I shall tell you for what purpose I have done this. I have
done it all for naught, for that is what I have now as I lay my soul bare before
you: nothing. Nothing to show for two centuries of life, the lands that I once
claimed as my own, the people who paid me fealty, all now forgotten.
And all I have now to look forward to is an ignominious end
and an eternity spent in that twilight world of the realm of the dead, trapped
between the worlds of eternal rest and glorious life, unable to exist in either,
both tantalisingly, torturously out of reach. An eternity of torment. An
eternity of damnation.
It has been said that the line between genius and insanity is
a fine one and crossed all too easily. It has also been said that a madman sees
things more clearly than any other, even more so than a man on his deathbed when
suddenly his whole nefarious life is thrown into terrifying clarity for the
first time in decades.
In times of insanity look to a madman for guidance. How true
that saying is of this Chaos-riddled world in which we live, where nameless
horrors forever wait in the darkness, ready to catch us, to trap us, and bring
us to eternal ruin.
I believe that madness is an unshackling from the prescribed
constraints put on us by the expectations of our culture, our race and most of
all, ourselves. A madman does not care what others think of him. For what drives
a person to madness is often the revelation that the world around them is not as
safe and secure as they might like to believe, that it is a place populated by
monsters that lurk just behind the thin veil of reality, that can rend a man’s
soul apart as well as his body and destroy his mind.
You might ask whether I am mad?
If I deny it, would that be proof of my madness.
But then, if I were to say that I most certainly am mad, that
admission itself would surely suggest that I possessed a sound and reasoning
mind.
But I do not claim to be mad. As I have said, the only
thing that brings a man a clear-mindedness that even approaches that possessed
by the insane, is the knowledge that his own death is near. And I, for one, have
accepted that truth, that inevitability.
Ironically, the lunatic does not believe himself to be mad
for he sees the world with a clarity the rest of us could only hope for. He sees
the world as it really is. For so often it is the realisation that there are
horrors barely hidden beneath the surface of this world that drives men to
madness. They have seen the world as it really is. And how can such a clear,
unsullied view of the world be considered madness?
* * *
Mitterfruhl came and went that year in a haze of drizzle,
dampening the spirits of the congregations of Taal and Ulric worshippers who
thronged to the town to celebrate the spring equinox. And then Pflugzeit blew
in, unseasonably cold but seasonably wet. The relentless overcast skies darkened
the mood of everybody in the town, even though the Corpse Taker seemed to have
decided to leave the populace alone for the time being. The rain was welcome,
however, as it sluiced the slurry out of the streets that had collected in even
greater quantities during the three days given over to the Mitterfruhl festival.
But Dieter Heydrich had been virtually unaware of any of it.
Following his dire experience at the hands of the witch
hunter Brother-Captain Krieger, Dieter had thrown himself into his studies even
more than he had done before. He also spent even longer hours in the guild
library and then continued with his note-taking late into the night in his
garret room, spurning Erich’s offers of an evening’s relaxing entertainment away
from his studies. It was as if he was determined to prove that any ability he
might have was purely down to diligent labour and nothing more sinister than
that. What did it matter that he was a son of a priest of Morr? He had been
brought up in a gods-fearing household and he knew full well the difference
between right and wrong. He was certainly no bodysnatcher or, Morr forbid, a
necromancer!
But that did not change the fact that Dieter had acquired a
sinister new nickname, given him by the other students, that of the daemon’s
apprentice. Professor Theodrus had also taken pains to distance himself from
Dieter. Although Theodrus had initially stood by his star pupil, incensed that
Krieger should demonstrate such a flagrant disregard for the establishment of
the physicians’ guild, which itself held great power and influence within the
town, now that the matter was resolved, for the time being at least, the guild
master had decided that to protect his interests he had needed to loosen the
bonds between himself and his apprentice.
