difference to how they seem.’
‘Well, tell me how you would put it,’ said Beneditx.
‘I would not think of truth as single, like a great ocean, but as multiple, like many rivers,’ said Palinor. ‘If I say to you that the bird singing on the branch there is a warbler, how would you discover the truth of my statement? The truth of a statement that names something could be confirmed in a book of names, or by asking a speaker of the language in which the name is uttered. If I tell you that my servant can swim, the truth of the statement can be discovered by throwing him in the river; if I tell you that in my country the sun sets at midnight on midsummer day you will need to travel there at the right season to confirm it, and so on. Each of these statements is true in a different way, and a different process of confirmation – or, of course, of refutation – is required for each, although the words “true” and “false” are used to describe the results of all the investigations. In the many different kinds of procedure needed to verify things, I would find evidence that truth is of many kinds: were there such a thing as “The Truth”, surely one way of investigating matters would always reveal it. You say that God is truth itself – could he be said to be truths?’
‘That doesn’t sound right at all,’ said Beneditx. ‘For God is one and unchanging.’
‘You see what a difference it makes when one uses a different way of speaking,’ said Palinor. ‘The existence of truths does not so easily lead one to say that there is one overriding truth for God to be. Of course, if you can lead me from truths to one truth, I will gladly follow you. All you will then need to do is to prove the identity of this one truth with the God of your belief.’
Like a chess player who has lost some small advantage in the opening game, Beneditx took the measure of his opponent, perceiving him formidable. Formidable, and unlike the opponents imagined in the books with which Beneditx was so familiar. There were warning words about the difficulty of dealing with men who did not accept the Scriptures in the opening words of the great Summa Contra Gentiles of St Thomas; Beneditx had quoted them to Severo. But Palinor was not like any kind of gentile envisaged by the saint, as far as Beneditx could see, except in the absence of shared ground on which to refute him. It was not so much that Beneditx really understood why Palinor should be so interested in the different means of checking the truth of things as to divide truth on account of them; he was not a practical man, and investigation was a word to him rather than a process. But he had seen at once that it would take some preparation and some deep consideration to embark on an attempt to prove that all truths were one. Instead, he decided to call a halt to the discussion for that day, and think further.
‘I am at your disposal,’ said Palinor, with ironic courtesy. ‘And, Beneditx, I am very bored.’ Seeing Beneditx’s expression, he added hastily, ‘Not in the least while we talk together, but in the long hours spent here without occupation. Would anyone mind, do you think, if I turned my attention to improving the flow of water through these gardens? Whose permission would I need?’
‘Severo’s, I imagine,’ said Beneditx. ‘I will mention it to him when I write; but I will take it upon myself to give permission meanwhile.’
Palinor thanked him and wandered off into the gardens, exploring the various streams and walking beside them against the direction of flow, learning their origin. As though to side with Beneditx against him they diverged from a single forceful spring that filled a deep basin on top of a tall cliff, overhanging the narrowing valley of the garden, and spilled in a waterfall of considerable force and height. The waterfall hit a tumble of rocks and was deflected into multiple streamlets. Though as a dialectician Palinor could make no use of such a flow, as an engineer he found it satisfactory, and he began to make drawings and seek from the gardeners to know where he might acquire clay pipes.
16
Josefa was anxious on being summoned to speak with the abbess and Sor Agnete. ‘Have I done something wrong, Mother?’ she asked.
‘Not at all, child,’ said the abbess. ‘It is just that we need to know something. When you have cleaned and tended the wolf-child, have you found blood?’
‘There is often blood, Mother,’ said Josefa. ‘She seems not to feel pain, and cuts and scrapes herself constantly.’
‘We meant monthly blood,’ said Sor Agnete.
Josefa looked startled. ‘She is too young,’ she said.
‘We thought so,’ said the abbess. ‘But it is hard to be sure.’
‘We must be practical,’ said Sor Agnete. ‘Have you washed her since she was brought back to us?’
