A Cloud of Outrageous Blue

by Vesper Stamper

  The lapis ribbon dives into the pool and beckons me to come. I kneel at the edge and touch the water. It’s warm. My hands are still covered in blue and gold, and as water meets skin, the colors begin to dissolve and run and meld with the black spidery splotch on my wrist.

  I lie on my stomach and plunge my arms right down into the water. I just want to feel this on my skin before I die. I pull off my gown and hose and linen chemise and lower myself in. I only expected it to be as deep as my arms somehow, but I sink straight in like there’s no bottom, and scramble up to the surface.

  Blissfully I float in the warm water, thinking how strange it is that this place has been here all along, simply waiting for me to find it. I let myself sink to the chin, reach under my armpit and feel the lump. It’s the size of an egg now, and I feel two more beside it, like broad beans. I massage the lumps, hoping the water is permeating my skin somehow. Nothing’s happening. I don’t know why I’m disappointed. I guess it seemed like something should. It’s undeniable now: death is coming for me.

  What does it all matter? I cup my hands and drink. Chamomile and honey branch out into my body, a sense of spring green unfurling inside me, like honeysuckle blooms juicing themselves through my veins.

  Sleepiness overtakes me from treading water, and I climb clumsily out of the pool. The lumps smart terribly, but I tumble out feeling refreshed, warmth permeating my whole being. I find an Edyth-sized space among the roots and nestle silently against the tree to dry off, watching the sun set, dipping for sip after sip of the delicious, sweet, warm water.

  — 37 —

  It’s a moment before twilight when I wake, lying among the roots of the tree. I pull the green gown back over my head and rebraid my hair in a disheveled mess.

  But something is different.

  I run out of the woods and burst through the gate, past a surprised, bleating goat desperate to be milked, and stop myself short on the threshold of the chapel. Its door is carelessly left open. Mason’s on a scaffold working with a fine chisel, putting the finishing touches on a capital ringed with lions that I drew. Again and again he wipes his eyes with his sleeve. My heart breaks for what he must be thinking.

  I stand in the doorway until he sees me in his periphery and stops chiseling. He turns his head, and I see tears making dark paths through his dusty cheeks.

  “I tried to catch up to you!” he says. “I didn’t know where you—”

  I motion for him to be quiet and follow me. He grabs a torch, and I swipe a little bucket sitting outside the chapel door.

  When we pass through the gate into the woods, I finally address him.

  “Mason, I’m sorry I ran away. But it’s all clear now. I have to—”

  “Edyth, you’re not well. You should be in bed. You know what’s going to happen.”

  “I found it!” I grin, running to follow the color through the trees again, until at last we come to the yew tree.

  “A spring!” Mason says. “I haven’t seen clean water in…” He sticks his torch in a knot in the tree trunk, drops to his knees and starts scooping handfuls of water into his mouth.

  “It’s so sweet! And warm, like tea!” He splashes it over his dusty head and face, and laughs with relief.

  “It’s not just any spring, Mason. Look.” I pull my sleeve down off my shoulder and lift my bare arm. “Look.”

  Mason puts his face right up to my armpit, holds my arm and looks for any trace of the blotches. “But…”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your arm was turning as black as peat this afternoon.”

  “I know.”

  “No one survives this, Edyth. It spares no one. Are you sure you don’t have the lumps anywhere else?”

  “I’m sure,” I laugh. “They’re completely gone.”

  Mason stares as I pull my sleeve back on. “Are you telling me—”

  “I’m healed, Mason. This is the spring from the book, from my dream. It was right here all along. And it wasn’t just about me living or dying. It’s going to heal everyone.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, nudging my cheek. “I thought you might be crazy, Edie. The end of the disease is like that.” Mason hovers above me, his warm cedar breath surrounding me. Comfort waves off his body like tones of summer. I press into him with my whole body and put my arms around his neck.

  “Help me bring this water to the sick,” I say earnestly.

  Beaming with excitement, we make our plan: Give the water first to Alice, Muriel and Anne, in hopes it might protect them from the disease. Return with larger vessels tomorrow—at midnight, to keep the spring secret. And let this place be our sanctuary.

  We fill the little bucket to take back with us, and we talk, and drink, and kiss until the first tone of blue dawn reveals the shape of the trees.

  * * *

  —

  The first thing I do is bring a cup to Alice. I write the story on her wax tablet, then tiptoe over to the scriptorium and tell Muriel and Anne about my healing. I don’t know if the water will protect them from getting sick. They’re skeptical, but they listen.

  “It’s all well and good to read about miracles,” says Anne. “I’m just saying I’ve never seen one.”

  “Edyth’s not the type to make things up,” says Muriel.

  “Well, I’m sick of warm ale in any case,” says Anne. “Let’s drink.” They clink their cups of water together and drain them to the bottom.

  The thrill of last night wears off, and I can’t keep myself awake any longer. I know it’s urgent that we get water to the infirmary, but we’ve got to wait until dark. A few hours of sleep in the scriptorium, and I go to the chapel to meet Mason.

  * * *

  —

  “You gave them the water?” Mason confirms as we head back into the wood tonight, this time with bigger containers.

