The Islands of the Blessed

Chapter Forty-three SISTER WULFHILDA

They dismounted close to the walls. The apple orchard had been deserted for some time, for the branches were heavy with ripe fruit. It seemed to Jack that he had never smelled apples so fine. He picked one and held it to his nose.

“This alone tells us the nuns haven’t prospered,” said Thorgil. She, too, plucked one and began to eat. She stuffed several into her backpack.

They walked around the monastery walls, wading through areas where the lake had invaded. All the doors were bolted and the windows bricked up, but unlike Din Guardi, no sounds came from inside. “Curse Father Severus for being thorough,” said Jack, trying to force his shoulder against a door. Even the lych-gate that led to the monks’ cemetery had been reinforced. The walls were very high, like those of a fortress, and plastered so well that there was not a single foothold.

They shouted repeatedly. No one answered. Jack tried to raise fire to burn open the main gate. Nothing happened. “Why can’t I get this thing to work?” he fumed. “I’ve drawn up fire before. Why not now?”

“Fate,” Thorgil said simply. “It seems our path has been laid out for us. We were shown the entrance to St. Columba’s cave, but you couldn’t find it a second time. When it was time to leave Grim’s Island, Seafarer appeared. When you needed the lorica, it came to your mind. But when we wished to enter Din Guardi, we were turned away. Also here. I think we should go on to the convent.”

They found the gate open. Dry leaves blew across a small courtyard lined with doors. These, too, were open, showing small nuns’ cells with little in them except bedding. At the far end was a chapel. A table was covered with a cloth and a pewter cross. A single window was made of small panes of glass fastened together by lead strips. The panes were milky white except for one in the middle, a triangular shard of ruby red. It hung in the middle like a drop of blood, and the sun shone through it with a glory that made Jack catch his breath.

“That must have come from the Holy Isle,” he said quietly. “When the window there was shattered, the surviving pieces were fitted together at St. Filian’s. One must have been left over.” He didn’t say—what was the use?—that berserkers had been responsible. Olaf One-Brow, Sven the Vengeful, Rune. Thorgil.

Someone groaned not far away. Jack and Thorgil ran from the chapel and looked into the cells they had believed empty. In the third one they found a woman lying in a heap of filthy straw. “Wulfie!” cried Thorgil.

Jack could hardly recognize the large, healthy nun he’d seen before. She had wasted away, and her skin was gray with illness and dirt. “Water,” whispered Sister Wulfhilda. Thorgil grabbed her cider bag and dribbled a few drops into the woman’s mouth.

Sister Wulfhilda coughed but managed to swallow. Thorgil gave her more. “We’ll build a fire and cook you something,” the shield maiden said. “All we have is dried fish, but if I can find a pot, I can make soup.”

“Pots,” croaked the nun. “Storeroom.”

Jack and Thorgil pulled away the filthy straw and substituted fresh from the other cells. Thorgil cut an apple into thin slices and placed it in Sister Wulfhilda’s hands. “Eat if you can. We’ll be back.”

They found the storeroom. It was an impressive structure made of stone with a thick wooden door that took both Jack and Thorgil to drag it open. Pots, cups, and wooden trenchers were stored on shelves. Firewood was stacked by the door. High on a platform were bags of grain and beans, while beneath were chests full of cheese wheels, bacon, and smoked fish. Crocks of honey and oil as well as a good supply of candles were in a side chamber. Eggs were stored in buckets of fine ash. A trapdoor led down to a cellar where they found onions, turnips, and kegs of ale and cider.

“Imagine!” cried Thorgil. “All this food and poor Wulfie was too weak to reach it.”

“Where are the other nuns?” Jack said uneasily.

“One step at a time,” the shield maiden said. “First, we have to get her strong enough to talk.” They built a fire in an outside hearth, and Thorgil fetched water from a stream running into the lake. “I’ll cook,” she said. “You feed Wulfie cider mixed with honey. Not too much at a time. After famines in the Northland, people had to eat slowly or they would die.”

Jack sat beside the nun and felt her head. It was cool. If she had suffered from flying venom, she no longer had it. He moistened her lips with the sweetened cider. “Good,” Sister Wulfhilda whispered. She hadn’t touched her apple slices. They had fallen into the straw.

Jack gave her cider until Thorgil returned with a cup of soup. She had boiled bacon in water to make a fragrant, salty broth with beads of oil on top. Sister Wulfhilda accepted this new dish with enthusiasm. “Goooood,” she crooned.

Little by little they fed her, and little by little her strength returned, until she was able to speak. “Flying venom. All are dying or dead.”

“All?” said Jack, fear quickening his heart.

“Father Severus ordered the nuns into the monastery,” said Sister Wulfhilda. “He said we were doomed, but if we kept to ourselves, we could save the town from the disease. God would see our sacrifice and forgive our sins.” She had to rest a moment before continuing. “He made everyone fast.”

“The idiot,” said Thorgil. “Everyone knows starvation is the brother of death.”

“What about Ethne?” Jack said.

“I wasn’t allowed to go near her. I tried.” Tears began to roll down Sister Wulfhilda’s cheeks. Gradually, the story came out. As Thorgil had guessed, the first case of flying venom had been Mrs. Tanner’s brother. He had fled to the monastery for help, and when Father Severus realized what a dangerous disease the man had, he sent monks to burn the tanner’s hovel down.

