Infinite Sacrifice (28 page)

“How old are you, Oliver?” I ask as
he pants, trying to carry Rowan as long as he can to help
me.

“My birthday passed a month ago.”
He heaves the slumped Rowan up higher. “I’m seven.”

“I thought you were eight or
nine!”

He looks up, and his indigo eyes
sparkle proudly. We reach the abbey and walk through the open doors
to the chapel.

The pews have been cleared to the
side of the vast, high-ceilinged room. Bodies are everywhere, in
every state of agony. The smell of the plague lifts into our noses,
and Oliver holds tight to my dress as I take Rowan. The sick are
everywhere, but there are no nuns to be seen. We stand there,
waiting for someone to come and help us, while people cry out in
the delirium that only high fever causes, crying either for water
or loved ones, and some simply incoherent.

Right as I am thinking of leaving
the horrible place, a nun in full habit comes hustling from outside
with two buckets of water hanging off a stick on her shoulders. She
puts the buckets down, takes a dipper, and proceeds to fill a
wooden goblet repeatedly, while delivering it to each parched
mouth. She is so busy and dedicated to the saintly task, she
doesn’t see us standing there. After she has reached every thirsty
soul, she stands up and looks satisfied with the way the sick have
settled down. She spins around to grab a pile of cloths and dumps
them in one of the buckets. Pulling each one out, she wrings them
and places them on every fevered forehead. I know she is never
going to stop her chores and notice us, so I step carefully around
the bodies lying on rags on the floor and surprise her.

“Sister—”

She jumps and grabs her
chest.

“Sister, I am sorry to startle you,
but I need your assistance. These children have been orphaned,
their mother died, and their father abandoned them.”

“We have heard that story before.”
She doesn’t make eye contact, only goes back to her
chores.

“The little one is sick with a
fever and a bubo under his arm.” She now looks sympathetically upon
Rowan’s sleeping face and holds her hand to his forehead. She
traces her finger down the faint scar and smiles.

“I will make a small bed for him.”
She goes out the back door and returns quickly with a handful of
rags. They are torn scraps from discarded clothing but are crisp
and clean.

I go to put Rowan down when she
stops me. “No, the child needs to be cleaned first.”

She beckons me to follow, and
Oliver tags behind. She has a wide basin in the back beside an open
fire. She fills the basin with hot water from the cauldron and
pours cold water in to make it an acceptable temperature. I wake
Rowan while pulling his nightshirt over his head, and he cries
groggily at the disturbance. All sorts of vermin go hopping off his
body when the shirt is removed. The burlap shirt is stiff and
scratchy; the roughness causes Rowan’s delicate skin to chafe.
Seeing this, the nun takes his shirt as far away from her body as
possible and pitches it into the fire.

I put Rowan in the warm bath, and
judging by the layers of dirt on the child, I’m sure it is the
first bath of his life. Oliver looks on with interest. The nun
takes up a rough brush and begins scrubbing the filth off; her
mouth pinches in hard labor, and the freckles disappear in the red
flush of heat to her face. Rowan enjoys it until she pours water
over his head and scrubs his scalp. He screams in
protest.

Oliver tries to run away at this
point, but I tell him to remove his shirt. I wrap Rowan up in a
clean woolen shirt the nun has found for him and bring him inside
to his bed. The nun orders Oliver to get in the tub in the
background. Rowan settles immediately into the heap as the curls
start to return with the warmth of his fever. As I walk back
outside, I can hear Oliver hollering, “Quit it!” as she scrubs the
lice off him. I help dry him off and hand him his shirt, knowing he
thinks he is old enough to dress himself. I find his heap of rags
and a large piece of wool for a blanket, and he looks relaxed for
the first time.

After they are both asleep, I go
out back to find the nun again, since she seems to be purposely
avoiding me.

I walk up and say, “I am not ill
but have some experience with caring for plague victims.” She still
doesn’t stop her chores and keeps her back turned. “I was hoping
that in return for shelter and some food, I could help care for the
sick.”

Still with her back turned, she
says, “You will need to talk to the Mother Superior about such
matters.”

“Where can I find her?”

She points to a small thatched barn
up the hill. I lift my dress off the ground and trudge up the hill.
Reaching the fenced-in area behind the barn, I hear a great
commotion of clucking and wings flapping. Peering around the large
hexagonal chicken coop, I feel instantly intrusive upon spying an
older nun with her habit tucked up into her undergarments, lunging
wildly around after the scattering hens. After one awkward dive
into the corner, she comes up with a flapping, fat hen upside
down.

Seeing me, she laughs and says,
“God’s work is not always pretty!” She walks around the coop to a
broad stump, swiftly lifts a short axe, and with a clean chop, the
life leaves the golden hen.

She walks up with the hen’s feet
still kicking and asks, “How can I help you, child?”

“I have brought some plague orphans
here for your care and was hoping I could stay to assist you with
the stricken.”

She glances up to the sky. “Oh! The
Lord is miraculous! We are in need of more assistance.” She looks
back down at me. “God bless you, child, but you know you put
yourself at great risk?”

Wishing I could somehow change my
mind, I answer, “I have no choice, Mother. My husband deserted me
when I tried to care for the children.”

She shakes her head. “We cannot all
see the grace of God in such perilous times. Only the most devout
can see the humanity behind the fear.”

Her eyes are small and so dark they
reflect all light. She has a mole to the side of her right eye that
gives her a painted look, and her smile is comforting.

She thrusts the dead chicken into
my hands, tucks her dress farther into her breeches, and says, “Get
busy plucking that one for our stew tonight. I have to go chop
three more.”

The stew is delicious, and the
children wake back up in time to have some for supper. I feed Rowan
in his bed and make him swallow the contents of one of the vials
Hadrian left me. Oliver and I join the two nuns by the fire. They
say a prolonged grace and eat in silence.

