The Spirit Well be-3 Page 14

  When everything was ready and in order, Anen gestured to one of the attendant servants, who turned to Benedict, bowed low, and, taking him by the hand, led him to a far corner of the room where the youth could watch but would not interfere. Then, at a nod from Anen, the operation began.

  The foremost of the priest physicians knelt down beside the bed and took up a small knife with an obsidian blade; he clicked his fingers before Arthur’s eyes, then tapped him lightly on the cheekraising no response. Then with quick, decisive strokes he applied the blade and cut into the scalp around the discoloured lump above the left eye-once, twice, and again. Blood flowed freely from the deep cut. Instantly, wet cloths were applied that had been soaked in some astringent solution, because the gush of blood ceased almost at once. The physician made another quick incision and then pulled back the flap of scalp to reveal a black clot of blood and tissue with white bone beneath. A cloying, sweet smell wafted into the room.

  While the first physician held back the flap with a little bronze prong, a second moved swiftly forward with a pair of long, golden tweezers and began picking out bits of clot and dead flesh. When the area was clean, he turned his attention to tweezing out fragments of crushed bone and dropping them into a small silver bowl.

  Anen stood by, arms folded across his chest, supervising the procedure. When the priest finished removing the splinters of bone, Anen motioned to the third priest-a short, stocky man with a shaved head and round, cherubic face-who stepped to the bedside and took up a bronze instrument that to Benedict resembled a carpenter’s auger. As the first priest carefully held back the flap of scalp he had freed, the auger was applied to the freshly scoured bone.

  The fourth priest moved in to steady the patient’s head, and Benedict heard a sound like that of a millstone grinding corn. Unable to watch, he turned his face and looked away. The grisly sound seemed to go on and on, and when it finished, Benedict glanced around to see that a neat round hole had been bored in his father’s skull. In the centre of the hole was a ghastly clot of blood glistening red-black and virulent. Anen turned and offered Benedict a knowing smile to tell him that all was going well.

  The stocky priest stepped back from his work, and another moved into his place. Taking up a tiny golden knife, the physician began gently scraping at the clot, cutting it away, pausing now and then to dab away the blood oozing from the fresh wound and to remove the scrapings and rinse his blade in a bowl of vinegar solution. It was soon finished, and the golden tweezers applied once more to remove every last fragment, sliver, and fleck of broken bone. Greyish pink flesh glistened through the hole.

  Anen stepped forward then; the other priests stood back to allow him to examine their work. He bent close, and with the most delicate touch probed the neat incision and felt the smooth edges of bone. He inspected the wound and spoke to his fellow priests. They held close consultation for a moment, whereupon Anen crossed the room to join Benedict.

  “There has been much bleeding beneath the bone,” the priest said, willing the youth to understand. “The bleeding is stopped and pressure is relieved. Now we can but watch and wait.”

  Benedict heard in the priest’s tone a note of reassurance and clung to it. “Thank you.”

  Anen squeezed the young man’s shoulder, then returned to supervise the binding of the wound. A small disk of gold was washed in the vinegar solution and then applied to the naked skull. Working with deft efficiency, the priests closed the wound, replacing the scalp and sewing the edges back together; they then wrapped strips of clean linen around and around the patient’s head. When they finished, Arthur’s head was swathed in a turban. All four doctors stepped back, bowed to the patient and to Anen, then took up their trays and instruments and departed, leaving one behind to watch the patient. Anen released Benedict to approach his father once more.

  Despite the ordeal just endured, his father seemed to rest peacefully. His breathing, though shallow, was regular and even. Benedict took this as a good sign. He settled onto his bedside stool to resume his vigil.

  Sometime before morning there arose a commotion out in the temple courtyard. Benedict, dozing on his chair, awoke to the sound of raised voices and running feet. Glancing around, he saw that the priest keeping vigil was gone. He went to the door of the Healing House and looked out. Priests with torches were running here and there; they seemed to be barring the gates. No sooner was this accomplished then they raced away, and the courtyard grew quiet once more.