There had been long-held distrust between the Templar Order
of Sigmar and the physicians’ guild. The templars held an almost psychotic
hatred for magic users and spell casters—seeing the miracles their own warrior
priests performed as exactly that, the divine intervention of the Heldenhammer
himself—and considered the potion-brewing physicians as little better than
conjurers or alchemists themselves.
So when Leopold offered him the opportunity to visit the
Temple of Shallya, only a little further into the town from the guild, Dieter
jumped at the chance to further his studies in another setting, no matter how
brief that change might be. Here was a chance to prove that he was dedicated to
the healing arts rather than a practitioner of the black arts, and at the same
time practise his skills on live patients, rather than merely helping the
licensed guild members prepare treatments that the qualified physicians would
ultimately administer themselves, or simply cleaning up after them in their
filthy laboratories.
The infirmary was a surprisingly large, open space that
seemed to swallow up the echoes of the footsteps on the flags and absorb the
muffled moans of the patients. It had been arranged inside a long hall, the
cross-beamed roof the height of a two-storey building. Simple pallet beds lined
the whitewashed walls, some separated from the others by wooden screens. The
priestesses of Shallya glided between the beds in their dove grey and white
gowns with a gold-embroidered heart over the left breast, each woman wearing a
wimple that kept her hair hidden and out of the way.
The women ranged in age from young girls, barely out of
adolescence, admitted to the temple as novices, to plump old dames, many of whom
were widows who had come to the order late in life, after their duties to family
were done, as a way of making the last years of their life mean something.
But they all had a calm demeanour about them and a ready
smile for those poor souls in their care.
Standing before the two apprentices was Sister Marilda, a
tall woman whose age Dieter found it hard to determine. Her face was handsome
enough and she held herself with delicate poise and grace that also suggested
that when challenged she could be as immovable as a rock in her expectations and
attitudes. Dieter and Leopold had been sent to the temple with a letter of
introduction from Doktor Kalt, and arrived as the sisters were processing out of
matins.
“Good morning, gentlemen, and how may I help you this
morning?” Sister Marilda asked. She patently knew they were from the guild and
why they were there. Leopold had visited the infirmary-temple before with his
master, Kalt. It was merely out of courtesy that she asked.
“Good morning, sister,” Leopold answered confidently, giving
the priestess his most winning smile. Dieter stood behind him, trying not to
draw attention to himself. “We have been sent here by Doktor Kalt, from the
physicians’ guild.”
An apprentice could expect to visit the infirmary of the
Temple of Shallya on a semi-regular basis, as part of his training, to help the
priestesses tend to the sick. It also provided the medical students with an
opportunity to try out new treatments on patients who, on the whole, had no
family left to care what happened to them if something went wrong and they did
not recover. So many of those in the care of the sisterhood of Shallya were in a
state of terminal decline that they had nothing to lose in acting as guinea pigs
for the apprentices to practise on, other than perhaps a few days or weeks of
miserable life.
“Very good. You must thank Doktor Kalt when you return,” she
said matter-of-factly.
“We have brought a new unguent, made from the flower of the
meadowflax, for the treatment of open sores and ulcers and to see if there is
any other way in which we can help.”
“And your help is much appreciated. There are certainly those
who would be grateful for a salve to ease the pain of their afflictions. If you
would come this way.”
Sister Marilda led the way across the infirmary, the two
students following.
“But of course we must also continue to pray for the
absolution of their souls,” Marilda said as she walked, “for you know, of
course, that illness and disease are a physical manifestation of sin.”
“Yes, sister, of course,” Leopold agreed, then glancing back
over his shoulder at his companion threw Dieter a theatrical wink.
They spent the next two hours cleaning and dressing the
suppurating sores and raw flesh-eating ulcers of beggars, the elderly of the
town cast upon the Shallyan temple to be ministered to in their final days and
even an aging cleric from the temple of Bögenhafen’s patron—a thoroughly
unpleasant, foul-mouthed and unappreciative curmudgeon who showed not one ounce
of sanctity about his person.
