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 3
“Take a deep breath,” said Arabelle as she poured Fergus a cup of wine. “And a deeper swallow.”
Fergus knocked it back in three. He grimaced as if it contained vinegar. “I never shoulda let the marshal’s soldiers push me off m’farm. None of this woulda happened if I’d stayed put.”
“The Patronists were coming south,” Olvara barked from the kitchen. “If they knew you were Aeonist, they’d’ve set your house aflame... just like they did mine!”
Arabelle rapped her cane against the tabletop. In the silence that followed, I swallowed thickly while Fergus peeled flakes of blood from his fingers. He lifted his eyes when Arabelle said, “Go on.”
“The marshal lets me keep m’pigs in an old lumberyard across the street from a waterwheel — the one with angels carved on its spokes. Every day around this time, I muck out the pen and do a headcount. Thirteen I’m supposed to have, ’cept today I only counted twelve. Figgered I miscounted, so I tallied ’em up again. Then again. Then I got angry, y’see. I was gonna hunt down the hungry thief who dunnit when I heard m’daughter screaming her throat raw across the street. I hurried there like the ground was afire, but it was too late.”
He puffed out a shaky sigh. “I can still see it as clear as the candle on this here table. Elva was strapped to the rim of the wheel like the victim of some ol’ torture device. Her ribs... her ribs were flayed open, guts pouring into the river. Those angels, with their faces all covered in blood, they looked like they were laughing.”
“You have my deepest condolences.” Arabelle laid her pale hand over the farmer’s blood-darkened one. “I will pray for your daughter’s soul tonight.”
“M’daughter?”
“Yes. Elva, was it?”
Fergus lifted a bushy brow. “Elva is m’pig’s name. M’daughter was the one who found the poor thing like that. They say not to name your livestock, that you get too attached. But if you ask me—”
“Hold on,” I broke in. “You removed the pig, yes?”
“What’s it t’you?” Fergus scraped back his seat to give me the side-eye.
“A corpse is liable to spread disease,” I snapped. “Leave it in water and you’re inviting disaster.” Luthos should’ve known better than to post farmers and their livestock near the river, damn him!
I regretted my tone when Fergus’s glare slackened to a chapfallen expression. “Yeah, I took her down. Couldn’t stand the sight. I’d’ve preferred Eva get eaten over this. This is more’n some soldier playing a prank. It’s... it’s...”
“A desecration.” One word from Arabelle sucked the air from the room. “I’ll need to give this some thought. Do you still have the carcass?”
Fergus scratched the back of his neck. “M’daughter is butchering her as we speak.”
“Put a stop to that at once,” said Arabelle. “I’ll want to examine the pig with my own eyes. You’ll be reimbursed, needless to say.”
Fergus opened his mouth to object, but Arabelle cut him off with, “Many thanks for your time.”
I escorted him to the door. After letting it snick shut, I turned back to Arabelle. “Cultists, you think?”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Despite her casual tone, she hadn’t touched her food in a while. “Not until we finish hearing testimonies.”
The next informant was another refugee, to judge by his scraggly black hair and tattered garments. The sole of one shoe flopped loose like a tongue as he approached Arabelle.
Oh, how I wish I’d been focusing on his hands instead. Those damn, big-knuckled hands, one of which snatched a knife from the table and drove it into Arabelle’s upper chest. My heart throbbed in sympathy.
“For the Godking!” he shouted over Olvara’s screams. “For the Unifier!”
I shoved him away with all my strength. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much. I might’ve lost my life if the servitors hadn’t burst through the door.
“Leave him alive for questions.” Arabelle mumbled the words a moment too late. A sideways slash beheaded the assassin so that blood jetted from his neck.
“Conserve your energy.” I rested a hand on Arabelle’s shoulder. She sagged in her chair, one hand slung over the backrest and the other pressed against the wound. The seepage of blood between her fingers shone bright red. Good news there, since dark blood usually spelled death. Even better: the dagger had sunk through a cushion of flesh only to skid off the natural armor of her breastbone.
