The Blessed

by Lisa T. Bergren

  She stepped forward. “Gianni, Vito, Tess, Anette, you four come with me. We shall go about our God’s business, not Lord Amidei’s.” She eyed the man down the hall. “Lord Devenue, prepare yourself. We aim to enter your quarters and not leave until you are free. God has sent us here to heal you. Do you believe?”

  “I . . . I wish to.”

  Daria took strides forward, galvanized now with the enemy’s line so near. “Cease your wishing, m’lord. You must delve within you, deep within, like a drowning man searching his lungs for but one more half breath.” She walked onward, until Lord Devenue was forced to take a step backward. “Lord Devenue, I must hear it from your own lips.”

  He retreated until his back was against the stone bricks.

  Daria paused before him. He stared downward.

  Slowly, gently, she raised her hands so that he could see them in his line of vision and continued until one hand was on either side of his misshapen head.

  Lord Devenue gasped at the feel of her hands upon his head, half in fear at the sensation of touch, half in desperate grief that a lady dared to touch his deformities. His slow sigh made Daria’s eyes well with tears. Such sorrow, such loss he had suffered. Holding his head, closing her eyes, she could sense the dearth within him, the wild, yawning chasm and the masses, dark and throbbing within him. She panted, connecting with him, knowing his illness from the inside as if she could see it, reaching out to silence the life within him.

  “M’lady?” he asked, breaking her reverie.

  Daria opened her eyes, tears streaming down her face now, and looked him in the eye. “Oh, m’lord. I am so sorry. So sorry for your pain. Your grief. I know it now. I feel it.”

  Lord Devenue slowly reached up his hands and covered her own, bringing them down to cover his chest in an oddly intimate moment that neither of them could stop. Tears slid down his face as well, such a handsome face beneath the odd bulges that deformed his forehead and skull. But in his eyes, although tears flowed, there was a spark of something else.

  Daria smiled through her tears. “You know? You know now. I am here to help, m’lord, only help. God himself has sent me, us, to do his work within you. You are chosen. You are blessed. You shall be whole again. Healed.”

  Lord Devenue’s wide lips split into a slow grin and he laughed silently. “Yes. Well I know it. While the dark lord dared to make an appearance, so did our Lord’s angels. They are behind you still, Lady Daria. Behind you all. I believe. I believe.”

  Daria turned with Gianni, Anette, Vito, and Tessa, and watched as rays of light, as if from a quickly receding sun, slid up the floors and walls and out the window.

  Daria wiped her cheeks and turned back to Lord Devenue. “Countess Anette’s men guard our walls. Our people are in unceasing prayer. God’s own angels are here to keep out those of the dark. Let us be about our Lord’s business without further failure or hesitation.”

  “THEY grow stronger,” Amidei growled. He leaned against the cave’s walls and stared out through the tree branches that shielded their location but gave them a view of Lord Devenue’s mansion, alight from every window. “I merely frightened her for a moment. But what I sense now . . . it is as if my action worked in their favor more than our own, master.”

  “Fool. For every move we make upon the Gifted, our enemy shall make a countermove. They are precious to him, these Gifted. He obviously intends to use them for something we must stop, at all costs.”

  “I have tried everything I can think of. Used everything you have taught me, master.”

  “Nay. Not everything.”

  His master’s deep voice slipped into Abramo’s ears, as if more liquid than sound, entering his head, his neck, his heart, warming all as it went. He closed his eyes, relishing the moment of communion, infiltration, oneness with his master. “Yes, yes,” Abramo moaned. “I had wondered . . . considered . . . now I know.” He opened his eyes and stared down at the red tiles of Devenue’s roof. “She shall heal the sad, decrepit shell of a man. And then I shall take one of them. Tit for tat. It is only just.”

  The master laughed behind him, his laughter resonating in Abramo’s own chest. “Yes, my good and faithful servant. It is only just.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “IT is well with you that Countess Anette is present?” Daria asked. The countess hovered near the door, as if ready to flee, as Lord Devenue lay back upon his bed, following Daria’s instructions.