At the end, Mother Superior calls,
“Emeline, why don’t you take—I’m sorry child, what is your
name?”

“Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth up to our quarters. Poor
dear looks tired.”

I walk Oliver back to where Rowan
sleeps soundly, and he looks nervous that I will be leaving
them.

“I will only be upstairs with the
nuns. You need to stay here to take care of Rowan. If he needs any
help, you come find me.”

Being protective makes him
understand why he has to stay, and without a word, he kisses his
sleeping brother and lies back down on his rags. I follow Emeline
up the narrow stairs to a few small rooms with narrow roped beds
and hair mattresses.

She points to two of the rooms.
“You can take your pick. Normally we have four nuns to a room…” She
tries to choose her words carefully, and finding none, she
finishes, “…Well, we can all have our own rooms, now.”

I take the room closest to me. It
makes me nervous to think so many nuns sacrificed themselves to
help others, nuns who slept in this very bed. When I lie down on
the lumpy mattress and pull up the wool blanket, I wonder how my
life has changed so much in one day. I feel alone for the first
time in my life, and cry as I realize that I have no idea what I am
doing with two small children.

I wake up to someone knocking on
the door.

Oliver is there, sniffling, and I
whisper, “What it is, Oliver?”

“Rowan is very hot, and he isn’t
waking up.”

I run down the stairs, getting my
shoe caught in the hem of my kirtle, and fall at the base of the
stairs. I hurry to Rowan’s bed and see that he is murmuring
restlessly between chattering teeth.

Emeline rushes down behind us. “The
child is burning up. We need to get him into cold
water.”

“My husband is a doctor, and he
said the only cure for fever is bloodletting. We need to flush out
the impurities.”

She sneers at my idea, grabs Rowan
up, and carries the child out back. Emeline pours water straight
from the well into the basin and places Rowan into the cold water.
She reaches for a rag and keeps wringing it over his head. Baths
are known to bring on disease and death. Why would she think
submerging the child would save him?

I go to Mother Superior and find
her leaving her room. “Mother, Sister Emeline is killing
Rowan!”

“Calm yourself, dear. Sister
Emeline has been taking care of the sick since she first arrived
here at fourteen. She may have strange customs, but more people
have survived under her care than any other nun. Trust her as I
trust her.” She calmly walks down the stairs and out to the chapel,
where she kneels with her rosary and puts her hand up to bring me
on my knees with her . “The best thing you can do is pray to God to
allow him to get better.”

I kneel with her for some time, and
when I open my eyes, I’m surprised to see Oliver by my side in
prayer also. I’m not sure if it was the praying or the bathing, but
Rowan’s high fever broke that night, and he improves steadily.
Rowan begins to get up and run around with Oliver again, and in the
midst of great suffering, it’s nice to hear the happy chatter of
children playing. I do everything Emeline asks from that point,
although she does let me show her how to cauterize the buboes and
nods in thanks for the helpful instruction. I also get permission
to bring the children up into my bed and looked forward to their
little arms and legs draping over me every night.

Every few days, the monks come from
the municipal almshouse to deliver goods they produced from their
acres of wheat, barley, and fresh vegetables. One monk stands out
to me. He never makes eye contact with me and gravitates toward
assisting the neediest victims. He brings soup to the hungry,
cradling their heads in his arms and smiling as they manage to
swallow. He sweetly and lovingly caresses fevered heads while
giving the sickest their last rites. He performs the most difficult
acts, such as washing infected feet, changing soiled sheets, and
wrapping seeping pustules, with great compassion.

One day I try to talk to him as he
is washing the floors.

“Brother Simon?”

His sparkling green eyes dart up to
me. “Yes?”

I grab a rag and get on my hands
and knees to help him scrub. He looks like he’s uncomfortable
seeing me get down in the wetness in my velvet kirtle. I hadn’t
planned far enough to answer him, so I awkwardly don’t say
anything. He stares at my left hand on the scrub brush for a moment
and seems nervous with me so close.

“You bring such comfort to the
dying,” I finally say as I keep scrubbing.

“I wish I could do more,” he says
as he reaches over to pull the veil from my headdress out of the
bucket.

I feel childish as I sweep it off
my head, releasing my long, four-plaited braid, and wring the veil
out swiftly. He puts his hands out to carry it to the table for me.
Taking up the brush again, I try to scrub away my embarrassment. He
takes his place on the floor again, and after a thick pause, I try
to return to our conversation. “I wish I could bring such
comfort.”

He looks up, catches my eyes, and
then fixes his gaze back on the floor. “Mother Superior told me you
left your husband to care for orphans.”

“They are over there.” I point to
them right as Rowan jumps on Oliver’s back, sending Oliver
careening into the ground over in the corner of the chapel. Both of
them giggle hysterically.

Simon smiles, and I notice a slight
gap in his front teeth. “Looks like you have brought much comfort
too.”

That one sentence makes me feel
more important than anything else in my whole life. I help him
finish the entire room.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Every morning it’s a somber job to
see which tired soul has expired in the night. Sometimes we’re
prepared for it, seeing someone in particular distress. Other times
we’re caught off guard. The occasional patient will look as though
he’s improving and will be found cold unexpectedly. Malkyn, the
Mother Superior, will say a prayer over their lost battle and cover
them with a shroud.

The unfortunate job of instructing
the sexton is mine. It’s the same steel-eyed, vile sexton who
buried the children’s mother, and they run whenever they see him
coming. He shows up this grim morning with a completely loaded
cart—shirtless, even though there’s an autumn chill in the
air.

“Oh, the sun is already shining!”
he calls out upon seeing me. “My little burgundy hen waits for
me.”