Chapter 9

I

Northamptonshire, 1451

The crater was at least thirty meters wide. Considering how small the object was that had created it in the first place, it was remarkably respectable in size. Rows of uprooted, flattened trees were arranged in perfect circles around the impact point, like one would paint the rays of the sun radiating from its golden center. The three fallen angels were at the bottom of the crater, standing amid the still smoldering rubble. They had searched over every inch of these fractured, blackened grounds, but had failed to retrieve the one tiny object that they had been so desperately looking for. The conclusion was painfully clear. Lucifer's Morningstar was no longer here.

"Blasted!" Lucifer cried out. "Blasted, blasted, blasted, blasted!" There was a great urgency in his voice that came close to despair.

"Are you sure we have not made a mistake?" Zambriem opted carefully. He was sensibly sensing that his brother was in a most irritated mood, but was not sensible enough to keep his mouth shut. "Is this the right crater?" He added.

"How many fresh craters do you think there are at this exact time in this region?" Lucifer snapped back. "The Morningstar fell down from heaven the same day I arrived here on earth. The human chronicles state very clearly that on this night, a comet was seen, crossing the sky over England. It was heading to the west, where a great blast was later witnessed. The locals say that it was as if the woods in the western lands near Northhampshire were set on fire. So the impact must be here, right on this exact location."

"According to my calculations, the impact must have happened only three to four hours ago, yet the Morningstar is nowhere to be found." Raguel commented.

"Someone must have already taken it." Lucifer replied, thinking it through with a growing sense of dread.

"There is definitely something fishy going on." Raguel concurred. "Pockets of time have been closed down around this time point. We cannot go anywhere nearer to the time of impact than we currently are."

"The hosts must have sealed it. They must have done this to protect the Morningstar." Lucifer concluded. The comprehension of how he was bested by his heavenly brothers did not sit well with him. "If this is true, they must also know who has taken it."

"I can ask around for information, call in favors of some dear old friends." Raguel opted.

Lucifer nodded. "But be careful. Don't let them know that you are with me if you don't trust them. We don't want the heavenly brigade to descend on our backsides right now to overcomplicate things."

Raguel grinned. His eyes were flashing. "I shall be as mindful as a fox in the farmyard on his way to visit a henhouse."

II

The snow had melted and the sun was beginning to warm up and mellow the lengthening days when Ophelia told me she was going to visit a nearby monastery. She invited me to come along. I was not eager to meet other people, but she insisted that I could be of some help to her. I only gave in, because I dreaded the thought of being left by myself, and feared what it would do to my sanity if she was no longer there to silence my demons.

So one early morning in late April, we loaded the horse with everything that she had hoarded up during the long winter months. We took our journey on foot, guiding the fully packed animal down the long serpentine road.

For the first time since Ophelia had rescued me from the wolves, I was venturing away from the cabin during daytime. Spring had truly conquered the winter gloom and I was delighted by the dazzling spectacle of yellow and purple blooms, just peeking through the fresh spring grass that covered the forest floor. There was a strong sense of a new beginning in the air that did not fail to affect me. If dead winter soil could bring forth such joyful splendor, could not then the miserable death of a Godless man yield virtuous life thereafter, if it was nurtured by the warmth of a kind and noble light? With Ophelia by my side, I certainly cherished such hopes.

By the time we reached the valley below, the open spaces with flowerbeds became much sparser, and although the rays of the midday sun still shimmered through the canopy of leaves above us, it had much decreased in strength. We were venturing deeper into the forest.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" I asked. One would expect a monastery to be surrounded by open fields, and to be close to small villages, or at least connected to major road. It was not supposed to be lying in the middle of the woods, and to be almost inaccessible except for a more or less invisible track. It was then that my eyes caught sight of a wooden structure, hidden behind a chaotic growth of trees. It was no more than a platform build into the crown of an ancient-looking oak.

"We are midway." Ophelia blew on two fingers, producing a short high-pitched whistle. A figure dressed in a hooded habit appeared on the platform above us. She waved at him.

"Don't sound the alarm!" She yelled up at the man in the tree tops. "It's me Ophelia."

He seemed to recognize her. "Who is this man?" He asked, pointing down at me.

"A good friend. I brought him along to visit the monastery. I assure you, he can be trusted."

This seemed to be a satisfying answer. The man returned a slight nod, before disappearing again behind the foliage.

"Who was that man?" I asked, confused by our strange encounter.

