Communion Blood (25 page)

At the stable door he dismounted and led his grey inside; a single lamp left burning for his arrival provided illumination Ragoczy did not need as he began to unsaddle the grey gelding. He was stowing his saddle in the tack-room when the side-door opened and Matyas stepped in; the chief groom and occasional coachman made a gesture of welcome to his employer.

“I’ll take care of the grey, Signore,” he said, speaking softly in a mixture of Hungarian and Italian. “It is late and you have need of sleep, I do not doubt. Amerigo has been abed since the cook retired.” There was a world of implication in this report, all of which Ragoczy ignored.

“The lamp is a kindness in you, Matyas,” said Ragoczy, knowing that his ability to see easily in the dark would attract attention he did not want.

“Then perhaps you can see what the penitent is doing? I hear her with her scourge at night, and I fear for her.” He pointed to the open side-door. “She has been praying for hours. I dare not think what she has done to herself.”

“I’ll see to her,” Ragoczy told him. “Make sure the gelding has grain as well as hay. It may be summer now, but that does not excuse us from feeding animals.”

“Of course,” said Matyas, a bit impatiently for being reminded of his job. “And he’ll have a brushing-down before I retire.”

“Including the mane and tail,” Ragoczy said. “The insects are plentiful: use the orange-peel oil on his coat.”

“I will,” said Matyas, and left to attend to the horse.

Ragoczy stood for a moment, gathering his thoughts in preparation, then he went out into the night again. He paused for a moment to listen to the sounds coming from beyond the old coach-house: there could be no doubt—Leocadia was beating herself with a scourge. Steeling himself against what he would see, he made his way to the small building she had made her cell. He hesitated once again, his senses keen. The odor of her sweat and blood, and the faint, acrid sweetness of infection filled him so intensely that he had to bank his feelings against them as he went to knock on the crude wooden door. When the prayers continued, he knocked again, more firmly.

“Is someone there?” Leocadia called out, fear making her voice hoarse.

“Yes. It is Signore Ragoczy,” he replied gently, his voice low and pleasant. “I am .. . concerned for you, Penitent. It is very late and I am troubled by the rigors of your devotions.”

The laughter that answered his words was strident. “They are not

rigorous enough for what I must expiate.” As if to underscore her words, the hiss and slap of the scourge sounded again. “I am as yet unworthy of salvation. God let His Son suffer more anguish than anything I have known.” Her voice was sing-song and thready, both worrisome signs.

Ragoczy knew better than to challenge this; instead he asked, “Have you been feverish? The weather has been so warm and close that I sense you might become so. That is more than chastisement, Penitent, it is dangerous.”

“God sends the weather as surely as He sends retribution,” she said. “I have not completed the Rosary yet. I beg you will permit me to.” Without waiting for anything more from him, she began to pray again, punctuating the cadences with the whack of her scourge.

“Penitent,” Ragoczy said a little louder to catch her attention, “you are in my care and I will be held accountable if any ill should befall you.”

“God will absolve you of all responsibility,” said Leocadia, before beginning another Ave Maria, the scourge keeping cadence with the salutation of the Angel Gabriel.

“Ah, but the earthly courts may not be so compassionate should you ail while you stop here,” said Ragoczy, and gave her time to think of this before he went on. “If anything should happen to you, it will fall to me to answer for it.”

“But how can you? I am nothing to you.” She spoke anxiously, her prayer abandoned. “You do not know me as more than a penitent. Who is to act against you if I should perish? How could you be held to answer for an unknown?” The edge in her voice revealed the terror that he had inspired.

“Unknown you may be to me, but you must be someone’s daughter, or sister,” he said persuasively.

“I have
no one,”
she whispered fiercely; there was the sound of her moving, and when she spoke again she was immediately on the other side of the door. “I am
nobody."

Ragoczy considered his next remark carefully. “That may be true, but the Church values the least of her children as greatly as the mightiest.”

“H a!” came the rejoinder. “No one believes that. The mighty are mighty and the rest are dust beneath their feet.”

Aware that her sudden anger might work against him as readily as for him, he went on carefully. “If you accept that, why do you spend your days in prayer?”

“Because my
sin
is mighty.” She began suddenly to weep in hard, desperate sobs. “God will not overlook my sins simply because I am not of any importance in the world.”

