Chapter Twenty-Six #2
She nodded, her thoughts taking a trip into the past. She remembered that day vividly, how Matteo chose a table at the back, away from prying eyes, so they could eat and talk in peace.
When Hartmann and the other guard left to check on the horses and smoke a pipe outside, she and Matteo drew close, foreheads touching as he drew a sketch for her in his journal.
He always had his pocketbook with him, where he sketched patterns and wrote his thoughts.
Seraphina had never looked in it uninvited, knowing some things he wrote were personal.
“Can you take us to the church?” Rune asked, and Seraphina startled at the sound of his voice.
“Absolutely not,” the woman said “The air is poisoned there. If you breathe it, the fever will come faster.”
Seraphina took a few steps toward her and reached out to touch her arm.
“What is your name?”
“Willa.”
“Willa, I’m Seraphina, and this is Rune. As you can see, I’m blind. He is my eyes, and do you know what else he is?”
The woman looked up at Rune and shook her head.
She couldn’t see his face, so what did she know?
These strangers had come out of nowhere, and she’d poured her heart out to them.
Seraphina knew that was because she rarely saw other people anymore, aside from those ambling about and dying.
Langenbach had been cut out from the world, and she’d be surprised if any of the towns around still sent them supplies.
“He is a weaver,” Seraphina said before she could think too hard.
She heard Rune gasp, but he didn’t contradict her.
“He also has medical experience.” In prison, he’d told her about the woman he’d tried to save, the one whose leg he’d had to amputate.
She still thought that story had sounded fantastical, but she didn’t think he’d lied to her.
“He wants you to take us to the church because he wants to see the patients. And your broken lattices. Maybe he can help.”
“Truly?” Willa asked.
Seraphina turned to Rune, and the relic showed his head nod in approval.
She breathed in relief. She hadn’t made a mistake.
She hadn’t read his intention wrong. Did this mean that what she’d told Willa was true?
That he was a weaver and a physician? She’d said it so Willa would take them to see the hospital, so Seraphina and Rune could assess the situation for themselves.
Maybe Seraphina would get to see the Black Eagle tavern too.
It would reopen old wounds, but she couldn’t stay away when she was so close to the place where she’d last seen Matteo alive and happy.
“Yes,” Rune said. “Take us, please.”
“You will get sick,” she whispered. “But then again, you probably got the bone fever already. From me. In a few days, your joints will begin to ache.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Seraphina said. “We can help, and that’s all that matters.”
Willa shook her head but then sighed in defeat.
“All right. They sent doctors and nurses at first, when ours started dying, but they stopped, and no one blames them. Now we have no doctor, and only two nurses are left. The rest of us help as much as we can. I am a midwife. I was just gathering herbs when I saw you.” She lifted a fabric pouch that was attached to her waist, then waved for them to follow her.
“Bring your horses. The animals are not affected.”
Seraphina and Rune took the reins of their horses and followed Willa into the town.
The sound of their footsteps and the horses’ hooves echoed loudly on the empty street.
Seraphina felt the crunch of rubble under her boots, and the relic showed her the shadows of houses with walls blown open and roof beams jutting like broken ribs against the sky.
They reached the church and tethered the horses in the courtyard.
“The bell tower still stands,” Willa said. “The walls are scorched black from cannon fire. This is the church of Saint Nikolaus, and the interior is barely damaged, so we built a makeshift hospital inside when the resistance took back the town.”
They entered, and Willa led them past the font of holy water and into the nave.
The pews had been pushed against the walls to make room for rows of makeshift beds – wooden planks laid across sawhorses covered with thin mattresses stuffed with straw.
The air was thick with the smell of fever and unwashed bodies.
Patients moaned and coughed, and when they were silent, their breathing was shallow and labored.
“How many?” she asked.
“Twenty beds, all occupied,” Willa said. “We lost two people yesterday and another one today. More might die tonight, and we don’t even have a priest anymore to hold last rites. Father Johann died in August. He was among the first.”
“I’m so sorry,” Seraphina whispered.
Willa bowed her head and led them toward the altar, where two women, one young, the other in her forties ground herbs and whispered in dim candlelight. Willa took out the herbs she’d gathered in her pouch and placed them on the table.
“We’re running out of willow bark,” one of them said. “This is the last we have left.” She sighed as she kept grinding.