"He is a monk from the hidden monastery. He is hiding up there because he has guard duties."

"Why is he guarding the road? Are there bands of robbers roaming these lands?"

"You could call them that I guess." She replied with a bitter smile. "It's for our lord's army. He needs to warn the others when he sees them approach."

"But why, they are monks, not thieves. There is no need to fear the authority of their lord."

Ophelia gazed at me with real puzzlement. "They are Catholics." She stated, as if that would explain everything.

"Yes, and so is the rest of England including the king." I reminded her.

"Is this a joke Richard? Are you pretending to be a time-traveler again?" Ophelia was now staring at me as if I had just grown an extra head.

"I am not joking, why would their lord or the king want to harm these God-fearing men?"

"The king put out a decree to dissolute the monasteries. Most of England's abbeys have been plundered. Congregations that have existed for over centuries were forcefully disassembled."

"That…simply cannot be true." I muttered, taking it all in with the incredulity of someone who had been just informed that the natural order of things had been replaced by utter chaos. "That is blasphemy!" I called out. "Has the world been turned on its head? What does the pope say about this?"

"We are no longer under the pope's rule. Our king is now head of the church. The English church. A new religion for a new age. Apparently, it is no longer enough for tyrants to rule over the hearts of their subjects. They need to rule over their souls as well."

"But, the authorities of the church, the nobility, how could anyone allow this to happen?"

"It happened as most things happen, by force and under the threat of a blade at one's throat." She paused for a moment to take in my visibly shock. "How could you not know?" Ophelia said. "They have been persecuting the Catholic monks ever since Thomas Cromwell sent out his first commissioners to do his dirty work for his royal master."

Her expression became solemn, and anger rang through her voice. "I don't mind that they smashed the statues of the saints or destroyed the stained glass windows, or even that they set fire to the libraries to wipe out centuries of irreplaceable knowledge. What I find most horrible of all is that they ripped out the heart of countless of communities. It's the common people who are the most affected by the king's actions. They have no longer a place to turn to when they are in need. The poor are left to fend for themselves. The sick are literally dying in the streets."

The forest suddenly stopped to exist, revealing a large area of low growth that reached up to a circular brick wall in the distance that fenced off a complex of buildings. The highest of these was a tower-like structure, narrow of shape, and hardly 2 stories tall. Except for that, nothing surpassed the height of the surrounding trees. We entered through the main gate and were greeted by a gathering of monks, headed by a bearded man dressed in a long white habit.

"Friar Norbert." Ophelia said while she embraced him. "I am happy to see that you are well."

"My dear Ophelia." The friar responded warmly to her greetings. "We have missed you." He told her most affectionately, before fixed his eyes on me. "I see you brought a friend."

That I felt ill at ease would be an understatement. My previous experiences since I returned to this strange life had left me rightfully distrustful of my fellow human beings, all except for Ophelia. Shielding behind her, I instinctively pulled back a little when friar Norbert walked up to greet me, and was glad that he kept it formal and short.

"How did you fare?" Ophelia asked the friar.

"At long last my lady, the long dark winter has finally passed." The friar replied. "Thankful for your last year's donations, we had enough at our disposal to keep everyone fed during the harshest of months."

He led us across the courtyard to the largest building in the compound. Inside was a great hall turned into a sick ward. Rows of wooden coffin-like boxes with straw bedding lined the walls. Most, if not all of them were occupied by the sufferers of all kind of illnesses, men and women of all ages, children, and even babes with their mothers. Some of them were emaciated, gaunt faces struck by starvation, with large hollow empty eyes, others were coughing continuously, soiling their bed sheets with red dots of blood. A half-conscious man trashed violently, while the friars pinned him down as they poured vinegar over a raw red stump of his amputated arm.

"The sick keep on coming." The friar lamented. "There is no end to it. There are simply not enough other places left for them to go."

"We are here to help." Ophelia reassured him. "We brought food and medicine. Mostly, potions to treat gangrene, convulsion, and different types of fever."

"God will reward you my child! I will ask brother Remus to unpack your horse and store these items at once. We are in such short supply. Nothing is yet growing in the gardens, and even if we were in the midst of summer, we probably could not grow enough to elevate all of this suffering."

"I am very aware of your predicaments. I promise I shall do what I can to aid you in your good work." Ophelia turned and leaned closer to the friar, so the others may not catch this part of their conversation. "Were there any new cases?"

