It was well into the second week since his circumstances had taken a turn for the bizarre before Oliver’s misgivings seeped into his conscious mind. Providing emergency care to stabilize his patient had absorbed all his attention. That done, he could now let his mind wander to other matters and it set him to wondering out loud, Felicity looking on, whether there was not perhaps a heaven and if he would get a VIP pass for his awesomely stupid act of generosity when those responsible for trying to murder the crackpot in the spare bedroom return finally to finish the job.
“My dear Oliver,” Felicity rose to the challenge, “imagine us as characters in a play that is being written as we speak. True we cannot yet see the ending and, the gods only know, there are many possibilities, some bad, some good and a whole lot in between. The good news, however, is that we are also the authors.”
“Huh, I count at least five authors, three of which are utterly unpredictable and two of those, nodding his head towards the twins’ hovel, we know for sure are the gold standard for base humanity. The third we have yet to hear from. But those ‘Death-to-All’s’ he regularly lets loose don’t inspire great confidence in his endearment to happy endings.”
“Cheer up, the little choice we have left means we don’t have to worry about making too many hard decisions. It’s a bit late to go to the authorities. They would have to believe that we were coerced by the evil twins to hide Abelard and they would have to disbelieve the evil twins when they would surely heap all the blame on two perverted foreigners with ritual designs on an easy victim. These are two unlikely events.”
“Cheer up? I must be missing something. What is there in what you have just said to bring me joy?”
“Stoicism my friend; with only one course of action, give it your best shot; and don’t waste energy with self pity. But, fear not, it occurs to me that after we nurse him back to health a plethora of choices will suddenly become available to us. Of these there are the two most likely ones. If he then remembers who he is we will send him along his way and he will never know who we were. If he never recalls his past, we will bring him to the nearest public place and leave him there to be found by the authorities. For now, though, we should make it our priority to get him back on his feet. And the best part, from your perspective, is that there will be no implications for your future. I will be the only actor in the final scene. In the event of problems, which I do not foresee, my uncle I am sure will see to my welfare.”
Felicity knew that her analysis was more of a sieve than a water tight intellectual exercise. Moreover, she did not care. There was something compelling about this story and she had an overwhelming desire to be part of it. There were all sorts of emotional threads weaving this tale and she could not isolate them for proper analysis. She felt charitable, protective, defiant, invincible, challenged, deliciously frightened, industrious, loving and much more. It was child’s play for her over-active self-confidence to brush aside the undeniable cautionary signals. Abelard might be an innocent victim fallen into the wrong hands, a man with an irreproachable past caught in the tentacles of outrageous fortune. He might also be, at best, an Olympic psychopathy contender and, at worst, a murderous, ethically unconstrained, ambitious scoundrel, which amounts to the same thing. Her inexplicable need to see this through had sabotaged her normally incisive intellect.
The tinkle of breaking glass, crashing metal and the thud of a large object, which sent a shudder through the ceiling, put an abrupt end to their conversation. By the time Oliver raised his eyes from his mock after-you-madam bow, Felicity had already disappeared onto the second floor landing. He just stood there for a moment, daunted at how quickly adulation can propel a human being, until Felicity bellowed his name with an insistence that he felt needed prompt attention.
Blood, in plump blobs, was scattered over the wooden slats. Bulbous droplets were oozing from Abelard’s left hand, hanging limply at his side, the other propping him up against the window sill. His nightshirt was clearly going to be a washerwoman’s nightmare. Shards from the shattered water glass, which had been on the now upended night table twinkled red and bright yellow in the dull illumination from the ugly ceiling lamp.
“Raise your hand above your head,” Oliver bellowed, interrupting the unintelligible gibberish passing between Felicity and Abelard, “only, of course, if you want to stop the bleeding,” he added somewhat more politely to remove any doubts in Felicity’s mind his tone may have left as to his feelings towards Abelard.
He needed coherence and calm. All he got was dumb staring, as though he were the one speaking in tongues. It took another moment and Felicity, whose belligerent roar had so quickly fetched him up the stairs, was suddenly the kindly, selfless mother bear, gently taking Abelard’s bloody hand and raising it above his head. For Oliver she had but harsh words, “can’t you see he’s bleeding, do something,” the protective female snarled, removing any doubts he may have harboured as to her priorities.
Oliver moved closer to Abelard and quickly concluded that he had some nasty cuts on his palm and fingers, a few bits of embedded glass shard from having fallen on the broken tumbler and little else. He righted the night table and from the small first aid kit he kept in the slim drawer he took a fine needle and little tweezers. He motioned to Felicity that he needed Abelard to sit. She was obviously still unsettled and glared at his apparent unwillingness to move at a more obsequiously blinding pace to help her poor cub. Abelard, calm as Felicity was upset, sat and without prodding and with unmistakable haughtiness extended his hand to Oliver.
Normally very delicate in such matters, Oliver felt that Abelard had somehow turned Felicity against him and he needed some redress. He jabbed and poked and picked at the glass splinters somewhat more energetically than needed. Yet, butcher as he might, Abelard never flinched, did not even appear to acknowledge Oliver’s presence. He just continued chatting with Felicity, a broad grin of teenage culpability dimpling his still emaciated face. The extensive network of old injuries, most of them inflicted by sharp and pointed objects, had already tipped Oliver off that Abelard was quite used to being mutilated. Oliver also noted that he had gained a remarkable 30% in body weight over the past 10 days, but was still some way off from the 85 to 90 kilograms he expected someone of his height and with such large bone structure to reach at peak. That would be another two to three months at the very least.