‘No, Sor Agnete. I thought it best to let her rest. She loathes water, and she seemed frantic.’
‘I will come and help you bathe her when you think she has recovered a little,’ said Sor Agnete.
They found blood. They found injury also. But even if they had not found either, Josefa would have guessed that some outrage had befallen the child during her escape, because she seemed to be for the first time cowed, for the first time half willing to be handled, as though she had learned to divide detested humanity into friend and foe. Josefa even found her, the following evening, trying to crawl into the tatters of the ripped-off shift from the night before, pre-empting the struggle to dress her by dressing herself, though she could not manage it.
Then, before any softening in the child’s feelings could unfold, she fell ill. For the first time she left meat uneaten in her dish. Flies buzzed on the darkened meat, and crawled on the child’s face. The fuzz of soft dark curls that had regrown on her head was stuck to her scalp with sweat. The sisters carried her from the watchtower which had so long been her home, and put her in the infirmary. Sor Blancha made up some drink to bring her fever down, but she would not take it, and soon sores erupted all over her body. A row of blisters marked the edge of her lips, and she tossed and whimpered night and day, rubbing the sores till they oozed foul matter and bled. Josefa sat at her bedside, gently rubbing an ointment prepared by Sor Blancha into the ever increasing and spreading sores. Those on the child’s knees and elbows and on the knuckles of the first joints in her fingers broke through the callouses of thick skin that her manner of running had made, and she could not bear any covering except the lightest and smoothest sheet. She seemed not to feel the cold, but Sor Blancha was afraid to leave her uncovered when she was feverish, even though the infirmary was the only room in the convent kept warm at that time of year, so the best sheets were laid over her, and carried away stained. At length the child had no more strength even to cast off the sheet, or lift her head to drink, and Sor Blancha feared she was dying.
The abbess sent a message to Severo, telling him of the child’s danger, but not of her escape, for the two things were not necessarily connected, and she saw no need. Severo sent a doctor, choosing for the task a famous man from among the conversos, – Jews who had submitted to Christianity thirty years before to escape an outbreak of fervour in the Inquisition. Such a man was not supposed to practise medicine, but the sick have no scruples, only need of help, and the conversos were widely believed to have a better fund of knowledge and skill than Christian doctors, who too easily prescribed submission to the will of God. Severo told him nothing about his patient, only to ride to Sant Clara and save the child if he could.
The doctor was called Melchor Fortessa, and he was old enough to find the journey to Sant Clara a great matter. Nevertheless, a convert always lived in the island on sufferance, and could not afford to refuse a request from Severo, nor be dilatory in performing it. Melchor managed the long ride
over the mountains, and on arrival stayed in the guest-house only long enough to wash off the dust of the road before asking to see his patient.
A curious sight met him when he entered the infirmary. A young nun, coarse-featured and with large hands, was leaning over the bed. An expression of intense concentration and tenderness suffused her features, and she was in the act of applying an unguent. The patient, who was covered with terrible weeping sores, was lying in a strange position, very twisted, and was very wasted. He rolled up his sleeves and examined her, lifting her sunken eyelids, and attempting to straighten her limbs. Josefa and Sor Eulalie watched him.
‘This is a very severe spasm,’ he said. ‘How long has she been like this?’
‘She was bent before she was ill, sir,’ said Josefa. Her eyes were fixed on the doctor’s face. He was very old, with long wispy white hair and a flowing beard. His complexion was sallow and heavily wrinkled. But it seemed to Josefa that he was kindly, and she was burning with a painful despairing hope that he might bring help.
‘What has caused this rigidity, I wonder?’ he said, running his long blunt fingers along the thin bones of the child’s legs. ‘Was it from birth?’
‘We do not know,’ said Sor Eulalie. ‘But she was like that when she was consigned to our care.’
‘Was she also starving?’ he asked. ‘How does it come about in a house of charity that I am called to a patient and find her starving?’
