The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  “Now he’s an amputee, and you’re just a human being.”

  Janie ignored the rebuke. “I’m a mother who has a young son to raise.”

  Lany gave her a hard look. “A son you borrowed from another time. You brought him into this world for reasons of your own, not because nature made it happen. It was as much an act of selfishness as anything else. You brought someone from another time into this mess without asking him if he wanted it. If you’d cooked him up in the time before, it might be different. But now I think you owe him a world that he can actually live in. You have something inside you, just like I do, that can make a difference. Not everyone can say that.”

  “Why does it have to be me?” Janie lamented. “Why can’t it all just be taken care of, like it was before?”

  After a pause, Lany said, “That’s a question I can’t answer. If I was a believer, I’d say it was all part of some greater plan. Trouble with the greater plans is that when you’re one of the parts, it’s hard to see or understand the whole.”

  Janie turned away again. She thought about Tom and the hurt that was between them. Maybe it would be good to go out and see the hurt in the rest of the world, to understand her own good fortune better. Maybe then she could inspire him to understand for himself that there was good fortune in living, even if his life was limited. She tried to clear her head; everything was suddenly even more confusing.

  The larger part of her wanted to get back on her horse and return to the other side of the mountain, to snuggle into the oblivion that could be found there. So what if she turned into a recluse—so what if she kept Alex at her side until her dying day. Her son would live to pass on his genes.

  But it was the smaller part of her that had the louder voice. More than six hundred years after his death, the spirit of Alejandro still resonated.

  Six hundred years from now, her own genes and their uncanny resilience might resonate too.

  “Two days out, two days back, right?”

  “That’s it. A total of four days. Five at most if we stay in Worcester one day for the meeting. Assuming we leave from here. From your place, it would be longer.”

  “If we left from here, I wouldn’t see Tom or Alex before we go.”

  The tone of Lany’s voice was softer now. “You can e-mail them that you’re going. You won’t be gone much longer than you would have been here, anyway. Just a couple of days.”

  “Tom’s working through a lot of stuff right now,” Janie said. “Truth is, he could probably use an even longer break from me. He’ll have more time to sort through the things that are depressing him. But Alex will be upset.”

  Lany could not help but smile. “I saw what he did that night on the way back from the cell tower. I think he’ll be upset, all right, but more that you’re not taking him than that you’re going in the first place.”

  Lany was right.

  I wish I could go with you. Tell me where you’re going so I can look for it on the map.

  We’re not exactly sure yet. I’ll tell you all about it when we get back.

  Be careful.

  I will. I love you.

  I love you too, Mom.

  As she clicked the message closed, Janie wondered if Alejandro had ever told his mother that he loved her. Probably not, she decided. Those were different times, and she was a different mother.

  That evening at dinner, Steve Roy came to the table with a book in his hand. He handed it to Janie.

  She looked at the title, then up at Steve. “The Lewis and Clark Expedition? I thought we were going into known territory.”

  He laughed a little. “Known to a degree,” he said. “We don’t know what you’ll find for supplies and tools. These guys made it through an incredibly long journey with just what they had and what they could gather.” He pointed to the book. “There’s a chapter in there about how they prepared, what they brought, all that. I thought it might be helpful.”

  Janie thanked him for his kindness. As she ate her dinner, she perused the summary of the items the pair had taken along:

  Their arms & accouterments, some instruments of observation, & light & cheap presents for the Indians would be all the apparatus they could carry, and with an expectation of a soldier’s portion of land on their return would constitute the whole expense. “Portable soup,” medicine, special uniforms made of drab cloth, tents, tools, kettles, tobacco, corn mills, wine, gunpowder in lead canisters, medical and surgical supplies, and presents.

  Great. she thought. But we aren’t going eight thousand miles.

  It would only seem that way.

  She found Lany stowing clothes in her saddlebag.

  “I think I’m all set,” Janie said. “As set as I can be under the circumstances. I just wish there was some way we could communicate with the folks here. I would feel so much better about going. It was bad enough when Michael was out of touch for a day.”

  “Smoke signals.”

  Janie frowned. “Yes, it would be so wise to show a visible trail of our progress.”

  “Too bad the Palms don’t work anymore,” Lany said. “I got so used to mine.”

  For a moment, Janie said nothing. Then, “Don’t they?”

  “Of course they don’t.”

  “If we have wireless that works with the computers, why wouldn’t the same wireless work for a Palm?”

  “Good question,” Lany said. “Its receivers would have to be reset….”

  James was in the kitchen doing his turn at cleanup when they located him a few minutes later.

  “You know, I never even thought about that,” he said. “I have one in a box somewhere. Thought it might make a good paperweight. Hang on a moment, let me see if I can find it.”

  He left them in the kitchen; Janie dried dishes and Lany put them away while they waited for him to return. He came back with a small black object in one hand and something Janie couldn’t quite make out in the other.

  “Here it is,” he said, handing the black box to Janie.

  “Does it still have power?”

