Song Hereafter

by Jean Gill

  Layla was watching her actions, accepting them as she accepted Allah’s will, without hope. The others in the room watched Layla and made no move to interfere.

  ‘He tended the wound himself,’ said Layla. ‘He thought it had healed well.’

  ‘He was right,’ said Estela, puzzled. She had to examine Malik further but for that she needed to get all these people out of the chamber. They would all sicken and die in this foul air!

  ‘Layla, I need to examine Malik if I am to find out what ails him and what healing is required.’

  ‘It is too late,’ Layla repeated, her eyes dull with despair. ‘He cannot speak the Shahada, the last prayer, but the Imam will say the Talqeen for him instead, and accompany his soul to paradise.’

  The Imam broke off his ululation. ‘If the great physician could not heal himself then Allah has already spoken.’ He looked at Layla. ‘It is time for the widow’s white veil.’ Malik stirred restlessly, made incoherent noises. His wife took his twitching hand and held it against her cheek as she knelt by the bed.

  Physician heal thyself thought Estela bitterly. But of course, the Imam would not know the bible verse. And she had to convince a Muslim leader that she could heal Malik. And that everybody really had to leave the room before she lost her temper!

  What would Malik have done? What would he have said? Our profession dates back to Galen, to Hippocrates, she remembered him saying. And she had quoted the words of Bernardus Carnotensis back to him, ‘We are dwarves on the shoulders of giants.’ Dwarf that she was, she must use those ancient giants.

  Heart racing, Estela put her medicine box on the bed and opened it. The precious herbs would impress nobody so she undid the ribbon and opened the roll of cloth to reveal a gleaming array of surgical instruments. That drew a gasp. She held Malik’s wrist, pursed her lips and studied the collection, a gift from her patient. Sighing, she let the wrist drop, picked up the biggest knife in one hand and tweezers in the other.

  The Imam had stopped his keening, the Lord be thanked, and the throng was silent as Estela spoke, waving her weapons aloft, carefully. The knife was very sharp.

  ‘Your Lord, Malik, walked in the footsteps of the great healers, Galen, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle,’ she drew breath then extended the list. The more, the better. ‘Al-Razi, Inb al-Haytham, Ahmad ibn Abi al-Ash’ath, Yahja Ibn Adi...’

  Maybe she was pushing her luck to name the author of The Benefits and Disadvantages of Coitus, and ways of practicing it but a physician’s mind was an eclectic bookshelf.

  She rushed on, ‘Trota and Hildegard von Bingen, Christian women whose work your Lord respected.’ Should she say ‘your king’ or some other title? So much she did not know about these people. ‘As he followed in the footsteps of these great healers, so your Lord named me his disciple, worthy of carrying on his work, applying his principles. I am his instrument.’ She let the light catch the scalpel blade. ‘And I say to you that my Lord Malik would have me use my skills, use what he taught me.’

  They were still listening. She had to find some way to clinch that belief in her as a physician. What had her mother taught her? When they were working in poor cottages with women whose superstitions made no sense. Work with their beliefs.

  ‘My Lord Malik said Allah was all-powerful and that if we did our best work as healers, Allah would still decide whether a man’s time had come or not. But if we did nothing, Allah would judge us for having stepped aside from the task given. This is a sick man and I must follow the calling Lord Malik showed me but I need your prayers too.’

  The silence was broken only by the sick man’s involuntary sounds. Estela looked at him. She would win this fight! The cloth in the medicine box caught her attention. Maybe...

  She put the shining tools down carefully beside the potions and pulled out the silk brocade. She held it up, showing the three circles, symmetrical designs; the signature in Arabic. Arabesques and interlaced points, a mystery that had never been solved but that would serve her now. ‘This is the mantle given me by my Lord Malik when he declared me worthy as a physician. See the mystic symbols of our profession, the signature?’ She gave a flourish and folded it neatly on top of the box, like a jongleur making the coloured balls disappear.

  She had her audience now, she could feel it. ‘I need a concoction of galingale and fennel in equal weights, with twice the amount of both nutmeg and feverfew, to diminish his fever and banish the bad humours. And I need your prayers, which should be offered in a holy place, without the distraction of human frailty present in this chamber. Layla?’ She asked gently.