  “M’lady, if you are indeed about to heal me, no one more deserves to be present.” His tone was intimate, his heart in his throat, but his focus was on Anette more than Daria. “The countess lost as much through my illness as I.”

  Tears threatened again as Daria looked from one to the other. So they both had truly known love once. Could it be again? What had Lord Devenue done to make Anette stay away? Could that, too, be healed? One glance into the countess’s wide, blue eyes and the hope therein, and Daria knew that that rift, too, could be bridged.

  Lord Devenue sat back, sinking into new feather-filled pillows covered in new linens. He smelled like a new babe, so fresh was his bath. He had even allowed Agata to cut his long, brown, unkempt curls, bringing them back to shoulder length, as was the current style, and trim his beard into something manageable.

  Daria stood beside him, hands knit together, and stared at him. “The cancer. Do you believe it to be anywhere else in your body?”

  Lord Devenue hesitated for a moment. “Of late, the pain has resonated here, in my chest,” he said, gesturing toward his sternum, “and along my arms. But there is no deformity as one can see atop my head.”

  “You must remove your shirt,” Daria said.

  He sat up and did as she bid, revealing a thin but well-formed chest, almost entirely devoid of hair. She glanced at Gianni, wondering if he thought it improper, this view of a man’s naked chest, but then looked away before he could meet her gaze. Thankfully, Lord Devenue’s chest was devoid of any errant bulges.

  But Daria knew that the cancer could dive deep, deep within bones and organs, destroying from within like the devil’s best work. She had seen horrendous cases, as a child, alongside her mother . . . cancer like a weed among a dung heap, eating from within and then exploding outward, taking bone, muscle, tendon, anything it could within its wild, hungry wake.

  “Forgive me, m’lord, but I must lay my hands upon you.”

  “There have been far worse things done to me, m’lady,” he said, eyeing Anette with a grin. She could see that the man had once been skilled in the ways of courtly endeavors. Lord Devenue glanced to Gianni and his grin faded. He closed his eyes and leaned back. “Your love is plainly in the room with us, as is my own, Lady Daria. Be about your work, not as a woman, but as a healer.”

  “So be it,” she murmured. She leaned down and again covered his head, feeling the angry heat that resonated there. She covered every inch of his head with her fingertips, then his neck, then his shoulders and arms. Finally his chest. Briefly, she hovered her hands over his legs, a mere inch from his leggings, but sensed nothing there. “Turn over, please,” she instructed. Slowly, methodically, she moved her hands down his spine, out each rib, then lightly down his legs.

  “You may rise, Lord Devenue, and turn.”

  He did so, and his expression was serene. “Give me thy worst,” he said, staring into her eyes.

  Daria hesitated but a moment. “M’lord, the cancer is deep within you. I can feel it within your chest, several ribs, even as far as your forearms. Moreover, I feel it within your belly. It is why you are distended, even after months of self-starvation.”

  Lord Devenue paused, his eyes clouding. “But you believe you can cure me? I shall still be healed?”

  Daria nodded once.

  “Then be about it. I wish not to tarry one moment longer in the realm of the dying when I have living yet to do.” He reached out a hand to Anette, and she stepped across the room, taking his hand in her own, and then sank to the floor, weeping.

  “
Do not cry, my love,” Lord Devenue said.

  “She cries out of relief more than fear,” Tessa said, from the corner of the room. “Can you not feel it, m’lord?”

  “Yes, yes, I suppose I might,” he said, in wonder.

  Daria placed her hands atop Lord Devenue’s head and closed her eyes. Deep in the mansion, she could feel the prayers of Father Piero and the others like a warm blanket, wrapping around their shoulders. Beneath her hands, she could feel Lord Devenue’s heartbeat, longing to be set free, grow stronger, flourish. She smiled and opened her eyes.

  “Countess Anette?”

  “Yes?” The woman raised her head and looked to Daria.

