by M. K. Hume
“The people I care about always seem to die.” He dropped his head into his folded arms to rest, sure that he would never be able to sleep. But soon the night washed over him in a thick black tide.
In the morning, Germanus appeared to be coming to some kind of physical crisis. The blue of his lips, his glazed and sightless eyes, and the heat in his body that seemed to sear his flesh were killing him. The mystery illness had defied Lorcan’s best efforts to save his friend.
His extremities appeared white or bluish, so Lorcan massaged the Frank’s fingers and toes, pinched his nose at the tip to stimulate the blood flow, and massaged his friend’s thinning lips. Lorcan understood that if the blood flow slowed or was cut off from the extremities, then the fingers, toes, nose, or lips would die and the skin would begin to putrefy while the patient still breathed.
When Gareth asked Lorcan what he was doing, the priest dropped his head into his hands while his whole body seemed to shrink in defeat.
“I’ve no idea what I’m about, Gareth. The odd color of our friend’s extremities seems to indicate that his circulation is compromised and his flesh is dying. Would Germanus want to live without fingers and toes? No, I think not! If he should suffer that fate, he would kill himself before too long, and this would bar his soul from Heaven. That’s something I couldn’t bear to contemplate, so I massage his extremities and try to force the blood to stir through his body. I do it every hour without fail, but I have now reached the point where I must ask for your help because I have to sleep.”
He smiled wearily and sat down to rest.
“So heat me some water, Gareth, and I’ll try to give him some more massage. Afterwards, there are some matters that I would like to discuss with you. I’d send you on without us if I could, but I need your help now and I don’t like to risk the health of our hosts by asking them to assist me with the nursing.”
“We’ve been at cross-purposes in the past, Lorcan. Please forgive my impatience if I’ve been uncharitable or unkind. I’d never sacrifice Germanus just to achieve my quest. Besides, I don’t think I can be successful without you both to guide me along the paths we will be forced to travel.”
Lorcan saw real sincerity in Gareth’s moist eyes and wondered if Germanus had touched the boy’s wounded heart.
When Gareth returned with the hot water, Lorcan was kneeling beside his friend with the Frank’s right arm extended above his head.
“Look at his inner arm, Gareth. Then tell me what you can see there?”
“Dear Lord,” Gareth whispered. “What is that thing?”
“I don’t know,” Lorcan replied slowly. “But he has the same massive boil, or whatever it is, under the other arm. I’ve checked his groin and neck, but so far, beyond a little swelling, there are only two of these things that actually look like that.”
Just below the greying hair that grew sparsely into the deepest hollows, a massive red and shiny swelling distended the skin so it seemed that the flesh could tear open at any moment. Even more grotesquely, there seemed to be no head on this infection, just an egg of raw, red, and burning agony that throbbed under Lorcan’s fingers. The slightest touch caused Germanus such pain that Lorcan could only drizzle more and more cooling water over the terrible outward manifestation of this foul illness.
“Do you realize that this disease, whatever it is, could be contagious? Have you been feeling ill at all?” The twin swellings were so painful that Gareth had already started to check his whole body with exquisite care.
“No, nothing, I’m feeling perfectly healthy,” Gareth said. “I’d be very sorry if we were to bring disease to this farm.”
“I feel as you do, Gareth, but I don’t think we have to worry. Neither Tominoe nor his wife has been near Germanus, so we’ll keep it that way. Now, help me to dip his hands in the hot water.”
Germanus screamed weakly when his fingers were placed in the hot water, almost as if every nerve ending had been abused. Gradually, because the swellings under his armpits weren’t compressed, their patient quietened, and Lorcan asked Gareth to prepare more milk with two raw eggs broken and stirred into the liquid.
“It seems to give Germanus strength, although he finds it increasingly difficult to swallow. I’ve been chewing his food for several days now, but it still pains him to swallow it. I’ve been depending on Eleana’s milk. Those two old ones are decent, kindly people. They deserve more from their king than stolen children and a penurious old age.”
