The sight that loomed before Jilseponie when she and Dainsey came in view of St.-Mere-Abelle made her memory of the suffering in Palmaris pale in comparison. Scores of tents had been erected on the bleak plain before the great abbey; and it seemed to Jilseponie as if there were a score of sick people for every tent.
Hundreds of them, the walking dead, moving listlessly about the dreary landscape.
"So many," Dainsey Aucomb whispered at her side.
Jilseponie nodded, but she knew the truth of this scene. St.-Mere-Abelle was a fairly isolated place, with no real cities anywhere near-the closest was Palmaris, some eighty miles to the northwest. And still, the grounds teemed with the sick, nocking here from all over the region, no doubt, coming to this greatest bastion of the Abellican Church, dying on the field before the walls of the Father Abbot.
How many more had died on the road? Jilseponie wondered. Likely as many as had arrived here.
The mere thought of it nearly overwhelmed her; in that moment of despair she wanted nothing more than to turn Symphony and pound back toward Dundalis and Fellowship Way, toward the hole she had once dug for herself. She had to stop herself, close her eyes, and conjure an image of Avelyn's arm.
"Too many," she whispered back to Dainsey. She kicked her heels into Symphony's flanks and the great stallion leaped away, galloping down across the field.
Many eyes followed the two riders as they wove their way across the wretched encampment, toward the front gates of the abbey. Jilseponie felt like a sailor on a vast sea; the abbey walls seemed a distant island.
But no refuge, that place, she knew.
She meant to tear those walls down.
* * * Brother Francis paced slowly before St.-Mere-Abelle's tussie-mussie bed, feeling his legs weaken with every step.
He wanted them to see this.
He was exhausted now, beyond belief. He had the soul stone in his pocket, and he had considered spirit-walking, having his spirit violate the sanctuary of St.-Mere-Abelle.
Yes, like a ghost, he wanted to haunt them.
He wanted them to see this.
He rolled the stone in his fingers now, knowing that he had missed his chance, for Francis couldn't possibly find the strength to enter its magic now, to separate spirit from body.
He could hardly even find the strength to call out "Bou-raiy!" at the wall.
And his legs were tiring fast and his breath was becoming harder and harder to find.
They had to see this, had to bear witness to the end of Brother Francis, to learn that he faced that end courageously and with the conviction that he was right!
But now he was no longer walking, was, suddenly and without even realizing the movement, not even standing. He managed to roll over a bit, to see the wall, and he took some comfort in the forms he noted up there. He couldn't make them out through his failing eyes, but he sensed that they were watching him, that they were pointing.
They knew, and they would tell Bou-raiy.
Taking comfort in that, Francis turned his attention to the tussie-mussie bed, bathing himself in the aromas, losing himself in the colorful sights and fragrances. He felt as if those very smells might lift him up, up, might separate his soul from his body as surely as would the hematite. He could float on a cloud of aromas to God, to a judgment that he no longer feared.
He hardly heard the horses gallop up to a stop a short distance behind him, hardly heard the gathering crowd-and surely they were gathering, led by Merry Cowsenfed, several hundred people coming to say farewell to Brother Francis of St.-Mere-Abelle.
It would have made Francis happy, if he had known.
Jilseponie knew before she ever moved beside the man that he-like several of those she had encountered in Palmaris, like one she had found on the road here to St.-Mere-Abelle-was beyond her help, that even if she went to him with all of her magical strength, she would buy him only a few minutes or hours, and those he would spend in pain.
She knew by his emaciated form, lying listlessly, that the plague had won this particular fight. She knew by the look in his eyes that he was seeing as much on the other side of death as in the material world.
Jilseponie would never have recognized the man had she not heard his name as she had crossed the field. When last she had seen Francis, he had been strong and stout, even a little portly, clean-shaven and with hair neatly cropped. Now he was a ragged thing! His hair and beard had grown wild, had thickened as his body had thinned.
She went to him and knelt beside him, and took up his hand in her own.
He stared at her for a long while, seeming not to recognize her.
"Greetings, Brother Francis," she whispered. "I have heard of your work here, of your courage and compassion."
Francis continued to stare at her curiously, and then a smile widened on his face, a light of recognition. "Jilseponie? " he asked.
She nodded and reached for her soul stone, though she doubted she could even get into the magical energy in time for Francis.
Francis' smile turned down suddenly. "Can you forgive me?" he asked, his voice a rasping thing, for a discernible rattle came from his chest with every word and every breath.
