The Scars of Saints Read online

  …

  Introduction

  In 1844, agriculturalist Nickolas Carolous unearthed a mass grave in the cathedral grounds in which he worked, thirty miles south of Avignon, France. Inside he discovered hundreds of skeletal remains callously stacked, thousands of men, women and children encrusted in dry dirt and stone. Carolous informed the head of the church, who identified the discovery as a trench used to bury the dead who’d fallen victim to the devastating bubonic plague hundreds of years before, the greatest ever pandemic in mankind’s short history.

  Distressed by the news, the head Cardinal instructed Carolous to rebury the remains, ensuring the spirits of the dead remain undisturbed.

  While doing so, Carolous discovered a small string-bound memoir inside the grave, the ragged, fragile pages dated circa 1349 - 1351. Inside were detailed travel transcripts of a man named Hyclid Van Wëegan, a self-proclaimed miracle healer, yet purported witch-doctor, who’d been summoned from a rural Transylvanian village in 1348 to investigate, and optimistically cure, the dreaded Black Death by his English mistress who was, at the time, residing in London.

  Various excerpts of the transcripts still legible were plastered back together and transported to the archives of a library in Bucharest for examination. The following day, Carolous went missing.

  Excerpt (1) - Van Wëegan’s transcripts, dated circa February 1349;

  The journey has been arduous, certainly more so than Cassandra first pledged. My founded interest in researching the sickness, and the resulting collapse in social societies across the lands has declined, this unrelenting expedition the catalyst to my dwindling enthusiasm. Fables from the west spoke of lands filled with the inflicted, sick and dying. Now I have witnessed it for myself.

  I miss the monasteries of home; humble walls painted sky blue, clover purple and sandstone red. Beautiful radiant tapestries adorn their brick, prophets and saints tortuously painted across the walls. I miss the charm, the allure of the sunset behind the Húnclean Hills. For there is no art where I now tread, no beauty or charm; only famine, disease and death. This purported sickness has wiped out not only villages and towns, but whole lands. Brother has abandoned brother, mother abandoned child. Piercing shrills of frightened children ring throughout the night sky for what I now consider the call of the dying, their faces ghostly pale with eyes darker than the darkest Romanian winters night. Bulbous boils on the infected grow large, the bulging sores black and infected, seeping pus. The sick with their wailing, their desperation, their panic, it has had a solemn, prodigious effect on me. To look into an infected man’s eyes, to see the life slip from his face; one cannot fathom.

  But if you are reading this, I must inform you that I am not a chronicler. I am a saviour. In a world abandoned by God, where word spreads the final judgment has arrived, I have been summoned to bring order to a collapsing society. Word travels that there is no cure, no remedy and no medication. Now, all there is to turn to is beliefs, rituals and blame. I can offer the world the answer, I can show them the sickness can be defeated. Cassandra knows it, as do I.

  The day before last, just after sun-down, I set camp ten miles from a small town somewhere in the highlands of eastern Bavaria. It was eerily quiet, not a sound at all. Not a breath of wind, song of bird nor call from wolf. But a presence there was, a heavy smell that I shall never forget. The winds of retribution had taken this land, and all who dwelled upon its once lush pasture. The pestilence had even reached these lands, the brick houses now empty. Only yards away I found a colossal pit, dug so deep and wide there seemed no end. Hundreds of the dead had been piled callously into this sepulcher. The smell was mortifying, millions of flies circled like vultures. My heart sinks to bear witness to uncultivated lands that now surround, the livestock that once thrived upon them now trapped, abandoned. The sickening wind from the south, I cannot begin to concoct an elixir to rectify the foul odour.

  My own frustrations grow each day as I tend to the sick, yet each of them, every single one I aim to heal – they all cry the same terrible plight. The epidemic, the disease, they insist the blame be God’s punishment, his wrath for the sins we have inflicted on this world. Others quarrel the fault lies with the Jews, or perhaps the Christians. It might even be the burden of the peasants. But I call forth; could God lay claim to such an abhorrent punishment that has seen his children encompassed with fever so heavy their eyes fall from their skull? Could this be his purge of the new world? And if so, is it too late for atonement?

