It was well into the final part of the night and her guard was down when she was caught by the moaning demon which suddenly oozed into her sweet smelling safe haven. In the pitch black she snapped upright as though activated by a taut spring. But she could still hear the demon’s moaning, sharp as it was the moment it had wrapped its serpentine fingers around her arm. It took another moment to grasp that a persistent grumble was coming through the thin walls, from the next room. Fast footfalls soon joined the low wail. Was it possible? Could the poor devil be well enough to walk about? She bounded from her bed, threw a robe over her nakedness and rushed into the narrow corridor. A rectangular cube of light from the stranger’s open door spilled into the hallway.
The moaning had by now morphed into mumbling. Oliver was being talked to while he ministered to his patient. Felicity approached the bed to better hear the low, hoarse whisper leaking from the thinly parted, barely moving dried lips. They had lost their bluish pallor and seemed a little less cracked than only a few hours earlier. Felicity wasn’t sure, but the words, if there was in fact deliberation behind the moaning, sounded suspiciously like Provencal. He may have been emaciated but he certainly didn’t look old enough to be using such an archaic language.
The transparent pale grey eyes, sunken into the starved face, made them seem unnaturally large and unseeing. They rotated laboriously from Felicity to Oliver and back, without any apparent emotion. It was a cold stare, without a hint of the unease reasonably expected of someone in his circumstances. He was thoroughly vulnerable, in a strange place with unknown people. The most that could be imagined was suspicion, but without a hint of dread. This was not a man unfamiliar with insecurity.
Then, there was no mistake about it, he purposefully changed to another tongue. It seemed to be French but with much that was unrecognizable to Felicity, who spoke the language fluently. He tried again and this time it was some sort of antediluvian English. The final attempt she very quickly recognized as Latin. Then, silence. He had exhausted his language resources. His gaunt face became surprisingly mobile, displaying anger and impatience but, still, devoid of fear. More of an I’m-in-charge attitude.
“I’ve heard this gibberish before,” Oliver said, hovering over the bed trying to examine the eyes, which the cadaverous head was doing its best to resist. “It’s the pitiful sound my high school English teacher would make when peddling Chaucer to the uncomprehending. It was just so much twaddle then and it has not gotten any more intelligible.”
“Perhaps, but before that I’m guessing he was speaking medieval French and, if I’m not mistaken, some form of Provencal and, with little doubt, Latin” Felicity added. “But it could be anything, Gascon, old languages from the Languedoc, Provencal, all of the above.” Felicity was passably familiar with medieval European tongues, very handy for the practicing archaeologist. The problem being, she had never actually heard them spoken outside the modern classroom.
“Let me try something,” she said to Oliver, who had been receiving blank stares from both Felicity and his patient, as he attempted to talk Chaucerian English. Speaking very slowly and articulating each word, Felicity rolled a ream of babble at the bed ridden figure. She could see comprehension crack the corners of his mouth, his eyes, remarkably, growing bigger in happy surprise. Then he responded, also slowly and deliberately, perhaps because he was not well enough to talk more quickly or simply because he knew he must be patient with these two gawking idiots.
After her brief conversation, “does he have any head injuries,” she asked? Oliver adjusted the bedside lamp, taking care not to tax the frail eyes, and ran his fingers through long ragged hair, and over the skull. He was surprised to feel the jagged scar lines of several healed injuries, all about the head. The shriveled arms briefly twitched, refusing to obey orders to strike Oliver.
“Definitely, more than a few, but none very recent” he finally responded.
She looked at him kindly, cooing soothingly, stroking his long hair, of still indeterminate colour; muck and dirt together creating a rough cap. “He is quite delusional,” she resumed. “He says his name’s Sir Abelard de Buch and that he is a captain in the Black Prince’s armies. He thinks he is our prisoner, which would seem to be a reasonable conclusion from his present perspective. He does, however, give me his word as a noble that his family will pay whatever ransom we demand to set him free. So, Doc, what’s the diagnosis; amnesia, delusion, most recent home probably a sanatorium, hopefully not for the criminally insane, all of the above?”
“Could be anything. If we ever find out why he was where we found him that might help. I have only the obvious to report. Malnutrition and severe disorientation. Give me a minute, I’ll feel around for his internal organs. See if they’re all there.” Abelard was by now naked and all he could do was look, like a dog might, perplexed at the very suspicious activities of his captors. Some movement was returning to his limbs, at least to his fingers, which he was moving in ever so slow wave patterns. Oliver began to palp and tap Abelard’s torso, checking for swelling and any pain he might induce, which he hoped would find expression in Abelard’s face. It was all easier than usual, no fat or bulky muscle to come between his fingers and Abelard’s liver, kidney, intestines, and on and on. Oliver had never come across such advanced starvation and he knew he had to be careful about breaking anything with too great a pressure.
“He’s fine, fit as fiddle nurse, please discharge him, and make sure you hide his reproductive organs,” Felicity’s attention having been captured by Abelard’s penis, appearing hugely outsized, drooping between his thin, featureless legs.
“I wonder if it still works,” she asked, to no one in particular, more to herself.
“Actually,” Oliver responded, “it’s a wonder that he has any working parts at all. Great genes. I’d expect that everything will function very well once he fully recovers. He just doesn’t seem the giving-up-and-dying type” Here Oliver paused. He fiddled with the intravenous equipment, checked Abelard’s eyes, hemmed and hawed. He had something to say.
“So, what are your plans for Abelard here over, say, the next few months? That’s when he should be more or less recovered.”
“What do you mean, ‘my plans’? I thought we were in this together. I suppose you would’ve left him there to die because it wasn’t convenient for that moron Aubrey. Perhaps we should have kept on the social agency path, even after that horrible little woman was fortuitously sent to hell? A long stay at a choice French prison would be just lovely. Do you think they have tourist brochures so that we might choose a good location?” Felicity had raised her voice a tone because she was angry and hurt that Oliver would think of sloughing this whole mess onto her. She hadn’t fully thought through the consequences of waiting until Abelard recovered. Oliver’s prognosis of ‘months’ had alarmed her.
“Bad choice of words,” Oliver said, contritely, “we’re in this together. I still have six months before I take up my new position in Montreal. I’ll hang here with you until then. With a little intensive care, we should have our patient up and about in a couple of months and ready to be abandoned somewhere obvious where the authorities can find and care for him. In the meantime, my money will run out, so I won’t pay you any rent here and I will live off the fat you provide. Is that OK?”
With tears of relief rolling down her flushed cheeks, Felicity hugged and held onto Oliver. She had been for a moment frightened for her future. It was an unusual and unpleasant sensation. She was not used to it and did not want any more practice.
“You’ve got a boyfriend now,” Oliver said, nodding his head at the bedridden figure, “not very perky but still a warm body. I’ll have to tend to my needs too. Six months is a long time to go without.” Oliver and Felicity were old friends and there had never been so much as a single moment when either would have thought otherwise.
*