Chapter Eight
He promised that death would not come for her, but as she shivers and sweats in the cradle of his arms—stares at him with fever glazed eyes—he is uncomfortably reminded that there is nothing to prevent Death from knocking.
Venice
Anna has sat through more sermons of brimstone and smoke than most. Since calling a monastery home a few years ago, she is subjected to it more than not.
It still doesn’t prepare her for the Hell that’s slithered into Venice’s ports.
She has seen sickness, has treated it, but she has never seen anything like this. They’re calling it The Black Death.
Anna hates how well the name fits.
There seems to be no end to the suffering.
No end to the infected coming into their care.
No end to the bodies leaving it. The stench is awful, foul in ways that make her stomach churn the moment she steps into the sick house.
Several of her sisters routinely lose their breakfast upon the first opening of the door.
Anna can’t say she doesn’t understand the temptation.
It’s only been a few weeks, and already the number of bodies crammed into the space is staggering. The walkways are so narrow, the patients so close together, Anna often finds herself stepping over limbs just to get from one end of the room to another.
She thinks of Piers, of the family he must have by now, and prays the shadow staining the city of Venice won’t spread far enough to reach him.
She crouches, her skirts tucked around her knees as she checks the bandages of a middle-aged gentleman. The pustules look worse, blackened flesh spreading around the open sore like poison. Anna tries not to notice that he’s roughly the same age as Piers.
“I admit, I never envisioned you marrying yourself to God. I’m feeling a little betrayed, if I’m honest.”
Anna’s lips purse, hands pausing. The voice behind her is feminine, lilted with a cadence so pure it rings like the bells of St. Mark’s Basilica before Mass.
Paired with the words, it should be no question who it is speaking.
Still, the habit comes as enough of a surprise to cast doubt, despite Anna not recognizing the face as someone from the monastery.
Then the nun smiles, sly and so crookedly him. Anna huffs. “It seems to be the only way to treat people without being called a witch. Now isn’t a good time.” She glances at the habit pointedly. “Also, that’s a bit sacrilegious even for you, isn’t it?”
“Only to those I take great delight in offending.”
Anna frowns, baffled, but he doesn’t give her time to ask. His eyes scan over her patient, lips thin. “While I respect that you’re terribly busy, I have to ask. You do understand that you’re not immune to disease?”
Painfully. Last year, when they had a large influx of influenza, Anna caught it from a patient. She had been miserable for a week. Before that, she’s caught multiple ailments over the years. Nothing ever too terrible, but bothersome enough. “Yes.”
His stare is weighted with a judgment she does not want. “Then you know you aren’t immune to this.” He gestures to the patient at his feet.
Anna suspected. She can see no reason why this would be any different, but she doesn’t dignify him with an answer. Instead, she retaliates with a question of her own. “Will it kill me?”
Eyes, hazel flecked with green, regard her carefully.
Anna wonders what color hair lies beneath the habit.
“Death and suffering are two different matters.” She gestures a hand to the bodies, pale wrist gleaming—clean and without flaw—in the dim light.
Leave it to Khiran to be pristine even when surrounded by filth.
“You’ve treated these people long enough to understand what awaits you should you continue. ”
She wished she could claim otherwise. The last two weeks have been a blur of feverish eyes, pustule ridden bodies, and a growing sense of fear.
What started off as only a handful of dock workers with mysterious lesions has grown into a full blown pandemic.
The bodies lining Venice’s narrow streets are quickly outnumbering the living.
“They’re saying it’s punishment from God,” she murmurs, eyes lifting to meet Khiran’s. “Is it?”
“Another one? I would have thought that excuse would have grown a bit tired by now.” A graceful hand gestures to the patient at her feet.
“There is nothing divine here. Just another sickness. Give it time, Anna, and you’ll come to realize miracles and curses are usually just words people hide behind when they don’t know any better. ”
Anna shakes her head, fighting the swell of feeling rising in her throat. “Not like this,” she murmurs, voice hoarse. “It’s never been like this.”
Khiran stares down at her patient. “Perhaps not to your eyes, but the world is much larger than you give it credit for. The East has already witnessed this plague’s savagery.”