  If I make it alive and reach England, I will find Cassandra and I will seek the truth. I can save these inflicted lands, and I can cure these people. I must reach London, my answer lies there.

  PROLOGUE

  The farming village of Aridotta;

  Nestled amongst the Cindrel - Gorges ranges, thirty miles south of Cluj – Napoca, Romania.

  The Year 1664

  ---

  The air was unnaturally still. Heavy snow carpeted the normally lush green hills barely visible from the window in the tiny upstairs bedroom. Rhana, cloaked in her mother’s old fur cloak, shivered. She tugged at her sister’s white cotton dress, begging her to change her mind.

  “Please don’t, I’m too scared, you know what they say.”

  Lidia did know. She knew it all. She’d heard the folklore; ghostly tales passed through generations of local villagers. She scoffed, and flicked her thick curly black hair out of her eyes.

  “There’s no truth to it, just silly stories to get the tourists here, you know that. Father told us it’s for those rich tourists from Paris and Bavaria.”

  “They’re not stories! The Kroï boys told me by the meadow, they told me they heard-”

  “What would mother say if she saw you like this?” Lidia snapped, eyebrows lowered, lips puckered - her best attempt at mimicking their late mother’s reactions to such bogus stories. She tied her old blood-red bandana around her head tightly, smiling with added confidence, before correcting her posture and rising to her tippy-toes to appear taller. She wore the same bandana every day; it made her strong, bathed in a sense of invincibility. The children from the blacksmith would mock her each day on her way to the mill, but she ignored their taunts. They’re just jealous, her father would tell her, jealous of your prowess, your strength and beauty; you’re just like your mother.

  Dragging her younger sister along, Lidia opened the glass door stained decoratively with ice, entering the upper story balcony of the old brick tavern. Outside, the deep strum of a cello filled her ears, a placid melody emanating from below.

  The freezing bursts of cold air callously bit their face, but the calm, still air and clear blue sky was perfect for her father’s patronage. The trade route that rose across the southern valley would be busy today, Lidia knew, so they’d be left alone for the morning, free to do what they pleased. And today, according to the vivacious Lidia, it was to explore the famously haunted forest that rose along the western outskirts of the village, the one Hungarian shepherds and herders had nicknamed ‘The éneklés halott woods’ – a name her mother had once told them is roughly translated as the ‘singing dead woods’.

  Lowering a makeshift rope; the result of old bed linen tied together with undependable knots, Lidia urged her stubborn younger sister to climb down. Predictably she refused.

  “Mother would never want us to do this!” Rhana squealed, stomping her foot, a tear forming in her eye.

  “Mother isn’t here,” reminded Lidia with little conviction, “she’s gone. Forever.” Her voice was unemotional, callous, but Rhana knew it was just a farce.

  The old black bangles their mother had given Lidia rattled on her wrist as she let go of the makeshift rope. Landing on the soft snow, she lost her footing for just a moment before retaining
her balance, glancing up at Rhana. Her stern expression offered one last opportunity to come with her. Lidia knew she would.

  “What are you doing child?” called their neighbour Margery, passing the tavern with her tiny dog grasped in her bony hands, “does your father know you’re out here?” The excitable dog barked and snarled at them. Lidia crunched her nose, and rudely turned her back to her neighbour. Margery was forever interfering in their affairs, it made Lidia furious.

  “Well?” asked Margery again, her voice louder, her dog yapping.

  Ignoring her inquisitive coos, Lidia led her apprehensive younger sister towards the back alley of the tavern, through the old beer garden, and across the frosted white hills that flanked the quaint little village.

  ---

  The view towards the forest was beautiful; accompanied in the far distance by the bowed peaks of the Cindrel Mountains, a burst of magically poignant-looking trees huddled together, their branches reaching towards the sky. Their trunks were fat and rounded, slimming as they rose from the snow-covered terrain like the shape of a pear.

