Infinite Sacrifice (31 page)

He brings his hands up under his
head, causing his elbow to rest slightly on my shoulder, and sighs.
“I, on the other hand, feel like I am waiting for death among the
dead.”

His heaviness feels palpable as we
watch the thin clouds drift by. I turn to study his face as he
moves his hands nervously to his flat stomach, then leans over me
and looks directly into my eyes for the first time. My stomach
twists as I watch him reach out and pick up my braid. He runs his
fingers up and down the entwined rope of hair. My heart begins to
rise in my throat. He lifts the braid up to his nose and breathes
it in. Then, just as quickly, he smiles, drops my braid, and falls
back noisily to the ground. My heart slams back down to the pit of
my stomach. I stare up at the waving wheat tops in silence,
thinking of the strange event that occurred, surprised I was
disappointed he didn’t try what I’d hoped he was going to. He pulls
a shiny red apple from his robe and begins carving it with his
folding knife. He offers me the first piece, and I take it, happy
for the distraction.

He begins again after a thick
silence, “Do you believe in pledging yourself to something of
extraordinary importance?”

He slips a slice in his mouth on
the blade of his knife.

“Yes, I do.” I think of how I feel
about Rowan and Oliver.

“Do you believe that no matter what
temptation might test you, one must stay true to a promise?” He
hands me another slice, which I hold on to for the children. He is
back to averting his eyes.

I pause a moment, trying to come up
with an honest answer. ”I believe everyone has a path and must use
their heart as a compass.”

He turns to me, smiling. “True,
very true, Elizabeth.”

He hops up but puts his warm hand
down to help me. I call for the children, who come running at once
with Mousie pouncing behind them. Simon carves up the rest of the
apple while the children drool expectantly before he gives it to
them. I decide to eat the last slice I’d been saving. Simon runs
after Rowan, screaming in delight, grabs him up in one swift
movement, and raises him to his shoulders. As we walk back up to
the abbey in purple dusk, I wonder what his heart has told
him.

Chapter 9

The next night, Simon is chopping
wood for the fire while the children are collecting
kindling.

I hear Oliver scream,
“Elizabeth!”

My stomach drops at the sight of
Simon vomiting beside the woodpile.

God, please, not
Simon
.

I dab off his face with the hem of
my kirtle and walk him back inside. We have some fresh beds ready
for incomers, and I lower him onto one. He waves his hand for me to
leave him, but I ignore the request. I get him a cool rag for his
forehead and place a bucket beside him. He lurches to the bucket a
few times and empties his stomach completely.

He’s burning up by the end of the
hour, and I go to Emeline to see if she thinks we should make a
cold bath for him. As Emeline is drawing the bath, Daniel comes and
places leeches at all his pulse points. Remembering the two
antidotes I have left, I run up to get one. I come back down to
Daniel helping Simon out of his robe and turn away to give him
privacy as he steps into the bath. He shakes and his teeth chatter
in response to the cold, but his fever won’t break. His shivering
gets so intense that the water sloshes out of the basin. Daniel
dries him off and slips back on his robe. Simon looks so feeble
walking back to his bed—aged decades within hours.

“E-Elizabeth?” he
chatters.

“Yes?”

“E-Elizabeth?”

“Right here.”

“S-stay with me.”

I lie on his blanket with him and
remember my vial. “Before you rest, swallow this,
please.”

“W-what is it?”

“It is an antidote all the way from
France. My husband gave me a few vials of his antidotes as he left
and I want you to take it.”

“I don’t w-want it.” He shoves my
hand away.

I don’t understand. “It can help
you.”

“If you have s-saved that when
others n-needed it, th-then I sh-shouldn’t have it
either.”

I feel ashamed I had selfishly been
holding onto these vials in case Oliver or I got sick and watched
as others perished. He keeps shivering for hours. I try to keep
cold rags on his head, but the fever is so high, they warm up too
quickly. Daniel comes to check his buboes and sees he has developed
an egg-sized one on his abdomen, above his groin, and a smaller one
on his thigh. Daniel became a master at cauterizing without causing
the reaction I usually got. But that didn’t seem to help Simon
either. Every time I give him the water that he begged for, he
brings it up minutes later, to only to beg for more yet again. His
lips crack severely from dehydration, and I see one of God’s tokens
develop on his chest. I know he doesn’t have long. Malkyn comes to
sing at her usual time, and I hold on to his shaking
hand.

“E-Elizabeth.”

“Yes, I haven’t gone
anywhere.”

“W-will you let me have y-your
braid?”

I bend down and let him hold it in
his hand.

After feeling it for a moment, he
says, “C-can I k-keep it with me?”

I realize what he means and say,
“Of course.”

