Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations (36 page)

~ William ~

The chill started at the base of my neck and traveled swiftly to my fingers and toes. At the same moment I heard Sarah, my favorite servant, calling my name. I don’t remember running, but all at once I was in Sarah’s arms, my face buried in her apron. I could hear the laughter of the children around me as they found their various treasures, but I didn’t let go of Sarah for what seemed a long time. I never told her or anyone else what I found in the forest.

It was my name on that headstone.

=[]=

The next clue came two years later, when I was eleven, on Christmas Day. I saw the small, plain white box nested in the Christmas tree with a “W” scrawled on the top. Dr. Phillips was adjusting the tie he’d received from a colleague and didn’t notice me opening it. A necklace lay curled at the bottom, a brass oval held by a well-worn leather strap. I noticed a tiny clasp and opened the necklace.

Dr. Phillips looked up when I gasped. He narrowed his eyes when he saw what I held. Even sitting in his old velvet high-backed chair, he looked imposing as he drew himself up and peered at the object from afar.

“Where . . . “ he intoned, reminding me of a sorrowful bell, “did you get that?”

I distinctly remember feeling fearful and wanting to hide the necklace. I swallowed hard and pointed to the tree branches. “It was there, it was just sitting there. It had my initial on it.” I then stood up taller and tried to return his wintry gaze. “Did Sarah want me to have this?”

His eyes flicked away. “It would seem so,” he replied.

I licked my lips nervously. “Do you know who is with her in this picture?”

His eyes still focused on something else as he said, “That would be her husband.”

Sarah had died only days before. Our most trusted servant, I had been there when Dr. Phillips tended to her in the final hours. He personally treated her and all the servants for their ailments, which seemed numerous in retrospect. It seemed as though he was always giving them injections for something. I suspected at the time that no one left because they were so grateful for his kindness. How many people had their own personal physician, a renowned medical geneticist at that? As sick as she was, yet another servant ravaged by cancer, Sarah’s eyes had lit up when she saw my father. Before her last breath she had whispered, “Thank you.”

Sarah had been there when my mother could not; she died in childbirth when I was quite young, Dr. Phillips said. Sarah had been endlessly kind, always telling me stories about “her people, the Irish” and “that damned Cromwell” to distract me from my loneliness. She was also very protective—“Never come to my quarters, William, nor any of the servants’ houses.” Because so many of the servants were often ill, she feared contagion. But she was also sad in a way that made me avoid her as I grew older and had friends my own age.

I remember wanting to ask Dr. Phillips who he thought had put the necklace there and how they knew Sarah wanted it for me, but he was already standing with his back to me in front of the large French doors, gazing out at the forest. When he clasped his hands behind him, I knew he would not tolerate any questions.

=[]=

The final clue changed my life. It was summer and I was home from boarding school, age seventeen. It was my junior year, and I was well on my way to applying to pre-med programs. As a result of the intensity of my classes, summers usually passed in a haze of novels, swimming, trips to town to see friends, and as many movies as I could squeeze in.

That summer it rained incessantly, making me feel lazy about venturing out. I’d been back from school only a few weeks and was bored with my usual routine. Dr. Phillips was in England, so in the absence of his gloomy, watchful eye, I wandered aimlessly from room to room, even trying doors that I knew would be locked. Most of my childhood had been segregated to such a small area; only then, wandering for what seemed like hours, did I fully appreciate how much of the house remained a mystery to me.

I knew Dr. Phillips had a “museum” somewhere. I’d heard the servants whispering about it since I was a boy. I had never found it myself, but with so much time to spare and having looked into a great number of rooms, I discovered it on the fifth floor. When the handle gave under my hand, for a moment I could not bring myself to enter. I had never entered a room in the house without permission. I then laughed at my own childishness and shoved open the heavy oak door.

The room stood apart from the rest of the austere house, decorated in a garish manner by the Doctor’s standards: Deep burgundy walls, plush green window seats framed by brocade curtains, gold-framed mirrors in various places, and delicate lights illuminating hundreds of objects under glass throughout the long room, easily the size of a dining hall.

