Of Healing And Pain.
A vapor of death hangs above Acre's hospital, and though the midday sunlight filters into the courtyard, the enclosed space appears just as dark as the confines within. Two sickening snaps split the air, along with cries of agony, causing everyone in the courtyard to cringe in their own skin. Everyone but one. Garnier de Naplouse, Grandmaster of the Order of the Hospital and presiding doctor, doesn't bat an eye as a fleeing patient is apprehended, neutralized at his command, and dragged gasping back into the operating wing.
Garnier casts a stern glance to the gawking spectators. "Have you people nothing better to do?!" he admonishes, making them humble their eyes to be recast to the stone floor. He then retreats through the large double doors back into the hospital's interior.
The aging surgeon feels he may have despised these defiant and contrary children, were he not so deeply moved by their afflictions. Since he began practicing his art years ago in France, it was his talent for healing the body that earned his renown. It was that same ability that led to the title of Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller. But he knows madness and ignorance to be a disease. Those who carry it cry out for healing just like victims of leprosy or plague. Now, with his current allegiance to the Templar Order, he has a chance to go beyond healing the body, to cure the ills that beset the mind.
He approaches a patient on an operating table, one of many that requires special attention.
"And how are you feeling?" he inquires.
"What have you done to me?" the wisp of a man chokes, as though the fresh stitches binding his chest also bind his vocal chords.
"Ah, yes, the pain. It hurts at first, I won't lie. A small price to pay. In time you'll agree."
"You are a monster," the patient gags.
A dismissive chuckle. "I've been called worse."
Monster. Butcher. Devil. Lunatic. The names used in description of him vary little between Acre and his native France. He doesn't mind the slander—ignorant minds will say what they may. What he regrets is knowing had the circumstances permitted, his homeland would have honored him as a deterrent of death, not a bringer of it. Countless lives may have been saved…including one whose loss haunts the physician even now.
Jean-Antoine Rousseau was a credit to the Frankish Knights and a good friend. The lord of a vast manor in the French countryside, he and Garnier first became acquainted when an attack on Jean-Antoine's land by a rival lord left several members of his household—including the expectant Lady Rousseau—wounded. As the only nearby doctor not in service to the rival lord, Garnier was tasked with mending the dismal aftermath of the conflict. He tended all of the wounded on the Rousseau estate, even assuring the well-being of the baby when it arrived.
"You've done us an remarkable service, Monsieur," the grateful nobleman commended. "For this, we owe you a debt of trust."
From then on, Jean-Antoine entrusted Garnier with full confidence and depended on him to medically treat anyone on his property when needed…from his lowest serfs, to the vassals that served him in arms, to his own newborn daughter.
In the darkest corner of the hospital lay the troublemaker who tried to escape, face streaked with tears.
"My legs…y-you bastard…broke both my legs…" he weeps.
"For your own good. You were going to run. To where?" Garnier reasons.
The rogue lashes out with a free arm. "Get away from me!"
"One day, we'll look back on this and laugh."
"I'll kill you," the youth threatens wanly.
"I doubt that."
The poor soul. Couldn't he understand he had forced the doctor's hand? Pain is temporary—even necessary—so there can be healing. Bones mend with time. An ill mind does not. He would have done more lasting damage to himself if he'd fled uncured.
Three years after the assault on the Rousseau estate, another malady struck that Garnier couldn't have anticipated. Jean-Antoine, his wife and several serfs came down with plague, and once again called on him for assistance. An herbal compound showed potential to cure the dreaded disease…but the compound was still experimental. Too low a dosage would do nothing. Too high a dosage would be lethal, and the physician wouldn't dream of reducing his friend to a mere test subject.
"The solution appears simple," came Jean-Antoine's trustful urging from his sickbed. "First, feed your herbs to my serfs. Then we will know if it is fit for my family."
Heeding this, Garnier administered the unstable elixir to the affected serfs, to ensure the results were perfect before their master was given a drop. During this time he monitored the condition of Jean-Antoine and his family daily, alleviating their symptoms with sedative herbs and assuring them every effort was being made to halt their illness. Before long, several serf subjects began to show signs of improvement. The ordeal seemed near an end.
"I trust today is better?" Garnier inquires of another bedbound patient.
"What do you want?" came the flat reply.
"Only to help you."
