show it, so I only bowed humbly and said that I was pleased to serve my prioress before God. My sole request was that I might check the soldier’s wounds, so that I might know what remedy I was looking for.
As I approached the table, I saw your face for the first time. It was burned then, as it is now, although less severely, and there was a great puddle of blood at your chest, seeping through the white sheet. I couldn’t help but think of a rose breaking through the snow. Even in the moment, I knew it was an inappropriate thought. Father Sunder looked to Mother Christina, who nodded her consent, and he gently peeled back the sheet. I could hear a slight tearing sound as the bloody fabric untacked itself from your body.
My reaction surprised me. I was fascinated more than anything else, and certainly not repulsed. While everyone else in the room, even the soldier Brandeis, took a step backward, I took a step forward.
There was scorched skin, of course, and your body was exuding more liquid than the bandages could absorb. I asked for a cloth to wipe away the excess. Black and red and gray all flowed into each other, but as I wiped away the charred residue, I made an amazing discovery. There was actually a rectangle of unburned flesh on your chest. It was on the left, just above your heart, and it stood out starkly in contrast to the destruction of the skin around it. Directly in its center was a single wound, a slit where some sharp instrument had cut into you. I asked Brandeis about this, and he answered that it was the entry point of the arrow that had hit you. He said that the arrow had not cut deeply and it was the fire that had caused the real damage.
I asked to know exactly what had happened. Brandeis’ face dropped, because he had already told this story to the nurses and telling it again was the last thing he wanted to do. But he braced himself and began talking.
You and Brandeis belonged to a condotta, as mercenary archers, and he looked down at the floor as if ashamed to admit his profession in a house of the Lord. There had been a battle the day previous. One moment the two of you were side by side with your crossbows, and the next moment you were struck by a flaming arrow. Brandeis reacted quickly, but the fire was already spreading. Because the shaft was sticking straight out of your chest, you couldn’t roll on the ground to extinguish the flames, so Brandeis broke the arrow near the head. At this point, he paused to hold out his palms and display his own considerable burns. He peeled away your burning clothes, but it was too late. The damage had been done.
He stayed at your side throughout the battle, using his crossbow to take down any attackers who dared to venture too close. Eventually, your troop prevailed and the fighting drew to a close. When your opponents had retreated, your fellow soldiers began to comb the carnage looking for survivors.
There were rules that everyone understood. If a wounded opponent was found, he would be executed. If one of your own was wounded but could be treated, treatment would be given. But if one of your soldiers was alive but injured past help, he too would be killed. This was considered an act of both mercy and economy. It was unbefitting for a good man to die a slow death, and it was not practical to waste resources to keep alive a useless soldier.
When you and Brandeis were discovered by your fellow mercenaries, a general consensus was quickly reached. You were too far gone and would be put out of your misery. And theirs.
A young warrior named Kuonrat stepped forward to offer his arm as the one to bring down the fatal sword, but do not think for a moment that this was a task he would regret. Kuonrat was an ambitious and bloodthirsty man with little in the way of conscience; he already had fixed his eye on the highest position, and your death would simply remove another of the old guard who was hindering his ascent to the position of condottiere, the troop’s leader.
But it was Herwald who was still in command that day, and your history with him had been long. In fact, it was he who had brought you into the troop when you were still just a teenager. You were one of his longest- serving soldiers, and over the years he’d come to respect you greatly. He was not looking forward to ordering your execution but, without a choice, he knew that the responsibility could not fall to a man like Kuonrat. So Herwald offered it to Brandeis, your closest friend. If Brandeis declined, Herwald would do it himself.
Brandeis would hear no talk about killing you. He drew himself up to his full height and pulled out his sword. “I will take down any man who dares step forward. My friend will not be cut down like some lame horse.”