  Benedict returned to his father’s room. Taking up a lamp, he moved to the bed and examined his father. Although it was difficult to tell, he sensed a change: his father seemed to rest more peacefully, the lines of tension in his face relaxed, his features composed. Benedict turned to replace the lamp on the stand and heard a faint clicking sound. Looking back, he saw his father’s mouth move, but no sound emerged.

  He leaned close once more. “I am here, Father. What is it?”

  Again the dry lips moved, and Benedict heard the merest ghost of a breath utter a word.

  “I did not hear you, Father. Say it again.”

  The voice, rising to a hoarse whisper, repeated the words. “The Spirit… Well… ” Arthur sighed and seemed to sink deeper into the bed.

  “What? Father, tell me again.” Benedict stared at his father, fear twisting his gut into a knot. “What did you say?”

  Receiving no response, Benedict leaned closer. “Father, I can’t hear you.” He put a tentative hand on his father’s shoulder and jostled him in an attempt to keep him awake just a little longer. “Please, tell me-what did you say?”

  “The… Spirit Well… ” The words came out as a moan. With the last of his strength, Arthur moved his hand to his chest. Benedict observed where the hand came to rest. “I have… marked it,” he gasped, his voice trailing into silence.

  Benedict gazed at the tattooed symbols on his father’s chest-the familiar spray of curious emblems he was only just beginning to learn how to navigate. He shook his father’s shoulder again.

  There was no response.

  “Father!” Benedict, growing frantic, shouted. “Please! I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Turning from the bed, he ran to the door and called for help. The priest assigned to bedside duty reappeared almost at once. Hurrying across the yard, he bowed to Benedict, then pushed past him and moved quickly to kneel beside the bed, placing a hand on Arthur’s chest. He put his ear close to his patient’s nose and mouth, and paused as if listening.

  “He was just-” began Benedict.

  The physician raised a palm for silence and then placed his fingertips against Arthur’s neck. Rising, he retrieved a small rectangle of polished bronze from his tray of instruments and held it beneath the stricken man’s nose.

  Benedict, his heart in his throat, knew what this meant. Dreading what he would see, yet unable to look away, he stared with growing apprehension as the physician turned the little square of bronze towards him. There was not the slightest smudge of fog or moisture on the polished surface. His father was no longer breathing.

  The physician shook his head, then stood and, raising his palms shoulder high, bent at the waist and began chanting in a low, droning voice.

  Benedict slumped back against the wall, his eyes on his father’s body. “No. It cannot be,” he murmured, pounding his fist against the wall. “He was just talking to me. He cannot be de-” The boy refused to say the word.

  Rushing to the bed, Benedict threw himself down upon his father’s body. There was no movement, no resistance. He clasped his father’s face in his hands and was surprised to feel the warmth there. “Don’t leave me.” His voice cracked. “Please… don’t leave me.”

  Strong hands gripped the young man’s arms and pulled him away. Upon release, Arthur’s head rolled to one side. Benedict shook off the priest’s hands and struggled forward once more. “I think he’s unconscious,” he insisted. “We should try to wake him.”

  The priest said something to him and shoo
k his head, then went back to his chanting.

  An almighty walloping thump sounded in the courtyard-something had crashed into the temple gates. Benedict turned towards the sound, and a servant burst into the room; the servant took one look at the praying priest and disappeared again. Benedict, sinking under the weight of grief rising within him, clasped his hands and began to pray as well. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed as he had never prayed in his life.

  The next thing he knew Anen was standing before him, his expression grim, sadness filling his dark eyes. The priest gestured to the body of his friend and said something Benedict could not understand. The young man shook his head, whereupon Anen took him by the hand and led him to the bed. Placing the young man’s hand against his father’s body, he held it there. The flesh was cooler now.

