Not unexpectedly, Aubrey had insisted that two more people meant an increase in the rent, to which Felicity agreed without argument. She and Oliver had to plan and organize their lives around the care and feeding of Abelard. Although no one wanted to admit it, they had begun to grow fond of their deluded knight. They earnestly believed he would eventually regain his memories and reveal who he was. That Abelard could as easily be a murderous psychopath as someone’s lost and kindly son, husband, father, was momentarily swept from their thoughts.
The evil twins, the only way Oliver now referred to them, had stashed their haul for later sale. They suspected these may be stolen goods and waiting until the case grew cold, a few months perhaps, would only be prudent. They rarely came to the farmhouse, preferring their crumbling hovel at the edge of the 40 hectare property. Oliver and Felicity had all the liberty they needed to care for Abelard.
Oliver laid in tons of vitamin supplements and much balm for bedsores, which Abelard seemed to have in place of a normal back. He’d been lying down for some time. How long? Oliver figured that he had already been starved by the time he was put into the cave and that he may have been there for several days more. The mystery of how he could possibly have been hidden away in such an inaccessible place, which was then perfectly and undetectably resealed, he preferred not to think about just yet. The muck in which he was sleeping was another unknown which he had filed for further reflection at another time. He did, however, have the foresight to scoop up a small sample for future analysis.
He had no way of detecting whether Abelard had been drugged, but that would not have surprised him. He had heard about cult kidnappings, even in the U.S.A., to provide fodder for perverse rituals. Oliver’s search for missing persons turned up over 19 million hits. He tried to narrow his search, using a facial recognition app based on an image which he reckoned would most closely resemble a fully recovered Abelard. He paused a moment at a missing professor, a possible explanation for Abelard’s Latin, but there were altogether too many old wounds to believe he could be an academic. He did retain a couple which he reckoned were very close fits. A diver who had mysteriously disappeared in Lake Annecy, in the Haute Savoie, and the other, a police detective, believed kidnapped by the mob on the outskirts of Bordeaux, not too far from the farmhouse.
Both these men were just over six feet tall, blondish hair, thick noses and beefy lips, just as he would imagine Abelard, fleshed out with another 50 kilograms or so. Abelard did have an unusually large number of scars all over his body, most evidently made by blades and some by heavy objects. It was his guess that if he turned out to be one of these missing men, it would be the detective who would be more likely than the diver to collect wounds in these ways. Must have been stabbed and, perhaps, bludgeoned several times.
His convalescence was not an entirely peaceful affair. In the early first days Abelard’s sleep was fitful. There was much screaming, some meaningful and the rest mostly gibberish. The little Felicity did grasp was mildly alarming. A favourite seemed to be “Death to All, Buch” followed closely by “For Edward and Albion”. When he was awake, he stayed quiet but very alert, following every movement around him. He seemed to have believed Felicity when she told him that they were negotiating a ransom and that he would soon be free. He did ask once whether the ‘Archpriest’ was nearby.
*
The Perfect Human: An Abelard Chronicles Book Page 10