First, the infirmary monks became ill and then the men who had contact with them. That was when the abbot brought the nuns in, for they had been exposed when they washed the monastery’s clothes. To add to everyone’s torment, fleas multiplied in the late-summer heat. It was much worse than the usual lice and fleas that pious people welcomed in order to offer their sufferings to Christ. Fleas infested everything, making everyone itch so much, their robes were spotted with blood from scratching.

That was when Father Severus had ordered the fast. After three days one of the monks, Brother Sylvus, came to Sister Wulfhilda and told her to bring food from the storehouse.

“Brother Sylvus is a good man,” said Sister Wulfhilda, “not like most of the scum in there. He’s genuinely kind, and it hurt him to see the weaker monks and nuns suffer. He let me out of the lych-gate and I ran here. I loaded up with as much as I could carry, but by the time I returned, the door had been locked.” The nun wept silently for a moment. “I went round and round, begging to be let in. No one answered. Day after day I tried. Then my head began to hurt.”

Sister Wulfhilda had come down with the flying venom. She had no idea how long she had been ill. At first she’d had the strength to crawl to the stream to fill her pitcher. Later her thoughts became too confused.

Jack saw the pitcher in a corner. It was dry, and a spider had spun a web over the mouth. “If you survived, others may have too,” he said. “How can we get inside?”

“I don’t know,” said the nun, weeping. “Father Severus reinforced the doors and windows.”

Jack and Thorgil walked around the monastery walls again. He attempted to call up fire again. He even—by now he was seething with anger—tried to create an earthquake, without results. It occurred to him, as he pushed fruitlessly at the bricks filling the windows, that the abbot really might have saved the town. Hundreds or thousands could have died if the flying venom had escaped. In that case, Father Severus was a hero. Or a saint. Could a man be a saint if he forced his companions to die with him?

“Let’s eat some of that bacon soup,” said Thorgil. “The smell is driving me crazy.”

“Wait a minute,” said Jack, halting in his tracks. He sniffed. The rich odor, even at this distance, made his stomach rumble. “That’s it, Thorgil! You’re brilliant!” He ran back to the nun’s cell and roused her from a half sleep. “Which is the easiest door to open?” he asked.

“Why…” She struggled to remember. “The front and back gates are so heavy, it takes two men to move them. The garden door has been bricked up. The lych-gate, when it’s unbolted, could be handled by a child.”

“Thank you,” said Jack, squeezing her hands. He ran back outside where Thorgil was wolfing down broth. “Find me a bigger pot from the storeroom,” he ordered. “Bring cups and spoons. I’m going to make a stew fit for the saints in Heaven.”

Thorgil fetched water while Jack went into the cellar for turnips, onions, rosemary, thyme, and garlic. He cut up an entire flitch of bacon. He built a new fire right outside the lych-gate. Watching Pega had taught him many things about cooking, and now he made a stew that not only tasted wonderful, but also smelled good enough to raise the dead.

“Wonderful!” said Thorgil, sniffing with appreciation. “I feel like diving into the pot.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jack said. “Now, let’s see if I can get St. Columba’s staff to behave.” He held it over the bubbling cauldron. Words came to him in a language he didn’t know, but he understood their meaning:

He repeated the charm three times, and the fragrant steam rose like a fountain and poured over the wall. For a few moments nothing happened. “Put your ear to the door,” Jack said. “Can you hear anything?”

“I hear something dragging along the ground. And weeping,” Thorgil reported.

“Someone’s alive.” Jack waited tensely. Presently, he heard feeble thumps against the door. A bolt was pulled back. After a long pause another bolt was slowly dragged out of its holder—ih ih ih. “If only we could help,” said Jack, but there was nothing either of them could do. After four bolts the wooden door began to move.

“Stand aside. We’ll do the rest,” called Thorgil. But the person on the other side collapsed instead, and they had to push both him and the door back. The shield maiden managed to squeeze through the gap and drag the monk out of the way. Jack knelt beside him and felt his head. It was cool. He no longer had the illness.

“I’ve failed Father Severus,” the monk moaned. “I smelled the food. I was weak. I opened the door.”

“I’m sure Father Severus can come up with a penance,” Jack said, irritated. The abbot had clearly meant his flock to starve to death, if they were lucky enough to survive the plague.

“Oh, no. He’s already gone to God,” the monk said. “In the middle of the night Sister Brecca saw his soul drawn up to Heaven by golden cords.”

“Good for him. Where are the other people?”

“In the chapel,” the monk said, gazing with undisguised longing at the cup of stew Thorgil carried.

She placed his hands around it. “You can have a little now and more later,” she instructed.

Jack saw the graveyard clearly for the first time. Once it had been a grassy field with a few sad tombstones. Now it was filled with many, many fresh mounds. Some bore wooden crosses. Most didn’t. The extent of the destruction appalled him. Jack braced himself to encounter unburied bodies in the halls, but there weren’t any. The monks and nuns, feeble as they were, hadn’t neglected their comrades.

The stench from the chapel hit him before he saw it. The sick must have fled here, he thought. It made sense, because none of them expected to survive, and what better place to die, for Christians, than at the heart of the church? Straw, now filthy and crawling with vermin, covered the floor. In the midst of this desolation, three emaciated monks and two nuns crouched around a body. Is that all who’ve survived? Jack thought. Seven out of a hundred?

The body was laid out more carefully than he would have expected, given the weakness of the survivors. She was lying on a deep bed of straw covered by a sheepskin, and she wore a crown of flowers on her head. The Bard’s forget-me-nots. They had not withered in all this time.

Beside Ethne, the great cat Pangur Ban stretched out with one paw on her breast.