The Islands of the Blessed

“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:

Rise like the sun,

Bring warmth to world.

Bend like a branch,

Heavy with harvest.

Waken the woeful.

Heal heart with hope.

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. 

Chapter Forty-four THE RUNE OF PROTECTION

“Oh, Ethne,” whispered Jack, shocked to his very core. He saw the door of her cell beyond, chopped open. Someone had used an axe to get inside. Unable to speak, Jack automatically felt the heads of the monks and nuns for fever, and they gazed at him from somewhere far away, as though they couldn’t believe he was real. None of them had a fever. They were going to recover. Next, he touched Ethne and recoiled. Her skin was hot!