“These are Katharina and Barbara, our nurses. We use willow bark for high fevers, and chamomile when the willow bark runs out. Yarrow and comfrey in poultices. They help with the pain and calm the bruises. Plants are good, but they work slowly, and once the bone fever burns deep, it sends the patients into a coma. From that point on, it’s a matter of days before the body gives up. ”
“Where are the broken lattices?” Rune asked.
“Who are these people?” asked one of the nurses.
“Barbara, these are Seraphina and Rune. They are travelers, they got lost, and they didn’t know about Langenbach. About what happened here.”
“And you brought them in? Willa, you have doomed them.”
“It’s true we didn’t know about the bone fever,” Seraphina said, “But now that we’re here, we can help.” She reached for Rune’s arm, found it, and gripped his sleeve to pull him forward. “Rune is a weaver, and he would like to take a look at your medical lattices.”
“They’re broken beyond repair,” Katharina said, shaking her head.
“I’d like to see them myself, if you’ll allow it,” Rune said.
As usual, his voice was low and gravely.
Seraphina had gotten used to it, but she wasn’t surprised when she noticed the women seemed to be softened by the vibrating baritone.
Barbara got up and motioned for them to follow her to a side door.
She opened it, and the three of them stepped into the sacristy.
It smelled of old books in here, of incense, myrrh, and beeswax.
Ornate chests were pushed against the walls, most likely containing the vestments of Father Johann.
There were numerous cupboards and shelves, all filled to the brim with books, chalices, candles, and oil for sacraments.
In a corner, there was an open crate filled with bottles of communion wine.
There was a table pressed against the only wall that had a small, arched window, and it was filled with papers, parchments and books, neatly stacked.
Barbara took a box from a shelf to their right and placed it on the table. She opened it.
“Six Anodyne Bands, four Quietus Nets, and four Antipyretic Nets, all broken. One Staunching Lattice, which still works, but we don’t need it.”
Rune reached for the box, his hand hovering over the tangle of bone shards, thread, and linen cloth. His fingers flexed before he could touch them.
“Can I take some time to look at them?”
“All right.” Barbara made to leave. “I’ll be just outside if you need me. I’ll send Katharina to bed soon, then she will replace me in a few hours. We work in shifts at night. We can’t do much for the dying, but we can be there for them, changing their poultices and vinegar compresses.”
“Can I have some paper and a pencil?” Rune asked.
“You can use Father Johann’s. He was very protective of his sacristy.” She smiled fondly. “But he’s not here anymore, is he?”
With that, she stepped out and closed the door behind her.
Rune moved to sit at the table, and Seraphina leaned her walking stick against a shelf and found a chair that wasn’t occupied by a stack of books. She sat down and leaned over the table, feeling frustrated that she couldn’t see the lattices herself.
“Well?” she prompted.
“They are in bad condition, but not beyond repair,” he said, picking up the lattices one by one and spreading them on the table.
“So, you can do it? You can fix them?”
“I believe so.”
Seraphina scoffed and leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. She opened her mouth to say something but changed her mind. What was there to say? So, he was a weaver. Or had the skills of a weaver.
At Kr?henstein Academy, there were a few stages to become a proper weaver.
Children who showed talent and an innate sense for relics were recruited early, when they were nine or ten years of age.
Once at the academy, they studied patterns, learned about materials, stitchwork and geometry for the first two years, and started handling bone shards only in the third year, when they became apprentices.
After two years of apprenticeship, they could move on to an assistant role in the academy’s lattice shops, where they fixed classes C and D lattices.
The next stage was that of a journeyman weaver, when they would finally be allowed to make classes C and D lattices from scratch, following patterns already established, and after that followed the role of senior journeyman, when they were experienced enough to work on classes A and B lattices.
Most stopped there. Not because they wanted to, but because that was how far their talents and skills took them.
Few senior journeymen advanced to master weavers, who could create new patterns and revolutionize the art of lattice weaving.
Even fewer could go through the stages in half the time the academy’s program advised.
Matteo had advanced at a steady pace and become a master weaver rather late, when he was twenty.
Falk Kühner had become a master weaver at seventeen. Now, he was the High Harvester.
Seraphina hadn’t felt frustrated by her blindness in a long time.
Had she been able to see what Rune was doing, how he handled the bone shards and what he was drawing on the piece of paper he’d pulled toward him, she could’ve judged his skill and the stage he was at.
As it were, she was effectively... in the dark.