The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“Look! That’s the cripple who was found a month ago.”

“He can’t talk or move, poor creature, yet he lives.”

“They say he’s possessed by the Enemy.”

Male voices rose in unison.

The angel spoke to the chosen one:

Rejoice!

Receive the light for the glory of God illuminates you.

Rejoice!

A dome opened above him, the gulf of air so vast that he could scarcely see the painted figures gazing benignly down upon him, who was smallest and least. Folks gaped at him but his bearers did not falter and he was borne forward under the dome and crossed under a lower arch to the apse, where the crowd thinned and he was set down in the midst of a company of brightly dressed nobles. One man stood with his back to Zacharias, his figure limned by the light streaming through a tall window. He turned. The sun dazzled Zacharias’ eyes as the man knelt beside him. He was clad in gold, and the gold cloth was sewn with gems; a heavy gold crown sat on his head and a gold torque encircled his throat. He had brown hair chased with silver and the calm, handsome, bearded face of a man in his middle years. Truly, he was as glorious as the sun.

Floating above, faces swam in and out of Zacharias’ sight: a pretty young woman crowned and robed in splendor equal to that of the kneeling man; Presbyter Hugh; a woman robed in white with a delicate gold torque at her throat and an embroidered golden cap concealing her hair.

The choir finished. Silence trembled beneath the gulf of air.

The crowned man drew a red gillyflower across Zacharias’ lips and after that a tickling branch of yew.

.

“Ah,” said Hugh. “I will leave you to think it over.”

He stoppered the inkhorn, cleaned the quill, and tidied up his writing things before he left. In his place, Eigio returned, blowing out the candle before he lay down to sleep.

In that darkness Zacharias smiled to discover what blossomed unexpectedly in his heart. Peace.

Hathui had accused him of never being content, but he was content now. He had saved Elene’s life despite his fear. He had stood his ground in honor of the bond between him and Hathui. Weren’t these the actions of a good man? A decent man? A courageous man?

In the morning, Eigio propped him up against the wall and he was delighted to discover that he could use his arms well enough to spoon gruel into his own mouth. He was ravenous. He had lost so much weight that his body seemed skin stretched over bone, and when he tried to stand, his legs hadn’t the strength to hold him. Only a handful of days ago he could not swallow or speak. If he ate and rested, he would recover his strength.

The afternoon’s meal of gruel and wine made him unaccountably sleepy. He drifted in and out of a doze as his skin burned and chilled at intervals and his tongue seemed swollen, choking him. Night came and departed while he napped and woke, head cloudy, hands tingling. Light returned, and he lay on his bed and struggled to move, but his limbs felt as heavy as stone, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Presbyter Hugh appeared suddenly, splendid in court robes and a scarlet cape that rippled like water every time he turned.

“Give him the antidote, and then bring him,” he said, and left.

Eigio poured sour wine down his throat. Half of it spilled down his cheeks and trickled along his jaw, but the servingman wiped him up and clad him in a plain shift, the kind of shroud a poor man would be buried in.

He couldn’t move.

Servants arrived and rolled him onto a stretcher. In this manner he jounced down the hall, down stairs, up and down and in such a twisting, turning, crazy route that he became dizzy. Bile burned at the back of his throat, but he could not swallow it down or force it up. He could not even blink, but must stare up at plain and fancy woodwork both, and once a stretch of bright blue sky, until the jostling brought him along an arcade open to the air and surrounded by an ocean of murmuring water. Yet these were the mutterings of humankind, because the servants bore him past multitudes whose faces flashed past as quickly as those of the painted cherubs laughing and weeping above him among the vaults.

A huge crowd had gathered, but where, and why, he did not know.

They crossed under a lintel and came into a space absolutely packed with women and men and rank with their perfumes and sweat and the headache-inducing bite of incense rolling in clouds past his streaming eyes. The ceiling flew away from him, arching up to an impossible height from which stared solemn angels and gloomy saints with huge eyes and glowing hands and heads.

Had he died at last and arrived at the Chamber of Light?

Whispers teased his ears as the servants bore him through the crowd.

“Look! That’s the cripple who was found a month ago.”

“He can’t talk or move, poor creature, yet he lives.”