Anna wishes the information gave her hope, but there’s a message hidden in the words left unsaid. “There’s no cure, is there?”
“No. Some will find the strength to fight through it. Most won’t.” Hazel eyes meet hers. “If you insist on continuing this work, I’d caution you not to get overly attached.”
“Most of my patients are out of their mind with fever. Our interactions are hardly lucid enough to be called conversation.”
“To anyone, Anna. Not your fellow nuns or caretakers. Not the healers with their ridiculous ensembles. You will lose more than you keep.”
Anna pales, fighting the chill that travels up her spine. “Oh,” she says. A weak word hanging on the edges of a weak breath.
Khiran regards her closely. “Leave, Anna. Whatever there may be here for you, won’t be for much longer. If you leave now, perhaps you can outrun the spread.”
She shakes her head, her own habit brushing across her shoulders with the movement.
“They need help—if anyone is to survive—they’ll need help.
” Her gaze drops to her patient, noting the wheeze in his breathing and the hollows in his cheeks.
Anna wonders if he has a family waiting for him or if they’re here, stashed away in some back hallway, too.
“So you’ll stay and … what? Sacrifice yourself to save the few?”
The laugh that leaves her is humorless, as dry and fragile as kindling. “Is it really still a sacrifice? When I know, no matter how many bodies this city buries, that I’m certain to walk away?”
The eyes that stare back at her are heavy—weighted with knowing. “There is sacrifice in more than just death, Anna.”
She swallows, trying to soothe the ache in her throat.
It does little to help. There is still much she doesn’t understand about him, but she can’t deny that he holds knowledge that makes her mere centuries of life seem pale in comparison.
She has no response, but it’s just as well because one of the physicians has come to make his rounds.
Anna can’t help but wonder if he’ll survive, or if this disease will strike him down as it did with the doctor whose body they’d sent off to be buried yesterday.
Khiran’s hands fold, a warning lacing his voice. “Take care, Anna.”
She doesn’t make it three days.
The fever starts midmorning. By supper, the chills have become too violent to hide them. Her teeth chatter around her aching, swollen tongue. When the sun sets, she’s been laid out beside the patients she had helped treat only that morning.
It’s just as Khiran had warned her.
The caretakers are dropping as quickly as their charges, the air ripe with tears and pain and hopelessness.
There is no salvation, no lives to be saved, when they can’t even save themselves.
Anna wonders how anyone is to survive—if anyone will survive.
Khiran said it wasn’t a punishment from God, but as she sits in her own putrid sweat with the ceiling spinning nauseating circles above her, Anna wonders how it could possibly be anything else.
A hand, blessedly cool and achingly soft, rests against her burning temple. It feels so good, Anna shudders. A soft sound, weak but appreciative, passes her cracked lips. It’s the closest to a ‘thank you’ she can manage when her tongue sits, thick and useless, inside her mouth.
She tries to open her eyes, the crust around her lids making her eyelashes stick together and blurring her vision. All she can make out is a blurred form of a habit.
“Foolish girl.” The words are soft, a sigh in the dark. Anna gets the sense that they aren’t spoken for her sake. The palm resting against her face retreats, and Anna whimpers in protest. “How long will it take before you learn?”
Then, those same hands are lifting her. Cradling her. Anna rests against an unfamiliar chest, her burning face buried in the crook of a clean, cool neck.
Her last lucid thought before she loses consciousness, is if Death has come for her after all.
She’s not sure how many times she wakes up; it’s hard to know when everything feels like a dream.
Did she imagine the cold cloth dabbing at her face and neck?
Or the soft reassurances she couldn’t quite make out the words to?
It’s a sea of moments, the first as murky and dark as the last, but through the depths she thinks she can make out Khiran’s face—his true face—hovering over her for many of them.
When she opens her eyes and finds herself in a small cottage, she thinks perhaps she dreamed him up as well.
There’s sunlight streaming through an open window and the breeze smells sweet, like clover.
The stone walls are lined with bits of artwork, and the floor of the seemingly single room is covered with an ornately woven rug decorated with fruits and flowers Anna has never seen.
“Ah, she wakes. Do you plan on staying a bit longer this time around?”