Red He Wept
by David Samuels
Moralt is an Infirmarian at a medieval military hospital. He has become disillusioned with religion and deities that seem to permit or even encourage humanity’s endless grind of self-inflicted suffering in war. When a report comes of a weeping statue, Moralt feels he owes it to his skepticism to go and investigate it. He is joined by Arabelle, who is an imp’s advocate sent to verify the claim of miracle.
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
part 1
Six years of studying medicine couldn’t prepare me for war. All of those late nights in the seminary’s archives proved useless in the stuffy confines of my operation tent.
A pair of orderlies pinned a soldier onto the table — what I’d come to regard as my butcher’s block — as he screamed past the dowel between his teeth.
A cannonball had chewed his leg down to a mangled drumstick of bone and gristle. Perhaps I should’ve thanked the gods that he’d survived at all. But as my bonesaw tore into his femur, I couldn’t help but wonder, Why?
Why would the gods let war ravage our land? This soldier would doubtless spend the rest of his days as a panhandler, and for what? To thwart the Patronists for worshipping a heresiarch? Medicine was supposed to bring me closer to the gods. Closer to the confluence of organs that brings forth life. For what is the body, if not proof of heavenly design?
But as the war raged on, I began to wonder what sort of gods would let their creations suffer so cruelly. I began to wonder, for that matter, whether the gods cared at all.
Sweat dribbled down my receding hairline by the time I finished tying off the patient’s blood vessels. A small blessing that the pain had knocked him out. I would’ve dosed him with dwale if our store of nightshade hadn’t run dry several days prior. Besieged within the city of Galvin’s Ford, we were short on everything except grief.
The city straddled a delta shaped like two fingers splinted together, with the walls ending at the furthest joint. On the nail of earth where the rivers met, the city’s waterwheels and dyeworks sat empty while our encampment ran at full capacity. Hundreds of tents crowded the tanning grounds in a huddle of pavilions, stables and, of course, my infirmary. The groans of burn victims and amputees rivaled the shouts of drill sergeants nearby.
As I did my rounds down the row of open-sided recovery tents, I kept dwelling on the three years left in my contract. If only sheer willpower could chip down the hours I still owed to the Church.
And when my contract expired, what then? Although I descended from a line of minor nobles, we lacked the funds for me to establish a clinic. I dreaded to think I’d end my days as an itinerant quack, peddling miracle cures from city to city.
My superior’s wheezy voice stirred me from my thoughts. “Moralt! Infirmarian Moralt!” Surgeon-Commander Benfrey hustled out of an alley between the burn ward and a supply tent. He almost got run over by a passing oxcart in his haste to reach me.
How typical of him to disregard his own safety. Early on, I held him in contempt for his reckless habits: drinking and smoking, to name a few. Divine Phidias, the patron saint of physicians, once wrote that a body should be treated as a temple. Ergo, I believed Benfrey was being remiss in his duties as a physician. Only later did I realize how the stress from those duties drove him to drink in the first place.
“Surgeon-Commander.” I folded a thumb under my palm and saluted with a four-fingered pat on my chest.
“Something’s happened,” he said between breaths, “in the city. I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“Oh, gods.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Should I get the orderlies to empty more bunks?”
A shake of the head tilted his skullcap askew. “You wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain. Not a skeptic like you. Some things a man must witness firsthand.”
Although curious, I said, “I’m sure it can wait until I finish my shift.”
“It might disappear by then! Here, I’ll tend to your patients while you take a look-see.”
How unusual of him to pick up the slack. This must be worth it.
“Yes, sir,” I said, eager to distance myself from the dead and the dying.
* * *
Off-duty soldiers, camp followers, and townsfolk alike jostled around the wheeled stalls and refugee wagons of Eastgate Terrace. Other folks packed the balconies of A-frame houses, their eyes fixed on something in the middle of the square. Amid the tangle of excited whispers, I unbraided the words statue and blood.Moments like this made me grateful for the blessing of height. On tiptoe, I beheld the stone likeness of Divine Galvin, the city’s saintly founder. From the hagiographies I’d read in seminary, Galvin calmed the river gods long enough to build a city upon the delta.
Me, I had my doubts. More and more, I began to think saintly feats were blown out of proportion. That mindset changed the moment I laid eyes upon the statue’s face.
Tears of blood dripped from the pair of limestone eyes. I would’ve dismissed them for sacrilege if not for the blood’s otherworldly luminance. The tears glowed almost as bright as the sunset beyond the gatehouse.
Only then did I understand the words that hummed from lips to lips. Talk of blessings and heavenly signs rumbled across the square, but one word stood apart from them all: Miracle.
In the darkest hours of war, Divine Galvin graced us with his assurance. Assurance to soldiers laying down their lives for a dubious cause; to townsfolk who suffered on the sidelines; and, perhaps, to a wayward infirmarian in a crisis of faith. Maybe this was the sign I needed that the gods truly stood by my side.