  “I didn’t try it, but it’s been stored in a cool, dry place, that’s for sure. Eight years, though—that’s a long time. Open up the back and look at the batteries. If they aren’t corroded, they might work. It’s a long shot.”

  There was no corrosion that anyone could see. Janie removed the batteries and rubbed the contact points briskly on the denim of her jeans, then replaced them in the unit.

  “Here goes,” she said. She pressed the power button. Miraculously, the screen began to glow.

  “Son of a gun,” James said. “Gotta love those nicads. And guess what else I found in the box.”

  Grinning widely, he held up a battery charger. The two women nearly cheered.

  “Now, don’t get too excited just yet,” he admonished them. “I still have a lot of setting up to do for this to work. No point in taking the thing along unless it’ll talk.”

  For the next couple of hours, he tweaked, and eventually it talked.

  “Okay, now just a couple more settings to create an account…and by the way, what do you want the account to be called?” he asked.

  Janie didn’t hesitate. “Lewis and Clark,” she said.

  By noon the next day, they were already eight miles to the southeast, in a journey that proved remarkably uneventful at the start. They followed a small reedy river in the hopes of avoiding those remnants of civilization that were likely to be unsavory; according to their map, it paralleled the road that led to Worcester. Despite the thick brush and uncertain footing, neither woman wanted to brave the road.

  As they progressed, the river widened, swollen by the meltings of spring. The reeds disappeared, and the water swirled in fast-moving eddies around fallen trees and frothed white over submerged rocks. In summer, Janie suspected, it would be a trickle in comparison. They rode against the current; the river’s origin was close to their final destination, and they hoped to be able to follow it almost all the way.

  Somewhere along t
he way, Janie let her guard down long enough to experience her surroundings. She found a sense of peace in their sheer natural beauty. After a night rain, the trunks of the trees were starkly blackened with moisture, except the birches, which were blazingly white. The budding leaves were nearly fluorescent. Here and there on the forest floor there were small still pools rimmed with bright green sprouting things. A chorus of peeper frogs screamed out advertisements for their own virility; birds chirped to announce their territory. The light was bright but indirect, diffused as it was by the new leaves of the canopy. It was lovely.

  “‘Whose woods these are,’” Janie said pensively.

  Lany turned back and faced her. “‘Miles to go before I sleep.’”

  “Spoilsport.”

  Up ahead, the water seemed to swirl in a more pronounced manner, as if its flow were blocked by something. Janie shaded her eyes and focused.

  “There’s a canoe up there, on the edge of the river.”

  Lany took out a pair of binoculars. “A sad-looking one,” she said. “I don’t see anyone near it.”

  Nevertheless, she undid the strap on her saddle holster.

  “Let’s check it out.”

  They moved forward and brought the horses alongside it. The canoe lay against the bank, sad and forlorn. The floor was completely rotted through.

  “Made of wood,” Lany said. “Usually they’re some kind of resin. Haven’t seen one of these for a while.”

  Janie pointed to a cluster of small green shoots sprouting out from between the shrunken side boards. “It’s got a new career as a planter.” She glanced up at the sky, judging the time. “This is nothing to be concerned about. We should keep moving.”

  Lany did not disagree. They urged the horses along, still following the water’s edge. Here the water flowed smoothly along the bank; Janie’s calm returned.

  It was short-lived.

  “What’s that?” she said, pointing to a mounded area a short distance ahead. “It doesn’t look like it should be there.”

  “Don’t know, but nothing’s moving. Maybe a beaver hut.”

  “Not the right shape.”

  A few yards short of the mound, they dismounted.

  The pile of leaves was odd-shaped and seemed out of place, though it didn’t look as if the leaves had been put there but rather had accumulated naturally. Janie rooted around on the ground and came up with a stick. She poked into the leaves repeatedly; it went in easily, the first few times.

  “Whoa,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Something’s in there. It has a strange feel to it.”

  “Strange like what?”

  “Not mushy, but not firm either. Spongy.”

  She handed the stick to Lany, who probed on her own.

  Janie found another stick, and between them they worked at the leaves. When a blackened hand appeared, they jumped backward in unison.

  With her heart pounding, Lany said, “You’d think it wouldn’t be such a big thing for a cop and a doctor to come across a dead body.”

  “That’s just a hand. We don’t know that there’s a body attached to it.”

  “There usually is,” Lany said.

  As the body was revealed, Lany seemed to slip back into the practiced personality of her former profession. She leaned over the body, analyzing it with her eyes while ignoring the smell.

  “Thirty-five to forty years old,” Lany said. “Caucasian male, no blatant signs of trauma.”

  Janie squatted down beside the bloated body. “I wonder how long he’s been here.”

  “Hard to tell,” Lany said, “coming out of winter.” She shoved aside a small piece of ice that had emerged from beneath the leaves. “He might have actually died sometime in the last three or four months, and his body is just now thawing.”

  “I don’t know,” Janie said. “The clothes look awfully good for being out here all winter, and he’s not wearing a coat.”

  She used the tip of the stick to push up the collar on the man’s shirt.