The smell of infection as they worked was appalling, and
Dieter was glad of the posy of strong-smelling herbs he carried now in his
pocket. Between patients he held the posy close to his nose and inhaled deeply
of its heady fragrance, so that it might at least in part mask the stench of
putrefaction.
Throughout, Leopold talked to the patients about what he was
doing, his manner jovial, and in turn listened to them unburden their hearts
about the miseries that their lives had brought them. Dieter was secretly
impressed by the way his friend conducted himself and wished he could be more
like him. Leopold had obviously known what to expect from his previous visits,
but it was more than just that. He had a manner about him more like that of a
confessional priest than a doktor, from what Dieter had seen in his short time
at the guild.
Sister Marilda approached Leopold and Dieter as they were
washing their hands in the bowl the priestesses had provided for them, as the
temple bell was chiming the hour of noon. Despite the stench of the work and the
repulsive sores they had seen, Dieter could still feel hunger knotting inside
his belly and was looking forward to sating his hunger at the Pestle and Mortar.
“Are you gentlemen finished?” Marilda asked demurely.
Leopold straightened from leaning over their last patient’s
bed. “Yes, sister,” he said. “Is there something else we can do for you before
we go?”
“Yes, there is,” Marilda replied. The image in Dieter’s mind
of his next meal was devoured by stomach-gnawing hunger, “Just one more patient
who might benefit from your salve. But I must warn you that he is a poor lunatic
whose wits have left him.”
“Really?” Dieter suddenly found himself saying, morbidly
curious. He had only ever encountered the wandering lunatics and drink and
drug-addled vagabonds who could be found in every Imperial town or city, or
wandering the highways and byways of the land, some in semi-feral packs. He had
spent long hours studying ailments of the body over the past two months. Now
here was an opportunity to study a sickness of the mind.
“Yes, his sins weigh heavy upon him,” Marilda said, lowering
her eyes and shaking her head sadly.
“What is his name?” Leopold asked, surprised at his friend’s
unaccustomed outburst, whilst at the same time being just as fascinated and
excited by the prospect of meeting one of the mentally ill.
“His name is Anselm.”
“Anselm,” Leopold repeated. “Is that it? What is his family
name?”
“Anselm is all he told us,” Sister Marilda explained. “It
might well be all he knows. Come, he is this way.”
Within the harsh world in which the people of the Empire
lived, the mentally ill were often forgotten; for the most part a misunderstood,
untolerated and feared underclass. Very few places actually existed to make
provision for their care. At best they were an embarrassment to their families,
to be locked away from the world to save their relations embarrassment as much
as for their own protection. At worst the insane were accused of being possessed
by daemons and burnt as witches, or were, driven to join crazed Chaos cults in
which they found some kind of acceptance. And every once in a while the mentally
ill were taken to be divinely inspired messengers of the gods. Such was not the
case with the poor wretch Anselm.
He was huddled on a pallet bed in a small cell with a sturdy
iron-banded door. Dieter was immediately taken aback. Where the other patients
they had attended to were old or at least prematurely aged by the hand life had
dealt them, there was no mistaking that Anselm was still a young man, despite
the sunken cheeks and hollow-eyed stare. His long hair, hanging in matted knots
down as far as his shoulder blades, was prematurely white, making him look older
than his years.
“Is it safe?” Dieter asked anxiously, seeing that Anselm was
restrained within a harness-like jacket that kept his arms tied tight around his
middle, secured with buckles behind so that he could not free himself.
“Oh yes,” assured Sister Marilda. “We had to restrain him to
stop him harming himself.”
“Harming himself?” Leopold asked, looking at the bound man.
Dieter looked again too, the red-eyed stare of the madman
looking sorrowfully back at him. But his eyes were drawn to infected areas of
exposed flesh on the man’s legs, where circles of skin had been peeled away,
revealing the raw flesh underneath.