Infinite Sacrifice (30 page)

Chapter 7

“—
seven… eight…
nine… ten—” I hear Oliver counting loudly as I creak the short door
to the hayshed open enough to squeeze inside.

I find a seat
behind a wall of bales and try to keeping from coughing on the hay
dust I stirred up in the dark. Light filters in and disappears just
as promptly, and I still my breathing to listen for footsteps
approaching. Someone much taller than I expect yanks my braid and I
turn to see Simon, half in shadow, with his finger to his lips. He
sits down right beside me on my bale and fills the air between us
with the sweet smell from gathering honey all morning. He points to
the outside of the shed, and I deduce Rowan and Oliver are close.
We both look down at our hands, in the strange quiet moment we’re
caught in. Our breaths are the only sound in the dark, but I become
increasingly aware of how swift and loud my heart’s
becoming.
Can he hear
it?

The door swings open, chasing away
the shadows, and Simon puts his warm arm around me, ducking us from
their view. I’m there under Simon’s wing for only a moment before
Oliver pounces out and screams, “Ah ha!”

Rowan runs out from behind him,
beaming to find Simon there with me.

Oliver yells, “No fair! You can’t
hide together!”

“How did you know where Elizabeth
was hiding?” Rowan asks as Simon pulls me up.

Simon leads the way out and calls
back behind him, “I was watching her from up on that
hill.”

“If you don’t play by the rules,
then you can’t play with us.” Oliver crosses his arms.

Simon says in a high voice, “Not
even if I brought you both a present?”

Rowan coos immediately, and Oliver
quickly forgives him.

“Is it an apple?” Oliver
hopes.

“Some figs?” Rowan
guesses.

Simon smiles and pulls out a small
grey puffball of a kitten with golden eyes from his
satchel.

I couldn’t believe he had concealed
that the whole time in the shed.

They put their hands on him at
once, and Rowan says, “His name is Mousie, because he looks just
like a mouse.”

Oliver laughs. “That’s a terrible
name for a cat!”

Simon bends down to Rowan. “Mousie
is a fine name.”

The children take the kitten away
to play, and Simon says, “That’s to help with the rat
problem.”

The rats had been getting into the
chapel in great numbers. Every morning I would find at least one
dead in the corners of the chapel or out in our stock
house.

“Thank you, that
will most definitely help
and
keep the children occupied.”

We walk back together through
Emeline’s garden. The trace of mint aroma hangs in the air. Simon
ducks his height under the bended willow arch covered in lush
rose-hipped branches, and opens the small wooden gate. Forsythia
grows high all around the small boxwood-edged place, naturally
enclosing the garden away from the world. We walk along the narrow
graveled path toward the tall stone sundial in the very center. As
in a dance, we both part round the dial and come back together as a
swarm of birds returns to roost in a massive oak in the foreground,
making a ruckus in the quiet peace of the moment. Simon strips a
boxwood branch and sprinkles the tiny leaves over my head. I laugh
and grab up a handful of dried leaves and throw them over his head
as he tries to turn away. I dart out the opposite gated arch as
soon as I see him grabbing up an even greater pile and make it into
the abbey right before he releases them, catching Malkyn on her way
out. Simon immediately apologizes straight-faced, as I hide my
laughter behind the door. Malkyn can care less about the leaves and
invites Simon to eat with us. I hear him walk off to assist Malkyn
with supper.

After our grace, Simon looks up and
asks Daniel, “How bad were things in France?”

Daniel looks up with one eye narrow
and one eye wide. “You cannot imagine the horrors I have
witnessed.”

We all sit, quiet. Simon attempts
again, “I only ask because I have heard rumors about what occurred
in Strasburg.”

Daniel dips his bread in the stew,
pops it in his large mouth, and states, “They are not rumors. I was
there.”

We all wait for him to speak again;
I wonder if he ever will.

“It was Friday, the thirteenth of
February, when they rounded us all up like wandering cattle,
hitting us with sticks as they drove us toward the cemetery. I held
in my arms my precious Rebecca, who was still asleep upon my
shoulder, and my wife by my side. The sky was grey and dull, as the
winter sun hid behind thick clouds, and we all cried out when we
saw the massive bonfire burning among the graves. They forced us to
strip our clothes. I woke up Rebecca, taking off her little dress
and stockings, and she cried because she was cold.” He pauses with
that difficult imagery.

Moments later he continues, “The
villagers pounced on our clothes after we threw them in a pile and
stuffed their pockets with our savings we carried on us.” He turns
to Simon with his finger pointing to the sky. “That is the whole
reason they brought us there!”

He breathes out, trying to calm
himself. “They told us they were going to burn us to keep God from
seeking vengeance for our sins and bringing the plague to their
city. Jews tried to run in every direction. Many pushed through the
mob and out into the streets only to be chased down and beaten with
clubs in the sewers. They called out to us, ‘Either come and
absolve your sins through baptism of water or we will baptize you
with fire!’