  “Oh, my,” she said quietly.

  “What?” Lany said.

  “His neck.”

  Lany looked closer. “It’s bloated and discolored,” Lany said. “That’s normal in decomposition.”

  “But he’s not really all that decomposed.”

  Lany gave her an odd look, then moved closer to examine the discoloration. She pushed the collar away with her own stick.

  “I’m not getting what you mean.”

  “I mean that his neck is darker and more swollen that any other part of him.”

  “We can’t see anything but his hands.”

  “Then we need to take his clothes off him.”

  “Are you kidding? We’re already too close.”

  “Please,” Janie said, her voice hushed. “It’s important.”

  They had no gloves for this sort of task; Lany stood up and looked around, and found a large dark leaf that was still intact enough to use as a barrier. It became her pot holder as she undid the buttons of the corpse’s shirt and pulled down the zipper on his pants. She spread apart the front of the shirt and then, with Janie’s help, pulled off the man’s pants and underwear.

  The naked corpse lay before them, in all its terrible glory.

  “My God,” Janie said. “I don’t believe this.”

  “Don’t believe what?” Lany said. “That another one bit the dust from DR SAM?”

  “This isn’t DR SAM,” Janie said. “The discolorations on the neck and groin aren’t from decomposition. The rest of him would show at least something of it too.” She swallowed hard. “This looks like plague. Or something very much like it.”

  Twenty-five

  As Alejandro and Kate went farther north, the conditions improved and the path widened to the point where a cart might pass unimpeded, and it became clear to both of them that they were nearing some sort of town. The trees thinned, and they came upon a wall that ran along the side of the path. Beams of sunlight touched the forest floor at the long angle mandated by the low position of the sun.

  “In Spain, the shadows seemed shorter,” Alejandro said.

  “I should like to go to Spain one day, Père,” Kate said.

  For a moment he did not know what to say; it had been so many years since he left his country of birth that he had to stretch his mind to bring it back. His memories of the place were not entirely fond. Still, it was his first home. “It was always warm there,” he said, rather pensively. “Not like England, where a third of the year is spent in shivering. Sometimes in that winter when I was here, I felt as if I would never get warm again, so deep was the chill that penetrated my bones.”

  “Had you spent more time here, you might have become accustomed to it.”

  “Not likely,” he said. But had Adele lived, he might now still reside in England, as her husband, the owner of a proud estate of his own. Coupled with her inherited lands, they would have been prosperous indeed.

  The road widened further, and they saw fresh ruts where a cart had passed not too long before. Alejandro stared down at the tracks. “Always, when I see such marks in a road, I think of the death carts, laden with bodies of plague dead.”

  Kate reached up and made the sign of the cross on her chest. “God rest the souls of the departed and keep them.”

  “Amain,” Alejandro said.

  They pressed on, despite their sudden uneasiness. Up ahead, Alejandro made out what he thought was a flag tied around the trunk of a tree, perhaps at shoulder height. Travelers on horseback and foot alike would not fail to see it.

  “Look there,” he said, gesturing in that direction.

  Kate looked over his shoulder. “Black again…”

  Soon enough they were abreast of the flag, which hung weather-tattered on a dying tree. The bark had been stripped all around, probably by some gnawing animal. The poor tree had only a few leaves and was—in its own illness—a fitting support for the sign of plague.

  Kate tightened her gr
ip on his back yet again. “What shall we do?”

  With the flag waving over his head, Alejandro considered the matter. It was a few moments before he answered her. “I think we shall proceed,” he said.

  “But—”

  “Where better to hide than in the midst of something that will keep even the staunchest warrior at a distance?”

  They rode on, leaving the flag behind them. They passed a few small cottages, set well back. A bit farther along, the road opened up into what appeared to be the center of a small village. They stayed back on the edge of the market area, watching in relative anonymity as the people of the town went about their daily business.

  “I see no mourners, no death carts waiting, no black drapes on the lintels.”

  “Aye,” Kate said quietly. “There is too much activity for there to be plague herein.”

  Soon people began to look in their direction, but no one approached, though passersby kept their eyes upon them until they were well past.

  “Always,” Alejandro observed quietly, “the women gather at the well.”

  “Where else are they to gather? They need water, for cooking, dyeing, washing, the grinding of flour—it is a necessary thing.”

  “Indeed.”

  He dismounted, then offered his hand in assistance to Kate, saying, “I think we shall stop here for a decent meal.” He pointed to a tavern on one side of the square. “Perhaps we shall even stay a day or two, to restore ourselves.”

  Kate came to the ground and stood next to him. Alejandro tied the horse to a post, and the two travelers stood on the edge of the square and surveyed the bustling village as the inhabitants went about their business.

  “I have not seen this much liveliness in a town for a very long time.”

  “Nor I,” Kate said. “The place seems a prosperous little island unto itself.”

  It was only a short while before a young boy came up to them. He smiled in the awkward sort of way of boys and made a rough bow. “Welcome, travelers,” he said, with all the innocence of youth. “I see that you have braved our flag.”