  “Alice was all for it. Muriel and Anne didn’t believe me at first. But they drank it anyway.”

  “Maybe there’s a chance for them, then.”

  Through the columns of ash and elm, past the oaks, our pace picks up to a run. The leaves part alongside us like the Red Sea, sending smears of light blue and lilac along my periphery until we arrive at the grove where the yew tree’s arms rise, embracing the sky. Out from the roots of the yew tree, the spring still effervesces. The pool has doubled in size from last night.

  “Edyth, come see this!” Mason says from the other side of the yew. He climbs into the tree, and I follow. The expanse inside is as big as my dormitory cell, cool and sheltered.

  “You could make a nice little home in here,” he says.

  “Maybe we’ll have to,” I respond, sitting on the bed of dry needles. It feels so safe in here. I scoot next to Mason, and he puts his cloak around both of our shoulders. I kiss him without fear. “It’s time,” I say. “Let’s get the water and see what happens.”

  We kneel by the pool, our knees wet and muddy, filling our buckets. We sit at the edge of the spring and stare at the hazy reflection of the moon, feeling the warmth rising from the water, listening to the crickets and the sounds of the autumn night. But it’s still, too still. We can’t pretend people aren’t dying while we stay here. I move his hand from my waist and squeeze it.

  “Let’s go.”

  We pick up our vessels and set off toward the infirmary, walking silently under the waxing moon.

  — 38 —

  So slowly our feet tread in the autumn leaves, under the woad sky, carrying the water we hope, believe, doubt, plead, will bring life to the dying. It was one thing to give it to Alice, Muriel and Anne—they’re quarantined. I’m suddenly sober. This will be the real test.

  We squeeze through the gate onto the gravel path, past barns of neglected and wandering livestock, the vegetable garden tangled with vines, the orchard dropping its fruits.

 
On our left is the doleful song of the nuns in the church, doors closed against corruption, breathing their psalms against the foul air of pestilence, hoping in that big boat of stone to get safely to the other shore with their souls intact.

  On the right is the infirmary, emanating with the moans of those under the sentence of death, breathing their pleas to someone, anyone: the Blessed Mother; their earthly mothers; their spiritual Mother, the prioress.

  We stand in the open pathway, in the space between.

  “Mason,” I say, slowing a little, “if this doesn’t work, if my own healing was only a coincidence, then we’re walking right into the mouth of death.”

  “Do you want to turn back?” says Mason. “Or maybe give it to the nuns instead?”

  “They don’t need it in there,” I say. “It’s the sick who need a doctor, remember?”

  * * *

  —

  In the infirmary, every torch is lit down the long gallery of cells. The walls are the deep red of burnished clay, glowing against the beams of the timber roof. I hadn’t noticed the row of blue-winged angels painted above the cells, cohorts of commanders, interceding for the sick below. The walls become sootier the closer they rise to the ceiling, but the angels peek glints of light out of deepening darkness.

  We duck into the corner by the door and wait. In walks the last person I would have expected: Cook.

  “I hear you’re short on help, and I’m short on diners,” says Cook. “Can you put me to work, Physician?”

  Joan stops her ministrations. “It means certain death, Cook.”

  She sighs. “What choice do I have? I’m going to stand before my Judge one way or the other.”

  “If you insist,” Joan sighs, but I can tell she’s glad to have the help. “Now listen, Cook, back when Father Johannes found the first sign of disease on his own skin, he dispensed all of us to hear confession, even give communion to the dying. You do whatever these people need you to do.”

  “Right,” says Cook, crossing herself. “Holy Saint Cook, at your service.”

  A curtain’s pushed aside, and the prioress herself exits a cell. Weak as she is, of course she’d spend the last of her strength here serving the dying. She sees me and Mason standing frozen by the doorway, and draws a deep breath.

  “You found what you were looking for,” she says, smiling.

  I return the smile, holding up a vessel. “It’s healing water, Mother. And there’s plenty more.”

  She takes two tin cups from a cabinet and hands them to us. “Draw some, and follow me.”

  We go with her into the very first cell on the left, the one where Brother Timothy died. A man is there, naked to the waist, covered in black pustules, his skin purple against his whitish-yellow hair. He’s clutching at his chest, gasping for breath and coughing out blood. His fingertips look like they’ve been dipped in liquid coal; his eyes are frenzied.

  The prioress takes a clay cup from the table at his bedside and holds it out to me. I pour the water into it. She sits on the edge of the bed and fearlessly slides her arm under the bare, seeping shoulders of the sick man. She holds the cup to his cracked white mouth and says softly,

  O omnes sitientes, venite ad aquas.

  All you who are thirsty, come to the waters.

  The man drinks and licks his lips. The wildness in his eyes softens into something more like frightened confusion; he looks at the prioress as she lays him back down, like a child being put to bed after a nightmare. She washes her hands in a basin of cloudy water and dries them as she walks over to the table in the middle of the room.

  “Now you do it,” she says to me, and walks away to tend to other responsibilities.

  But I’m frozen to the spot. This is the moment where it all becomes real. Mason urges me on with a nod.