  Layla looked at her husband, at the Imam, at Estela. She nodded, without hope. ‘Please do what you can. It is what he would have done for me.’ The man in the bed stirred and made a supreme effort to speak.

  It sounded like ‘Teborny,’ which Estela thought had something to do with his burial.

  Layla started weeping again, kissed him, said, ‘Nene, no, no,’ and stood up.

  ‘Myrrh is the only potion that will be needed,’ was the Imam’s parting shot but he stalked out from the chamber and the others followed.

  Layla gave one last look, said ‘I will send servants with water and soap. They will do your bidding.’ To everyone else, she said, ‘We will let Malik’s chosen physician do her work. And, meantime, we will let only prayers and positive thoughts enter our minds, as the Prophet said was meet in the presence of a sick or dying person: ‘for verily the Angels say Amen to whatever you say’. We will call on the angels.’

  Then Estela was left alone with her patient. What in God’s name was wrong with him and could she save him? Anything else was unthinkable and she set to work, washing her hands and freshening the room. Under her instructions, a manservant sponged Malik with a compress soaked in feverfew, while Estela paced the room, murmuring, ‘Cut, not deep, healed. Maybe no connection. Nine days later, fever, spasms. Difficulty talking. Not tertial or quartial fever but quotidian.’ If only he could talk to her. She had always relied on his hints and encouragement when she was making a diagnosis. And now he might as well be mute.

  Then it hit her. ‘Difficulty talking! Ask your mistress to send me Hippocrates from the library!’ she told the servant. ‘Quickly!’ And if she was right? Was there anything she could do about it?

  THE SERVANT WHO BROUGHT the man a flagon of wine looked at his travel cloak, at his swordbelt, anywhere but his face. The man was used to it, even enjoyed the effect he had on strangers. Truth to tell, he preferred those who knew him to be scared too. He deliberately adjusted the leather mask covering half his face, drawing the lad’s eyes to follow the gesture. The boy gulped and turned to leave. Where was the fun in that?

  ‘Your coin.’ The boy knew an order when he heard one and turned back to collect payment.

  ‘You want to look, don’t you? To see what’s behind the mask.’

  Wide-eyed like a rabbit before the kill. ‘No sir, I didn’t mean to be rude sir, I’m sorry sir.’

  The man suddenly lost interest. ‘Go,’ he told the boy, who didn’t wait for a change of mind.

  The wine was good. Rich and red, like blood. He swirled the liquid. The torchlight flamed in the reflections and he flinched, shut his eyes and took a deep draught. It was very good, worth coming all this way for. Unlike the annual duty of paying dues to the noble Comte de Barcelone and his royal wife. Each year there was some new name for taxes: rents, questas, toltas, forcias all meant more money lost from Montbrun to their Liege of Carcassonne, and from Raymond of Carcassonne to his Liege of Barcelone.

  Unlike the wine, duty never made travel a pleasure, but it left the domain of Montbrun in peace for another year. His domain now.

  The day had been frustrating. Finding Estela’s house had been easy enough. The famous commander Dragonetz los Pros and his harlot had been known throughout the city and the splendid new house on the Carrer de Montcada reeked of their ill-gotten wealth and status. Sometimes it was hard to believe that God was just. But with a
little help, God could indeed deliver justice. The man had helped in such matters before.

  He’d been disappointed to find Estela away from home but he’d left a message for her. If he hadn’t heard barking somewhere in the house – that infernal dog! – he could have got to the child and left a stronger message.

  ‘Who shall I say called?’ asked the sweet-faced girl at the door. She hadn’t minded when he chucked her under the chin. Had gazed impudently into both his eyes, regardless of what was hidden. Or attracted by it. There were girls like that.

  ‘Family,’ he said. ‘Tell your mistress family is looking for her. Has found her,’ he corrected with a smile. ‘And will be back.’

  The girl had curtseyed, with a pert smile that looked forward to his return. To be encouraged. He gave her a coin and a wink. He could still wink. The rage washed over him again and he turned on his heel, so the girl could not see what no mask could hide, burning, burning inside him.

  ‘Family,’ he repeated. And, of course, it was true.

