Strands of Starlight (5 page)

Mika smiled softly. “I suppose it will have to do.” She sounded disappointed. “I suppose it would be difficult to train a porcupine as a midwife.”

There was hurt in the midwife's voice. Miriam paused with a piece of cheese in her hand. She had hardly said one kind word to the woman who had picked her up from the road, cared for her, nursed her, and taken her into her house. “I'm sorry, Mika. I'm not used to this. Maybe I should just go my own way. You shouldn't be so burdened.”

Mika sat beside her. There was a hint of a tear in the corner of her eye, and her face looked lined and sad. “Child,” she said, and silenced Miriam's objection with a glance. “You need rest, and healing. And I'm afraid your heart needs healing, too; but I don't know how to help you there. Maybe someday, somewhere . . .” She looked past Miriam, as though she were remembering something. “Maybe you'll find an ending. But for now, listen to your midwife: don't make any decisions until you're well. There will be time enough for decisions later on.”

There was a lump in Miriam's throat. “Please,” she said. “Can I lie down?”

Without comment, Mika fixed a pallet for her in the corner, close enough to the fire for warmth, but far enough away for privacy. Miriam curled up under the comforter. Hands to her face, she shuddered, muffling her sobs in the thick dressings around her palms and fingers.

After a while, she slept, and Mika silently replaced the bandages that Miriam had soaked with her tears.

To His Holiness, the Most Gracious Holy Father Clement VI, from his obedient servant Aloysius Cranby, Bishop of Hypprux,
benedicite
:

As we enter into the Lenten season, renouncing worldly pleasure and frivolity so as to comprehend better the Mystery of our Savior's death and resurrection, the people of the city of Hypprux and the land of Adria extend their heartfelt wishes for Your Holiness's continued good health, and their thanks for Your Holiness's wise and just rule.

In the letter that Your Holiness sent to me last autumn, I was requested to provide an account of my see (given unto my care by my friend, and Your Holiness's predecessor, Benedict) with regard to a most evil and pernicious heresy that has taken root here. In these grave days, we of Holy Mother Church are much assailed by Satan, as is evidenced by the spread of heretical beliefs. My friend, Jaques Fournier, (who later graced the Throne of Peter as Benedict XII) well distinguished himself in eradicating the despised Cathars in the Pyrenees: and I can but hope in my own way to carry on his work.

In this land of Adria, which my friend Benedict XII gave into my care when he raised me to the rank of bishop, I have found heresy of two sorts: ordinary and extraordinary. That is, beliefs and practices brought about by Satan's penetration into the hearts and minds of common people, and those brought about by Satan and his representatives manifesting in material form. In describing this latter I am, of course, referring to those demons whom the vulgar call the Elves.

Of ordinary heresy, much has been written, argued, and accomplished. Holy Mother Church has done much to differentiate between those sects devoted solely to the greater glory of God (such as the Minorite Friars and the Franciscans) and those in service of the Great Enemy. By the grace of God, Catharism is no more. The notorious Knights Templar are dead. Unfortunately, the Fraticelli, the Spirituals, and the abominable Beghards still persist from year to year.

I have fought these latter heresies in Adria, and have, to a great extent, succeeded in extirpating them. News has reached me that there are some small villages deep in the Aleser Mountains where the Fraticelli still find refuge, but I am confident, Holy Father, that their days are numbered.

But as it grieves me to speak of such evils, it grieves me even more to speak of the extraordinary heresy brought by the Elves. You asked me to enumerate, Holy Father, the nature of this heresy, and to tell you something of its beliefs, so that God's truth may be better known by its contrast to such lies and abominations.

The Elves are still with us, and though their race declines, they are yet capable of leading God's children astray with their magic and their voices, for it is rightly said that an Elf can confuse black and white merely by speaking of them, so subtle and devious is that pernicious race of forest-dwelling demons.

Of the preaching of the Elves I can enumerate many errors. I have painstakingly collected numerous reports, gathered from the far corners of Adria, in order to present a list of their lies. Such information is difficult to come by, for there are few who will admit to hearing the Elves preach, and such information as I have comes only after intense and rigorous questioning. Although their errors are legion, there are five main heresies of which they are guilty.