"No. You want to hurt me. That's all you've done since you brought me here," he retorts bitterly.
"My child, the very fact that we're having this conversation shows that we've made progress," the doctor points out. "Or did you forget the way you once were?"
"…Can't remember before…all a blur," the patient admits.
"Ah. It will come back in time." A reassuring pat of the shoulder. "Then you'll see."
Before much time had passed, Jean-Antoine's household saw the return of misfortune. The serfs who had taken the elixir formed an immunity, resuming old symptoms which now required an increased dosage to treat. Determined to correct the problem, Garnier fed them more of the compound, hoping to develop a permanent effect. Some died of overdose. Suspicion stirred amongst the survivors. Was this man really working to heal them, or did he aim to drive them faster into their graves?
It was all Garnier could do to convince the simple peasants their fears were unwarranted. Those who died were simply beyond helping, he maintained. Pitiable, of course…but their allegiance in life had been to the lord and master they served. If their deaths could be worked to avert his, then they would have done him the most invaluable service of all. And with the continued support of the survivors, he could ensure they didn't suffer the same fate.
The collective unease of the serfs was quelled for the time-being, but their tenacity strained Garnier. He worked tirelessly, resting only when Jean-Antoine insisted upon it.
"Heed those tired eyes and rest for now," the nobleman would advise, waving his friend away with a weary hand. "Nothing was ever accomplished by a man already half taken by dreams."
"Ah, he stirs."
A patient who hadn't the soundness of mind to speak his own name when he arrived now wakes in wonderment from his treatment-induced slumber. "How…? How did you do it?" he asks, dumbfounded.
"I have my ways. The worst is over, then."
"So tired…" he murmurs.
"Then rest, my child."
On the final grim day Garnier went to check Jean-Antoine's condition, he found the Frank pale and hollow-eyed, still gaping where his wife lay. His pulse was hardly a flutter, and his lips scarcely moved as he spoke in the whisper of a dying man.
"Do whatever you must to save her, mon ami," the ailing noble knight entreated. "Don't let her die this way. No consequence is too great—there can be no healing without pain."
Those words were his last.
Even with the loss of a dearly valued friend, there would be no rest. As the widowed Lady Rousseau clung to life, another problem surfaced—the dwindling supply of serfs with plague to test the cure on. A blessed handful had recovered, their treatment taken effect…but most had died from overexposure. There was one remaining resource—many of the serfs who worked the fields were so far unaffected by the plague. Obliging the final plea of his late friend to save his wife at any cost, he resorted to having the field workers' food and water tainted, infecting them with the disease so the tests could continue.
How they fought for their lives then. How they cried, pleaded, and wasted the precious little time their mistress had left. Resolute that the doctor who had tended them for the past three years was now only killing them faster, they had to be dragged thrashing every unfettered limb, tied down, and forcibly made to ingest the medicine.
They didn't appreciate what he strove to attain. Far to many in this age died of sickness each day. With his intervention, just a few of these deaths would lead to the salvation of many. Would they have resisted so if they had understood this?
The French countryside became a graveyard. Revolts broke out. Vassals who remained on Jean-Antoine's property—perhaps hopeful for a chance to wed his widow and inherit his fortune—kept busy night and day extinguishing these uprisings. Maybe it was because the subjects became so noncompliant that the fight with time was lost. In the end, Lady Rousseau met the same end as her husband.
Giving up was enticing, but entirely unacceptable. The compound was nearing perfection. Gradually more subjects were surviving, even recovering. Though Lady Rousseau lay barely cold in her grave beside her husband and Garnier stung with the failure to carry out his friend's final wishes, still he labored so that their deaths might not be in vain. As Jean-Antoine had said, no consequence was too great. Once the elixir was completed, it could be employed to prevent such tragedies amongst other families of France, indeed all of civilized Europe.
All hope was lost when some of the serfs, no sooner then they'd been cured, escaped to alert authorities. They called Garnier a sorcerer, a demon, a bringer of death. They even went so far as to blame him for their lord and lady's demise, insisting he developed an unholy poison to wipe out the Rousseau namesake completely.
Their ignorance cost him dearly. The herbal compound was destroyed by the summoned officials, burying all hope of the success for which many serfs died. For the cruel and inhumane experiments performed on the souls at the Rousseau estate, Garnier himself faced exile from France.
"They say you can walk now. Impressive."