Still, the edge could’ve been poisoned. I shook both winebottles, found them empty, then called to Olvara, “Get me a jug of something strong!”
Back to Arabelle, I said, “Steady breaths, now.” I nudged her hand aside and tore the robe further. After dunking a washcloth in a cup of water, I wrung it out and dabbed away the blood. More ichor gushed from the ruptured lips, but not enough to worry me.
“You’re lucky,” I said. “The dagger was a few inches from nicking your heart.”
“How... fortunate.” She sucked air sharply between the words.
When Olvara came around with the bottle, Arabelle snatched it from her hands and swigged it with an eagerness that would’ve put Surgeon-Commander Benfrey under the table.
Gently, I pried it from her fingers. “Hold still. This’ll hurt.”
I suppose it goes without saying that we ended the interview stage after that.
* * *
“Glad to see your color is improving,” I said as I stepped into her recovery tent later that night. “I’ve come to apologize. If not for my oversight, that attack never would’ve happened. If you want to dismiss me from your service, I—”
“Bah, none of that piffle!” When she sat up in bed, a flab of stomach overhung her lap. “There’s no way you could’ve predicted how things would unravel. I’m merely grateful you were there to patch me up.”
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that!” Not to mention relieved. I dragged up a stool and sat at her bedside. “Now listen. I’ve asked around about the assassin. He went by the name of Tyther. Beyond that, he’s an enigma. The man kept to himself, by all accounts.”
“As I suspected.” Her fingers rubbed the poultice strapped to her wound. Nobody could ever call that fungal odor a perfume of the gods, but it was vastly preferable to the fishy reek of infection.
She burped into her fist. “What about the pig?”
“Pig? Oh, yes. Fergus brought it to my operation tent.” Not without giving me an earful of grumbling.
“Let’s have a look then, shall we?” Arabelle took my arm for support as she lurched to her feet.
“So soon?” I kept pace with her out the tent and into the cold evening. A pair of holy servitors trailed behind us, snatching glances from patients and personnel alike. “You’ll need plenty of rest for that wound to heal.”
“Time is a luxury we can ill afford. Let’s not forget the reverend marshal’s deadline.”
“True.” On one hand, I doubted Luthos would force a wounded prelate out of the city. On the other, my cousin had a loose interpretation of chivalry.
Ironic to think that the goriest thing to have ever lain on my butcher’s block was the easiest for me to stomach. Although the pig stank up the tent with its ruptured intestines, the flayed ribs brought to mind a fancy roast from Luthos’s dinner table.
“Take a look at this.” With both hands, I tipped the pig on its side. “Something Fergus neglected to mention.”
There, on a flap of skin between two ribs, someone had carved a triangle within an octagon.
I rubbed my hands together. “In seminary, we spent a few months on exorcisms. If I remember right, this is a cryptogram for a demon-summoning ritual. What I don’t understand is, why now?”
Shadows loomed over the curves of her cheeks as she sighed deeply. “You forget the fact that demons draw power from belief, even when such faith is misdirected. Through a ritual such as this, someone could funnel the people’s prayers from Divine Galvin to a sinister force.”
“Surely the gods will intercede on our behalf,” I said, voice pinched with desperation. “Why else would they bless us with a miracle, if not to assure us of their protection?”
“Oh, Moralt” — blue eyes locked on my brown ones, she said — “this was never a miracle in the first place.”
Just like that, my sapling of hope withered beneath the stormclouds of doubt — doubt that the gods cared at all. How could I be so gullible? Stuttering at first, I said, “What makes you so sure?”
“I knew from the moment I tasted the tears. Divine pneuma has no flavor, you see. This substance was far too sweet to originate from the heavens.”
“Then why proceed with the interviews at all?” Enraged by my crisis of faith, I paced around my butcher’s block and flung out both hands on every other word. “Why string us along when you could’ve told the truth?”