Jilseponie paused and looked back at him curiously.
"Your brother," Francis remarked, "Grady Chilichunk. I was the one."
Jilseponie moved close to him, trying to suppress a scowl.
"I killed him," Francis admitted, "on the road from Palmaris. It was an accident... I did not mean ..."
Jilseponie put her finger against Francis' lips to quiet him. That battle seemed so far removed now, that hatred so irrelevant to the current situation.
"Forgive me," Francis said again. "We were all so confused then, and all so wrong."
"And now you see the truth? " she asked him.
Francis' smile returned, but then he winced and closed his eyes. Jilseponie started to reach for her soul stone again, but, as if he had read her mind, Brother Francis reached over and held her arm. "I go without fear," he whispered, and it seemed to Jilseponie as if he were speaking more to himself than to her.
"I do not fear justice," he finished, never opening his eyes, and those were the last words that Brother Francis Dellacourt of St.-Mere-Abelle would ever utter.
It hurt Jilseponie more than she would ever have believed to watch this man die. She held little fondness for Francis, had once been his avowed enemy; and even in those last days when she had been with him in St. Precious after the fall of Markwart, even when he had declared that she should become the mother abbess of the Abellican Church, she had not been overfond of him.
And he had died peacefully, contentedly, it seemed; and yet, to her surprise, Jilseponie found that his passing had wounded her.
She gently removed his hand from her forearm and placed it over his chest, then slowly rose and turned, first to regard the teary gathering of plague sufferers and the one-eyed woman who led them, then to turn and face the dark and foreboding walls of St.-Mere-Abelle. It took her a while to steady herself, to get over the emotional shock of looking at this place.
The place that had served as prison for Bradwarden. The place where her adoptive parents had died horribly.
She took another steadying breath, reminding herself of her purpose and her need, and she forced her gaze to drift up, up, to the dark, cloaked forms standing along the wall. She took Dainsey's hand and walked toward them.
"Francis is dead? " came a call down, a sharp voice she did not recognize.
"He is," Jilseponie answered.
The snort that she heard next seemed to her one of derision.
"They never was likin' him much for comin' out to us," came a voice from behind. Jilseponie turned to see the one-eyed woman standing there. Behind her, the others were gathering up the body of Francis, wrapping it lovingly in sheets.
"They put him out when he came down with plague? " Jilseponie reasoned.
The woman shook her head. "He came out of his own doin'," she answered, "and not a sign o' the plague in him. And he worked with them," she added, turning back to motion to the crowd of the sick. "All of 'em. And he helped one or two afore the plague caught up to him. Ah, a good man was Brother Francis. A saint, I say! But them on the wall don't know it." She spat on the ground. "Bah, they're not knowin' anythin' but their own scaredness. Won't come out and will shoot us dead, any of us, if we walk across their precious flowers."
Brother Francis, a saint. The incongruous notion rolled around in Jilseponie's mind as she stood there, staring at his body being borne away by the peasants. His last words, the proclamation that he did not fear justice, weighed more heavily on her, then. Had Francis truly found the light and the truth? Was his contentment at his death as real as it had seemed? Could he so understand that he had redeemed himself, and thus, need not fear the judgment of his God?
Jilseponie turned back to look at the monks on the wall, and many more had come up by then, no doubt to watch the last journey of their brother.
"I need to speak to the Father Abbot," she called to them.
"You cannot come in," came the reply from that same, sharp voice, and in a purely condescending tone.
Jilseponie looked at the great doors of the abbey, her hands going reuexively to the gemstones hanging at her belt. "Ah, but I could if I wanted to," she muttered under her breath. She looked back up at the wall, at the harsh speaker, and only then did she note that one of the monk's sleeves was tied off, as if he was missing an arm.
"I will speak to him in the gateway, from across the tussie-mussie bed," she said.
The monk scoffed at her and started to turn away.
"Do you know who I am?" she cried out, stopping him in midturn. "I am Jilseponie Wyndon of Dundalis, friend to Avelyn Desbris, friend to Braumin Herde, wife of Nightbird! I am she who destroyed the demon of Father Abbot Markwart!"
The monk walked back to the edge of the wall and leaned out through the break in the batdement, peering at her intently.
"Tell Father Abbot Agronguerre that I have come bearing the most urgent news," she went on. "The most urgent."
"Tell me, then," the monk replied.
"Bid him meet me by the tussie-mussie bed," Jilseponie continued, ignoring the man's command. "If you wish to hear my tale, then join him. I've not the time to tell it more than once." Then she turned away, gathering the one-eyed woman and Dainsey in tow and walking toward the other peasants.