1. The Elves deny the existence of evil in the world. They cunningly attempt to disguise their service to Satan by stating that he does not exist, that he is but a fancy invented by Holy Church so as to terrify people and make them subject to her will. As to what reasons exist for death and misfortune, they are silent.

2. The Elves deny the finitude of the material world. They preach against the belief in the Last Judgment. They deny also the omnipotence of God, saying that He is by nature limited. Thus do these demons turn the universe upside-down: the world will go on forever, but God, the Creator of that world, will not.

3. They revere women, and treat them with respect, ascribing various noble virtues to the daughters of Eve, thus more easily to ensnare our women and make them subject to their inhuman wills. For woman is ever ready to listen to sweet lies, being by nature weaker and more susceptible to error and to the lusts of the flesh, and so do the Elves and devils corrupt even the most seemingly chaste women.

4. They deny the sinfulness of the material world in general and of fornication in particular, holding that what is natural to the body cannot be evil.

5. It is well-known that the Elves worship a woman, consummating their rites in obscene blasphemies. Furthermore, they claim that this woman-god of theirs is tangible, and that she can be perceived by the believer directly, before death, and that this perception can be constant and joyful.

Such are the errors promulgated by the Elves that the greater truth of Holy Mother Church might shine more brightly. I trust that Your Holiness will approve of my most rigorous actions against these foul beliefs as did Your Holiness's predecessor, Benedict. Therefore, in Christian love and charity, and in the fraternal spirit of our Most Holy Mother the Church, I wish Your Holiness a blessed Easter and do humbly request that Bartholomew of Onella, the good cleric who bears this missive, be treated well and sent back to me as soon as Your Holiness deems it fit.

Dated this Twenty-Eighth day of the month of February, in the Year of Our Lord 1350.

***

The weather slowly turned warmer. By the beginning of Lent the clouds were dropping what was definitely rain; and, come mid-March, the sun was melting even the stubborn snow to the north of Mika's house.

Miriam was still mending. While she insisted on her share of the housework, she spent the lengthening afternoons on the split-log bench by the west wall of the house, warming herself in the sun, watching the lower slopes of the Aleser Mountains shake off their white coats while Malvern Forest took on hues of soft green. The heat soothed her aching joints, and Mika's ointments faded the deep wounds on her legs to a network of reddened welts.

Mika was often away, for her skill in midwifery was such that she was in great demand in the houses of both rich and poor. Miriam learned that the good midwife had been granted a monthly stipend from the local overlord, Paul delMari, but when Miriam had mentioned it, Mika laughed. “Baron Paul thinks he can buy everyone,” she said. “Furze is big enough for me, but if he wants to pay me to live here, I won't complain. Nor will my ladies.” She chuckled again. “Nor will his. What a fine, big boy she had last week!”

But Furze was half a league away, and when Mika was gone, the house was quiet and still, the only sound that of the wind in the branches of the oak trees. The crocuses were blooming fiercely. The daffodils were up, and the tulips also. Miriam sat amid a torrent of color, lapped in a comforter, and it seemed that here, in a little hamlet south of Furze, she had found an end to her fears.

For a time. She reminded herself of that. For a time.

But for now here were flowers, and a bright sun, and a blue sky. The neighbors, bluff, earthy people who had little to do with formality, accepted her within a week, and it was not unusual for Jeanne or Agnes or even Robert or Charles to stop at the door and ask after her, the women more often than not bringing something to eat for Mika's little cousin, the men bowing, their hoes or shovels or picks over their shoulders and their voices rough but friendly.

Miriam spoke politely in return, and she even learned not to start in fear at a knock on the door. But she usually kept her eyes averted as much from the instinctive aversion to forming attachments as from a real and immediate fear that she would see something—a cut, a bruise, a skin infection—anything that would awaken her slumbering power and send it climbing up her spine in a rush of white heat. Then these same neighbors would shun her and talk among themselves about the horror that had come to dwell among them. And word would spread, widening like the ripples left by the leap of a fish, until it reached Hypprux, and Cranby, and the Inquisition.

It can't last.