  Anen spoke again, his voice gentle with sorrow. “We tried to heal him, but it was not to be. His soul has entered the House of the Dead and has begun the journey into the afterlife.” He pointed to the body in the bed and seemed to expect a response.

  Benedict gazed upon that inert form. The transformation had begun; the animated presence he had known all his life was no longer there. All that was left was a shell, a rather sad and damaged husk. The man he knew and loved was gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  In Which Old Haunts Are Revisited

  Wilhelmina enjoyed her visits to the abbey at Montserrat and looked forward to them with an anticipation that far exceeded any expectation she held for the journey or destination itself. In some ways it was reminiscent of the feeling she had had as a schoolgirl the night before the annual field trip to the British Museum, a place she loved; or maybe it was the way a pilgrim felt when, after weeks or months of preparation, the day came to set foot on the peregrine path leading to a sacred destination. Perhaps, by a little stretch, that was what she was-a pilgrim.

  Just thinking about working with Brother Lazarus at his kitchen table in the observatory high on the mountaintop, sipping his sour wine and talking astronomy, cosmology, and physics in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of ley travel, made Wilhelmina’s heart beat that little bit faster. She had found him-or had been guided to him, as he insisted-to further her education for the work ordained for her to do. She was stretched and challenged, always, but also comfortable in his presence; he was the wise uncle she had never had.

  And so it was that on one of those early visits it was decided that as a test of Brother Lazarus’ theory of time calibration between alternate dimensions, Wilhelmina should return to London to find Kit and, as she put it, settle her affairs. Aside from explaining what had happened to her during that first ill-considered jump, she wanted to tell him not to worry about her, that she had found her bliss running a coffee shop in Prague and was making a better life for herself in the seventeenth century than she had ever known in the twenty-first and, incidentally, that whatever romantic attachment they might once have shared was now irrevocably severed. Time had passed, events had transpired, and as a consequence they were no longer what they had once been. Selflessly, magnanimously, with every blessing for his future happiness, she graciously freed him from any entanglements, real or imagined, he might feel. For this last part she rehearsed various scenarios, all of them ending with a tearful, regret-filled Kit bidding her farewell as she strode-shoulders back, head held high-out of his life forever.

  The inevitable breakup was not owing to any vindictiveness or hard feelings towards Kit; she bore him no ill will whatsoever-just the opposite, in fact. She was extremely grateful to him for introducing her to the wonders of ley travel, if accidentally, and any resentment or bitterness she initially felt-and there was plenty of that in those first traumatic days-had long since evaporated in the sunny prospect of a far brighter future than she could have imagined, much less engineered, on her own. That it was a future taking place in a post-medieval version of Prague gave her no end of pleasure; the paradox was delicious. I guess I’m just an old-fashioned girl at heart, she mused happily.

  Now that she was familiar with ley travel in its broadest, most general sense, and growing in confidence by leaps and bounds, as it were, Wilhelmina was keen to master the finer points and intricacies and so had become a willing guinea pig for Brother Lazarus’ experiments.

  “Getting the time period right,” he said during one of their sessions. “That is most crucial if we’re ever to effect a reunion between you and your friend.”

  “Or any other useful purpose, for that matter,” suggested Mina.

  “To be sure.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Are you certain you wish to try?”

  “Why not?” She shrugged. “What have we got to lose? I know how to get back here. If anything goes wrong, I can always return. And who knows? Whatever happens might prove useful.”

  “There is rarely advance without experiment,” he observed, then leaned forward, elbows on the table in the posture of a lecturer instructing a pupil. “If this experiment is successful, we will add a great deal to our store of knowledge. See here, now. Listen carefully. Thomas Young was active in London between 1799 and 1829. He was a president and member of the Royal Society, so you should be able to make contact with him through the society secretary-providing you can get back to London in the first place. The ley that took you to Prague should lead you back to London-although this is far from certain.”

  Mina agreed that it was worth a try. “I just wish there was a way to calibrate the time frame more precisely.”

