Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [206]
Dietrich found another pustule, much smaller, high up on her inner thigh. This, he lanced more swiftly and with a cloth squeezed out as much pus as he could. “Examine under her arms and on her chest,” he told the mason.
Gregor nodded and pulled her gown up as far as he could. Theresia’s cries had subsided into sobs. She said, “The other man was not so nice.”
“What was that, schatzi? Pastor, what does she mean?”
Dietrich would not look at him. “She is delirious.”
“He had a beard, too; but it was bright red. But Daddy made him go away.” The blood ran down her chin as she talked and Gregor mopped after it without hope.
Dietrich remembered the man. His name had been Ezzo, and his beard had been red from his own blood, after Dietrich had slit his throat and pulled him off the girl.
“You are safe now,” he told the girl, told the woman she had become. “Your husband is here.”
“It hurts.” Her eyes were clenched closed now.
There was one more pustule, under her right arm, as big as Dietrich’s thumb. This was more difficult to lance, for when he came off her legs, they bent and tucked themselves up, as small children were wont to do when sleeping. Theresia hugged her knees. “It hurts,” she said again.
“Why has God abandoned us?” Gregor asked.
Dietrich tried to pry Theresia’s arm loose so he could lance the last pustule. He did not think it mattered. “God will never abandon us,” he insisted, “but we may abandon God.”
The mason swept his arm wide, relinquishing his grip on Theresia’s shoulder. “Then where is He in all this?” he shouted. Theresia flinched at the bellow and he immediately took a more tender note and stroked her hair with his great stubby fingers.
Dietrich thought of all the reasoned arguments, of Aquinas and the other philosophers. He wondered how Joachim would have answered. Then he thought that Gregor did not need an answer, did not want an answer, or that the only answer was hope.
“Theresia, I need to cut the pustule under your arm.”
She had opened her eyes. “Will I see God?”
“Ja. Doch. Gregor, look for some cooking oil.”
“Cooking oil? Why?”
“I must anoint her. It is not too late.”
Gregor blinked, as if anointing were a sudden and alien thing that had never been done before. Then he released Theresia and went to the other side of the cottage, near the hearth, and came back with a small flask. “I think this is oil.”
Dietrich took it. “It will do.” His lips moved in silent prayer as he blessed the oil. Then, wetting his thumb in it, he traced the sign of the cross on her forehead, then on her closed eyelids, praying, “Illúmina óculos meos, ne umquam obdórmium in morte …” From time to time, when Dietrich paused to recollect the proper words, Gregor would say, “Amen,” through his tears.
He was nearly finished with the sacrament when Theresia coughed and a bolus of blood and vomit issued forth from her mouth. Dietrich thought, the small-lives are in there. They will have gotten Gregor and me. Yet this was not the first time he had been spattered; and Ulf, on his last inspection of Dietrich’s blood, had pronounced it still clean.
But Ulf died many days ago.
When he had completed the rite, Dietrich set the oil aside—others would need it soon—and he took one of Theresia’s hands in his own. It seemed a fragile thing, though the skin was rough and cracked. “Do you remember,” he said, “when Fulk broke his finger and I taught you how to set it?” Her lips, when she smiled, were as red as berries. “I do not know which of the three of us was more frightened, you, I, or Fulk.” To Gregor, he said, “I remember her first words. She was mute when I brought her here. We were out in the Lesser Wood searching for peony and other herbs and roots, and I was showing her where to find them when her foot became caught in the cleft of a fallen branch, and she said …”
“Help me,” said Theresia and her hand clenched Dietrich’s so tight as possible in her weakness. She coughed a little, and then a little more,