The Islands of the Blessed

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.”