The monk called out several times to her then, mosdy cries for her to stop and explain herself and a threat or two that he would not bring Agronguerre to meet with her.
But Jilseponie wasn't playing that game with him. Not then. Not with so much obviously critical work right before her.
"Tell me your tale," she bade the one-eyed woman, for she knew that this one had somehow survived the plague and had, subsequently, come to be the leader of this tent city.
Soon after, while she tended yet another in the long line of plague sufferers that Merry Cowsenfed had ordered for her, the great gates of St.-Mere-Abelle swung open. In the archway across the tussie-mussie bed stood several brothers, flanked, Jilseponie noted, by monks armed with heavy crossbows. She motioned for Merry Cowsenfed to join her.
"Keep them quiet and in line," she explained. "I will be back soon enough."
"I seen them that ye healed," Merry started to spout, so obviously thrilled.
"Not healed," Jilseponie quickly corrected, "no, not that. That will come later, as I told you, and from one much greater than I." She patted the woman on the shoulder, then motioned for Dainsey to follow her and strode over to her side of the tussie-mussie bed.
"We have heard much of your good work, Jilseponie Wyndon," greeted the largest man there, an older monk who seemed to Jilseponie as if he could be Belster O'Comely's father. "I am Father Abbot Agronguerre, formerly of St. Belfour. It pains my heart gready to learn that you are with plague."
"Not I," Jilseponie replied immediately.
"But you tend to the victims," the Father Abbot reasoned.
"And soon to find the same fate as Francis, no doubt," the one-armed monk beside him remarked.
"The plague cannot touch me," Jilseponie replied, "for I have tasted of the blood of Avelyn's covenant. Thus I can tend them with the soul stone without fear that the plague demons will attack me, and thus am I more effective in the tending."
"You will heal them all?" the one-armed monk asked, his tone half skeptical and half sarcastic.
"I will heal none, likely," the woman replied, "but I will make many strong enough for the road, for the journey they must now undertake." She paused, trying to measure the level of interest as it crossed all their faces. "To the Barbacan, to Avelyn," she explained. "There they will be healed."
The one-armed monk snorted and started to respond, but Agronguerre put his arm up before the man, silencing him.
"It is true, Father Abbot," Jilseponie went on, staring at him. "This woman-" she pulled Dainsey forward "-is my living proof. I took her to the Barbacan. She was no better off than was Francis when I came upon him on the field. I thought her death imminent, but then-"
"But then I kissed the bleeding palm," Dainsey interrupted, "and it was like all the angels o' heaven came down and burned the plague from me body."
"Francis is dead," the one-armed monk remarked. "You did not save him."
"He could not make the journey," Jilseponie replied. She turned and looked back to the hundreds at the tent city. "Nor will many of them," she admitted. "But many others will, and there they will find healing. And those who go though they have not yet been touched by the plague will find armor against it."
The monks didn't immediately respond, and when Jilseponie turned back, she found the Father Abbot stroking his chin pensively.
"You wished to speak with me, and so I assume that you believe that we have a role to play in this," he said. Again, the one-armed monk snorted.
"Preposterous," he muttered. "No doubt you wish us to come out on the field beside you, to work our sacred stone magic to help the peasants, that we might all die of the plague together."
"I wished to tell you of the miracle at Aida," Jilseponie explained to Agronguerre, again trying very hard to ignore the unpleasant one-armed monk. "You and all of your brethren must make the pilgrimage there, and with all speed, to enter the covenant. Only then can you truly begin to help the plague sufferers. Before you make such a journey, I would not even want you to try to tend the sufferers, for your brethren will prove vital in the long battle we must wage against the plague."
Agronguerre didn't immediately reply, but Jilseponie saw his emotions clearly. He didn't believe her, but how he wanted to!
"Take not my word for it," she said sharply, even as the one-armed monk started to jump in with another negative remark. "Go out with your soul stones. To Palmaris, where you will learn that the whole city is on the march to the north, Duke Tetrafel's soldiers and your brothers of St. Precious with them. Go out farther to the north, and see the lines of those living in the towns in and about the Timberlands, well on their way to that most holy of places."
She paused, just to see if the monks would try to interject anything, but she saw from their dumfounded expressions that she would not be interrupted.
