"Duke Tetrafel, will you come with me inside the abbey, to meet with Abbot Braumin, that I might explain my revelations to you? "
The sick man stared at her hard.
"A trick!" cried another of the troublesome Brothers Repentant. "A deception to take the heart from our fight!"
Jilseponie didn't even glance the man's way. "You have the plague and will die," she said bluntly to the Duke. "I cannot help you, nor can the brothers within the abbey. But there is an answer, a cure for your sickness, and I know how to reach it."
" Then tell us!" came a cry from the crowd, a plea echoed many times over.
Jilseponie held up her hand. "It will take all of us to do this thing," she shouted back, "It will only work if Duke Tetrafel agrees." And she settled her gaze upon him again as she finished, putting the weight of a thousand desperate prayers squarely on his sickly shoulders. "Will you come in with me?" she asked again. "On my word, you'll not be harmed nor detained."
"Your word? " Duke Tetrafel echoed skeptically, glancing past her to the brothers of the abbey.
"Mine as well," said Abbot Braumin.
The monks about him shifted nervously, staring at him with disbelief. Jilseponie could not enter the abbey, by his own words, unless she submitted to thorough inspection to ensure that she was not afflicted, and Duke Tetrafel, of course, could not be admitted at all, for he was obviously ill with plague.
"We will meet at the gate," the abbot clarified, "on opposite sides of a tussie-mussie bed we will lay out within the tower antechamber."
"A hero to the end," Duke Tetrafel muttered, loudly enough for Jilseponie to hear, but in truth, that arrangement seemed perfectly suited to her needs.
"All of you stay back," Tetrafel said to his soldiers and to the common people. He sucked in his breath and strode forward, then walked with Jilseponie and Dainsey to St. Precious' front gates. It was some time before the monks had the flowers in place within the gatehouse, but soon after, the doors swung open.
Abbot Braumin and his advisers, Viscenti, Talumus, and Castinagis, stood across the flower bed from the trio.
Now it was Jilseponie's turn to take a deep breath. This was her moment, a critical one for the fate of all the world.
She told them the story, all of it, of Dainsey and Roger, of her trip to the Barbacan with Bradwarden and Dainsey, of the ghost of Romeo Mullahywhich made Master Viscenti gasp fearfully-and of the second miracle of Aida.
"I, too, have kissed the hand of Avelyn," Jilseponie finished. "Thus, the rosy plague cannot touch me."
The expressions coming back at her from across the tussie-mussie bed ranged from joyful Master Viscenti, hopeful Brother Talumus, skeptical Brother Castinagis, and, even worse than that, something beyond skeptical, sympathetic Abbot Braumin. Beside Jilseponie, Tetrafel was more animated, was grabbing at the hope she had just offered to him.
"Then you are my angel," he said, taking Jilseponie's hand in his own. "You will take this wretched disease from my body!"
Jilseponie turned to him, trying to find the words to explain to him that, while there was indeed an answer, a true hope, she was not the source of his, or anyone else's, cure.
"The plague is not always fatal," Abbot Braumin interrupted. Jilseponie and Tetrafel both turned to regard him, for the manner in which he had spoken those words showed that he believed Jilseponie's "revelation" to be nothing so spectacular. "People have been cured, though it is rare," the abbot went on.
"Then why do you hide behind your walls? " Duke Tetrafel demanded.
"One in twenty, so say the old songs," the abbot calmly replied. "One in twenty might be helped, but one in seven will afflict the helping brother. We hide because those numbers, learned through bitter experience, demand that we hide."
Tetrafel trembled and seemed on the verge of an explosion. "This is different," Jilseponie put in. "Dainsey was not helped by meindeed, I tried and was repulsed, again and again."
"Perhaps you had more success than you believed," suggested Braumin.
Jilseponie was shaking her head before he ever finished the words. "I had no effect, and was, in fact, afflicted by my efforts. Yet the plague is not within me any longer and cannot enter this, my body purified by the blood of Avelyn. It is real, Ab-Braumin. It is real and it is up there, at the Barbacan, the cure for the plague for those who can make the journey, the armor that can turn it aside without fail."
Now it was Braumin's turn to shake his head, but that only made Jilseponie press on more forcefully.
"You doubt, as many doubted your own tale of a miracle at Mount Aida," she reminded him. "I speak of ghosts and of blood on a hand long petrified. I speak of a miraculous recovery by a woman who had already begun her journey into Death's dark realm. And so it is difficult for you to dare to hope." She paused and stared at the abbot intently, even came forward onto the tussie-mussie bed. "You know me, Braumin Herde. You know who I am and what I have done. You know of my attributes and of my failings. False hope has never been among those failings."
"The bell! The bell!" came a cry, echoing along the corridors and the ramparts. "The bell!" the excited young brother cried again, scrambling down beside the abbot and the other leaders of the abbey. "My abbot, the bell!" he stammered, pointing back toward the abbey's central bell tower. The man hardly seemed able to stand, so overwhelmed was he.
"What is it, Brother Dissin?" Braumin demanded, putting his hands on the man's shoulders, trying to hold him steady.
"The bell!" he cried again, tears flowing down his cheeks. "You must see it!"
Even as he finished, more cries came from the back of the abbey, shouts of "A sign!" and "A miracle!"
Castinagis, Talumus, and Viscenti started off that way. Braumin turned to regard Jilseponie and saw that she and her two companions were boldly crossing the flower bed. He started to motion for them to stop but found that he could not-found, to his surprise, that he had come to believe that something extraordinary was indeed happening here, something that he could not and should not deny.
Together they ran into the abbey, up the stone stairs, along a corridor, down another and up another set of stairs, and into the bell tower. They had to push past many brothers-monks who were so overwhelmed that they hardly seemed to notice that Duke Tetrafel, a man infected with the rosy plague, was crowding among them.
Up the winding stairs, they climbed and climbed, coming at last to the highest landing, in plain view of the great bell of St. Precious, the bell Jilseponie had struck with a lightning bolt to herald her arrival in Palmaris. And there, scorched into the side of the old metal, was an unmistakable image: an upraised arm clenching a sword at midblade.
Braumin's jaw fell open. He turned back to the woman. "How did you
…" he started to ask, but the question fell away, for it was quite obvious that Jilseponie was every bit as stunned and confused as he.
He was tired and he was dirty, and he knew that if he wasn't already afflicted with plague, then he soon would be. But Brother Holan Dellman would not surrender his work, not with so many people dying about the grounds of St. Belfour Abbey.
Nor would Abbot Haney, nor any of the other brothers who had chosen to remain within the structure after the decision had been made to open wide the gates. Three of those brothers had died, and horribly, of plague contracted through their futile healing efforts, and not a single person had been healed, though many lives had been extended somewhat by the heroic efforts.
Even that grim reality had not deterred Haney, Dellman, and the others from the course they knew they must pursue. Nor was Prince Midalis, ever a friend of the common folk, hiding away in his small palace in the complex at Pireth Vanguard. For he, like the monks, could not suffer the cries of the dying.