The Golden Specific (17 page)

 18 

The Road to Ausentinia

March 15, 1881

Rubio died on the sixth day, and Ildefonso and El Sapo died on the seventh. Whatever food and water Bronson and I did not consume remained untouched, and our jailers observed these signs without comment. For several days the fear that we, too, would fall ill paralyzed us. I think at times the fear itself was enough to make me lose my appetite. Watching three grown men kill themselves slowly, passing out of the world as if they had never belonged to it, was horrifying.

As the days wore on, Bronson and I realized that we remained, somehow, unaffected. I was frightened and disheartened, but I still wanted to live. Every morning when I awoke I searched Bronson's face with apprehension, terrified that I would find there the weary indifference that marked the first signs of the plague. But every morning he bore an anxious concern that mirrored mine. The desperate wish to escape, to flee that plagued continent, to return to our dearest Sophia, shone brightly in his eyes.

We had pressed the button on Wren's watch on the first day and every day since, but nothing came of it. I still held out hope that he might arrive—with a ship like the
Roost
,
anything was possible. But perhaps my hope was naive.

Even more naive was our hope that resisting the plague would be our deliverance. Surely they could not keep us quarantined if we were not ill? But on the eighth day, after the sheriff's men in golden masks had carried away the corpses and burned them on the plain beside the jail, we discovered our error.

We were visited by the sheriff and two other men: a scribe in black robes with a portable desk who wrote down every word of our long exchange, and a small, plump man in red and white robes. Like the sheriff's men, he wore a beaked mask made out of pounded gold and a magnificent golden cross on a gold chain across his chest. From the sheriff's explanation, I understood the second man to be Murtea's priest. Communicating through the barred window, the priest asked us a series of questions, all the while clasping his pudgy, rather dirty hands reverently over his belly.

“State your names and place of origin.”

“Minna and Bronson Tims of Boston in New Occident.”

“Why does your husband not answer?” the priest asked. I could not make out his expression behind the golden mask, but the tone of disapproval was unmistakable.

“He does not speak Castilian.”

There was a short pause. “Very well,” the priest said, making clear that it was not. “Why have you traveled to the Papal States?”

“We came here to find news of our friend, Bruno Casavetti, who contacted us some months ago. I believe he was
here, in Murtea. Was he here? Can you tell us where he is now?”

This caused some consternation. The three men consulted with each other, and though they spoke too rapidly and quietly for me to follow their entire conversation, I heard the name “Rosemary” and the word
brujo
—meaning “witch”—repeatedly.

When the priest turned back to us, it seemed that they had already formed some conclusion, for his line of questioning changed. “By what spells or dark arts do you repel the plague?”

I was so stunned that I could not reply. “What did he say?” Bronson asked.

“He asked what spells we use to protect ourselves from the plague,” I said, aghast.

“Fates above,” he murmured. “This bodes ill.”

I turned back to the cleric. “We are astonished by your question. We do not believe in spells or dark arts. We have no more idea than you do why we did not catch the disease carried by our companions. Truly, it is entirely a mystery to us.”

“You do not believe in the dark arts?” the priest said, his voice hard. “You deny the existence of such dangerous evil?”

“Please,” I said quickly, realizing my mistake, “we do not know what to believe. This illness and the means of treating it are entirely unknown to us. What I meant to say is that we have no knowledge of any spells or dark arts.”

The priest and sheriff conferred once more, while the scribe diligently took notes. This time I understood nothing
of their conversation, and when the priest faced me again, an air of dismissal evident in his every movement, I felt a terrible sense of foreboding. “Your sentence will be determined by midday tomorrow and communicated to you by the sheriff.” Without another word, he began to walk away, followed by the other two men.

“Please!” I called after him. “Please let us go on our way and we promise never to return. We are not ill! We will cause you no harm.”

They made no sign of having heard me, but continued without pause toward the walled village of Murtea, kicking up a cloud of dust in their wake.

The relief we had felt at escaping the plague gave way to a contained panic. Bronson spent the long afternoon trying to weaken the mortar holding the bars on the rear window, and I began writing this account with the notepaper in my pack. My thoughts turned somber. I began to feel that escape would be impossible, and that whatever dread fate had befallen Bruno would befall us, too. I did not regret that we had responded to his call for aid, but I regretted with all my heart that we had arrived so precipitously and thereby placed ourselves in peril. We might have stayed longer with Gilberto Jerez. We might have sent someone on ahead of us to inquire what had happened. We might have called upon the authority of the bishop in Seville. All the alternatives seemed, from the vantage point of the Murtea jail, wiser than the one we had chosen.

As the afternoon darkened into dusk, Bronson abandoned
his hopeless task at the window and I put down my pen. I lost track of time as I wandered down the dark pathways of what might have been, before Bronson finally recalled me to the present. We sat in the growing darkness, our hands entwined, not speaking. But our thoughts traveled together over the past, lingering on Sophia and the world we had left behind in Boston. The sun set, and our spirits sank with it.

Then, as the hours dragged, we were surprised to hear a light footstep approaching the jail. Had the sheriff arrived with our sentence? We rose and went to the barred window. But it was not the sheriff. We saw a girl—no more than twelve or thirteen years of age—approaching us.