“I turned to my wife, and she shook
her head stubbornly. But I could not think of Rebecca burning in
the fire. It was a terrible sight, as devout Jews walked into the
flames. I heard their screams of agony and smelled their burnt hair
and flesh!” He pauses again, then continues, “I turned to take
Rebecca over with me to the water, and Sarah grabbed her from me
and leapt”–he begins to sob—“leapt into the flames with
her.”

We all wait with tears in our eyes
as he pulls himself together again and blows his nose in a cloth he
carries, in two loud trumpets.

“I knew I disappointed Sarah
greatly. She was the daughter of an esteemed rabbi and extremely
pious. I was too much of a coward to join them in the flames and
took conversion with a thousand other cowards as twice that number
of Jews died for what they believed in. Coward. Such a coward.” He
sits there shaking his head.

Malkyn speaks, “God forgive them
for such heinous acts upon humanity.”

“All spring they were murdering
Jews. Killing them, stuffing their bodies in barrels, and floating
them down the Rhine. Even after I converted, they kept threatening
me. But when the plague arrived and I treated sick Jews and
gentiles alike, a mob came accusing me of murdering gentiles.
Poisoning them with the plague! They dragged me down to the well
and demanded I tell them what poison I put in. Of course I said, ‘I
have no poison.’

“They insisted I was on a mission
to kill all the Christians to achieve world domination.

“Domination!” He throws his hands
in the air but lets them fall like soft snow.

“They stripped me of my clothes,
put a crown of thorns on my head, and smashed it into my skin with
mailed fists. Then they made ropes of thorns and thrust them up
into my genitals. Who wouldn’t confess after that?”

Simon winces at this and nods in
agreement.

“So,” he continues, “I told them I
didn’t put poison in, but I saw another Jew put poison in. They
asked which Jew, and I described a plague victim dying in my care.
They wanted to know what he’d done, so I told them he dropped an
egg-sized tablet out of a wrapped package into the town well. When
they demanded the name of the poison, I thought of belladonna, the
only poison I knew. They refused to believe me, said this was a
poison never seen before, and threatened to send me to
hell.

“They thrust the rope back up with
such force, the roping caught in my skin. I told them what they
wanted to hear, that the Jew said he made it from the hearts of
good Christians and Holy Communion wafers.”

Malkyn, Simon, and Emeline all look
down at this.

“The mob set on the man I
described, and although he was half-dead, the look on his face as
they beat him to death still keeps me from sleeping.”

Simon rests his hand on Daniel’s
slumped shoulder. “Though you have been tried and tested, the sins
rest on those committing such acts.”

Daniel’s shoulders still hang low,
and judging by the constant circles under his eyes from then on, I
would say he slept no better.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

I stand before a wall of fire; the
heat makes it hard for me to open my eyes. I feel the weight of two
hands. I look down to Rowan’s and Oliver’s sweet faces.

Simon appears next to us and
cries, “How strongly do you believe, Elizabeth?” then leaps and
disappears into the flames.

I pull them back from the fire,
but I hear, “Oliver! Rowan!” from behind us.

Rowan and Oliver rip themselves
from my grip and run into the arms of their father.

I cry out, “They are mine now! You
left them!”

But he smiles and leads them into
the fire.

I wake up and clutch for the warm,
floppy bodies beside me, only startling Mousie nestled into the
space between the boys and me. He crawls up farther onto Rowan’s
neck and curls his plumed tail around him out of my reach. Rowan’s
sweet face shines serenely in the moonlight, and Oliver stretches
but quickly settles back into his peaceful dreams. I let their slow
and rhythmic breathing lull me back to sleep.

Chapter 8

Autumn gives way into winter but
grants one last sunny crisp day in celebration of harvest’s end.
The sunset has left a red haze across the sky. I take Oliver and
Rowan outside at dusk to run around and they bring their little
kitten out with them. The abbey is an island in a sea of wheat,
left standing with no one to reap it. You can see the direction of
the wind by watching the ebb and flow of the grain tides.
Everything is gilded: the grain, the grass, and the trees in the
distance. I’m taking in the beauty of the moment, tracing my gaze
along the maze of stone walls separating various crops, when I feel
the familiar tug on my braid. Simon stands behind me,
grinning.

“Your braid is as thick as a mare’s
tail!”

I run my hands along it, checking
its girth as we walk the winding cart’s path through the
crops.

“I didn’t mean that in a bad way,”
he says with a laugh.

I turn back to watch the children
running in circles with long sticks, which the kitten’s chasing
wildly.

He looks on as well and says,
“Amazing how children surrounded with the threat of death ignore it
in their quest for life.”

He steps into the wheat and lies on
his back, gazing up at the sky. I decide to lie down next to him.
We seem hidden from the world under the thick tops of grain—our own
secret place. He plucks a long stalk and twists it into two joined
circles. He holds it out against the blue, then lets it pop out of
his hands and fall to the ground next to him.