“Penitent,” Ragoczy said firmly, “please let me in. I want only to see that you are well, or, if you are not, to provide succor.”

“No!”
She retreated from the door, her crying becoming whimpering, as if she dared not raise her voice.

“Signorina,” Ragoczy said, his voice gentle and urgent at once, “I mean you no harm. You have my Word that I will do nothing more than I have said I will do.”

It required some effort for Leocadia to collect herself enough to speak. “I don’t believe you.”

The resentment in her voice shocked Ragoczy; he had expected many things of her, but this surprised him. “Why should I dissemble?” he asked at his most reasonable. “As you say, I know nothing of you, but I suspect you have taken some infection from
your...
exercises. I would like to be certain you are not ill, for your sake as well as mine.”

She muttered something under her breath that Ragoczy could not hear, and then she raised her voice enough to be heard. “I will not be turned from my penance.”

Ragoczy raised his hands in aggravation, although his voice did not change. “I have no wish to do so,” he said mendaciously. “But I want to assure myself that you are not so ill that your penance is ... tainted.”

“Tainted.” Leocadia fell silent: no prayers, no scourging came from the improvised cell. Finally her steps approached the door, and she drew back the bolt that secured it. “See for yourself.” She was in her camisa, which had once been white but was now dirty and stained, the back nothing more than tatters, matted with old and new blood. Her face was gaunt and her color high, her lips cracked and dry, revealing the extent of the infection that possessed her. In her right hand she held her rosary, the amber beads clouded, in her left she held her scourge, the four lashes darkly glistening with wetness.

“You are ill,” Ragoczy said calmly enough, though he was struck by the lack of concern she displayed.

“Not beyond God’s cure,” she said, preparing to close the door again. “I entrust myself to Him and the Virgin, and pray for mercy,” She tried to swing the door closed, but could not; she clung to it, swaying slightly.

Ragoczy held the door open easily. He spoke kindly and simply. “Penitent, I ask you—I beseech you—let me tend to your injuries, so that you do not pray in delirium. Who knows what forces you might invoke in such a state.”

She gazed at him, blinking frequently. “You shine.” With that, she dropped to her knees, trying to steady herself as she began praying.

“Penitent,” Ragoczy said gently and persistently, “listen to me. You have become fevered. This fever may be ended, if you will permit me to treat you. Do not refuse the healing I can offer, for I do it in the name of charity. Recover from your fever, te prego. Then you may continue your devotions without the distortions that such febrile infection brings.”

“I pray, and offer up my burning,” she said, her voice becoming fainter. “Like ... the Saints
...”

“It cannot be God’s wish to see you die from illness,” Ragoczy said, a wave of hideous memories coming over him, from his days at the Temple of Imhotep to the cholera-stricken streets of Athens to the devastation of Europe when the Black Plague first struck. “There is no piety in disease, Penitent, only suffering.”

“God’s Son suffered,” Leocadia murmured. She crossed herself, lassitude making it difficult to complete.

“But not from disease,” Ragoczy insisted as he swiftly bent and lifted her into his arms, saying, “You will need to get well if you wish to continue your devotions.” Her sickness struck him with a force that was almost physical. He could feel the heat of her through her ruined camisa and his own riding clothes. “When did you last eat?” he asked, expecting no answer. “Or drink?”

Leocadia flailed at him silently, but her weakness quickly exhausted her and she lay limp and unprotesting as he carried her into his house; her head lolled over Ragoczy’s arm as if she had completely lost consciousness.

“Rugerius,” said Ragoczy, as he came down the hall toward his study; he knew his manservant would be waiting for him there, and would know how to explain his actions to the servants if they should gossip.

“My master,” Rugerius exclaimed as he held the door wide for Ragoczy. “Our Penitent Guest? What is wrong?”

“She’s flailed her shoulders to bits and is burning with fever. Those welts are infected.” He cocked his head toward the trestle table. “Move the books and papers off that, will you? I need to have a proper look at her.”

“No, no,” she whispered. “No, brother, you must
not...”
“Penitent, you are ill. I have a remedy for you,” said Ragoczy as calmingly as he could; he moved to the table Rugerius was clearing. “God will not mind you being treated for your sickness.” He spoke to Rugerius in a crisper tone. “At least we have trestle tables in plenty; without one this would be more difficult. We have something more to thank the builders for.” Then he spoke to Leocadia again. “Do not worry; you will be better.”