  Nowhere else had Lidia seen such peculiar trees; rich with character, yet flawed with an ugly elegance. She knew it was something only she could appreciate. It’s why she loved coming to this spot. They were different – like she was. The storybooks her mother used to bring back from travels to the Danube never boasted trees of such ridiculous stature. They were always simple trees; rigid, green, lush with vegetation.

  Rhana didn’t share her older sister’s sense of kinship. Shivering, her arms clasped around herself as she called out to her older sister.

  “We mustn’t go in,” Rhana pleaded, “we mustn’t!”

  “There’s magic inside!” assured Lidia, her face lit with explorative enthusiasm, “don’t you want to see magic?”

  Rhana’s eyes filled with dread, appearing crystal blue under her short bobby blonde hair messy and untamed. “Father says there’s only evil inside. It’s what everyone says. And it’s so cold. Father’s preparing pork knuckle, we must go back.”

  Lidia offered no response; instead taking hold of her younger sister’s shaking hand, leading her into the forest, past the one remarkably ugly tree skulking inauspiciously by the entrance, coated in a magical layer of ice. Rhana kept her gaze on the tree for a moment, drawn to its malevolent stature. She flashed a quick glance towards Lidia bounding excitedly into the forest, her matted black hair flailing aimlessly as she ran, cruelly unaware this would be the last time she would ever lay eyes on her older sister again.

  ---

  Lidia danced among the charred trees, humming to herself with her eyes squeezed shut, imagining she was in a world far away like the stories her mother would read to her. She caressed her hands across each tree she passed, residue staining her hands black. A pungent odour wept from the bark – a smell she matched to her father’s cooking vinegar. Most of the trees were devoid of any leaves, just skeletons donned with dying branches and solemn trunks. As she skipped, she passed a particularly strange tree, its trunk curled to the ground like an archway. She paused, gazing up and down at the deformed shaft, running her hand down it in a gesture of pity.

  “Why are you so ugly?” she asked, a tone of disparagement.

  Then, she felt someone pass behind her, a quick movement, much faster than her less-than-nimble sister. A soft pinch tickled her back, and a horrible overpowering stench gushed past her, a bitter taste forming in her mouth. The surrounding trees creaked against the wind, sounds of strain, almost as though they were trying to warn her.

  It was then she realised she’d lost sight of Rhana, and it immediately felt as though the ominous trees were trying to suffocate her. As soon as they had past that giant scowling tree guarding the entrance, Lidia had been mesmerized, awestruck at the ill-famed forest she had heard so much about. She had hardly noticed the darkened mist secreting from the forest floor, hovering waist high. She had failed to notice her sister heading the opposite direction to her. Now, her throat was corrosively dry, the tiny hairs rose on her arms, and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. All she wanted to do was run. Run towards the direction home, to her father, the tavern, and her little village with her friends and family. But she couldn’t. She had to find Rhana.

  “Rhana!” hissed Lidia, performing a full circle, her view entirely obstructed by mist and dead trees, “Rhana, stop hiding and come out at once!”

  She needed to be brave. Clutching the knot on her bandana so tight her knuckles grew white, she took a few deep breaths. She coughed violently, the acidic air burning her throat.

  Then she heard a whisper, a gentle voice in the rustle of the wind. Among the creaking branches a soft, soothing voice, echoing all around her.

  She felt someone grab her arm, squeezing tightly. Screaming, Lidia turned to nothing but an audience of dark brown leafless trees and a forest floor carpeted with a sinister haze, dying roots and slime ridden rocks. She circled twice, yet still no one.

  “Rhana, stop it at once!”

  Then she heard the voice again, deep and agitated.

  “She dies,” it whispered.

  “Rhana!” screamed Lidia, her eyes welling with tears. The sound of her terrified voice was all but swallowed up by the air, now heavy with an overwhelming stench of rotting meat, the same sickening smell the pig carcasses would exude after a few days when her father disposed of them in the pits.

  She had to run and find her father.

  He would help, he would persuade his patrons to assist in looking for Rhana. He would inevitably scold her; tell her how ashamed her mother would have been, knowing she had come into the woods after the countless times she was told not to. But she had no choice, she had to tell him. Lidia glanced down at her feeble hands, shivering and weak.