"Yes I am afraid there were. A young girl who had lost her family during last year's famine, and one of our own brothers who had tried to take care of her."

She nodded with a grim expression on her face. "They are quarantined?"

"Yes, we followed your instructions to the letter."

"Could you take me to see them?"

He let us to the entrance of the narrow tower and took us up the winding staircase. A sickly stench came at us when he opened the doorway that led to a narrow chamber. Inside, there was barely enough room for two cots. One was occupied by a young girl, the other by an old man. Both had drenched their nightgowns and bedsheets in sweat and were barely conscious. My stomach tightened when my worried eyes spotted the telltale signs of bubonic plaque, the large bulbous growths that bloomed like grotesque dark mushrooms on the necks and under the armpits of the victims, the blackened fingers, and the strong stench of decay that attracted a legion of flies. The old man was in the worst state, with his jaw and tongue so grotesquely swollen that he could no longer close his mouth, and he was drooling incessantly.

Ophelia was about to enter this room of death when I grabbed her by her arm. "Don't go near them." I urged.

"Richard, what are you doing? You know I came here to treat the sick."

"That may be but these two are beyond your help. Look at them. They are dying. If you go near you'll risk getting infected."

"Not if I take the right precautions." She pulled away and took out a piece of cloth, which she folded several times before using it to cover her mouth and nose. "I assure you, I know what I am doing." She tied the ends behind her head, and went through her hip bag to take out a phial with a honey colored liquid. It was the potion that she had made from our winter harvest of mandrake roots.

"That little girl and that old man, they have entered the final stage of the disease. If I don't treat them now they are going to die within days."

"You don't even know these wretched souls Ophelia. Why risk your own life to save two strangers."

She looked at me with reproachful eyes. "I did not know you when I first found you in the woods. Yet I did what was right. I saved your life."

She turned to the friar. "Could you please bring me a burning candle and a thin knife with a sharp tip? I need to lance the buboes before cleaning the wounds with the potion." The man nodded solemnly and ventured downstairs. Ophelia then turned back to me and said in a resolute voice: "If you value your own life so much Richard, just go, but don't prevent me from helping those in need."

She stepped inside the chamber and closed the door behind her. I stood outside in the corridor, not knowing what to do, till my growing resentment against her irrational decision got the better of me and made me leave.

II

I returned to the ward where, after I watched friar Norbert rush upstairs with the requested tools, I waited for Ophelia to return. The vast hollow space was constantly echoing with the noises of human suffering, but I soon grew immune to it, being too occupied by my own grievances with Ophelia.

As the shadows cast from the line of pillars in the adjacent corridor grew longer and thinner with every passing hour, so was I becoming increasingly frustrated with her. When she still had not returned by early evening, I contemplated to go up into the tower again to intervene with her ridiculous quest for self-destruction. In my view, her saintliness was not only incomprehensible, but also completely absurd. It was the naïve conviction of a fool who had missed the true meaning of this most cruel world, that bad things happened without moral cause and that no good deed was ever rightfully rewarded. The only cautionary tale that was worth telling to our children in this miserable existence was that of the battle for survival. It dazzled my mind that from the lowliest worm struggling to escape it's dire fate from a fisherman's hook to the youngest of infants crying for their mother's warmth could understand this very simple logic, but Ophelia would or could not grasp it.

Sitting in a dark corner, as far away from the humanity as possible, I leaned back my head against a pillar and observed in silence the activities that took place around me. The friars were patrolling the ward, busy carrying out the thankless tasks of caring for the sick. Some of them were cleaning out the rotting maggot-infested wounds of amputees and injured soldiers. Others offered food to the frail, feeding them one half-spoon full at the time with saint-like patience. An elderly monk held a dying man's hand, who was caught in his final death throw signaled by the emptying of the bowels and bladder. How shameful and undignified were these final moments of death, which returned us all to helpless infancy, with soiled trousers and childish cries. The bleakness and horror of it all only further darkened my mood.

It was then that I finally noticed that friar Norbert had re-entered the ward. He was searching through the sea of faces, before he found his objective and walked over to a woman who was sitting at the bedside of a man who could have been her husband in age. His complexion was corpse-like and his wide-eyed gaze showed an absence of mind that indicated that he was ready to leave this world.

The friar put a hand on the woman's shoulder, and she gazed up at him, her most expression dazed by sorrow and exhaustion. The friar pushed something in the palm of her hand and closed her fingers around it, before he spoke to her for a little while. Then the friar nodded in my direction, and they both looked up at me briefly.