‘We have great difficulty feeding her, sir,’ said Josefa. ‘She refuses all sustenance except raw meat. We have tried feeding her with everything we can think of, without success.’
‘Odd,’ he said. ‘I must ask you to retire while I examine her intimately.’ Once he was alone in the whitewashed, barrel-vaulted room, smelling of herbs and the sour odour of sickness, he picked up and smelt the jar of unguent and, bending over the child, again tried to draw out the crooked legs. Whimpering, she opened her eyes, and at the sight of him seemed terrified. He frowned. Everything about this case was curious.
Later he presented himself in front of the abbess. Sor Agnete, the abbess’s eyes and her second opinion, was there as always.
‘I confess I am baffled,’ he said. ‘I can offer some advice, but I am not sure of its efficacy, because I have never seen a case like this before. Can you tell me more about her?’
‘Only that she came to us in the state in which you see her. The cardinal has appointed himself her protector, and consigned her to us. We have done all that we can; Sor Blancha has made up herbal medicine . . .’
‘Can I speak to Sor Blancha?’ he asked.
Sor Blancha was summoned, and reported on exactly what was in her concoctions.
‘Good,’ said Melchor. ‘You have done well. But the source of the trouble is not the site of the trouble. You are treating a disorder of the skin, but it is not because the skin is disordered that she suffers these blemishes, but because she is malnourished. A way must be found to feed her properly, or she will die very quickly.’
‘We have tried everything except the most extreme force to persuade her,’ said Sor Blancha, ‘Nothing works.’
‘You will try milk sweetened with honey,’ he said, ‘very little honey. Then very gradually you will add meal to the milk until it is a thin gruel.’
‘We will try, sir, but I doubt of our success.’
‘I am going to give you something else to add to the milk,’ said Melchor. ‘It is a powerful elixir. Once you have insinuated a few drops of it she will be frantic for more of it, and I think she will drink.’
‘And afterwards?’ said Sor Blancha. ‘When the elixir is all gone? What then?’
Melchor reflected that the sister he was talking to had some experience of the world – she knew enough to fear to follow his advice. ‘Then she will be difficult for some days. There is a risk attached to giving elixirs. We must take this risk, because if she will not eat better food, she will die. Now let me advise you about the spasm. If she is not released from it, she will never walk, nor even sit normally for the rest of her life. Who nurses her?’
‘Several of us,’ said Sor Agnete. ‘But mostly Sor Blancha, and our novice Josefa.’
Melchor looked at Sor Blancha’s arthritic hands and said he would train the novice. Then he told Sor Blancha that she should coat her hands in hot wax several times a week and leave it to cool on her hands if she would delay the progress of the stiffness and pain in the finger joints. Then for the second time in a month the abbess was confronted by a layman demanding to speak to her alone. She had her chair put in the cloister garden once again, and let him have his audience.
‘It is hard for a doctor, lady, to advise on a case about which the truth is withheld from him,’ he said.
‘The child was rescued from extreme neglect,’ she said, ‘and it is our duty to gentle her and teach her if we can.’
‘You have had the care of her for some months?’
‘Yes.’
‘She has recently been violently assaulted,’ he said.
‘She escaped. She was brought back to us in the condition in which you find her.’
‘Was she walking and talking when she escaped?’
‘No. She could do neither.’
‘A child of that age?’
The abbess saw her chance. ‘Of what age do you estimate her to be?’ she asked.
‘Somewhere between eleven and thirteen,’ he said.
‘Surely not . . . She is not large enough . . .’ Collecting herself, she said unhappily, ‘The men who recaptured her taught me to fear that she might be pregnant. I had thought she was too young.’
‘It is not likely in one so ill-grown and malnourished,’ he said. ‘Nature usually protects the most grossly unfortunate.’
‘I would have said it was God who protects,’ she reproved him.
