* * * * *
“Stop.”
At first, the priest thought he’d spoken without meaning to. But his lips hadn’t moved from their frozen grimace, and he hadn’t the breath to speak anyway.
“S-stop!”
Someone pushed between David and his attackers, repeating the stuttering injunction a third time. For a time, the second thug had held the priest steady for the other to strike; then the second fellow had released him to have a go as well. David had sunk down on his haunches and huddled against the wall with his eyes closed; from this position, now, the priest couldn’t tell who the newcomer was.
The battering stopped.
“Move yer arse, y’bloody fool,” the first thug snarled.
“N-no! No!” The newcomer’s words were a cross between a command and a plea; at the same time, David felt himself wrapped in gentle embrace.
“Why you—!”
“—Venn!” The second thug cut the first off sharply. “Boss says we can’t touch ‘im.”
The first – whose name was apparently Venn – grumbled most vehemently at this, but (to David’s surprise) he respected both the newcomer’s wishes and the second thug’s reminder.
After a moment, David opened his eyes – one was nearly swelled shut – and saw Innocent’s face only a few inches from his own.
“Thank you,” the priest murmured. Split and bleeding though his lips were, he managed to speak coherently. Innocent beamed in response.
The young man helped David stand. His body screamed quite unhappily at this, but the priest was pleased to note none of his new pains shrilled with the sharpness of broken bones.
Small mercy.
The fair-haired chap returned a minute or two later, and the two thugs crowded David against the wall again. With Innocent at his shoulder, the only violence the two directed toward him were hostile looks (the third thug still seemed as bored as ever).
A new fellow who’d accompanied the blonde into the room completely arrested David’s attention.
This chap was no taller than the priest himself, of a slight but sturdy build, and dressed in the long, loose shirt and baggy, straight-legged trousers of the Orient. The fellow’s face was a round collection of lines and wrinkles, his eyes were an impassive almond in both shape and color, and the hair that straggled out from beneath a squashed felt cap was uniformly white.
In silence, the old man knelt down next to Lewis, who was deathly still in the lamplight’s glow…though David could still hear him wheezing ever so faintly.
Every person in the room – even the bored thug – was riveted by the sight of the little foreigner as he transformed the room into an impromptu surgery.
Over the course of the next hour or so (David couldn’t be certain how long), the old man worked over the policeman with long-nailed, deft fingers. When he finally finished, Lewis was rather bloodied, but his breathing was noticeably stronger, less labored, and his face no longer bluish.
That the blonde had indeed brought a doctor to fix his friend shocked the priest, as did the exchange the little foreigner and the fair-haired fellow had as the former made to leave.
As the old man moved to the door, he paused, caught the leader’s arm, and began to speak to the fellow in what sounded to David like Mandarin. David had yet to learn any of the languages from the Orient, but he had little doubt he would should they ever escape their current predicament. Even now, though, he was able to understand the gist of the conversation that passed between the two men.
It seemed the old fellow was chastising the blond thug for something (perhaps for what had been done to Lewis?), and the thug hung his head briefly in acknowledgment.
If this surprised David, hearing the blonde respond in the same language – albeit with an unmistakably east London accent – did so even more. Whatever he said seemed to mollify the old man, who then departed.
As the blonde, whose face was impassive but whose eyes were introspective, nodded for his lackeys to leave, Innocent spoke up.
“I is s-s-s-stayin’.”
The blond fellow gave him a hard look, but shrugged and left without further ado, the three other thugs accompanying him and taking the lantern as they left.
The light dimmed back to what shown through the wall slit as the door slammed shut behind them; David stood against the wall for a moment before starting toward his friend.
He staggered once; Innocent steadied him. The priest was dimly curious about where Innocent had been all day, but curiosity could wait. He had a promise to keep.
Kneeling down by his friend, the little clergyman bowed his head and closed his eyes and began to speak the words Lewis had asked for.
Languages came so easily to David. He’d never thought his talent anything special until he’d been to seminary in Rome. There, surrounded by students from many other countries, he discovered other tongues making sense to him within weeks of an initial introduction. By the end of his first term, he’d been passably conversant in a half-dozen languages beside his own, and genuinely fluent in those same half-dozen by the end of the year. Italian, French, German, Spanish – in addition to the Latin and Greek required by his studies – were his in so little time that even his professors began to wonder.
Their awe had made him uncomfortable, so he’d brushed it away by saying he’d received extensive training as a child – only partially true. One of his teachers, however, had encouraged him to recognize his gift as just that, so David had revised his perception and learned to relish and share his skill with communication.
Now, some 10 years after his professor had encouraged him, David was fluent in a full dozen languages, conversant in twice that many dialects, and still absorbing another five or so new tongues. This gift was one of the cornerstones of the school he was trying to establish.
As he said the words of the prayer, though, it was as if David were speaking a language he’d forgotten.
He knew the words had meaning, but as the words of the sacrament passed from his lips into the still air of the room, that meaning escaped him. For a moment, he tried to hold onto them, to yank their importance back so he could understand again, but he gave up.
The words weren’t for him in any case.
When he finished, David rested for a moment with his head still bowed, aching.
“A’ yer a p-p-pries’?”
David looked up, confused for a moment. The movement made the room spin.
“Yes – why yes, I am,” he mumbled, realizing then that Innocent had never seen him in his clerics.
The room whirled faster.
Maybe he should lie down for a moment, David thought woozily. After all, he’d slept only an hour or two since...was it the night before last?
Innocent said something further, but the priest couldn’t make out what it was, what with his pulse a thundering, all-consuming tempo in his ears.
The room tilted sideways.
Then everything went black.