  “Please, dry your tears. Lord Devenue is about to be restored to you. I need one thing of you . . . to sing. Sing of our Lord on high. Sing of the Christ. Sing of light. Fill this room with a voice that you, yourself, have never heard before. Allow God to work within you and be present here, from within. Can you do that for us?”

  Anette nodded tentatively and rose, hope alive in her eyes.

  Daria turned to Gianni, Vito, and Tessa. “You three, please pray, incessantly. You knights I trust will be on guard, but even in such a state, the Lord on High shall hear your prayers for Lord Devenue. Every word out of my mouth, please echo silently, as if you were speaking to the Christ, here in the room. You understand?”

  The men and child all nodded as one.

  She turned back to Lord Devenue. “Before we begin, Lord Devenue. Before you know life again, a life purchased by your Lord God, to be celebrated and praised always, I shall have your Christian name.”

  He smiled. “It has been some time since I have heard it uttered by another,” he said in little more than a whisper. “It is Dimitri. I am Dimitri Marciano Devenue.”

  “I am most pleased to be of your acquaintance,” Daria said with a nod. “Let us now go about restoring you, Dimitri, once and forever.”

  DARIA had never experienced anything like it. The more she dropped into the cascade of prayer, the more she could feel the Spirit draw near. Anette’s voice, so high, so sweet, pulled her inward, closer to Dimitri. In her mind, she could see the depths of the cancer, wonder that he still lived at all. It was so vast, so strong . . . but in prayer, lost in Anette’s song of praise to the God on high, she began to see past the cancer, past the degradation and dismemberment to what Dimitri’s body would look like whole.

  She prayed that God would begin his healing work now, cutting out each limb of the tumors, eviscerating them open, digging out the poison, capturing it, pulling it from the man’s body, and knitting together his bones and muscles and sinew where there would be vast holes. Anette’s voice came down low, and then slowly, steadily edged into the upper reaches of a perfect pitch that gave Daria chills up and down her arms as she worked.

  Then suddenly, Anette stopped.

  Daria opened her eyes and saw what had given the countess pause. The angels . . . at first it was as if a line of candles was casting a warm glow about the room. Eventually they took form, and Daria could see them as well as the others. Tessa stood in the corner of the room, eyes wide and tears running down her face.

  They were taller and broader than Gianni, so brilliant in the clarity of their white that Daria could barely stand gazing upon them. At each window, an angel stood on guard, looking out into the dark night. They were safe, so safe in this room, even with forces of evil just steps away. Because God’s own were here to protect them.

  “Daria,” Gianni said in a low whisper, eyes alight in awe.

  “I see them, Gianni. Vito?”

  “I see them, too, m’lady. ’Tis a pity the priest isn’t here.”

  Daria smiled. “Oh, he knows that God’s warriors are here, one and all.”

  Those angels on the inner circle, five in all, stood between and about Lord Devenue’s bed. One looked to Daria, his face a marble masterpiece of frightful, fearsome beauty. She could barely tear her eyes from him, but he gestured forward, to Dimitri, wanting her to complete her work. Daria glanced to the others. They, too, stared at her and down to Lord Devenue, faces alive with anticipation.

  “Lord Devenue . . .”

  “If I didn’t believe before, I most certainly do now.”

  “If you didn’t believe before, this would not be transpiring.” She closed her eyes again, calling upon the heavenly hosts, upon the Holy Spirit, to aid her in her cause. Her hands traced the mammoth tumor to the side of Lord Devenue’s head, praying that God would take it from him, destroy it, bit by bit by bit . . .

  Anette gasped and again, Daria opened her eyes. Dimitri was unconscious, but beneath her hands, it was as if her fingers were of a stone from the fire, and the tumor butter melting at her touch. She leaned closer to the man and could feel an angel on either side of her, leaning in, watching, almost as wondrous as she at what was transpiring. Daria pressed down on the apex of the largest portion of the tumor, and within minutes, it was flattened, Dimitri’s skull again in proper proportion. She reached for the fingers of the tumors, slowly flattening each tendril, as if she were a potter and Dimitri’s skull mere clay.

