Suffer the Children #5
“No,” Eleazar said softly. “It is too long.”
“Like my grandson,” Doc Adams said. “Gone a week now.”
Eleazar nodded.
“My daughter was wee still,” Dobbs said. “My wife can have others. My son was growing into a strong lad. If you could return him…”
He said it so casually, Browning marveled.
If you could return him. As if asking for a simple favor.
If you could bring a pie on Sunday, that would be lovely.
Browning knew Dobbs loved his boy. But it was not the same as his own situation.
Dobbs had two other children and apparently planned others to replace those lost. Browning’s wife had lost their first two in infancy, to influenza.
She was past the age of bearing more. Without their son, they had nothing.
No child. No grandchildren. No great-grandchildren.
Only the two of them, growing old in their loneliness and their grief.
“Tell us more,” Browning said again.
“There is a price,” Doc Adams said. “Surely there must be a price.”
Eleazar looked uncomfortable. “Yes, I fear there is. I cannot perform this miracle often. That was the stricture given by the Lord Jesus Christ. We must be very careful imparting our gift, so as not to disrupt the natural order of things. I search out tragedies, such as yours, where it can be of most use. That means, however, that there is a cost, to allow my assistant and me to live frugally and continue our work.”
“How much?” Dobbs asked.
“My normal rate is one thousand dollars for a resurrection.”
Doc Adams inhaled sharply. Dobbs looked ill.
Browning began quickly calculating. He had money and a few items he could sell.
Yes, he could manage it. When he looked at the faces of the others, though, he felt a slight pang of guilt.
A thousand dollars would be impossible for them.
Men at the mines bragged of earning that much in a year.
“Most of us would not be able to afford that,” Browning said, quickly adding, “Though a few could scrape it together.”
“Understandable,” Eleazar said. “And while that is my fee, normally I am performing a single resurrection, so I require an exorbitant amount, as it is all I may earn for a year or more. However, as there are multiple resurrections required here, I did not intend to charge so much for the good people of Chestnut Hill. How many children would there be, if price were no object?”
“Seven,” Doc Adams said. “I pronounced seven poor children dead in the last four days.”
“Then my fee would be three hundred dollars apiece.”
Doc Adams exhaled in relief. Browning knew he could afford that with ease. He glanced at Dobbs as the younger man counted on his fingers.
“Would you require cash?” Browning asked. “Or would goods be sufficient?”
“If they are easily transported goods—horses, jewelry, furs—yes, we would take them for market value.”
Dobbs nodded, a slow smile creasing his broad face.
He could manage that. Most could. It was not a small amount—one could purchase three good horses for as much.
But at least half of the families would be able to get by and there were enough wealthier folks in town to lend the rest. That would be important, he realized.
He could imagine the rancor it would bring to Chestnut Hill if there were parents unable to afford the fee.
Best to lend it to them, at a reasonable rate.
“We could manage it,” Browning said. “For all seven.”
“But we’d need the children back first,” Doc Adams cut in. “What you’re offering is, as you said, a miracle, and those are few and far between. We cannot simply trust you can do as you claim.”
A kernel of panic exploded in Browning’s gut. He wanted to shush the doctor. Tell him not to insult this man, who was offering a dream come true, lest he take that dream and vanish whence he came.
As soon as he thought it, though, he was shamed.
Was this not what Preacher had warned of, when he said the men were coming?
They’ll want to prey on our tragedy, Mayor.
They’ll offer us impossible things for our hard-earned cash, and I fear the village folks are too grief-stricken to think straight.
Browning had agreed wholeheartedly…when he thought the men might only be selling some elixir of youth or happiness. Instead, they offered something even more unbelievable, and here he was, ready to leap on it without a shred of proof.
“The doctor is right,” Browning said. “We’ll need the children resurrected before we pay the full cost. We can arrange something, of course—a contract or such.”
Eleazar smiled. “I doubt any court would recognize a contract to raise the dead, but yes, of course I do not expect you to pay us without the children. In fact, I do not expect you to even agree to pay us without proof. That is why I will resurrect one child first, free of any charge. In demonstration.” He turned to Browning. “You said you had a son newly passed?”
Browning’s heart pounded so hard he could barely force a nod.
“May I ask his age?”
“He just passed his thirteenth birthday.”