  “That, my dear, is what the experiment is designed to explore,” he said with a smile. “If my theory is correct, each physical point along any particular line corresponds to a specific time reference. That being so… ” He smiled and shook his head. “Well, you’ll just have to try making a jump and see where that gets you. A leap or two along the same ley should give you the means of comparison. Again, this is assuming you end up in London.”

  “I have my ley lamp to help me,” she pointed out.

  “An extraordinary instrument,” Brother Lazarus enthused. “I would give my right arm to know how it works.” He regarded her across the table. “Are you certain you wish to try this? Going home again could be distressing.”

  “I was born and raised in London. I’ll be all right.”

  “When will you go?”

  “I’m ready now,” Mina told him. “There’s no time like the present.”

  As the sun began to sink beyond the crags to the west, Brother Lazarus walked with her to the high mountain ley to see her away. “Vaya con Dios!” he called as Wilhelmina embarked on her long-delayed return to London.

  Her attempt employed the line she now called the Bohemian Ley; the landscape was as she remembered it from that first traumatic leap, and visiting the place again brought a curiously nostalgic feeling. The little blue lights on the lamp confirmed the presence of an active ley, and her first jump proved marginally successful in that she reached the outskirts of a sizeable town set in a place that in most ways resembled the English countryside. At first glance the landscape looked familiar; but as she stood on a bluff overlooking a wide, generous valley with a small village of thatched-roof cottages, the absence of paved roads and motorways gave her to know that if it was anywhere near London, the day of the combustion engine had yet to dawn. Immediately turning around, she doubled back before the ley closed-and tried again.

  In all, it took her two days and no fewer than seven leaps before she happened to strike the winning formula: roughly a metre every four hundred years, or thereabouts. She worked out that if one paced off the stride and matched stride to leap, so to speak, one could home in on England’s capital city in a particular epoch. Her seventh attempt brought her to a suitably modern period.

  The sound of the gusting wind receded, blending into the whine of an ambulance siren echoing down the brick canyon of Stane Way. The alleyway looked familiar, and she was mightily encouraged. It remained to be seen precisely when she had arrived, but that mystery was cleared up the moment she emerg
ed onto Grafton Street. A bus bearing an advertisement for Virgin Mobile phones was the first vehicle to pass, and it was quickly followed by a British Telecom van advertising their speedy 30 MB service for?I6 a month.

  “I made it!” trilled Wilhelmina. “I actually made it!” She shivered with equal parts excitement and dread at the prospect of a return to her old haunts, then started down Grafton Street. Her progress soon had her reeling with the brute force assault on her senses. The ordinary sights of the city were garish and gaudy, the sounds strident and confusing-everything blared and screamed and contested for her attention. After the relative peace of a less-mechanised time, the modern pace of the world seemed an ordeal-too loud, too fast, too rough. She had the feeling of running an obstacle course full of unnecessary shock and alarms.

  Everywhere she looked, the view appeared designed to deliver a blow. A low-slung black car with black-tinted windows cruised by, booming out a bass beat designed to disturb; a motorbike zipped past in the opposite direction buzzing like an oversized hornet; the pavement teemed with French language students lugging matching orange backpacks and drifting along in amorphous crowds like multi-headed amoebas; a tower block undergoing renovation was a gutted noise box echoing with the clatter of jackhammers and diesel generators filling the air above with a noxious pollution of high-decibel clashing and blue fumes; the signs in shop windows screamed in fluorescent letters Sale! and Ultra Discount! Everything Must Go!

  Yet… and yet-these streets heaving with traffic, bristling with advertising, and thronged with oblivious pedestrians bowling along in pursuit of their own private agendas were exactly the same as she remembered. The bleak skyline of grey apartment blocks, the dreary sky crisscrossed with vapour trails of roaring jetliners, the litter and garbage discarded in the gutter, the thrum and thrust of a busy metropolitan street-all of it was precisely the same as it had always been. Funny, she had never noticed the casual brutality of it before. Well, she noticed now, and she did not like it.