Or maybe the days ahead would prove me wrong.
* * *
Another month, another battle. The first I heard of it was a few hours before dawn, when I was jostled awake by Benfrey.
Rapidly he explained how a supply ship of ours had been intercepted by Patronist archers. Our outriders struck back and, inspired by the tears of Divine Galvin, kept their losses to a minimum.
Over the next hour, a barrage of orderlies rushed surviving provisioners back to the infirmary. It was one of those survivors who heralded the end of my first career and the start of another.
The chubby middle-aged woman writhed against the straps of a stretcher carried by two orderlies. Writhing not in agony, but in irritation.
“Let me off this thing!” Her voice sounded harsher than I’d expected, as if a crone hid beneath those layers of flesh.
“Sorry, m’dame,” said Belthas, the orderly in front. “We can’t let you hurt yourself. Might rupture a wound or bust a hip, you know.”
“Bust a hip? I’ll bust your teeth in if you don’t unstrap me this moment!”
I met them midway down the avenue of tents. Aside from a few grazes on her forehead, she was largely unscathed.
“Do as she asks!” I commanded. Sometimes I wished the orderlies didn’t follow protocol so blindly. We might’ve saved more lives in triage if they knew when to bend the rules.
The woman ignored my proffered hand as she lurched into sitting position. Not that I blamed her. In hindsight, my youthful attempts at gallantry weren’t so much courteous as they were condescending. Except in this case, she actually did need help, since she wobbled off balance from a sprained ankle.
I shot out my hand in time to catch her under the armpit. A keyring slipped out of her pocket as she rustled in my grip.
“My name is Infirmarian Moralt. I’m afraid we’re out of beds, but I can find you a stool while I tend to that ankle.”
“You may call me Arabelle.” She nodded at Belthas as he handed her the keyring. “On your lead.”
* * *
Arabelle kept quiet as I coiled a bandage around the groove of her foot. Her silence magnified the groans of nearby patients. Ordinarily I blocked them out by repeating paeans in my head, but something else occupied my mind today. Only after tying off the bandage did I give voice to my thoughts. “Am I to understand you’re here to investigate the statue?”Either I’d missed my guess, or she knew how to keep surprise from rising to her face. Eventually those cheeks bulged in a smirk. “Walk me through how you determined that.”
“I did what physicians do best: Assess the symptoms and conclude with a diagnosis. Starting with the fact that you were aboard that supply ship. Your hands are too soft to belong to a sailor or one of the provisioners. Nor do you bear the Clover Mark on your wrist, so you can’t be a prostitute. Not a licensed one, anyway.” I waggled a brow to widen the smirk on her lips. “Which led me to believe you’re a prelate of some sort who was sent along with the convoy.”
“If I’m a prelate, then where are my vestments?”
“Floating downriver. And if you’re wise, you never brought them at all. Only a fool would travel in the green-and-silver within sight of the Patronists.”
She put some weight on her ankle and winced through her smirk. “Alright, let’s suppose I am a prelate. How does that connect to some statue?”
Besides the fact that I could think of little else for the past week? “I didn’t see any connection at first. Not until you dropped your key. The one with an opal set in the base. It’s an imp’s tooth, if I’m not mistaken.”
I remembered a similar key from my boyhood. It had hung from the belt of a cleric sent by the Church to investigate the local baker’s claim to divinity. A fraudulent claim, as it turned out, one which condemned the baker to burn at the stake.
“That would make you an imp’s advocate,” I said.
The smile grew wider, creasing the eyes into crescents above bulbous cheeks. “I could use someone like you.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Yes,” she mumbled to herself. Then, louder: “An insider is just what I need to help with my investigation. Someone who knows the townsfolk better than I do.”
Uncertain how to respond, I fetched a cane from the corner of the tent. I handed it over before saying, “Surely I’m not qualified.”
“I beg to differ.” She took the cane and leaned off the bed. “I seem to recall a lot of talk about symptoms and diagnoses. Our methods are not so different in the grand scheme of things.”
Admittedly, I was thrilled by Arabelle’s offer. Not only would it take my mind off the death and despair that plagued the infirmary, but I also yearned to discover, firsthand, whether the tears were miraculous.
And if they weren’t?
The screams of nearby patients reminded me of Baker Elridge at the pyre. How he shrieked until the heat frayed his voice into something inhuman. Or the way his flesh dripped from his skull in runny globs. His execution had shaken our county for years afterward. I doubted that the people of Galvin’s Ford — myself included — could stand such a blow to their faith.
But at least we’d know the truth. And when it came down to it, I’d prefer to suffer with certainty than languish in doubt.
“I’ll do what I can to help,” I said, “but I don’t want to leave my colleagues shorthanded. Let me find someone to fill in for me.” About time one of the other infirmarians returned the favor.
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by David Samuels