  She felt her throat tighten, a sensation as though someone was trying to suffocate her. She gagged for air, dropping to her knees, wailing her puny arms in protest. The forest grew dark, heavy and threatening. Her vision fluttered. She saw stars.

  “She dies,” the voice whispered, from behind the charred tree right beside her, “she dies so I may live.”

  With a pitiful scream, Lidia slid sideways, gashing her leg on a rock. Adrenaline masked the pain, and she immediately climbed to her feet to run. She didn’t know what direction she was headed, as long as she got away. She ran and ran and ran, until her tiny lungs felt they were caving in. She collapsed, catching a glimpse of daylight through the trees.

  An exit!

  An immobilising sensation overcame her, one she could not describe. If she were to depict it later, she would imply her bones were filled with lead, her mind with coal and her skin with icy water. Incapacitated to a numb state, her chest pumped up and down with raspy breaths as she lay amongst the debris and crushed leaves of the forest floor. A deep clasp on her groin made her scream in terror.

  “Come to me,” the deathly voice croaked, the invisible grasp creeping up her skirt.

  A surge of panic forced Lidia to her feet, her shoes squishing in the cesspool of mud and slush. With the last of her energy, she battled intense fatigue, running past the cowering trees, towards the small streak of daylight ahead and out of the forest.

  “Father!” screamed Lidia, running into the open, embracing her freedom with outstretched arms.

  But her feet did not trample freshly fallen snow, nor did the tenacious freezing air burn her face. The hill that rose up to the forest, the bridge that crossed into her town and the prairie that lay nearby were all lush and green, like a mid-summers day, devoid of any snow at all.

  Distressed, Lidia held back tears, running down the rise towards the tavern. Her chest pounding, her lungs burning, she rushed past the water spire and the circular gardens of the stone chapel, reaching the village centre.

  “Help me! Please!” She squawked, narrowly avoiding tripping over.

  But no one did. No one came outside at all. The streets lay empty, the gardens bare. No chatter from the shepherd’s hut, nor rowdy dru
nks from the fork roads near the trade route.

  Fatigue kicked in, and Lidia fell sideways, grasping a wooden wheelbarrow filled with plums, causing it to collapse under her weight. She climbed to her feet in an uncoordinated flurry, following the dirt road to her left, turning a corner towards her father’s tavern. When it came into view, she stopped, a lump forming in her throat.

  The tavern was completely boarded up.

  The windows, doors and front gate harboured rows of festering wood nailed in zigzag formation. The outside paint once boasting an inviting red glow, now a gloomy, monstrous maroon and yellow splotchy eyesore riddled with mould and dust. The front yard was overgrown, spider webs encompassed every corner, every outdoor gas-lamp shattered and decayed. The building was completely abandoned.

  Her hands trembled, her body shook. Running through the piercing long grass, she reached a boarded window, banging loudly on it with her tiny fists. Dust and debris showered down, into her eyes and hair. She spluttered, taking a step backwards. Wiping away her tears, she left a smear of dirt and dust across her face. She sniffled, and called out again; “father!”

  She raced to her left, to the front door of the abandoned building. It was the first time she had seen the giant door closed before, it’s grand arch permanently open for patrons well into the night. Now, only planks of wood, damp and sorrowful, abundantly nailed tightly across the entrance. She slammed both her brittle hands against the wooden barricades, pushing with all her might; “father please, it’s me, I can’t find Rhana! I need help!”

  She noticed a small opening between two planks of wood, a peephole just wide enough for her to glimpse inside. Pressing her face against the beams of wood, she flicked away a mound of dust, and gazed in.

  The sight made her nauseous. The impressively long gold-panelled bar, routinely cleaned by her father, now lay riddled with grime and mould. Along the wall, moss grew, vines hanging undisturbed from the ceiling, the beautiful pinewood floors now a cesspool of murky puddles and weeds, and screeches of water rats the only sign of life. Beer steins lined against the wall, resting on their shelves, now covered in black speckled filth, the grand old piano perched up on its platform carpeted with a sticky film of slime, covered in webs, a single giant vine encompassing the entire base.