The Gargoyle (30 page)

Herwald accepted the proposition, a rare concession on his part. Personally and politically, this was an astute decision. It illustrated that loyal soldiers would be rewarded, while at the same time it saved him from ordering the execution of an old friend. And no one could charge that he would be letting an able soldier leave the ranks, as Brandeis had promised to return.

Kuonrat the Ambitious knew better than to attack Herwald publicly when goodwill was high, but he did whisper to anyone who would listen that this was actually the second time that the condotta’s supposedly unbreakable rule had been disregarded. “Does no one remember the Italian bowman Benedetto? We let him escape without sending soldiers to track him. Again Herwald has betrayed us with his weakness. How long can we allow this to continue?”

Only a few listened. Most agreed that after your years of service you should be allowed to die close to God, under the care of the sisters at Engelthal.

When Brandeis finished the story, he rubbed his exhausted face. It’s possible that I saw a tear, but it might just have been sweat. And that’s how you came to the monastery. How you came to me.

Brandeis’ story had entranced everyone in the room, even those who’d heard it before. Father Sunder finally broke the silence, commending him for his most proper actions. Mother Christina said that she did not approve of mercenaries but recognized true brotherly love when she saw it. She assured Brandeis once more that we would do everything we could, and the nurse-nuns nodded their agreement. These were all good words, of course, but every face in the room was written with the same expression of pity. Everyone thought you would die.

I did not. I wanted to run my fingers over your wounds; I wanted your blood on me. Where everyone else saw a dying man, I saw a man awaiting resurrection. I thought of Christ’s wounds in His finest hour.

Brandeis straightened his spine, the way men do when they think it’ll give them greater strength than they actually possess. He bowed stiffly and said that he had to honor his promise to return to his troop. He had confidence in our abilities, he said, and in the goodness of the Lord. At the door he looked over his shoulder at you, one final time.

After Brandeis’ departure, I spent the day poring through the scriptorium’s volumes looking for anything that might be of service in your treatment. But as urgent as my task was, I had trouble keeping my focus. I tried to imagine the two of you in battle, but I couldn’t. Brandeis seemed too concerned with your life to also be a killer, and the calm expression on your face as you lay on the table haunted me. I didn’t realize it then, but you were in shock. At the time, it seemed to me as if your spirit had slipped out of the casing of your body. As a nun, I found this deeply disconcerting. It did not help my concentration to realize that I hadn’t asked Brandeis why the rectangular area above your heart was not burned, in the midst of such damage to the rest of your torso.

Our books presented no remedies for your terrible burns. No shaft of light through a window illuminated a relevant passage, nor did the wind flow through an opened casement to flip a book to the correct page. In the evening, I felt obligated to return to the infirmary, if only to inform the nun-nurses that I’d made absolutely no progress.

The scene was markedly different from what I had seen earlier. You were screaming with a fury that I’d never heard in my life. My years of monastic silence had rendered me unable to imagine that a human body could produce such noises. The nuns were trying to hold you still, but it was a losing battle. Sister Elisabeth was more than happy to yield her place to me. You were drenched in your body’s escaping fluids, and your eyes darted from side to side as if following a demon that only you could see. I placed my hands around your head, but you wouldn’t stop thrashing. I stroked your hair and spoke soothing words as the others poured water over you. Each cool splash induced another jerk of your body. I grabbed a jug also, and tried my best to force liquid down your throat. When you finally opened your mouth to accept it, your eyes fluttered for a moment before going completely still.

A minute passed in eerie silence, and I could see in the way they glanced from face to face that everyone was certain you’d died. The nurses tentatively allowed themselves to sit down, exhausted from dealing with you.

And then you jolted awake with a gasp, your eyes filled with terror as if you had seen everything there was to know about death. You began to scream again, so I slapped your face and tried to force you to focus, but your eyes kept darting in search of that demon again. I grabbed you as vigorously as I dared and brought my face inches from yours, yelling. When you were finally able to concentrate upon me, your fear seemed to fly away.

The look in your eyes was more like recognition than anything else. We studied each other. I don’t know how many moments passed. You tried to say something, but it was so soft I thought I must be imagining your voice. I brought my ear nearer to your mouth. The other nuns had taken a few steps back and could not hear that in a garbled voice, you said a few words.

“My heart…Locked…The key.”

Then you closed your eyes and drifted back into unconsciousness.

I had no idea what you meant by these words, but they somehow strengthened my certainty that I was meant to help you. It is not in the nature of any nun to accept the idea of a man’s heart being locked, especially the heart of a man who might so soon be at the threshold of Heaven—or, though I did not want to admit it to myself, Hell. One must be realistic about the final destination of a mercenary.

I stayed with you through the night and washed away the murky fluids that ran from your chest. I was as gentle as I could be, but your flesh still leapt beneath my touch. As difficult as it was to look upon your pain, I was certain—for the very first time in my life—that Engelthal was
exactly
the place for me to be. My lack of mystic visions, my lack of understanding about the Eternal Godhead, these things were now completely unimportant.

The following morning, on the way back to my cell, I met Gertrud. She inquired, with a fakely sweet voice, when I “might find a few moments away from the killer” to resume my scriptorium duties and continue God’s work. I informed her that Mother Christina had specifically requested my help with the burn patient, and that was my primary responsibility at the moment. I also let it slip that Mother Christina thought I was uniquely qualified to find any relevant information in our scriptorium. I could see anger pass across Gertrud’s face, but only for a moment.