He reaches in his pocket, gets his
knife, and tries to open it but can’t manage the skillful movement
while his hand is trembling so much. I open it, cut part of the
ribbon off, and give it to him. He takes the braid in one hand and
cuts into the middle of it. I catch it before it untwines, making
the hair above the cut spin out around my shoulders. I tie the
piece of ribbon on the top to hold the braid, and he closes his
pale hand around it.

He dies around midnight, still
clutching my braid.

The Brothers come with their wagon
to collect Simon for burial in their monastery’s graveyard. They
treat his body with such care and place him in an ornately carved
coffin. It is nice not to worry about his dignity in death or
handing him over to Ulric’s apathetic care, but I can’t help
thinking he would have been embarrassed by all this special
treatment.

Chapter 10

I try to busy myself to keep my
mind off Simon being gone, afraid that if I fall into the hole he
left, I will never surface again.

A nobleman in the midst of great
delirium proves a good distraction.

“I’m filthy! I’m filthy! This whole
city’s crawling in excrement and disease!”

I wipe his perfectly clean brow.
Strangely enough, this man had come in cleaner than we’d ever seen
a body.

“You are not filthy at all.
Actually it looks like you have scrubbed yourself raw.” I look at
his extremely chapped and cracked hands.

“I locked the house up and deprived
myself of every comfort. Avoided all contact with any living
creature. Subsisted in utter deprivation! Look at where it got
me.”

I remove the last vial I had left,
giving them away the way Simon would have wanted. I empty the amber
powder into a ladle of water and bring it to his purple lips to
swallow. I stand up and throw the glass into the fire. He quickly
falls into unconsciousness, but after three days, he
improves.

Upon opening his ice-blue eyes, he
asks, “Am I dead?”

I reply, “Does this look like
heaven?”

I sweep my hand across the sad
scene of people coughing on heaps of rags.

“Am I cured, then?” He whisks the
hair from his widow’s peak back behind his ear.

“I cannot say if you are cured, but
your fever broke, and that is a good sign.”

“It was all the cleaning I did. I
know it weakened the disease.”

Everyone has
their own idea of what saved them
.

“Do you know what is happening out
there?” He points to the street side of the abbey.

“No, I have not been outside the
abbey for months.”

I start to spoon-feed him some
soup.

“It is terrible. I lost my whole
fortune. So many people are dying, and they have no one to leave
their property to. Half the houses in London are vacant, falling
into ruin and neglect.” He takes the spoonful I have waiting and
swallows rapidly to continue, “Neighbors are robbing neighbors, and
greedy peasants are moving property lines with no one to contest.
And that is nowhere near as bad as the problems due to the
heriot.”

I have never heard someone complain
so soon after recovering before.

He continues fuming about the death
tax, “Normally one gives the king a horse in payment at a death,
but there are so many dying, the horses are all running loose in
the streets! It has completely ruined the market! All of my herds
are worthless now! I cannot even acquire hay to feed them with the
scarcity of labor.” He sits up. “Marriage has all but vanished!
Society is crumbling. Even the great Edward the III has fled.
Animals are dying in the streets and fields because there are no
shepherds left to tend to them!” He starts wringing his hands. “I
cannot go back! I cannot go back!”

“If you have survived it, we have
not seen one person yet that has suffered a relapse.”

“It is not the plague I fear but
the sounds of the dying and the deplorable state London is in!” He
grabs my arm. “Do you know for three nights in a row a man down in
Cheapside kept stumbling up and down the streets screaming for his
family all night. The lack of sleep I got was probably the very
thing that exposed me to the filth. I can still hear it:
‘Christiana! Oliver! Rowan!’—”

I freeze and drop
the spoon into the bowl.
He is searching
for them.

“Coughing horribly all the while.
It was enough to drive us all mad!”

Their father must
be sick. I get up while Fendel is still ranting and walk out back.
Oliver comes up bringing me a bouquet of juniper berries before he
runs up to bed. Can I let their father die alone? However, the
thought of losing the only two people I have left scares me more
than anything could.
Nevertheless
,
he must be brought here, even if he wants them
back.

Emeline tells me she will keep her
eye on the children, and I wrap the leather belt Simon wore around
me, which holds everything necessary for delivering last rites. I
walk down the lanes with lantern lit as a full moon rises. I can’t
believe how much has changed. Half the houses have doors wide open,
with sows sticking their pink faces out at my approach. Black flags
wave from every door, pole, and window flapping down the row like
the invading enemy has won. Someone opens a window and screams out
in agony, startling me into a run.

The children’s house looks
abandoned, and I almost turn to leave when I hear a rasping cough
come from within. The house is in the same condition I left it
except that the animals have all gone, turning over the chairs and
table in their flight. I walk back to the bedroom where I had found
their mother and see a half-dead man in her place. He’s struggling
to breathe between harsh, hacking sounds and violent spasms of
endless coughing. There’s a thick red pool of blood on the dingy
sheets around his head. The most dreaded form of plague. I’m
already in danger simply by sharing the same air as him.