“He assures me that he was not trying to escape. He is high born and his word is his bond,” Felicity said, grinning like a recently minted twit, greatly relieved that he was not seriously hurt. Oliver was more perplexed than miffed at the giddiness this probable mass murderer had excited in Felicity. He also silently scoffed at the notion that either knights or the high born were honourable men. King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Ivanhoe and all the other medieval heroes were fictions foisted on audiences by greedy studios who knew that romanticism sold better than pre-digested food. The Dark Age warrior was just that, a metaphor of his cruel, brutal times.
“He was trying to get to the window. He wanted to see what place this was where rooms were lit, as if by magic, when one of us entered and then darkened when we left. Where could we have come from, with our outlandish clothes, bizarre food and unrecognizable language? But he had not appreciated just how weak his legs had become.” Felicity became more reflective after translating for Oliver.
“Oliver, he doesn’t remember anything. The modern world is an alien place for him. He has only his make believe space. I’m hoping he’ll snap out of it if he sees something familiar. When he is well enough we should drive him around the area.”
“I would have bet anything that the light bulb, jeans and the little clock on the dresser would have won hands down in a familiarity contest,” Oliver said with more than a little irony. “Never mind,” he reckoned it best to back off in the harsh stare of Felicity’s disapproval. But his need to vent was overwhelming. He went on speaking through an artificial grin, “I’d better do a quick heart check on him just to make sure it hasn’t aged as quickly
as his brain. If the electric light astonishes him, the automobile will almost surely stop his ticker for a moment or two. Then there are the airplanes, big buildings, telephones and on and on. You know what. We may want to think about boarding him here permanently. He just won’t be able to handle the world outside his mind,” Oliver was gesticulating with the needle and tweezers, like a rapper, deliberately exaggerating the intended irony. “There, I’ve made my contribution to his incredible scar collection, I’m through.”
“Oliver, do I detect anger, perhaps a little frustration? What’s up?”
“Nothing, really….well yes, I’m feeling a little uneasy with the blossoming relation between you and him.”
“Oliver, are you jealous?” she asked with indignation.
“No, I am not,” he said, emphatically! “You should know better than that.”
“Sorry, I misspoke.”
“I am quite frustrated, though, at your unusual naiveté. As far as I can tell, you’ve let your attachment to Abelard become irreversible. Felicity, we have no idea who or what he is. Had he recalled being Nelson Mandela and nothing else, it may have been boring but comforting. Instead, his brain is wired for a distinctly unpleasant period that was not remarkable for kindness and where none of the bleeding was for empathy. And you, of all people, should know that. How and why he was remade into the Medieval Candidate we do not know, but it could not have been to prepare him to care for the needy. You’ve got to be realistic. I agree we have little choice. We must nurse him back to health but, for both our sakes, let’s be sensibly mature about this. More business, less emotion. OK?”
“You’re absolutely right. What have I been thinking?” she responded, looking lovingly at Abelard. Oliver sensed that his appeal had not registered and that he would have deal with Felicity’s growing infatuation on a day-to-day basis.
“Very good, down to business then,” he said, trying to suppress the less than stoic sigh. “We are obviously running on instinct. We will be better off with a plan. There are the bare necessities for an amnesiac recovering from starvation. He will need an exercise program so that he doesn’t have to fall his way to the window. He will also need a tolerably strict diet of massive protein and, lucky him, lots of fat; did you know that all the taste in food hides in the fatty parts? To boot, and you may not like this, we will have to figure out to what extent his brain is actually functioning. Can he dress himself? Is he able to remember stuff for any length of time? Does he know about personal hygiene – although the state of his teeth and skin, apart from its tendency to be frequently punctured by sharp objects, would suggest that he does? Can he read, write, learn a live language? I’ll think of more stuff as we go along.” He paused a moment, looked at his watch and added, “we should shoot for an outing in three, at most, four weeks.”
“Oui, mon General,” Felicity shouted, leaping to her feet and saluting. This provoked a sharp outburst from Abelard. After exchanging some hurried gibberish with him, Felicity turned to Oliver, “he had thought you were some sort of retainer and that I was the boss. He now has a great deal more respect for you and would like from now on, to have direct contact with you,” she said, pausing a moment and then, with a wide grin only Oliver could see, she clicked to attention and promoted him on the spot with an exuberant “si, El Supremo,” accompanied by another lively salute.
Despite his frustration and growing concern, this was too much for Oliver, a rare genuine smile broke through the grim features that had settled over the past two weeks in his usually eager face. A comfortable serenity seemed to suddenly take hold. Just to have a plan was a strong tonic against despair, for keeping oblivion at bay. There is very little more disheartening than to lose a rudder and fall to the vagaries of the wind and sea.
They would find that Abelard already had a great store of knowledge, a mind trained to learn, a capacity for fine judgment and a set of operating principles that would, at the very least, alarm them.
*