  Somehow my feet pull me heavily on toward the next cell. I draw the curtain slowly and slip it into the bracket on the wall. There’s an entire family in here. A husband sits on the bed with his wife’s head in his lap. She’s unconscious and in much the same state as the first man was. There on the floor lie two little ones on a pile of dirty straw, writhing and mewling like kittens. Their parents are powerless to help them. The father is only moderately better than the rest of his family. All he can do is watch them die, and wait for his own death to progress.

  I reach over to the little side table and pick up their cup. Tin clatters against clay as I pour out the water with trembling hands. I offer it to the father, who’s the only one capable of receiving it, but he points to his children, that they should drink first. I kneel on the ground, and as I saw the prioress do, I slide my arm underneath the shoulders of the younger child.

  She can’t be more than four—the age at which parents start breathing a little easier for a child having survived the perils of childhood. The girl’s mouth gapes open. She has a row of perfect baby teeth. Her eyes are half shut. I put the cup to the girl’s bottom lip and she instinctively closes her mouth around its rim.

  O omnes sitientes, venite ad aquas.

  And I relax into the compassion I feel for this child. Since the sick can’t go to the waters, I’ll bring the waters to them. All they have to do is drink.

  * * *

  —

  Mason and I give water to the pilgrims until the containers are dry, and I feel buoyed by hope. By dawn, the infirmary has fallen silent. Cook slumps in her chair; Joan has her head down on the table, sleeping for perhaps the first time in days. The prioress is curled up on a pallet outside a cell.

  Joan wakes up, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands, and immediately begins writing on her wax tablet as though jotting down a dream. Mason and I look in the cells, and most of the patients are either sleeping peacefully, their chests rising and falling in easy rhythms, or sitting up, stunned by the peace they feel.

  Despite our own exhaustion, Mason and I make our way to the door with our now-empty buckets. We pass the first cell, where the man with the frenzied eyes had been so near death. He’s sitting cross-legged on the bed with his back against the wall, staring up at the light beginning to come through the window. His skin still has the memory of purple, but the lumps have receded, and his hands, folded in his lap, are no longer tipped in black. His lips move in silent prayer as tears drip down his pale beard.

  He’s made it through the night, and must now face the day alone.

  * * *

  —

  I awake to a soft knock on the scriptorium door sometime in the afternoon, after sleeping all day.

  “It’s me,” says Mason’s careful voice. I get up and open the door. My eyes are still puffy; I blink a few times to unblur Mason’s face.

  “You have to come.”

  “Where?” I ask, still shaking off my sleep.

  “The infirmary. You have to see this.” He takes my hand and we hurry noiselessly down the stairs. I haven’t even put on my shoes.

  When we get to the infirmary, it’s bustling and noisy, but not with the death throes of the night before. People are laughing and crying. The couple with the two small children are unapologetically kissing in the middle of the gallery as their children play at their feet. Not a few are kneeling and weeping in loud prayers of gratitude.

  They are all alive.

  The prioress leaves the woman whose confession she’s hearing and greets me and Mason at the door. Her face is gray and tired, but her smile is euphoric. She grasps me by the shoulders, wanting to say something but not finding the words. She simply nods her head in approval.

  “Ave!” she shouts, and claps, turning to the crowd. “Your lives have been restored to you. Now you have a task to do. You must go down to the town and search for those who still live and tell them to come here. You all must leave this place and return to your own homes and towns and begin again. Gather your belongings and go!”

  “
But the gate—”

  “Am I not still prioress here? I will unlock the gate myself. Go home!”

  Some of the pilgrims don’t seem to recognize me; they were too close to death, the disease having penetrated too far into their brains. But those who do recall me holding the cup of honeyed water to their lips come and kiss my hand as they leave.

  The infirmary clears out. Joan and Cook and the Pri set about changing out the hay and bedclothes. We know what work awaits us tonight.

  — 39 —

  Autumn’s coming in as dry as summer’s been wet. The peas and beans should have been harvested weeks ago, but the vines lie shriveled in the field, foraged by pigs and goats that have quickly reverted to their feral natures. The nuns in the church refuse to come out to eat, but it’s just as well with food this scarce, the water from the cloister fountain running in a cloudy trickle. Still, they fast, and they cry, and when I visit Alice, I watch them sitting in the sanctuary corners staring in despair.

  But the water from the yew’s roots is working, night after night delivering people from their slide into death.

  We enter the woods under the curled russet parchments of the great oaks, listening to the acorns beat against one another like seashells, dense and hollowed. Mason lugs a leather sack on his back and a wooden bucket in each hand. I carry the wooden yoke across my shoulders.

  “I have a surprise for you,” says Mason as we round the corner to the yew tree.

  “Mason!” I gasp. “What’s this?”

  Around the pool, Mason’s put in a pavement of smoothly dressed stones, smuggled from the chapel, so we can sit without getting muddy. Four steps lead down into the pool. A small channel collects water in a stone basin for drinking or filling vessels before it runs off into a longer channel away from the spring.

  “I took a break from the chapel and worked on this instead,” he says. “And there’s one finishing touch.”