Into the Wilderness: Blood of the Lamb (Book Two) (9 page)

He blinked, and blinked again, as the meaning of her charade struck him full force. His shoulders slumped and he let loose a drawn-out sigh. “So it begins,” he murmured.

Maryam did not know how to answer him, rattled by his lack of fight. Instead, she jogged after Joseph, who had recovered his breath enough to descend the stairs. Whatever happened now, she would not let him out of her sights. He needed her, she reasoned, almost as much as she needed him.

It was impossible to find firm footing on the boggy ground, and all four of them slipped and fell on the tortuous downhill track. They were mud-coated and bruised when they finally reached flat land again and waded through the remnants of the overgrown village near the beach.

Joseph barely talked, answering Maryam's concerned questions with only a brief word or two as he struggled to keep his coughing under control. It seemed that now these spasms had started, they would not relent. He moved ever more slowly as the last quarter hour of the trek stretched out to double that and then some more. By the time they broke through the trees at the border of the beach he looked completely defeated. He didn't bother washing off the crusted mud, just climbed aboard the beached boat and collapsed on the deck with a wheezy groan.

Maryam clambered after him. She poured him a cup of water and helped prop him up a little so he could drink. His colour was terrible, so pale she could see the veins beneath his skin, and on his chest and neck she could see blotches of red forming next to the purple mottling. It frightened her, knowing full well that by the time the mottling and the breathing problems appeared the plague's victims were already caught fast in its grip. Without a transfusion of blood, there was no doubt he would die.

Lazarus climbed aboard and squatted down next to Joseph. “Come on, cousin, let me take you down to the sea to wash off this mud.”

Joseph barely raised his head. “It doesn't matter. I'm fine.”

“I think Lazarus is right,” Maryam said to him, laying aside her defensive armour for now, for Joseph's sake. “You can't risk an infection from those wounds.” She tucked her hand under his armpit to help him up, and glanced over at Lazarus to indicate that he should do the same.

Between them they supported Joseph down to the sea. She had a terrible sense of history repeating itself as she recalled the night her friend Sarah had died. Only then it was Joseph who'd helped her answer Sarah's dying wish to escape the confines of the Holy City to breathe fresh air. That was the night Maryam had first fully understood that she too would die if she remained in the Holy City. The Apostles had drained Sarah of so much blood her body could not sustain itself, and yet they truly did not care—there was always another docile Sister to replace her, to be bled to death.

Now they walked Joseph out into the sea until the water met their thighs. While Lazarus supported Joseph in his arms,
floating him on the warm tide, Maryam gently washed him clean, running her hands along his thin arms and legs to rinse away the mud. His skin felt burning hot despite the cooling effects of the water, and she tried to freshen his face, scooping up water in her palm to carefully trickle it across his forehead before sliding her hands down his cheeks to wipe away the grime and further flush out the graze.

She felt as though she was trapped inside the worst of dreams. Only last night they had embraced in the water here, desire the only thief of breath. But now Joseph was struggling for every lungful, his rib bones straining up against his skin as he fought for air. She did not know why the symptoms of Te Matee Iai were thus: the deep ugly blotches, the fight for breath, the terrible coughing and weakness, the rapid decline to death as every part of the body seemed to scream with pain—but it was something passed down from the Tribulation, that much she knew.

Old Hushai had told her this during one of the long nights before her escape. How the Tribulation had caused blindness, terrible weeping sores, babies born grossly deformed. All this, and then Te Matee Iai, which could consume whole families, generation after generation, yet did not appear to be passed by contact or through the air. It was as if Te Matee Iai was some terrible taimonio—a demon—who could possess a man's body at his birth and one day decide to rapidly and painfully bring on his death. That the Sisters' blood somehow halted this taimonio in his tracks made no sense to her, and yet it did. She could only suppose that whatever poison the taimonio slowly leaked into its victim's body was diluted by the transfusion of a Sister's blood.

Once again that was Joseph's only hope. She somehow had to convince him to back down and let her help.

Joseph started coughing, the spasms so fierce that Lazarus lost his grip on him and Joseph slipped under the water. Maryam lunged for him as Lazarus dragged him back to his feet. He was choking and spitting out sea water, mucus flowing freely from his nose. When the spasms finally stopped, he shook off Lazarus's hands and rinsed his face.

“No need to drown me, cousin,” he said, forcing a faint smile. “My time will come soon enough.”

“Don't say that!” Maryam pleaded. “You've just overdone it today. Come now and rest while we make you something to eat.” She ducked down quickly into the water to wipe away the mud and grime from her own body before trailing the two boys back to the boat.

Ruth had relit the fire and dragged the sleeping mats outside, piling them one on top of the other clear of the still-dripping trees. Now she held out a dry shirt and pants. “Why don't you put these on and rest here,” she called to Joseph as the group approached. The girls turned their backs as Lazarus helped him change out of his wet clothing. Then Joseph lay back on the sleeping mats and closed his eyes. No one spoke, yet they all seemed instinctively to understand their roles.

Lazarus began scouring beneath the thick undergrowth for drier firewood, while Ruth prepared a stew of salted fish and root vegetables from their stores. Maryam took her infusion of te buka leaves and gently dabbed it over Joseph's scrapes and grazes, murmuring the kind of mindless platitudes she'd used for the young Sisters when they were hurt and needed care back at home.

“This'll get you right in no time,” she said, trying to ignore the nagging voice inside her head.
No it won't. The only thing that can save him is your blood.
The voice would not let up on her.
You have the means to do so, right in the boat.