‘Neither God nor nature has been sufficiently vigilant here,’ he said. ‘I have never seen so damaged a child. But now we will rely on the diligence of your good novice, and we will have some improvement, I think. How much will depend on what native intelligence the girl has. She may be able to respond. We must hope so.’
It had seemed to Josefa that the child would surely die. It had seemed to Josefa to be the most terrible thing that could happen. The child was in many ways appalling, repellent. Looking after it was a chain of disgusting and unpleasant tasks, a dispiriting drudgery, which had fallen on her shoulders while her sisters serenely lived their calm and uplifting days. It is a burden to be hated; it is a burden to reach out towards a creature who always flinches, to speak to a creature who never answers, to use kindness that is repaid unvaryingly by snarls, bites and scratches, to keep company with a creature who is wretched, and constantly pining to flee away. Pity is soon beaten into the ground by such trials, even a rampant pity like Josefa’s. But the child needed her with a simple and absolute need, the need for food. While it would eat only meat, and only Josefa could prepare it, it needed her as a babe needs a mother’s breast. While it would eat only meat, the whole sisterhood needed Josefa, in order to keep their promise to the cardinal, and although she was modest, she saw the importance that she was given.
A strange emotion flows between the helpless and the helper. It binds like rods of iron. Josefa thought of nothing but Amara, day and night, and was hard put to it to pray, except for Amara. If she was at holy office or commanded on some other task for an hour, she was full of fear and a fierce physical need to return, like a woman who has put down a baby at the corner of the harvest field and who runs on her errand and runs back again all the way. Josefa had looked after her brothers, and they had needed her in a way, but they could walk, they could ask for what they wanted. That had been different. Now only she could truly understand the child’s diseased behaviour, because she had watched for longest, she had thought about her hardest. The other sisters, she could feel in her bones, though no such words were spoken, had given up, had concluded that the child was a hopeless case. The more dejected they became, the mo
re they turned their attention to other things, the more passionately Josefa drove herself. She would never give up. She would never desert her charge. The child would live, the child would walk, the child would speak, or she, Josefa, would die in the attempt to save her.
‘We shall have a broken spirit there, if she fails,’ said Sor Lucia to Sor Blancha, watching Josefa carrying water from the stove to the infirmary. But Josefa would not even think about failing. She would have called her feeling – a heady brew of fascination and revulsion – a struggle to devote herself to her duty; she might have called it hope, perhaps. She would not have called it love.
At least, after Melchor’s visit, they had instructions, could follow his instructions to the letter. Sor Blancha gave the child sips of milk, laced with three drops of the elixir he had left for her and sweetened with honey. While she was still feverish, they gave her water also. And Josefa’s special task, massaging the child’s legs and arms, was begun at once. Seven times a day he had prescribed, and Josefa marked the times by the canonical hours. While her sisters knelt and prayed and sang the ancient music with which God had been praised from time immemorial, Josefa dipped her hands in lamp oil and rubbed Amara’s limbs. First she straightened a leg as far as it would go, and then gently pummelling with her fingertips, she worked on the muscle to loosen it further. As she worked she talked and sang softly. First one leg, then the other, then the arms, then the hands, working the thumb across the palm, touching its tip to the tip of the little finger, making each finger move independently of the others.
Whatever the elixir was, the child became frantic for it. Eagerly she would drink the milk in which it was given to her, even consenting to suck it from the rim of the dish in the likeness of human drinking when she was too weak to raise herself on all fours and lap at it, as she had always done before. In her eagerness she would reach out her hands for the dish and draw it towards her mouth, so that she was holding it in human fashion and raising it to her lips. It seemed she could never have enough of it, and though she spat and whimpered at first when a little meal was added to the milk, she still drank it, and licked round the dish when she had finished it. Greatly daring, Josefa made a mash of vegetables, cooked so soft they were almost liquid, and added to that three drops from Melchor’s bottle, and Amara ate it.
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