As I began peering at the various objects, I realized the theme—medicine. Every artifact had a date and as I walked around the room in a clockwise fashion, the dates grew more modern. Pictures of what I assumed were families dotted the walls starting in the nineteenth century showing the fashions of that age, though I noticed some of the people in the picture wore clothes I could only describe as “proper” and others in the picture wore clothes that leaned more toward “practical.” Everyone in the pictures seemed to be holding children of various ages—lots of children.

The oldest artifacts were from the seventeenth century and intrigued me the most: Rusty-looking saws and knives among the scalpels and clamps. Books on herbs and even “astrologie” lay carefully on silk under dimly-lit glass. One leather-bound book in particular riveted me. The spine was very cracked, but the embossed silhouette of a once-colorful lion on the cover seemed like buried treasure to me. I lightly touched the sides of the glass casing to look more closely at the book and my hand brushed a latch. I swallowed and peered to see if a heavy padlock rested on the latch but found it completely free.

I think I honestly looked around before I touched the latch again. I could imagine that such an act might inspire Dr. Phillips to try out his riding whip on me despite my age. But with each passing moment, my curiosity grew to the point of not caring about the consequences. I took a deep breath and crossed the room to close the door to this museum before returning to gently lift the latch. Out from under the glass, I realized the book cover was tightly laminated to protect it from the oil of human hands; I felt a little better knowing my fingers couldn’t damage it. Feeling the closed pages, I could tell they had been laminated too.

I’m not sure what I expected beneath the exotic cover, but it was better than I’d hoped: it was a diary. It started in 1650. 1650! This
was
buried treasure, and looking at the various pages, it looked like it had not only been buried but also burned and beaten. Some pages were crumpled, smudged, or singed, and several had deep brown stains in various places. I wondered how long this had been here and if the Doctor had kept it from me because he’d known I couldn’t resist it.

But the Doctor wasn’t here now. I gave into my urge completely, stretching my legs out in a window seat, determined to read as much as I could before I was discovered.

=[]=

When the natural light from the window waned to the point that I was squinting to read, I realized how much time had passed. My stomach groaned with hunger, though I was sure I could not handle any meat tonight. The diary had been written by a seventeenth century battlefield surgeon and even though there were spellings that were strange to me, “cutting” was the same and the only anesthetic his patients ever received was their own loss of consciousness. The surgeon discussed the use of herbs for treatment and, since he was called upon to treat not just war wounds but diseases the men would catch, he alluded to creating “decumbiture” charts, something that sounded like an astrological diagnosis of the patient.

But, what really shocked me the most were not the details of the surgeon’s methods. It was the fact that he started his diary while on Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland.

=[]=

A hastily-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich later, I could feel Sarah’s sad eyes over my shoulder as I plunged back into the surgeon’s world, a standing lamp providing me light far into the night in the window seat. I shivered when the surgeon walked through snowdrifts to reach people in need and winced as he cut into each patient, more often to remove something than to save it. And Sarah was right—Cromwell and his supporters were ruthless to the Irish. I admit, though, that I wasn’t prepared for the siege at Limerick in 1651, with the surgeon supporting General Ireton’s army. Beginning in July of 1651, the surgeon’s entries, always on Sundays, became less frequent.

Sunday 16 July 1651

My conscience compels me to wryte, to somehow try to understand how this can be happening. A fierey temper always holds the General, but I saw it mostly in battle. Now I know it’s through and through.

You made this famine and it will kill us both, O’Neill told our General. And I fear it will come to pass as I watch the men grow weaker each day, the lack of fighting eating at them as much as their hunger. My herb that tempered their desire for food is almost gone.

By day’s end, we saw forty people standing outside the town walls. They could not go around us. The men escorted them into the fort and I wondered of the General’s wayes.

When the slow smile spread across the General’s face, I divined his intent. And as a surgeon, a healer, I would have no part of it. But the barber, he obliged. Nothing but a blindfold and an axe, and the savage completed his work in a matter of hours. Old and young, women and men. Forty humans, and despite being Irish, human they still were.