She wore a long dress and a shawl that covered her head. When she reached the window of the jail, she lowered the shawl so that we could see her face in the faltering light. “You are friends of Bruno?” she asked in slightly accented English.

“Yes,” I answered, surprised. My mind leaped to the letter he had sent us. “Are you Rosemary?”

She nodded.

“Thank the Fates,” Bronson exclaimed. “We have found you. Or you have found us. We received the letter you sent for Bruno. Is he here? Is he well?”

Rosemary bit her lip. Her eyes were filled with sorrow. “He is not here. He was sentenced in December, only a week after I sent the letter.”

Bronson and I were dumbstruck. Our worst fears had come true. “What was his sentence?” I asked hoarsely.

“He was banished to the hills north of here to follow
the
señas perdidas
. The lost signs—the paths that once led to Ausentinia.”

“Banished?” I echoed. “But then he is alive? We could find him by also following these—lost signs?”

“I fear not. I will explain it to you. I have come here partly for this purpose, to explain to you what happened to Bruno, because I fear,” she paused, “it is the same as what will happen to you.” She fell silent. “It is difficult to tell.”

“We understand, Rosemary.” I was suddenly conscious of the risk she must have taken to visit us. “We appreciate your generosity in bringing us this news. Yours is the only kind word we have had since arriving here.”

Rosemary looked pained, but she nodded. “I will tell you what happened to Bruno.” She paused. “It all happened because of Ausentinia.”

“Ausentinia?” I echoed.

“Yes.” She sighed. “Ausentinia. For as long as we in Murtea can remember, there has been another Age in the hills to the north—the hills of Ausentinia. My mother told me of it from the time I was very little, before I ever visited myself.

“From the moment you cross the stone bridge into the hills, you leave our Age behind. The paths through the hills are a labyrinth—mysterious and changing paths, that shift every time you turn your head. Yet every traveler knew how to find the way. At each juncture in the road, there is a path to the left, a path in the middle, and a path to the right. However much they might change, by always choosing the middle path, you would arrive after an hour's travel in a
beautiful valley where the city of Ausentinia shone like a piece of polished copper in the sun.

“Pilgrims from every corner of the Papal States traveled to it, always taking the stone bridge, always following the middle path, and always finding their way to the hidden city. This is why your friend Bruno came—to visit Ausentinia.” Rosemary paused.

“But why?” asked Bronson.

“We call it Ausentinia here, but elsewhere it is known as
La Casa de San Antonio
—‘The House of Saint Antony,' after Saint Antony of Padua, the patron saint of lost things. Ausentinia offered every person who visited something marvelous: the miracle of way-finding.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Imagine you had lost something very precious: the key to a trunk full of treasures; a brother who had left home, never to return; a secret whispered in your ear and then forgotten. Then imagine that someone with knowledge of all things that could and would happen drew you a map: a map that told exactly where to go and what to do when, so that you would find the key, or the brother, or the whispered secret. Wouldn't you travel any distance for such a map?”

It sounded like something out of a dream. “Of course I would.”

“Let me tell you of my own visit so that you may understand,” Rosemary said. “When I was little, I lived with my mother on a farm outside Murtea, some half hour's walk
from the walls. I had never known my father, and my mother was the world to me. We were very happy.

“My mother loved to sing, and she had a beautiful voice. Wishing to be just like her, I sang, too—she called me her little warbler. The sound of our voices, filling the house and the field behind it, day and night, made me glad.

“Then, three years ago, when I was ten, she fell ill. You know the signs now, as I did: she lost her appetite; in the mornings, she had no desire to rise from her bed. We both knew it was
lapena.
Before it could get worse, she did something both cruel and merciful. She left me. The note I found in her place explained that she wished to spare me not only the illness but also the sight of her losing care for everything she loved, including me.

“I searched, day after day, in all the places where I thought she might go, but I could not find her. After two weeks had passed, I knew. She was gone. She had met her death somewhere out on the dry plains, alone. Worse still, her remains would never be buried on consecrated ground, and her soul would wander forever in purgatory. All this she had done just to spare me.

“That was a terrible time. I cried until my eyes were swollen shut. Why had the plague not taken me, too? I wished for it and it would not come.

“When I emerged from my grief, alive despite myself, I found that I had lost my voice. Not only my singing voice—I had entirely lost the power of speech. At first, I did
not care. I had lost my mother, and any loss compared to that great loss was as nothing.

“But as the weeks passed, something changed. The silence that settled upon the house was killing me—and I no longer wished to die. Singing would have reminded me of her and brought the memory of her into the house. I needed my voice to return.

“So, for the first time, I crossed the stone bridge, taking the middle path at each juncture, following the dusty footpaths until, after an hour's walking, I reached the city of Ausentinia. I remember that I arrived at midday, when the sun was high. In Murtea, the heat would be unbearable, and everyone would be indoors. But here it was cool. The city was ringed with pine and cypress trees, and their aroma filled the air. Lovely stone houses, with their shining copper roofs, basked in the sun. The market was full of vendors, and every man, woman, and child seemed to radiate contentment. I realized, as I walked along, seeking a map vendor, the cause of their happiness: nothing was ever lost for long in Ausentinia. Anything lost would soon be found. And the departure of those things that left the world forever—my mother among them—caused them less agony, I thought, for they understood the loss as final and necessary.