When she regained her composure, Gertrud said, “It is most kind of Mother Christina to devote such resources to aiding this man. However, I think you would be wise to remember that only God can help this soldier. It is out of the hands of a bastard child left at the gate.”

These were by far the harshest words she’d ever spoken to me. I was shocked, but I assured her that she was quite right, of course. I added that, nevertheless, I should excuse myself to say my prayers and get some sleep, just in case God did decide to grace a bastard child such as myself with the ability to assist a man in need.

When I returned to the infirmary later that day, I discovered that you’d had a very rough time in my absence. You’d been babbling incoherently, tossing violently. Mother Christina and Father Sunder were there, consulting with the nurses, but no one knew what to do next.

Without warning, you lifted an arm and pointed at me. All your confused talk fell away and you called out in a clear voice: “This one.”

Everyone was stunned. Except for the few words that only I had heard, this was the first time you had spoken. There was a perfect dramatic pause in the room before you added, “I had a vision.”

The nuns gasped and Mother Christina uttered an immediate prayer for guidance. A soldier having a vision: truly Engelthal was a mystical and wonderful place! But I didn’t believe it. You’d been in the monastery for a short time, I thought, but somehow you’d managed to learn that the only currency which mattered was heavenly revelations.

Mother Christina took a tentative step forward. “What kind of vision?”

You pointed at me again and whispered, “God said this one would heal me.”

Mother Christina clutched tightly at Father Sunder’s arm. “Are you certain?”

You nodded almost imperceptibly and closed your eyes, exactly the way the nuns did to show just how deeply they were in contemplation.

The nun-nurses clasped their hands in holy fear and kneeled in reverence, while Father Sunder and Mother Christina withdrew into a corner to confer. Shortly after, Mother Christina took my hands into her own. “It is highly strange, Sister Marianne, but we must take him at his word. Have I not always known there was something more to you than meets the eye?”

Perhaps Mother Christina, bless her, was anticipating a marvelous new chapter in her Engelthal chronicles. Who was I to disappoint? I nodded, as though the mantle of chosen healer was a heavy burden for an unexceptional sister such as I, but one that I would shoulder for the sake of our monastery. Behind Mother Christina, you appeared to have lapsed back into unconsciousness, but there was the trace of a smile on your lips.

The other nuns gave me great leeway in your treatment after the revelation. No doubt, they didn’t want their earthly mistakes to sully divine remedy. I cleaned your wounds with cold water and changed your bandages, but I also took to cutting away bad flesh, a procedure that drew protests from the others until I reminded them of your vision. Perhaps they didn’t have the stomach for it, or perhaps they thought we had no right to desecrate a body created by the Lord, but whatever the reason, they always left the room when I did it.

Why I decided cutting was the correct course of action, I’ll never know. From my birth, it had been ingrained in me that one had to separate the bad from the good, so maybe I was only taking this idea to its most literal level. And why you allowed me to cut at your skin, I also don’t know, but you did. You screamed, and slipped in and out of consciousness, but you never once told me to stop using the knife. I was amazed by your courage.

In that first week you were consistently delirious. On the seventh day, your fever broke and you finally woke fully into the world. I was dabbing the sweat from your brow when you looked up and began to sing in a weak voice.

Dû bist mîn, ich bin dîn:
des solt dû gewis sîn;
dû bist beslozzen in mînem herzen,
verlorn ist daz slüzzelîn:
dû muost och immer darinne sîn.

It did not matter, the fact that you coughed fitfully in the middle of your singing. Simply because it came from the throat of a recovering man, it was more beautiful than any song that I had heard ever lifted on the nuns’ voices in salute to the glory of the Lord.

Word of your awakening traveled the length of Engelthal. “Truly a miracle has been worked through the hands of Sister Marianne!” I thought that common sense would prevail, but you can’t argue with a monastery of elated nuns. Even Gertrud and Agletrudis stopped whispering into the ear of Mother Christina that I needed to get back to my scriptorium duties.

“S
o what did the song mean?”

“How strange that you no longer remember your mother tongue,” Marianne Engel mused.
“You are mine, I am yours: you may be sure of this. You’ve been locked inside my heart, the key has been thrown away; within it, you must always stay.
It’s a traditional love ballad.”

“Why that one?” I asked.

“You were a warrior, not a singer. Maybe it was the only song you knew.”

We spoke more—mostly she talked, explaining the tradition of the Minnelieder—medieval love songs—to me, until it came time for her to leave. After gathering her belongings, she asked me to close my eyes.

When I did, she slipped over my head a thin strand of leather, with a hanging coin as its pendant. “The proper name for that is an ‘angel.’ They were issued in England in the sixteenth century. Please allow me to make a gift of it to you.”

On one side of the coin was the image of someone killing a dragon; Marianne Engel explained its history. “It’s the Archangel Michael, from Revelation. ‘And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon…. And the great dragon was cast out.’”

“Thank you,” I said.

“When the time comes, you’ll know what to do with that coin.”

Such comments from Marianne Engel, nonsensical at worst and cryptic at best, were so common that I had stopped asking what they meant. Trying to get her to explain herself in these matters usually brought our conversations to a halt and, ultimately, she never really explained anyway.

Marianne Engel informed me that she’d not be able to return until after the New Year because she had a basement full of neglected grotesques. As she headed towards the door, she patted the briefcase containing the two hundred grand. “Don’t forget, you’re coming to live with me.”