Chapter 36

We step by step went onward without speech,

Gazing upon and listening to the sick

Who had not strength enough to lift their bodies.

Dante, Inferno, 29.70-72

As the man had indicated, they soon came to a large tent by the side of the trail. Even before they saw the pavilion, they heard the moans coming from it, though these sounded like the sounds of living people in pain, not the hungry voices of the dead. They soon smelled the sick and dying as well. The sour scent of decayed flesh and human filth assailed them. Though it was still chilly here, the tent was open on the side facing the trail, probably to try and get some fresh air for the patients. Dante could see several small braziers with smoke trickling up from them. He caught the earthy, slightly acrid smell of burning herbs: another attempt to purify the diseased air.

The patients lay on the ground. From the way they wailed incoherently and writhed on their dirty blankets, many of them appeared to be feverish and delirious. Moving among them were three women in long, black robes and black scarves wrapped tightly about their heads. The scarves even covered their noses and mouths, so only their eyes could be seen. Dante noticed the three women limped when they walked. At first he thought they were just shuffling so as not to step on the patients, but after a while he could see all three of them had a definite limp. One of the women spotted Dante and gestured for the four of them to come closer. She stood over a frail, old man. He wasn’t moving and his skin was grey. His mouth hung open, and although there was bloody drool dried on his neck and chin, his lips were now dry and cracked.

“You, the big one!” she said, as she pointed to Radovan then to the man at her feet. “Put your foot on his chest. Hold him down. I should’ve kept a closer watch on him, but we have so many. Please, hurry!”

Radovan looked at Dante and the others, then did as the woman had instructed. As she went to the other side of the tent, the dead man’s eyes opened. He clawed the boot and leg holding him down. His feet kicked around randomly before he got them planted and tried to arch his back or roll over. Radovan had to lean forward to keep the struggling man pinned down, but by then the woman had returned with an ugly iron pole sharpened on one end. She held the point just above the man’s right eye and shoved it down. His roaring howl was instantly cut off, as the woman put her weight into it and pushed the spike all the way down. The man’s arms dropped. There was a slight wheezing sound as his whole body seemed to collapse in on itself like a spider in a flame.

The woman took the spike and leaned it against one of the tent poles. She draped a blanket over the dead man’s face, then leaned herself against the tent pole as well. She sighed.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m Myra. It’s hard with just the three of us. There were more, but two ran away, and the other got sick.”

She was a small woman. Covered as she was, it was impossible to guess her age. Her hazel eyes appeared tinged with fatigue and sadness, but were still bright and alert. She was probably a few years younger than Dante.

“You have taken vows, my daughter?” Adam asked.

Myra looked at her robes. “These? Well, sort of.” She looked around at the sick people. None of them seemed attentive to the conversation. “Why don’t we take a step into the fresh air for a moment?”

She led them away from the tent. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. As cold and sterile as the air was, it was much better than in the tent.

“There, that’s better,” the woman said. “I’m not supposed to say it in front of them, but no, I’m not a monastic. I wasn’t even really a believer before this. They make us wear these clothes. It’s all a disguise or costume.” She pulled the covering from off her face. “That’s not really part of the outfit. .That’s just for the smell and diseased vapors.” Her mouth was small, her cheekbones high; like the rest of her, her face was slender and drawn, but still full of life. “Anyway, they think the sick people will like it better if there are religious women caring for them, and it’ll keep them calmer. The ones who can still move about would be quite a problem, if they thought they weren’t being treated properly. They could get everyone worked up, and then the bosses would really crack down and kill lots of people. So I suppose it’s for the best.”

“I don’t understand,” Dante said. “Who makes you do this?”

“Who? Lord Ahriman’s men, of course. The ones who run all the mines and everything else in the valley.”

Bogdana stepped forward. “How did you come to be here in this terrible place?” she asked.

