In the Arms of Immortals
Page 23
She sat on the ground. Her hair was matting from the sweat running down her forehead and neck. She thought of running her fingers through the mats, to loosen and free them, but she had no energy.
She was sluggish and tired. The world looked so cold and distant. The green trees did not give her joy; the warm stones under her feet left her listless. This world was someone else’s home. She did not know it.
The heaviness grew in her throat, making her head dip down unless she forced it up for breath. She had no appetite, no will to force food past the thick knot that slept there.
Gio had been sitting on the ground like this for two days, having lost it all: the people of the village she could not cure; the two men who helped her come home to the Church and herself … Lazarro and Del Grasso; her pigments, her words, even her body. Her only victory had been burying Del Grasso and the Old Man. She had no feeling left in her limbs; every inch of her was pierced beyond mending, bled out by tears and grief. She was dizzy when she stood and tried to walk. She could not convince her legs to move as they once had. She could not make anything work. She did not think she belonged to this world. It did not seem to recognize her.
Gio had made it down the path to the village but couldn’t force herself to move any closer. She sat on its outer edge, where she could see and be seen. She did not feel as alone, but she did not want to return there either. Lazarro would be dead by now, thrown in the back of the hay wagons that came through the streets at night, collecting the dead, carrying them away to a mass grave. She had forced herself to turn away from the sight.
He would be glad to know they all got a Christian burial, even if sometimes there was only a woman available who knew the right words.
This scandal would be forgotten, she knew. Women had stood at the bedside of the dying, saying the words only the holy men of God were authorized to use. They had been priests, willing to die to speak God’s words to the weak and the lost.
When the women contracted the plague and died, as they knew they would, most had been content. They died quiet deaths. These women had seen a glimpse of the true Christ, here on earth. The Church that had denied them so much, kept them ignorant and poor, this same Church broke itself at the right moment, sacrificing custom and appearance, and embraced its women.
They had stayed, and prayed, and loved. They had fought.
If she lived on, she promised herself, she would tell this to the world: Do not trust in yourself to gain your freedom from sin. Better to wait than regret.
Gio thought of Del Grasso’s words to her. If she asked “why?” she might never come down off this path. She might never return to the living. She should only ask “how.” That was his dying wish.
“How, then, will I live?” she asked out loud. The only reply was a soft grinding noise in the village.
Gio saw a man wheeling an empty, stained cart along a lane. She admired him. He knew what to do. A chore, even a little chore, was a soothing comfort. To watch your limbs know what to do, to be taught by your body how to live again—that would be a comfort.
Gio wished she had a chore.
If she had words, she thought, she would dare to pray, even to pray alone, without a priest to make it pleasing to God. She would pray for a chore.
A hand rested on her head, stroking her hair. Gio looked up and saw Armando. He stroked her hair, but Gio did not think it was a chore. He was not trying to return to the living, as she was. He had seen death before, she knew. He had seen its face in a distant land. But still, he had returned to the village, to this life.
Armando knelt beside her in the dirt, brushing the hair away from her face. “Are you hungry?”
Gio shook her head no.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gio said, whispering the word. She didn’t want to hear it. That word was too big for her today. She would speak someday, but it was not today. Words needed time to come home, and hers were buried deep in the earth. They would need time to push through the soil and find her again.
He lifted her up, one arm around her waist, the other steadying her from sinking back into the dirt. “Night is coming,” he said.
Chapter Twenty
Armando wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her back to lean in to him. It was his nightly ritual. He loved running his hands through her long, soft hair after she brushed it. Inhaling the perfume that scented it—a present he had given her after their marriage—he pressed his face into her neck.
Gio let him love her and never pushed him away. She wondered if other women had this love. It was a revelation to her. All it required was a soft spirit.
Armando moved his hands from her hair and rested them on her belly. Gio laughed. The baby seemed to know his father’s touch, because she always felt it kick at his flat, wide palms. She marveled at God’s creative mercy, that a man such as Armando took such pleasure in her. He loved watching her become a woman of grace and mercy, the wife of Armando, the woman who turned no one away from her door hungry.
“I should check on the others,” Gio said. “The candles burn low. Some still fear the night.”
“The children are sleeping,” Armando replied. “They had both Nero and Fidato out today, looking for apples and racing down the quiet lanes.”
Gio sighed. “They need to be picking more from the crops, not playing. Winter will come soon.”
“Ah, let them alone. Too long have these streets been without the sound of children’s laughter. It is good to see them happy again. They lost much. Let me worry that we will be ready for winter.”
“And the other villagers,” Gio said. “They will need food. They look to you as their baron.”
“Yes, all will be cared for, Gio. The house of Dario will not fail them again.”