Why couldn’t Brandeis just take you somewhere to look after you himself? The reason lies with the motto of the condotta. Once a soldier was in, he was in for life. That’s the way it was, the way it had always been, and the way it always would be. A soldier needed to know that he could count on the man next to him, and there could be no desertion in times of trouble. To enforce this rule, anyone who attempted to leave was hunted down and brutally killed, with no exceptions. If Brandeis were allowed to leave to care for you, who would claim the same privilege next?
So Brandeis was standing over you, his sword raised against the entire troop and against a tradition that could not be broken. It was incredibly brave and incredibly stupid. But, perhaps, the other soldiers felt a grudging respect for someone who would risk his own life for a friend. The stalemate could be resolved only if Brandeis was able to offer a workable solution and, amazingly, he did just that.
Brandeis knew the proximity of Engelthal to the battle, and he knew of the monastery’s reputation as a place where miracles occurred routinely. Brandeis swore, on his honor, that he would rejoin the troop before their next battle if he were allowed to bring you to the monastery. He put forward that-since everyone was convinced you would die anyway-you should at least be allowed to die under the protection of the Lord.
Herwald accepted the proposition, a rare concession on his part. Personally and politically, this was an astute decision. It illustrated that loyal soldiers would be rewarded, while at the same time it saved him from ordering the execution of an old friend. And no one could charge that he would be letting an able soldier leave the ranks, as Brandeis had promised to return.
Kuonrat the Ambitious knew better than to attack Herwald publicly when goodwill was high, but he did whisper to anyone who would listen that this was actually the second time that the condotta’s supposedly unbreakable rule had been disregarded. “Does no one remember the Italian bowman Benedetto? We let him escape without sending soldiers to track him. Again Herwald has betrayed us with his weakness. How long can we allow this to continue?”
Only a few listened. Most agreed that after your years of service you should be allowed to die close to God, under the care of the sisters at Engelthal.
When Brandeis finished the story, he rubbed his exhausted face. It’s possible that I saw a tear, but it might just have been sweat. And that’s how you came to the monastery. How you came to me.
Brandeis’ story had entranced everyone in the room, even those who’d heard it before. Father Sunder finally broke the silence, commending him for his most proper actions. Mother Christina said that she did not approve of mercenaries but recognized true brotherly love when she saw it. She assured Brandeis once more that we would do everything we could, and the nurse-nuns nodded their agreement. These were all good words, of course, but every face in the room was written with the same expression of pity. Everyone thought you would die.
I did not. I wanted to run my fingers over your wounds; I wanted your blood on me. Where everyone else saw a dying man, I saw a man awaiting resurrection. I thought of Christ’s wounds in His finest hour.
Brandeis straightened his spine, the way men do when they think it’ll give them greater strength than they actually possess. He bowed stiffly and said that he had to honor his promise to return to his troop. He had confidence in our abilities, he said, and in the goodness of the Lord. At the door he looked over his shoulder at you, one final time.
After Brandeis’ departure, I spent the day poring through the scriptorium’s volumes looking for anything that might be of service in your treatment. But as urgent as my task was, I had trouble keeping my focus. I tried to imagine the two of you in battle, but I couldn’t. Brandeis seemed too concerned with your life to also be a killer, and the calm expression on your face as you lay on the table haunted me. I didn’t realize it then, but you were in shock. At the time, it seemed to me as if your spirit had slipped out of the casing of your body. As a nun, I found this deeply disconcerting. It did not help my concentration to realize that I hadn’t asked Brandeis why the rectangular area above your heart was not burned, in the midst of such damage to the rest of your torso.
Our books presented no remedies for your terrible burns. No shaft of light through a window illuminated a relevant passage, nor did the wind flow through an opened casement to flip a book to the correct page. In the evening, I felt obligated to return to the infirmary, if only to inform the nun-nurses that I’d made absolutely no progress.
The scene was markedly different from what I had seen earlier. You were screaming with a fury that I’d never heard in my life. My years of monastic silence had rendered me unable to imagine that a human body could produce such noises. The nuns were trying to hold you still, but it was a losing battle. Sister Elisabeth was more