What struk us all as strange was their lack of cryes. Not once. Their bravery was impressed upon us.

But the hunger pressed harder. No one looked at each other at our late-nyght dinner tho I noted the General had himself many servings.

Never have I known a man so cruel. To this victualling he hath reduced us. May the Lord protect us from ourselves.

I looked up from the diary, feeling the sandwich flip in my stomach. I’d read about the Donner Party and that was shocking enough, but this . . . this seemed like a war tactic. Had General Ireton deliberately cut off both of their supplies to destroy the enemy
this
way? Or was this merely a way to survive a situation he’d unwittingly created? My sense of revulsion was so strong I wasn’t sure I cared. And the surgeon . . . ! He’d been part of this; he survived on those people too!

But I couldn’t stop reading now and things only got worse for the Irish from there. And then, something completely unexpected happened.

Sunday 27 August 1651

My heart cannot help but wonder if O’Neill is ever seized by the knowledge of what is happening to his people, the endless supply of people he forces outside of his city each week. I confess, having little to do after tending to the men’s ailments or wounds, I have at this point examined many of them before the barber finished his “work” and noted after a month’s time they all bear something in common—no one looks a day over five and twenty and they all have a crescent-shaped mark on the back of their neck.

Among thos pushed outside the town walls one early morn was one with child. God’s eyes seemed to bore into the men that day and even the barber could not do it. She was instead sent to the dungeon. It had not been twelve hours before we heard her howling birth cryes. Nerves seized the men and many crossed themselves for this first time in the campaign. Her tongue pleaded with strange Irish words, but we all recognized the suffering. Fortunately, no wounds needed tending so I went to her. My training offered me the experience of assisting in birth so I could try to lift her suffering.

In the grip of Venus, I gave her an herb I usually saved for amputations, as her spirit seemed so strained and her face bloodless. My hand she squeezed until the bones seemed to crack and water poured from every surface of her body. When the child suddenly came forth in a rush, her hand went limp and I went immediately to see to the welfare of the child. I could not help but smile when I noticed it was a boy. Scraping the insides of his nose he issued a mighty crye, a good sign. Severing the cord, I took off my coat and wrapped him up and put him beside the mother, but she did not stir. Her breathing was shallow and soon the afterbirth followed. But with the afterbirth also came blood, more blood than is usual. It soaked my clothes and poured over the stones and made the straw crimson. Never had I seen such a syght. No attempt to staunch the blood succeeded. I held her hand until her chest moved no more. Light no longer entered the fort and the baby wailed against its dead mother.

I am terrified. I cannot let them kill a baby, not a boy, especially. Yet no women are with us to tend to it.

May Gold help this child.

Sunday 17 September 1651

God must care for this child because He hath made me do wonderous things on his behalf. The morning after the death of the mother, I let it be known that I was going to look for a new supply of herbs amongst the locals in Irish Town in the garb of one of our deceased, lest my English clothes reveal my loyalties. We knew all fighting men were barricaded in Limerick so the risk was not overly great. Plus, I bore no arms so unless I spoke, the locals would have no cause to fear me. None of the men said anything but I suspect they kept my trip from the General—they noted the babe lying openly in my medical bag. Upon reaching a village, I acted mute but pointed frantically to the baby who was now too weak to crye. Everyone looked at me suspiciously but eventually I found myself at the door of a woman with a young babe of her own. She looked frightened of me at first, but when she saw the state of the baby, she said not a word, but took it into her arms and went into the house. I followed, but she held up a hand and pushed a chair into a corner with her back to me and the baby crooked in one arm. I averted my eyes and then heard the sounds of suckling. This sound did not stop for some time and then was at last followed with, to my relief, a fresh bellow of cryes from the lad. She tidyed herself and then turned around and silently returned the squalling baby to my medical bag. I reached underneath the babe until I felt a certain-shaped bottle that I knew would be of use to a new mother. I pointed to it, mimicked drinking its contents, and then smiled to show the health it would bestow upon her. She gently led me from her house, but it was the first of many visits that would save the child’s life.