  ESTELA PLACED A WARM poultice on Malik’s jaw and was rewarded by him shutting his eyes in relief. ‘Tetanos,’ she said to him. He tried to nod but grimaced. ‘Your neck hurts,’ she observed, without needing a reply.

  She sat on a stool by the bed with the relevant passage from Hippocrates open on her lap. With any other patient, she would have kept her thoughts to herself but this was no ordinary patient and if ever she’d needed a second opinion, this was the moment.

  ‘The patient cannot open his mouth, his eyes are wet with tears...’ Malik’s dark eyes were brimming but whether with relief or from sickness, who could say. Estela placed one hand on his arm. ‘We will conquer this,’ she told him. ‘We have to. Dragonetz’ damned conscience would require a pilgrimage of twenty years if we lost you and I have not enough years in my life to make amends.’ Did she imagine a smile in Malik’s eyes?

  ‘Concentrate,’ she said, more to herself than to him. ‘lower limbs jerk... quotidian fever... If there are spasms...’ her voice faltered but his eyes were hard on her. He knew. ‘...If there are spasms, the prognosis is fatal. All patients with tetanos die in four days.’

  She asked Layla. The spasms had started the previous day, and it was now nine days since the wound had let in contaminated air. The wound itself was clean and healed.

  Estela could not believe that a gash from rose thorns could lead to such an illness. ‘Gardening!’ she said aloud. ‘After all those years in battle!’

  Malik’s eyes clouded and she berated him. ‘No. You are not going to die from a bush attacking you! Not if I have anything to do with it! Not to mention the prayers of your very large family and opinionated Imam!’

  She chewed her lip. The floor was strewn with dried lavender and lady’s bedstraw, and now smelled like a place of healing. She’d managed to slip an infusion of the galingale medicine through his lips, and some fish broth to sustain him. She’d used the heat to relax his jaw. But she could feel the heat in his body. How to balance the humours... ice, she thought.

  Layla had promised her crushed ice in sherbet for the summer months, fetched from the ice-house. She would have her ice now and use it for more than a cooling drink.

  By the time the servant returned with a jar of ice, Estela had told Malik her proposed regimen. It was better than nothing. Prognosis fatal said the voice in her head and when Malik sipped the draught of poppy through his clenched teeth, she wasn’t sure whether he was hoping to live or to slip easy into death. She had three days to make his muscles relax. As well as the poppy internally, she would apply hot and cold treatments alternately to his jaw and legs, where the spasm occurred; and she would pray. With all her heart. If Malik survived she would do anything God wanted of her, anything.

  Time passed in a sleepless haze of medicine and broth. The servants took care of Malik’s base needs but Estela trusted nobody else with his treatment. If she nodded off by her patient’s bedside, she woke with a start to the gut-wrenching certainty that she’d lost him. Then she’d see the painful breathing and know the fight continued. She remembered that other fight, with poppy as the enemy, when she and Malik had saved Dragonetz from himself.

  Layla sat with her, watching with her. While Malik lay between life and death, Estela risked asking, ‘What does Teborny mean?’

  ‘May my grave precede yours,’ was the answer, ‘it is an Arab way of saying I love you, I cannot live without you.’ She rested her hand on that of her husband, as he lay in the poppy stupor. ‘But you see my dear, we have an impasse. Te’borny,’ she whispered. ‘Te’borny.’

  On the fourth day, Estela wondered whether Hippocrates was wrong. Not about the disease being fatal but about how long it took to die. What if she reduced the poppy dose and Malik died? She reduced the poppy dose.

  Malik did not die. His jaw unclenched and his eyes opened. But he was weak and unwell. Now he could perhaps talk, he was reluctant to do so. He had walked too far down the road to death for the return to be easy. And the poppy demanded a price, as they both knew.

  Estela talked to him as he lay there and learned how to carry on living.

  ‘I do not understand Dragonetz,’ she told him and went into detail.

  ‘I do not know how to be a good woman,’ she told him and went into detail.

  ‘I am glad you are alive,’ she told him and burst into tears.

  After what could have been years but was probably days or even hours, Malik said, ‘I am well enough now. It is good to lie here, to let go.’

  ‘To let go?’ she queried sharply.

  ‘Only of my responsibilities, dear friend, not to let go of this world, not yet. Not after all you have done to bring me back. Go home now. Dragonetz must find his own path. Inshallah.’