“We should change the name of this manor,” Gio said.
With a satisfied groan, she pushed away the plate of pastries he had brought her. She ate far too many these days.
A wind came through her window, but it did not smell of the dead anymore.
This wind smelled of coming rain, and earth that would grow crops again for hungry mouths whose cries had shocked the survivors of the plague into labouring long hours in the fields.
Life would continue. It would not be stopped, not by the death of one, or of thousands. Not by the death of dreams or love. Life pushed past death and did not stop. Life would continue, and children would be hungry.
While their parents fretted and kept candles burning through the night for comfort, all the children in the house of Armando, the orphans, foundlings, and heirs, slept well and safe, resting in the arms of immortals.
Amber-Marie groaned as the phone went to voice mail again. Mariskka was so typical of overnight-success authors: She thought everyone was her fan just because they promoted her books.
Fans didn’t mind being kept waiting.
Amber-Marie did. Time was money.
Thankfully, at one overpriced dinner she had slipped her hand into Mariskka’s bag and stolen her keys. Excusing herself for a phone call, Amber-Marie had handed the keys and a fifty-dollar bill to the waiter. He knew the drill. Before they finished dessert, Mariskka had her keys back and Amber-Marie had a secret, second set.
Not that Amber-Marie was the villain. She was protecting Mariskka from herself. New money, new fame, and new expectations had done many authors in. Her publisher had spent a fortune on Mariskka, totaling an amount that rivaled a smaller country’s gross national product. Mariskka was a walking investment account. If she did well, her publishing team would have a nice retirement. Those same executives had hired Amber-Marie’s independent public relations firm to guide Mariskka through this first year, keeping her safe and sane until she delivered book two. Amber-Marie didn’t mind. It was good money, and Mariskka didn’t know enough yet to be a real pain.
She took the elevator to Mariskka’s floor.
She fished out her author keychain and moved the keys around until she found Mariskka’s.
Mariskka’s apartment smelled like a Girl Scout campout, filled with smoke and something toasting in the kitchen.
Smoke.
“Smoke!” Amber-Marie gasped. She ran from the foyer into the main room, which was separated by two massive marble columns.
Mariskka was lying facedown on the floor. Something smoldered red in the fireplace. Amber-Marie looked again. It was a manuscript, burning.
She’d save Mariskka later. Grabbing a fireplace poker, she tried to fish out what fragments she could. The poker was useless. She stuck her hand into the fire’s edge and pulled them out, burning her fingertips and getting black soot all over her clothes.
“No!” Mariskka yelled, grabbing Amber-Marie from behind. “Let it burn!”
Amber-Marie fell back on top of Mariskka and pushed free. “What are you doing, Mariskka? Tell me that’s not your new book!”
“New book?” Mariskka asked. “That’s why He sent me back!”
Amber-Marie reached out to pat Mariskka on the shoulder with one hand. With her other, she slowly pulled out her cell phone. This was spectacular.
“Why don’t you rest here a moment?” Amber-Marie said. “Let me fix you some hot chocolate, and we’ll talk.”
Mariskka looked up at her with unabashed adoration. “I’d love hot chocolate. They didn’t have it back then.”
Amber-Marie’s mind worked especially hard when she was up to no good. She took the stairs in leaps and ran into Mariskka’s bedroom.
“Gotcha,” she whispered, grabbing all the pill containers she could find, even Mariskka’s vitamins. Running back downstairs, she sprinkled pills all around Mariskka, then handed an empty container to her. Mariskka held it without question.
Amber-Marie held her cell phone up, snapping pictures. “Back in a jiffy with your hot chocolate,” she told her.
“Stop!” Mariskka said.
Amber-Marie froze.
“I have to tell you something, Amber-Marie. A confession.”
This isn’t wrong, Amber-Marie told herself. This is good business. Profit margins in the publishing business are getting smaller and smaller.
Amber-Marie pressed “record” on her phone and waited.
“I didn’t write my first book,” Mariskka began. “I stole it from a dead patient. And her watch. I stole her Rolex watch. I should have been ministering to her, but I wanted her watch. I am very sorry for that now.”
“Forget the watch. A patient at the hospice made your first novel up?” Amber-Marie asked.
“No. It wasn’t a novel. It was more like a biography, I guess. An angel appeared to my patient Bridget on the night she died, because there was no Blood on her. There was no Blood, and she wasn’t safe. So he showed her the past. She saw a woman named Rose, and it was her ancestor. Then she let Him save her, and then she died. But I was different. I lived the story. But I didn’t know anyone. And I didn’t die.”
If Amber-Marie had had any pity at all, she would have turned her cell phone off and called 911.