Her mumbled response was incoherent; she turned her head away from him.

“I think, old friend, she had better lie prone. Her back will need attention first.” He nodded in the direction of a small settee. ‘Take one of the cushions, for her head.”

Rugerius finished stacking the books he had cleared on a stool and put the papers on a tall lectern, then fetched the cushion, placing it at the end of the table nearest Ragoczy. “What more shall I do?” “She needs a clean camisa; there is a linen night-rail in the clothes- press as I recall: it will do. Bring that, and a vial of the sovereign remedy. I’ll need a basin and a sponge to clean—” He indicated her back as he laid her very tenderly facedown on the table, her head resting on the brocade-covered cushion. “And a topical anodyne as well, I think,” he said impassively as he looked at the ruin of her shoulders and back.

“What has she done to herself?” Rugerius asked after a single glance at the young woman’s back. “Some of those—” He went to the far side of the room for a tree of candles which he brought back to the trestle table. “You may want more light. This calls for more than you can see in the dark.”

“Yes. Thank you,” said Ragoczy, bending over the young woman. “I will need the spirits of wine to clean this, I fear. A pity we have no housekeeper to whom we can entrust her, but—” He nodded toward the door. “Do not rouse the household if you can avoid it.”

“Of course not,” said Rugerius, and went off to do as Ragoczy had charged him.

Removing his gloves, Ragoczy made a careful study of Leocadia’s back, taking care not to touch her, for he did not want to give her any more pain than she had inflicted upon herself. The flesh on her shoulders and her upper back was the most damaged; the sweet, metallic odor of it revealed its rottenness as much as the puffy, discolored tissue did. Her hands and feet were grimy, with dark stains from her blood as well as fine lines of dirt; one long, matted braid fell over her shoulder, the hair stiff with blood. Ragoczy wondered how long she had been beating herself, and how many blows she had inflicted.

On the table Leocadia stirred a little, suppressing a moan as she did; her eyes came open, but the stare with which she took in her surroundings was blank, and she closed them again.

As he watched her, Ragoczy could not rid himself of an uneasy worry: should he inform her brother of her condition? He knew that the Cardinal had announced his sister was away from Roma, saying she was visiting in Spain. The trouble was, as Ragoczy saw it, that if the Cardinal believed this to be true, he would regard any information from Ragoczy regarding his missing sister as an attempt at embarrassing him; if the Cardinal was aware that she had disappeared, he might decide that Ragoczy had kidnapped her, or taken her as a concubine. The punishment for such crimes was severe and deadly; there would be no mercy for so great an insult.

“Here are the items you requested,” Rugerius said as he came back into the study and closed the door behind him. “All but the night-warder are asleep, and he is posted at the new house.”

“Excellent,” Ragoczy approved. His swift perusal of the items on the tray revealed that Rugerius had brought scissors and a small jar of ginger-willow-and-valerian tincture as well as the sovereign remedy, the spirits of wine, and the topical anodyne. “Very sensible. I should have thought of that,” he said as Rugerius dragged a small bench nearer on which he could place his tray.

“The night-rail is much too large for her, but it will do for now,” Rugerius remarked as he took the lawn garment from hanging over his arm and draped it over the chair with the highest back. “I will go get the basin of water now, if you do not need me.”

“I do, but I need the water more,” Ragoczy said with a trace of mild self-mockery in his tone. As soon as Rugerius left the study again, Ragoczy shrugged out of his riding-coat, took the anodyne tincture and using the long stopper, began to drop single droplets of the solution onto her shoulders. “This will numb your hurts,” Ragoczy explained, although he was not sure she heard him, or paid him any attention. “You wall not mind so much when I clean the pus from your wounds, which I must do if you are to fight off your infection. There is pus in the exposed tissues, and I want you to be rid of it. Your physicians may say what they wall—I do not think any pus is laudable.” In his black-brocaded waistcoat and white camisa, he looked severe as a priest, though the rubies securing his neck-bands were too ostentatious for the clergy, who saved their jewels for their reliquaries, monstrances, crucifixes, and ceremonial vestments.