I turned around to face the windows. The woman reminded me too much of Elizabeth Woodville, my brother Edward's hapless queen, to be any comfort to my soul. Just seeing her brought back memories of the dark days just before my brother's death. Similar to this soon to be widow, Elizabeth had been completely broken by grief, but I had absolutely no pity for her. She and her family were a bunch of parasitic leaches that had gorged themselves on the good fortunes of our house, reaping all the benefits from our greatest struggles, while George and me had been increasingly pushed aside by our much besotted king brother. As for love, I was still doubtful if lovely Elizabeth would have fallen for Edward if he had not been the monarch of the English realm, or had not looked the way his dashing royal highness did in his younger years. I may be called a cynic, but it was certainly difficult for me to picture that graceful Elizabeth would have lost her heart to my brother, if his appearance had been more similar to mine.

I was distracted from my resentful thought when the woman walked over and tried to catch my eyes.

"My dear sir." She started hesitantly. "I pray you could spare me a moment."

Up close, her features looked so very much like Elizabeth's, the same innocent doe-like eyes and warm kindly smile that had captured my brother's heart, that my own skipped a beat. She held a small purse in her hands. Her nervous fingers fiddled with the rope. "I would like to tell you that we thank you wholeheartedly for your charity."

"You have no need to do so." I answered, baffled by her statement. "I have not been charitable to you in any way."

"Forgive me, but Friar Norbert informed me that you have donated a large sum to the monastery that was to be distributed amongst the poor." She responded with a timid little smile.

"I am now very sure that you are mistaken, for I have truly not done such a thing." I replied rather bluntly, ignoring that her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

"Well, my kind sir, in my heart I know that my gratitude to you is justified, even if you would not accept it." There was an alarming shiver in her voice. "You see, without these coins I would not be able to take care of my children, not without my poor husband…" She could not continue, and covered her mouth as tears started to gather at the rims of her eyes.

"Come come, my lady. Do not weep." I told her. I wished my heart could be hardened to stone, but her frailty was most unsettling and I could no longer utter another harsh word. Instead I stretched out my hand and patted on her shoulder to console her.

Elizabeth and her clan had caused me much aggravation, but perhaps…perhaps like this widow, Elizabeth's devotion to my brother Edward had been genuine. Well, at least more so than all the artificial tears that I had shed at the funeral on dead Edward's behalf. I took this would-be widow's hand, held it tight, and waited patiently for her to compose herself, which took an achingly long time. After she finally went back to her dying husband's side, I caught friar Norbert's glance for a fleeting moment, and he greeted me with a most sympathetic smile. I just returned it with a short courteous nod.

Not long after, Ophelia came down from the room in the tower. I intercepted her just when she rushed by, carrying a washbowl filled with blood and puss soiled linen wrappings.

"It was you, wasn't?" I told her with great resentment. "You gave away the coins that you took from Audemar and Greybeard." It did not require much for me to put one and one together.

She gazed back at me, defiance shining in her green eyes.

"You also told the friar that I have donated it to the monastery."

Yes I did." She admitted.

"Why? Why did you do such a thing?" I asked, disgusted.

"Because it did came from you." She replied, returning me a meaningful look. "It was yours to give. I simply helped you to make the right decision what to do with it. Is that such a bad thing?"

"I don't mind that you are giving it all away to these peasants. Just why do you need to tell them?"

The surprise on her face after she realized what bothered me the most of her actions, quickly turned to cynical amusement. "Is it truly so horrible to receive the gratitude of another human being for once?" She replied, rolling her eyes at me as she walked away.

"Wait!" If she believed that this conversation was over, she was surely mistaken. "Where are you going?"

"I need to fetch cool water from the well. The little girl has a fever. I need to bring down her temperature." She halted her steps and waited in the doorway to the outside courtyard, her chin held up high as she gazed back at me. "If you have changed your mind and want to help, you are more then welcome to do so."

I bit on my lower lip, with my emotions caught in turmoil, I wondered if she had just tricked me again to force me to see the world through her charitable eyes. If she had, was it indeed, truly so horrible? Reconnecting with humanity may be the first step to rehabilitation, but did this sinner actually wish to atone, or did he merely hope to be pardoned for his heinous crimes to escape the devil? I had to confess that I could not answer these questions truthfully, not even to myself.

"Are you coming?" She repeated.

After another moment of hesitation, I finally made up my mind and followed her.

TBC