She drowsed in the warming sun, bits and pieces of her imprisonment drifting into her thoughts and startling her out of sleep: the soldiers, impassive; the torturer, grim and taciturn; Aloysius Cranby, passionate, ironic, and insinuating by turns.

Elves? She knew nothing about Elves. She healed, that was all. There was nothing else. What did Elves have to do with it? They lived in Malvern Forest, sheltered from the same persecuting Church that captured and tortured small healer girls. Elves?

If Aloysius Cranby wanted information about the Elves, he should ask someone from the Free Towns. Certainly the bishop had heard the same stories as she. The mayor of Saint Blaise, it was said, went out and danced with the Immortals on Midsummer Eve, and there was even a rumor that elven magic had turned a particularly troublesome priest into a pig. One could hear about it any market day int eh square. Why did Cranby have to bother her?

“Let that bitch's whelp deal with the Free Towns,” she muttered, shoving the memories down.”Then he can leave me alone.” She closed her eyes only to be awakened a short time later by a gruff voice calling her name.

She cried out, flailing with her arms for a moment, but it was only Robert, husband of Jeanne's sister, Clare. “I'm sorry, Miriam,” he said as she gathered the comforter about herself. “Din't mean to scare you.”

“It's all right, Robert. Is there something wrong?”

“It's Clare sent me over to see Mika. Her water broke last night but she han't started labor. She's still dropsied, too. The herbs han't helped much.”

“Mika's out with Petronella,” said Miriam. “It's her first. It'll take a while. I'll send Mika over when she returns.”

“I'm worried.”

“Clare will be fine,” said Miriam, though she did not know much about the woman who had been in last-month confinement since Miriam had come to Mika's house.

Robert wrung his cap in his hands. “She's late, she's dropsied, she's han a headache for the last week, and her water . . .” He fell silent, almost embarrassed.

“What about her water?” Miriam felt the barest stirrings of heat along her spine.

“ 'Twas green and slimy,” Robert blurted out. “Like pea soup. Not clear like Mika said it would be. Flecks of black in't, too.”

The heat stirred a little more. Miriam tried to ignore it. “I'll send Mika over right away.”

“Thank'ee,” said Robert. He turned away, still wringing his cap, the broad back of his tunic streaked with sweat and dirt. Miriam watched him go, and the heat in her spine faded. Probably no more than the comforter and the sun, she decided.

But she did not go back to sleep. The water green? Flecks of black? Mika had talked a little about midwifery, and as far as Miriam knew, such symptoms meant trouble. For a moment, she wished that she had accepted Mika's offer of training. She could go and see Clare and maybe bring aid of some sort. . . .

She stood up, arms folded and pressed to her belly as if to shield her from the thoughts. Training? Aid? Was she some kind of a fool? When Mika's training failed, would she then reach out with preternatural abilities and cure, regardless of the consequences? And when word got back to Cranby, would she then cheerfully climb up on the rack, stick her legs once more into the clamps, skip blithely down the street to the stake?

You'll have to handle it yourself, Clare. God—or whoever—be with you. I'll tell Mika. It can't last. It never lasts, but I'll hold out as long as I can.

***

Mika returned in the evening. The sun has already dropped below the mountains. Venus glittered in the west.

The midwife looked tired. The silver in her dark braids seemed more prominent than usual, the lines in her face deeper. Miriam noticed that her hands were shaking as she sliced cheese and smoked meat. “You needn't tell me about Clare,” she said. “I stopped on the way home.”

“How is she?”

“It's hard to tell. There's danger anytime the water breaks and the baby doesn't follow after. But Clare's late, too.” She filled a cup with cider and sat down on the padded lid of a clothes chest. “So the labor will be a long one. But the water was green with black in it. It means the baby's not happy there in her belly. And the dropsy. And now she's been with a headache.”

“What does it mean?” Miriam felt, again, the slightest flash of heat up her spine.

Mika shrugged. “Can't say for sure. Clare might start tomorrow morning and have no problems at all. Then again, all this might be adding up to . . . I don't know. Anything.” Mika was staring at the shuttered window where the last vestiges of twilight shone through the cracks. A tear trickled down her cheek.