It was true that buried at the bottom of her small pile of clothes she had the instruments that Mother Lilith used to take her blood—she'd stolen them on the spur of the moment, just before they fled the ship. But would she know how to use them, even if she could convince Joseph to accept her aid? She did not want to think of this, it scared her so. One mistake, one needle misplaced or calculation of volume wrong, and she would end up dead.

As Joseph slipped into a restless sleep she tried to distract herself by helping with the search for wood. The downpour had left everything soaked, and it took a lot of foraging to find anything remotely dry enough to burn. Eventually, she and Lazarus had stacked enough driftwood and brittle dead branches next to the fire to last them until later, when things had dried out. Although the day was hot and humid after the rain, there was something about the crackling, dancing flames that soothed.

Maryam and Lazarus perched on rocks they'd shifted to form makeshift seats around the blaze as Ruth doled out the hot fish stew, yet still no one was moved to speak. They ate hungrily, but it was as if each of them was locked inside their own thoughts, preparing for the moment when they'd have to tackle what to do now all hope of rescue was lost.

As soon as Maryam had finished her meal she carried a steaming bowl of stew across to Joseph, tenderly shaking him awake. “Eat now,” she murmured to him as he roused. “It will help you build some strength.”

He propped himself on one elbow, but his hand shook as he raised each spoonful to his lips. It was painful to watch him struggle so, and Maryam sat beside him biting back the urge to help, guessing he'd refuse her offer if she tried. Already the red welts around his neck were darkening to purple, but as he ate she was relieved to see a little colour creep back into his face. When, finally, he had finished as much as he could, she helped him get up to join the others sitting by the fire.

“We have to talk,” he said, studying each of them in turn.

How like him
, Maryam thought.
So frail, yet here he is still trying to hold us all together.

He started to cough, but managed to swallow the irritation down again before continuing. “It's clear there's no one left here. We must decide what to do next.”

“We should go back,” Ruth burst out. “Admit the Apostles were right about the Tribulation and leave this awful island.”

“You must be joking! Surely you can't honestly think we'd be better off back there?” Maryam felt sick at the thought.

“What would you have us do?” Ruth replied, two bright spots of colour branding her cheeks. “If we stay here under the eye of these heathen gods, the Lord will punish us as well. And if we sail on it's clear that all we'll find is more proof of the Lord's great wrath. You have to face it, Maryam. Make a choice. The Lord or death.”

“You can't seriously believe that?” Lazarus flung the last juices from his meal into the fire, causing it to spit and hiss. He turned to Maryam. “And you wonder why I hold you servers in such low esteem when the prey now argues to walk back willingly to its trap. How stupid is that?”

“That's not fair,” Maryam retorted, but she found she could
not meet his eye. What he said was true enough, but she understood Ruth's fear. For them to turn their backs on the teachings of the Apostles ran contrary to everything they'd been raised to think. To act upon. And to believe. It was just possible that the trials they now faced were punishment for her rejection of the Lord and his Apostles' Rules. She could not stop thinking about this: whether if she'd repented her sins and resolved once again to love the Lord and trust his chosen spokesmen, Joseph's life might not now be at risk. “I don't know about you others, but right now I think our priority should be healing Joseph.”

“You mean stay here?” Ruth's eyes were wide.

“No…Yes…I don't know.” It was impossible to stay calm while her mind was spinning so. Right now all she cared about was Joseph. “All I
do
know is that he needs our help.” She reached her hand out to him. “Please, Joseph, you have to let me try.”

“This discussion is so pointless,” he said, refusing to take her hand. “How do you want me to take your blood—drink it perhaps?” His tone was so scathing she felt heat consuming her face.

“Wait!” she cried. “I can answer that!”

She did not pause for his response. She ran over to the boat and scrambled up onto the deck, unearthed the bloodletting instruments and carried them triumphantly back to the fire. “Look,” she said, holding the strange array of objects out to him—the needle cannulas, the tubing, the one-way valve. “We have the means.”

Now real fury engulfed him. With a grunt he raised himself to standing, swaying slightly as he tried to seize the instruments from her. She dodged him and circled around the fire.

“Please, you have to let me help you. I don't want you to die.” Her words were not coming out as she had planned, her throat constricting and her nose and eyes aching with the effort of damming back tears. She stepped towards him, holding out the instruments as if they were holy relics, and whispered, for his ears alone: “If you really loved me, you'd let me help.”

His eyes flashed horror at her words. With a cry like a caged animal he lunged at her, wrenching the tubing from her grasp and flinging it into the fire.

“No! You mustn't do this!” She was devastated, heartbroken, and filled with rage. Somewhere close by Ruth was screaming at them both to stop, but neither Ruth nor Lazarus existed for Maryam in this moment—this was a one-on-one battle between her and Joseph. A fight to the death. His possible death.

Joseph came at her again, all flailing arms and kicking feet as he tried to wrestle the delicate instruments from her. They were breaking, snapping under the force of his assault, and she found herself sobbing—shrieking—as they fought.

Then, suddenly, Lazarus had stepped in between them. He grasped her wrists with such a steely grip she was powerless to stop Joseph from snatching the rest of the precious life-savers away. “That's enough!” Lazarus roared, dragging her now across the sand as Joseph pitched the broken cannulas and valve into the flames before succumbing to another dreadful fit of coughing.

She dug her toes in, trying to stop Lazarus in his tracks, but he was fired by anger and he did not stop until he had marched her, sobbing and wailing, into the bush and then a good distance further along the track. When he finally released her, he slapped her face.

“How dare you?” he shouted, as she nursed her cheek in her hand and tried to get her hysterical sobbing under control. “Do you have any idea what you just asked of him?” He glared at her. “Do you, damn it?”