Gareth was touched by Lorcan’s devotion. Although the comparison seemed ludicrous, Gareth was reminded of a mother bird regurgitating food for its chick.
The next morning, the swellings under Germanus’s arms were even more inflamed and terrible, so Lorcan was forced to face the possibility that his friend might be close to death. Throughout that night, the Hibernian had prayed, reverting to the idealistic blacksmith’s son who had gone into the priesthood with so much joy, before the cardinal in Rome had poisoned his heart.
Then, in the morning, Lorcan discovered that Germanus’s pulse was thready and had weakened during the night. The priest gazed down at his friend and decided to face up to what he’d known for some time would become an irrevocable and inevitable course of action.
During a long life, the priest had contrived to survive brutality and sodomy, lost children and a murdered wife. He had also been forced to plumb the depths of human depravity and to wade through blood in numerous battles, but he had somehow found the courage to return to the priesthood and to the life-giving strength of his humanity. Lorcan prepared himself mentally to take a terrible risk.
What he proposed to do was dangerous and could mean death for Germanus within hours, but Germanus’s plight was extreme now, and he’d die anyway if Lorcan did nothing.
The priest had made his decision during many melancholy hours of prayer, so he prepared to commence his battle with fate, while his heart was lighter for having arrived at this commitment.
“Please, Gareth, can you tell the farmer and his wife that your work in the fields will be delayed today? I know you were weeding the cabbages yesterday, but I need your strength here today. I’ll wait till you return.”
The priest refused to explain any further until Gareth had completed his duty to the farmer and his wife, so Gareth hurried to the large vegetable patch where the farmer was already hard at work with his hoe. As quickly as he could, he explained Germanus’s parlous condition and informed Tominoe that Lorcan needed his assistance. The elderly farmer crossed himself and muttered a short prayer before sending Gareth back to the barn with his good wishes for Germanus’s health.
When he entered the barn, Gareth could see that Lorcan had moved the Frank’s pallet closer to the door where the light was stronger. The strength that Lorcan must have expended to drag Germanus over the sod floor on his straw bed would have taxed even Gareth’s young muscles.
“What are you proposing to do, Lorcan? And how can I help you?”
“I’ve sharpened the blade of my eating knife by using the whetstone Germanus uses to sharpen his sword. Could you please hold the blade into an open fire if you can build one? I need hot water as well, as hot as I can bear, and I wish to cleanse my blade the way the Jews and Arabs of Rome did when they healed hideous wounds. I’ve read Master Myrddion’s scrolls, remember? His use of boiling water always seemed so odd, but I’ve tried everything else. I don’t know why fire cleans metal, or why boiling cleans water so it doesn’t contaminate a wound, but many of the patients of ancient times survived, as did Myrddion’s, so I must be guided by their wisdom.”
“This is nonsense, Lorcan! How can water cleanse anything? To drink polluted water is to die. And no healer I ever knew cleansed his knives with fire.”
Every instinct told the young man that this course of action was wrong, although he granted that Myrddion Merlinus was said to be a sorcerer in his trade of healing. Perhaps magic was need
ed to save Germanus.
“I don’t have time to argue with you, Gareth. Merlinus always used boiling water and fire to chase away the evil humors, so I intend to do the same for my friend. What can be the harm in that, boy?” Lorcan’s voice broke with the force of his passion. “He’s dying before our eyes!”
“But what are you proposing to do?”
“Please, boy, just do what I ask, and I will take the responsibility for all that happens.”
More confused than ever, Gareth used his tinderbox to raise a flame in the outside fire pit that Lorcan had built on the day of their arrival. When he fed that small tongue of orange some shavings from the wood heap, followed by several substantial logs, he set a pannikin upon the heat and filled the vessel with water. He then bathed the elegant little eating knife in the flickering, cherry-red flame.