"Been so long," a former cripple muses. "…Almost forgot how."
"Wonderful!"
"I don't understand," the invalid remarks. "Why did you help me?"
"Because no one else would."
The Holy Land Garnier arrived in was not the biblical paradise that deacons and bishops throughout Christendom spun yarns of. It was a sun-scorched, war-torn field of ashes. But this field was not without advantage to many. Many Crusaders who fought against the Saracen hordes did so with the promise of salvation in the life to come. Others fought to be absolved of crimes committed in the life left behind. A little coin and diplomacy was all that it took, and he found himself inducted into the Knights Hospitaller. Some years later, he advanced to Grandmaster.
The hospital he presided over in Acre swarmed day and night with brave Crusader warriors, scathed by Saracen weapons. Even innocent civilians caught in the wake of bloodshed were regularly admitted. All received the greatest care the Hospitallers could offer. It seemed that any time a bed was vacated by a recovered—or deceased—patient, another critical one waited not far behind to take his place. So long as the war continued, Garnier was not lacking for work to do, or chances to clear his name of the transgressions that had stained it in France.
Then came that momentous meeting with Robert de Sable.
His presence caused a stir, for the rivalry between the Order of the Temple and the Order of the Hospital was infamous. Furthermore, the Templar Grandmaster came bearing blasphemous claim. "The Crusade that ravages the Holy Land is a bad joke," he proclaimed. "King Richard's ridiculous dream can never be made a reality, so long as there is such disunity within his ranks."
He then went on to speak of another cause that was banding together for an even greater good than conquest for God. "Many men you've treated have spoken highly of your healing prowess," he commended. "They say you have done wonders with the needle and thread, and with herbs to dispel sickness. That's why I came to extend this invitation to you personally. Will you help us build the New World we seek?"
The Hospitaller Grandmaster would not hear of such farce at first. He dismissed it as a waste of time, a fools' errand. Plenty of courageous injured knights occupied his hospital now, brought in bleeding from the battlefronts and demanding his attention. His first loyalty was to them; the Hospitaller's oath to serve and save was not to be rashly discarded at one's choosing.
Then de Sable made a profound assertion. "You may treat these soldiers, restore them to the way they were, but then what? Send them back out to suffer more in the name of an inconstant God?" he challenged. "What if we found a way to heal them mind and body, then give them a better future?"
Given this to contemplate, Garnier eventually agreed. The patients within the hospital were made into subjects. The doors were closed to the sick and wounded of the city, angering many but ensuring the safety of the operation. Some time later, new subjects began arriving from a distant source in Jerusalem. The Templar cause was gaining ground not only in Acre, it seemed, but across the Kingdom as well.
"Ah, he's awake."
A final patient looks up, with the awed eyes of a healed man. "It's you!"
"And how does it feel to be home again?"
"I don't know how you did it."
This amuses Garnier. "It wasn't easy, I assure you. You fought hard at first. Most do. But now it's done. The hard part's past."
The patient is overcome with gratitude. "I owe you my life. I'm yours to command. Thank you…thank you for freeing me."
"Thank you for letting me."
He pats the gracious child's back and manages a brief smile. It is the small successes like these that make all his efforts worthwhile. The hardships may have been plentiful and the resistance may have been great, but with each lost soul that regains his senses, one step closer is made towards the ultimate goal of a New World. It is for this ultimate goal that he continues his labors. In the honor of Jean-Antoine Rousseau, Lady Rousseau and their orphan, he would strive on until it is achieved.
The sting of a blade ends all that.
A wave of pain and shock comes over the condemned surgeon, and the hospital that had served as his domain appears to dissipate around him as he is laid on the stone floor by his attacker. An assassin-one of the Templars' nemeses.
How? Garnier laments. How did he get in the fortress undetected?
"Let go your burden," commands a stoic voice.
So, this is death. The inevitable end that he had worked all his life to postpone. The oblivion that so many of his patients and subjects had wailed at the mere thought of.
"Ah…I'll rest now, yes. The endless dream call to me."
Though he wouldn't survive to see the Templar dream realized, Garnier doesn't take his demise as failure. He had sown the seeds of success, which he was sure his comrades would go on to raise unto fruition. He merely regrets the unkept promise to an old friend, and the unfinished labors he would leave behind.
"…But before I close my eyes, I must know. What will become of my children?"