She didn’t.
Mariskka shoved a thick stack of odd, rough papers to Amber-Marie. Amber-Marie had never seen paper like this.
“It’s from Amalfi, 1347,” Mariskka said. “Take it, Amber-Marie. I shouldn’t keep it. I’m not a writer!”
Amber-Marie took the papers without looking at them. “Everyone feels that way when they turn in a new manuscript, Mariskka. It’s just nerves.”
“No, it’s the truth! Read what the Scribe wrote down. It explains everything,” Mariskka said.
“Why don’t you get cleaned up, Mariskka? I’ll alert the studio we’re running behind.”
“I must look terrible,” Mariskka said, putting her hands on her cheeks. “I haven’t bathed in ages.”
When Mariskka had climbed the stairs, groaning as if she were in pain with each step, Amber-Marie exhaled to keep the butterflies in her stomach from going wild. This was just too good.
She entered *67 and then a longer number.
“City desk, please,” she said, and waited.
“Hi, I’d like to call in a tip,” she said. “A huge story is about to break. What is it? Well, send a reporter and a photographer to the address I’m about to give you. A hint? Okay, imagine this headline: ‘Best-Selling Author Goes Insane While Alone in Apartment, Finishing Sequel.’”
She hung up and gathered as many fragments of the papers as possible. They would be worth a chunk on eBay.
She hoisted the papers into her oversized black leather satchel. She was walking to the door when she felt something moving in the bag. She heard a scratching noise from inside, like a rat working on a piece of wood.
Amber-Marie swallowed hard and set the bag on the floor. With her foot, she pulled it open.
There was nothing. Just the papers. They did stink, though, of smoke and something else she couldn’t name.
She opened the door and walked to the empty elevator, pressing the button. It opened at once and she stepped in. Amber-Marie glanced down at the bag. She could swear she heard something with her, panting. It didn’t sound like a dog. More like a cat, she thought, the way the big lions sound on Animal Planet.
“Welcome to the story,” someone whispered to her.
God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
—Psalm 46:1–7
… a little more …
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Turn the page for ...
• Q & A with Ginger Garrett
• Discussion Questions
• How to Survive the Black Death
• Careers That Pay Well During the Black Death
• The Medieval Herbalist’s Medical Kit
• Bibliography/Suggested Reading
• About the Author
Q & A with Ginger Garrett
1. Where did you get Mbube’s name and how do you pronounce it?
Mbube is a Zulu word for lion, and it is also a form of African song, sung most often by men. Mbube is pronounced “Em-boo-beh.” I like to think of him as Bob Marley meets the Hulk. I don’t know why, but all the guardian angels in my stories appear in my mind as Africans. Africa was the continent that sheltered Jesus Christ as a young child when King Herod was hunting for Jesus to kill Him. God reminds us in the Bible that “out of Egypt I called my Son.” Africa gave shelter to a young Christ, to Go
d, and I believe there is an evil out there that has never forgiven Africa for that. If Africa protected the young Jesus, it’s easy to imagine angels as supernatural Africans who protect us, too.
2. You’re saying you believe in the Devil?
I believe there is an active, intelligent evil in this world, an evil that is at work to destroy everything God considers beautiful. This evil has several names in Scripture: the Enemy, the Evil One, Satan, Lucifer. Those names have become so perverted in our culture that I hate to even reference them. The Devil to us is a mascot for canned ham. It’s a masterful piece of public relations, don’t you think? The Devil as a mascot for ham, angels as sweet cherubs that offer no protection, and Jesus as a wise teacher in cool sandals but not really capable of outrageous miracles. Everything in that scenario is so innocuous; it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. There is a shocking truth hiding beneath that thin frosting. Someone is hoping we don’t scrape through it.
3. How did you choose the subject matter for each book in the Scribe series?
I picked the three most important moments in medieval history that changed women’s lives forever:
• Anne Boleyn gave us the right to read, including, but not limited to, the right to read the Bible. (And thus, book one, In the Shadow of Lions.)
• The women who survived the Black Death, though their names are lost to us, created a culture of survivors who launched the great Renaissance of science and art. We, too, must answer the question they faced: Amid so much suffering and pain, how then shall we live? (And thus, book two, In the Arms of Immortals.)
• For the final book in the series, I will be telling the tale of the witch hunts in medieval Europe. Women with strong wills, strong minds, or women who no longer had families were targeted for death. “Christians” both instigated the murders and stopped them. The Church was forced to confront perilous questions: What, and who, defines a woman? Are women more prone to sin and moral weakness? Do women have an equal place in God’s kingdom? (And thus, book three, In the Eyes of Eternity.)