The delicate little knife and its wicked point began to glow red . . . and then white, so Gareth removed it and, using gloves to protect his hands, carried both the blade and the pannikin back to the barn. Lorcan thanked him distantly and dipped a cloth into the steaming water in order to cleanse his hands with the hot fabric.
“Now, my friend, hold Germanus down and put all the pressure you can on his torso and his right elbow. You can even sit on him, if you must! Cracked ribs are the least of his problems, and I must ensure that he remains perfectly still. I plan to lance both the swellings because the humors are eating him alive.”
“But there’s no head on those lumps, just a gross tumorous swelling. You might be doing more harm than good!”
“Do what I ask, Gareth, for Germanus is dead if I don’t act right now. If he dies from what I do, I have only hastened his end. At any rate, the sin and the responsibility are mine. I’ll castigate myself far worse than you ever could.”
Then, as Gareth watched in dismay, Lorcan’s bravado cracked and the older man almost wept. “For God’s sake, boy, obey me before I lose the nerve to do what has to be done.”
So Gareth threw the whole weight of his body on Germanus’s chest and used both arms to hold the right arm above the Frank’s head. He was forced to lie across Germanus’s body, using his legs to hold down the left arm, while also providing space for Lorcan to reach the right armpit. The position was awkward for all three men, and Germanus began to thrash. A sharp blow struck Gareth across the nose and blinded him with pain for a moment, but he raised his right knee to hold down Germanus’s left arm, leaving Lorcan free to act.
“May God guide my hand,” Lorcan prayed, and then sliced deeply into the hideous swelling in Germanus’s armpit.
A rush of blood and serum came first, and then vile-smelling pus began to pour out. Quick as lightning, Lorcan thrust a hot piece of cloth into the open wound while Germanus howled and bucked like a wild animal. Gareth gritted his teeth and hung on to the wailing man with all his strength.
As Lorcan bound the cloth into a pad and secured it across Germanus’s arm and chest, the Frank gradually quietened. Gareth heaved a huge sigh of relief, but his ordeal was far from over.
“And now we must lance the other armpit, Gareth. Please, wash the knife, and then reheat it over the fire. We must replace the water first, however, so I can wash again.”
Gareth hurried to obey, sickened by the terrible, rotting stench.
Soon enough, Gareth was back in the barn, and the whole prelude to the operation was repeated, only in reverse.
Gareth changed position and maneuvered his body until his muscles began to crack with the strain. Under his weight, Germanus stirred as if, even in his torpor, he guessed that some new atrocity was coming at any moment.
“Are you ready, Gareth?” Lorcan asked. He used the knife with more confidence on this occasion. Once again, the Frank fought like a wild thing, but his great strength had been diminished by illness. Lorcan was obliged to cut a second time, much deeper, until the vile-smelling rot began to pour out. Gareth averted his head, because the stink was a reminder of the charnel house and of long-dead corpses. He feared he would vomit and contaminate the wound.
Once again, Lorcan packed and wrapped the wound and then asked Gareth to cleanse the blade with fire again, in case it required further use. This time, Gareth was quick to obey. He’d seen the corruption flow from within Germanus’s body, and he doubted that Lorcan would ever again be able to cut his meat with this dainty Roman toy. Beyond all doubt, the fire had cleansed the iron of that terrible pus, but what could cure the heart after the horrific wounds he had been forced to inflict on his friend?
Once Gareth had placed the knife into a fresh pannikin of boiling water, he looked to Lorcan for reassurance. “What do we do now, Lorcan? Does Germanus have any hope of survival?”
“We can only wait, Gareth. My treatment might prove to be fatal. But he must be watched constantly now, so we can concentrate on keeping his temperature down. He must be washed regularly, and the dressings have to be changed at regular intervals as well. I’ll still need your help, I’m afraid.”
“So we sit and wait. Is that all we can do?”
“You could try praying, boy. At this stage, even Germanus won’t mind a prayer or two.”