“A boy on the cusp of becoming a man. I am particularly sorry for your loss then. I know the disease usually affects only the very young and the very old.”
“He was the eldest of the victims,” Doc Adams said. “He’d suffered a cold this summer—a serious one that affected his lungs. While he seemed quite recovered, I believe it must have made him vulnerable.”
“Indeed.” Eleazar glanced at the old man, Rene. “Then with my assistant’s aid and the mayor’s approval, I will return this boy to life.”
“When?” Browning blurted.
Eleazar smiled, indulgent. “He will be back in time for your wife to serve him dinner.” The smile faded, his gaze growing troubled. “There is, however, one other—”
Eleazar stopped, looking sharply toward the door at the back of the room.
“Sir?” Doc Adams said.
“I thought I heard something. Is anyone back there?”
Browning shook his head. “My wife left that way before we began. The room was empty.”
“So there is a door?” Eleazar rose and walked to it, swinging it open fast and peering in as the others scrambled to their feet.
As Eleazar strode through, Browning hurried after him. He found the man in the back room, looking about. Browning could see into the kitchen, where the rear door was closing.
Someone had been there. Eleazar hadn’t noticed it, though, and Browning didn’t point it out. Browning was not about to do anything to upset him. Not after what he’d just said about…
Charlie.
Browning’s gaze swung to the coffin, the largest in the room, two chairs placed in front of it, where he and his wife had spent the night.
His wife. Dorothy. What would she say? Her heart might break with joy.
Eleazar strode over, scattering Browning’s thoughts.
“There’s no sign anyone was here,” Browning said. “Perhaps mice? Or coons in the eaves.”
“I’m sure it was nothing,” Eleazar said. “I’m a touch anxious about what I have to say next. My fears likely got the best of me.”
“What you have to say?” Browning paused. “Yes, you were saying there was something else.” His heart thudded anew. No, please, nothing else. Nothing that would stop this man from bringing Charlie back.
Eleazar was walking again, moving to Charlie’s coffin.
“Is this him, then?” he asked. “Your boy?”
Browning stayed where he was. He wasn’t looking in that coffin. If there was a chance he could see his son alive, he didn’t wish to see his corpse.
Was there a chance?
Dear God, let it be possible. Let his boy rise from that coffin, not the pasty-faced child with the mottled lips and eyelids, that sick child, that dead child. Let him rise as Browning remembered him.
Browning cleared his throat. “Yes, that’s Charlie.”
Eleazar smiled. “He’s a fine boy. Well-formed. Don’t you agree, Rene?”
Browning had not even noticed the old man there. Rene leaned over the coffin, and something in his face made Browning go cold. He wanted to leap forward. Yank the old man back. He swallowed hard. Rene nodded, jowls bobbing.
“You have a fine boy, sir,” Rene said, and there was nothing in his clouded old eyes but kindness.
“Thank you.” Browning turned to Eleazar. “You said there was more?”
Eleazar nodded. “Another price, I fear. One that cannot be negotiated.” He walked back to Browning.
“I said earlier that I use my powers sparingly because that is the Lord’s will.
There is another reason. The second price.
Unlike our Lord, I am but a mortal man. I cannot return the soul to a body for nothing, as he did. There must be an exchange.”
“Exchange?”
“A soul for a soul.”
Browning blinked. “I…I don’t understand.”
“I do,” said a voice behind him.
Browning turned to see Doc Adams in the doorway, looking ill.
“Yes,” Eleazar said. “Our good doctor understands. I cannot steal a life from heaven, like a base thief. I take a soul for you, I give a soul to Him. For a child to live again, someone must die.”
Preacher
Preacher was poring over a Latin book with Sophia.
The words…well, as he’d joked to her, they could have been Greek for all he understood of them.
He knew Latin, of course. At this moment, though, his mind was otherwise too occupied to translate them to English.
He was trying to distract himself from what was happening at the community hall and it was not working.
His wife was also trying to distract him, and had been since he’d explained when he came home.
“You can do nothing about it,” Sophia said. “They must make their own choices and their own mistakes.”
Which is what he’d told himself. Yet he could not shake the feeling that he ought to have done more.
“You cannot,” his wife said, as if reading his thoughts. “You dare not, under the circumstances.”