  Of course Malik would think a pilgrimage normal, Estela muttered to herself as she headed home. He spent years in an abbey! But all the same she stopped at a shrine on the way home. She placed a posy of wildflowers in the stone niche and knelt before the Madonna, who raised her hand in blessing. Maybe there had been a sign after all but Estela had yet to interpret what it meant.

  She did not seek words but let gratitude and humility flood her. Before she stood up, she asked Maria to watch over a wayfarer on the pilgrim’s route and to let him know how much he was loved. No conditions, no bargaining, just love.

  Musca and Nici were not surprised at being hugged. That was normal when Estela returned from wherever she went. This tendency towards salty damp face was new though. It tasted nice but was not to be encouraged; it was somehow upsetting.

  AT FIRST, ESTELA BERATED herself for imagining demons. She had not needed Dragonetz’ warning about Barcelone’s cut-throats and pickpockets to be alert as she walked the city streets, kicking up dust as the weather dried towards summer. She always had Gilles as bodyguard, even for the short distance between home and the Palace. Sometimes Nici loped alongside her. She saw no demons when Nici was at her side.

  Having accepted that her imagination was playing crazy tricks, Estela fought the impulse to run when a voice she knew spoke behind her as she hesitated between a roll of gold-shot green silk and the crimson. Gilles had grown bored and was gossiping with some he knew, within sight but not within earshot.

  ‘Take the gold and green, Roxie. It will bring out the colour in your eyes.’ The words were friendly enough, intimate even: too intimate and there was a sneer in the voice. Gilles was the only person in Barcelone who used her childhood name and this was not Gilles.

  She whirled around to face whoever it was and was thrown off balance for a moment by the leather mask, covering the right side of a man’s face. But then she knew for sure. His eyes, so like her own: their mother’s eyes.

  ‘Miquel,’ she said, striving for calm. Surely the whole market-place could hear her heart thumping! Her hand was on the hilt of her dagger, prepared to draw and to do whatever she must.

  There was no point pretending amity, so she told him. ‘I have given up any claim on Montbrun so I am no
threat to you.’ You don’t need to follow me, endanger my child... Musca, where was Musca? Panic flooded her. Maybe her brother had taken Musca, was here to tell her the worst. Be still, idiot. Musca is at home, with Prima, with Raoulf and with Nici.

  ‘Nici,’ she said aloud, remembering Miquel’s attack on her baby, and what it had cost him. She realised what lay behind the leather mask. ‘The burns left scars,’ she stated the obvious, adding automatically, ‘if there is any pain, you could still use a honey poultice, though it should have been done straight away for most effect...’ She tailed off, looked away from a gaze hard and dull as sling-shot. Her mother’s eyes had never carried such an expression, nor her own, she hoped.

  ‘The burns left scars,’ he mimicked, the open side of his face twisting, uglier than any burn scars Estela could imagine. ‘Spare me the false sympathy and the quackery. Your face might be prettier than mine but we are the same beneath the skin.’

  Gilles had rushed over, sword in his one hand, sensing the tension though he had not yet identified the stranger. Estela stopped him with a gesture.

  ‘The trusty henchman, Gilles Lack-Hand!’ They all knew that Miquel could easily best Gilles in a sword-fight if it came to that.

  But a dagger in the back would top two swords thought Estela. If it comes to that.

  Miquel raised his hands, empty of weapons. ‘We are both half-men. You have but one hand and I but half a face, so we are even.

  And my business with my lovely sister is just that: business. I am come to visit the Comte de Barcelone on behalf of my Liege of Carcassonne, to pay his dues to his Liege and I thought to bring news of our family to its disgraced daughter. Was that not kind of me?’

  Estela waited and he made her wait longer. Family news?

  Miquel continued, ‘I doubt you are au fait with news, here in exile. Our Lord, Raimon Trencavel of Carcassonne, has become fearful, torn between the Lords of Toulouse and of Barcelone. He owes allegiance to both because of his holdings and he hates Toulouse with a passion – God knows why – but is too weak to antagonize him. Barcelone he respects but,’ Miquel gestured to the bustling streets, ‘all this enterprise is good only for trade. I hear the Comte has armies that control the world, and the best commanders.’ More sarcasm.