"Go all the way to Mount Aida with your gemstones, Father Abbot," she finished. "See that holy place for yourself, if you must. Go and be convinced, and then send your brethren, all of your brethren, there in body that they might taste the blood of Avelyn's covenant and know the truth. Your aid will prove critical in healing the world."
"You ask much of us," Agronguerre remarked quietly.
"I tell you the truth and pray that you will choose correctly," Jilseponie replied.
"This is nonsense," claimed the one-armed brother. "Your friend survived the plague, but so have others. The ugly scarred woman on the field with the sick so survived. We did not cry miracle and send the whole world marching to the spot where she happened to be when her illness relinquished its grasp upon her!"
Jilseponie shrugged. "Believe what you will, or close your heart to the possibility of miracles and hide behind your walls," she said, and she gave a chuckle as the irony of her own words hit her. "I can do no more than tell you the truth and then pray that your faith is a real thing and not some mask for you to hide behind."
The one-armed monk scowled.
"For if you do not believe in the possibility of miracles, then wretched creatures you are indeed for hiding within abbey walls." And she turned and walked away. Dainsey, after a helpless chortle, followed.
"Those gemstones you carry!" the one-armed monk cried after her, and Jilseponie wheeled about.
"My gemstones," she said.
"They are the province of the Church," the monk corrected.
Jilseponie narrowed her eyes and glared at the man. "Come and take them," she challenged, and when he made no move toward her, she walked away.
She almost expected to take a crossbow quarrel in the back.
But nothing happened, and Jilseponie moved back to the line of patient sufferers again and went back to her duty, working tirelessly with the soul stone. Merry Cowsenfed directed the procession to Jilseponie and then to work gathering supplies.
They left in small groups, feeling better than they had in weeks, and moving with all speed for Palmaris, and for the north. If all went well, Jilseponie explained to them, they could expect to find soldiers guarding the road north and monks ready to give them more healing all along the way.
"At least we'll no longer need suffer the wails and the groans, and the stench," Fio Bou-raiy said to Glendenhook as they watched the spectacle of the thinning crowd. More sufferers continued to stream in, of course, but Jilseponie continued her work, and Merry sent them right on their way.
"Perhaps there is value to Jilseponie Wyndon after all," Glendenhook replied.
"Her words were correct," said Father Abbot Agronguerre, coming over to join the pair. His arrival made Bou-raiy and Glendenhook shuffle embarrassedly, given their previous callous remarks. "All of Palmaris, it seems, is on the road to the north."
Fio Bou-raiy threw up his hand in disgust.
"Suppose she is right?" Father Abbot Agronguerre asked. "Suppose there is a miracle to be found and we are too cynical even to look."
"And if she is wrong? " Bou-raiy came back. "Are we to send out all the brethren, as she bade us, only to have half of us die on the road and the other half return to St.-Mere-Abelle ridden with plague? "
"Her work with the gemstones seems nothing short of miraculous," Agronguerre remarked.
"She is not curing them, by her own admission," Bou-raiy reminded him.
Agronguerre turned and walked away.
Back in the abbey, the Father Abbot played all the possibilities about in his mind. Was he pragmatic or cowardly? What might be the cost of guessing wrong?
And what might be the cost of guessing right but not having the courage to act on that guess?
Inevitably, the Father Abbot kept coming back to the image of a brother dying on the field before the impenetrable walls of St.-Mere-Abelle, a brother whose courage surely humbled old Agronguerre.
"Ah, Francis," he muttered with a sigh. He remembered the night when Francis had gone out to the sick, the eve of the New Year. Not only had the man put himself in obvious physical jeopardy, but the action had brought him only snickers of derision from many of his so-called brothers.
That image haunted gentle Agronguerre as he walked slowly up to his private chambers, and it stayed with him all the way back down the circular stone stairwell.
Down, down, to the first floor of the abbey, he went, and then down again, until he stood before a little-used but extremely important doorway, ornately decorated-so much so that the great latch that secured it could hardly be noticed unless one looked at it carefully.
Agronguerre fumbled with the keys, wanting to get through the door and get done with this business before anyone could persuade him differently. For though his heart was strong now in his decision, bolstered by the image of poor dead Francis, his mind was filled with fear.
He turned open the lock, lifted the latch, and pulled the door open, but only an inch, for another, stronger hand came against the portal, pushing it closed.
Abbot Agronguerre stepped back and turned to see Master Bou-raiy, the man fixing him with a cold glare, a lock of eyes that would have gone on for a long while had not the two men heard the sound of footsteps descending the staircase back down the corridor.