“Because,” she said with admirable patience, “I still need to unmask the culprit. Whoever staged the hoax, whoever slaughtered that pig, they won’t stop there. And neither shall I. My question to you, Moralt, is what will you do?”
I pulled up short from my pacing. At first, I yearned for nothing more than a good sulk in my cot. But I had to accept that my doubts were petty in the face of a citywide possession. Starvation, disease, these were all endemic to a beseiged city. But a demon? My skin crawled at the image of Patronists battering down the city gates, only to find the crows pecking at corpses in the bloodsoaked streets.
“Whatever it takes,” I said. “Just say the word.”
The briefest smirk lifted one of her apple cheeks. “Our first order of business is identifying the substance used for the false tears.”
“Mind if I have a taste? Not that I mistrust your palate.” A gastronome such as her knew food better than most. Half the reason I asked was to get my matula back.
“Ah, of course.” She ducked her head out the flap and sent one of the servitors to fetch the vial.
Those candlelit hours I’d spent in the seminary archives could prove useful here. One of our required texts was Dv. Eustus’s Pharmacopeia, a comprehensive list of medical reagents. Having memorized the tome cover to cover, I narrowed the matches for the tears to three by the time the servitor returned.
Glad to see my prized possession intact, I removed the cork and took a whiff. Such a bitter aroma for something so sweet. The sludgy texture was to be expected, and the taste? Sweet, yes, but with salty undernotes. Almost like caramel, but not quite.
“Ruby sap.” I corked the matula and hooked it onto my belt with a satisfying snick. “The only trees that produce it are indigenous to the Penny Cantons. The good news is that only a few shopkeepers will stock it. Apothecaries and perfumers, mostly.”
Arabelle’s face glowed red by the sap’s faltering radiance. “And the bad news?”
“We’ll need to check all their ledgers before Luthos’s deadline. How about I handle the sutlers and unguilded merchants around the camp, while you take care of the shops within the city walls?”
“Agreed. And also—” Her eyes bulged at something behind me.
Breathlessly, I followed her gaze. A barrel-shaped shadow darkened the canvas wall. No, not a barrel, but someone on their knees.
“Anyway,” I said as casually as possible, “I don’t have a problem with surveying the locals.” I unclipped a scalpel from my belt and backstepped toward the wall. “But we’ll have to be careful. We don’t want to be too hasty!” On that word, I stabbed the canvas and tore a jagged line wide enough for me to burst through.
Nothing to the left. To my right, a blur of black sped around the rear corner of the tent.
Hoping the servitors would prove useful, I shouted, “To arms!” before I took off around the corner and down a back-alley of tents. The crescent moon revealed no more than the figure’s slim form as I closed the distance between us. Ten feet away, then five, then my foot hooked onto a line of rope tied to a tent’s peg. My body crashed onto the turf. Between rapid blinks, I saw the shadow veer to the left.
Back on my feet, I took the same turn and stumbled into a loose ring of soldiers. They hunched around a cookfire, some sipping stew out of their helmets.
“Where’d he go?” I bounced glances between them like a lunatic.
One of the soldiers scratched his armpit and quirked a brow at me. “Who?”
“A man. Or boy... girl? I don’t know. Someone just came through here. Where’d they go?”
“We didn’t see a soul,” piped up a soldier with a winestain birthmark on his cheek. His heavy-lidded eyes sprang wide when the servitors arrived behind me. “We don’t want any trouble.”
Any one of these soldiers could’ve been spying on us. But even if I had the power to extract a confession, what if they told the truth? What if, gods forbid, the spy had vanished through dark magic? Nothing was out of the question now that cultists were involved. So I had no option but to return to Arabelle empty-handed.
I spent all that night tossing and turning, haunted by visions of a black wraith stepping into my tent, eyes burning with hellish fire. A demon, perhaps, but also an embodiment of my doubt. And, before I could vanquish that shadow, I needed to establish the truth behind the tears.
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by David Samuels