• • •
FAR AWAY, A ship was found off the coast of the kingdom of the Visigoths near the town of Lisbon on the Tagus River. The vessel seemed to be wallowing rudderless in the waves, so several enterprising fishermen rowed out beyond the shallower waters and clambered over its stern.
Other than the absence of crew members aboard the ship, a disgusting odor was the first indication of something very wrong aboard the Golden Nymph. The grandiose name was etched into a plaque in Latin on the ship’s side.
The vile stench came from the hatches leading down to the hold. One of the fishermen crossed himself and muttered a comment about the works of the devil before heading back to his rowing boat, but his companion was made of sterner stuff. Carefully, and with his fish-gutting knife drawn to protect himself, he crept stealthily towards the prow of the vessel.
Something about the dark and gaping hatch made the hairs rise on the back of his neck, so he gave it a wide berth.
In a narrow gap between the mast and an adjacent storage locker, the fisherman found a dying man. His lips and nose were black with rot, as were the stumps of his fingers; his eyes were glazed with pain and fever, while his stripped torso revealed hideous boils under his arms and in the folds of his groin. As the fisherman watched, appalled, the sailor went into his death throes with a great convulsion of straining and cracking muscles.
Any man of sense would have fled in terror and forgotten the ship of dead men with its grisly cargo. But this fisherman was far too poor to leave the gold cross around the dead man’s neck or the silver rings that decorated his blackened fingers. Shuddering with revulsion, he went down belowdecks and stripped the dead and the barely alive of all the valuables that he could find in the fetid darkness, in spite of jumping in terror at the slightest movement or sound. The bright eyes of black rats watched him from the shadows, perched on the cargo and lashing the air with their scaly tails. Eventually, despite his strong constitution, the thought of these vermin feeding on the ship’s crew sent him running up into the clean air and back to his boat. Safely ensconced, he vomited until only bile was left in his stomach. Even the promise of more gold wasn’t sufficient incentive to tempt him back to the death ship.
In the morning, the Golden Nymph had disappeared from sight and was never seen again.
• • •
“I WANT YOU, woman! And I want you now! I don’t feel well—so fetch me some hot milk.” Priscus was tired, headachy, and nauseous, but refused to reveal just how ill he felt to his woman. He was sure she would take liberties.
Over the following days, she took more than liberties: she took everything. As the innkeeper fell into a deep coma that baffled the physicians she hired, Delia ordered the servants to move Priscus to a smaller
room over the stables, citing the need for the master to sleep peacefully, without being disturbed. In private, the servants wondered at the illness until other people away from the Green Man began to contract the illness.
In a fit of spite that she found impossible to explain, Delia decided to burn his bedding and every loathsome piece of the furniture in his room.
“With luck, he’ll have no use for it in Hades,” she said to herself as she watched the whole pile of bedding flame up. With some satisfaction, she watched Priscus’s bedbugs and lice pop and die in the blaze. The servants thought she’d gone just a little mad with grief.
In his new room above the stables, she cared for Priscus desultorily, taking pains not to touch him. Within days, he fell into the sleep of the deathly ill, and died unattended. By good fortune, none of the servants from the Green Man became ill, so they began to view Delia in a whole new fashion.
During the terrible days that followed, people were told that Delia had used fire to kill her man’s illness, and her methods were copied by other prudent citizens throughout Gesoriacum and the surrounding district. The air was filled with the smell of burning, and whole streets in the slums were turned into hell pits with the bodies of the dead still lying inside their burning beds. It would never be known how many sufferers died of the flames, rather than the disease.
Even priests and physicians died in the weeks that followed, for no one was spared—no matter how pious or learned they were.
The Green Man inn was taking no guests by this time and had barred its doors. Priscus was quickly forgotten, once Mistress Delia had removed all the innkeeper’s possessions and burned them to cinders with his remains carefully stacked inside the makeshift funeral pyre. The hostelry was soon seen as a haven of safety in a sea of disaster, so Delia was left to wonder at the luck that Fortuna had placed upon her attractive shoulders.