  Anette laughed then, watching in wonder, crying incessantly. She tried to sing, but the tears caught in her throat. That was when they heard it. Heavenly realms picking up her note and carrying it to such heights that Daria thought it might kill her to listen to such perfect, majestic beauty. She prayed for several minutes over Dimitri’s head, asking the Lord to eradicate it of illness, to cleanse him, to knit him back together, healthy and whole.

  Then she moved to his torso and hovered over the areas that radiated angry heat, as if defying her presence, or the Lord’s presence. It was as if the cancer wanted to stay, like an angry lion defending his dead prey as tomorrow’s sustenance. But she stood her ground, leaning harder into the tumors there, sensing their exact dimensions again, as she had on Dimitri’s head. She stood there and felt heat move from her fingertips, countering and then surpassing the cancer’s heat until it succumbed and receded, slowly, ever so slowly.

  Daria searched Dimitri’s chest for any further sign of the illness, but could find no more. Could it be so simple, so quick? She opened her eyes with a smile of gratitude on her lips and gazed in wonder at the angels within Dimitri’s room. But they were already disappearing, becoming a wave of warm light again until nothing was left but the flickering candles at each window.

  She rose and walked after them as if she could capture them, contain them until she had enough of looking upon their holy visage. Their exit left her feeling breathless. But they were gone.

  “I was not the only one who just witnessed that,” Vito said flatly, hand on chest, face pale.

  “Nay,” Gianni said. “We all saw it. The Lord’s own were here. Here in this room with us.”

  “Daria,” Anette said in little more than a whisper.

  Daria turned and looked back to the bed.

  “They were here as witnesses,” Anette said, stroking Lord Devenue’s head and face. He still slept, but his head was once more in perfect proportion. The light of the Holy Spirit shone through Anette’s eyes. “They were here to witness the miracle of healing. And sing of it in the heavens. Can you hear it, m’lady? Can you hear it?”

  And in the distance, as if the tiniest sound at the threshold of human hearing, Daria could still hear the strains of a heavenly chorus.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Avignon

  “CARDINAL, Cardinal,” the man said urgently, shaking Cardinal Boeri awake.

  He sat up, head in hand. “What? What is it?”

  “Your slave, Cardinal. He is mad, drawing with his own blood upon the walls! He screams as if bearing a demon. We fear he’ll break his wrists, the way he pulls at his irons!”

  Cardinal Boeri rose and hurriedly pulled on a robe. Bishop di Mino came into the room, already dressed, and met his gaze with equal concern, having overheard the whole conversation. Together, the men left the cardinal’s guest quarters and hurried down to the
stables, where Hasani was being held.

  It was not screaming that met their ears but the deep, aching tones of grief. The big, black man sat in a corner, his robe torn as the men of old used to do in mourning, rocking back and forth, weeping. Cardinal Boeri ventured inward, shaking off the bishop’s warning hand, raising his lantern high to see the walls, strewn with blood.

  “I . . . I know this place.” The Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman aqueduct that spanned the sprawling Gardon. It had once aided the Romans in bringing water to the city of Nimes, and in recent times it had been converted to a bridge.

  His eyes scanned the other figures in the drawing. Even clumsily drawn in blood with the end of a stick, he could easily make out Daria d’Angelo, Gianni de Capezzana, the priest, and others in the company of the Gifted. He did not know two men and a woman beside them, but they looked oddly familiar. Who were they? Who—

  Cardinal Boeri’s eyes stopped at the figure on the end. This was a knight he knew. He had seen him more than once in the company of Gianni, Daria, and the rest. His face was distorted by the pain, an arrow in his chest.

  The cardinal looked to Hasani, and the man stared back at him in agony. “So you are their seer,” he said bluntly. “Honestly, man, I had no idea.” He knelt down beside him, staring into Hasani’s eyes. “How long until this transpires?” he asked, waving toward the bloody wall.

  Hasani stared back at him, the whites of his eyes bloodshot from weariness? Or tears? For a long moment, Cardinal Boeri did not believe he would answer, confirm what he knew.