"Live a long time, old man," Bou-raiy warned ominously. "For, if you do this thing, you must know that when you die, the Abellican Church will be thrown into turmoil beyond anything it has ever known."
"Is that what is honestly within your heart, Master Bou-raiy? "
"That is what I know to be true."
"Would you have me preside over a Chu'rch that turns its back on the agony of the common folk? " the Father Abbot asked.
"The plague will pass in time," said Bou-raiy, and he lowered his voice as Master Glendenhook, with Master Machuso right on his heels, appeared a short distance down the corridor. "The Church must be eternal."
Master Glendenhook walked over to stand equidistant from the two men, glancing curiously back and forth between them. "Pray, brethren," he asked, "what is it that so troubles you? "
Father Abbot Agronguerre turned a skeptical look on the man, then stepped back from Bou-raiy. "You know our viewpoints," he replied. "You have heard the tale ofJilseponie and thus have seen the drawing of the line. On which side of that line does Master Glendenhook stand? "
Glendenhook's shoulders sagged a bit at the blunt question, a reflection of the fact that he did not want to be so drawn into any open argument. He looked at Agronguerre sympathetically, then turned to Bou-raiy, who fixed him with an unyielding stare-one, it seemed to Agronguerre, that demanded the man take a definitive stand.
Glendenhook put out his hand to pat Agronguerre on the shoulder, but then stepped away from the Father Abbot, to Bou-raiy's side. He faced Agronguerre and bowed. "With all respect and honor, Father Abbot," he said, "I fear the plague and heed well the old words written about itwords penned from the bitter experiences of those who have suffered through it. I fear sending the brethren out from St.-Mere-Abelle, and I fear even more the release of the soul stones into hands untrained and undeserving."
"The brothers will carry the stones," Agronguerre replied, not understanding that second point.
"And what of the brothers who will surely die along the road? " Bou-raiy asked. "They will fall while carrying soul stones, and those stones will, inevitably, fall into the hands of the undeserving and untrained."
"Jilseponie will train them," Agronguerre argued, his tone sharp, for the way in which Bou-raiy had said the word "undeserving" had struck him as very wrong.
"And that, Father Abbot, I fear most of all," Master Glendenhook remarked.
The words hit Agronguerre as surely as if Glendenhook had just punched him across the face. The Father Abbot felt so old at that moment, so defeated, and he almost threw up his hands and walked away. But then he turned to see the face of Master Machuso, the kindly man who oversaw all the secular workers at St.-Mere-Abelle, the gentle man whom Agronguerre had caught on several occasions stuffing extra supplies into the loads sent out to the sickly masses.
"My young brethren spend too many days looking into old books," Machuso said, managing a smile, "and too many hours on their knees with their arms and eyes uplifted to the heavens."
"We are Abellican brothers!" Master Bou-raiy sharply reminded him.
"Who would learn more of the world if they spent more time looking into the eyes of suffering folk," Machuso was quick to reply. "Abellican brothers who are so wrapped up in their own rituals and own importance, who are so determined to elevate themselves above the flock they pretend to tend that they cannot see the truth of the opportunity presented to us this day."
"By a laywoman," Bou-raiy remarked.
"A false prophet," Glendenhook echoed.
"She who destroyed the dactyl with Brother Avelyn at Mount Aida!" Machuso shot back. "And who defeated the demon spirit within Father Abbot Markwart, by Markwart's own admission to Master Francis at the time of his death. And now she is showing us the way again, Father Abbot," the suddenly energetic Machuso went on, turning to aim his words directly at Agronguerre, "the way to Avelyn, in body and in spirit."
Agronguerre reached for the door again, and so did Bou-raiy, but then the Father Abbot fixed him with such a stare that he backed off.
"Do not do this," Fio Bou-raiy warned. "You are condemning us all."
"I am damning myself if I do not," Agronguerre answered firmly. "Send word throughout the abbey, Master Machuso," he went on. "This is a choice and not an edict. All who wish to join the pilgrimage should be ready to leave within the hour."
"The hour?" Glendenhook said, as if the mere thought that hundreds of brothers could be packed with wagons readied within that time was preposterous.
"It will be done," Machuso answered with a bow. "And I doubt that many will choose to remain." "And if the hope is false? " Bou-raiy had to ask one last time. "Then better to die trying," Father Abbot Agronguerre said, putting his
face only an inch from Bou-raiy's.
He pulled open the door, the portal that led into the gemstone treasuryof St.-Mere-Abelle, where more than a thousand soul stones waited.