“How? Oh, there’s nothing special to it. My family was poor. I started selling my body. I heard the pay was better for working girls up here, so I came, but then I found out what they wanted you to do was disgusting. I wouldn’t always do what the men asked. My pimp said I complained too much and he beat me. They wouldn’t let me leave and go back down to a regular town, one with normal men with normal vices; men who just want you to do what their wives won’t; not men who expect you to do things no decent person should. They wouldn’t let me go, but they wouldn’t let me sell myself up here, either. So they hobbled me. Smashed my one foot with a hammer. They do it to all the girls they want to work in the hospital. It heals, mostly, but you can never walk right again. Makes it harder for us to run away. Nearly impossible for us to climb back down the cliff. I suppose they mean for us to spend the rest of our lives in this wretched hole.” Myra stretched her arms out to her sides, then over her head, before bringing them back down and taking another deep breath. “The air is nice. I wish the sun would come out.”

“What they did to you was awful,” Bogdana said in a quiet tone. “You must be so sad, and angry at them.”

Myra shrugged. Then she smiled, just a little. Like her eyes, the expression looked fragile and exhausted, but still full of life. “Oh, at first,” she said. “But not for very long. It was my own fault for coming here. My own fault for what I did before, too. You know how your mother always tells you not to do something, or you’ll be sorry. And it turns out she’s right, but you didn’t listen. It hurts to be like this, and no one likes to hurt. It frightens me, even, what might happen. I think of that especially when I fall asleep. But angry or sad? No, not really.”

“Not angry?” Dante said, nearly as mesmerized by the black-clad woman’s equanimity as he was by Bogdana’s beauty and simplicity. “I would be very angry, perhaps even angry with God. You have so much faith that you do not feel this way?”

Myra looked at him and smiled more broadly. “Yes. As I said, that’s sort of the funny part. I had no faith before this. Didn’t really think much about it. I mean, you know how you think about it when you’re a child. Then you grow up and you’re not interested in such things and don’t think about them. You think you’re too busy with more important things. But since I ended up here and saw real suffering and death all the time – now I see what I had to be grateful for. I even have a little hope, somedays. I think I’ll find another of the girls, and we’ll become friends. Trust each other, look out for one another. And if her other foot is the one that’s broken, the opposite from mine, then we can lean against each other, and perhaps we’ll be able to make it out of here. I like to think of that. Sometimes I feel quite certain it’ll happen one day soon.”

“You may be right,” Dante said. “And until then, at least you do some good for the sick people here. You’re not like the evil men who put you here.”

“I suppose, though I do very little, other than put them out of their misery when they pass.” Myra gestured to the clothes she wore. “These are less of a disguise than to call myself a nurse. I really can’t do anything for them. I feel worse about lying to them about that than I do for wearing these clothes.”

“Are they all sick with the plague?” Dante asked. “They’ve been bitten?”

Myra shook her head. “Oh no, very few with that,” she said. “Those people would die or be killed before they ever got here. But we still have to be prepared for when sick people pass. They usually get back up, even if they haven’t been bitten. Mostly we just have regular sick people here: disease, fever, injuries. So much can go wrong and hurt people. I guess I always knew that, but now it seems overwhelming. It makes my problems seem not so bad. Mostly I worry about the children. I really don’t know what will become of them.”

“Children?” Bogdana asked. “You have children here?”

“Only a few,” Myra replied.

She put the covering over her mouth and nose and led them back toward the tent, taking them around the one side of it, where three children squatted on the ground just outside the pavilion. They looked to be about four to six years old: two boys and one girl. They had made up some game with rocks and sticks and nutshells and were playing it in the dirt. The children glanced at them, seemed satisfied they were neither a threat nor offered anything interesting, and continued with their game.

“Are they sick?” Adam asked. “Why do you have them here?”

“No, they’re fine, so far as I can tell,” Myra said. “I’m told it happens during a plague. Some children will escape from the monsters that killed their family, and they’ll keep running, till eventually some of them end up all the way up here. I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t want them near the sick, but I can’t just set them loose. God knows, up here there are plenty of men who would do terrible things to them. So I just keep them here and feed them. Perhaps if I ever leave, I’ll be able to take them with me. I hope so.”

“They are lucky to have you here to protect them,” Adam said. “I think you have found another part of the reason for why you are here. Our way is too difficult to take them right now, but keep them here a bit longer. I think someone will find you here and take them to safety. Perhaps you as well. Have faith.”

“Where did you say you were going?” Myra asked.

“Up and over the mountains,” Adam said.

“Oh, yes. They are far too small to make that journey, if there even is a way up there. I’ve never heard of one. And I certainly can’t make it. But I will pray for you.”

Dante could see Bogdana’s eyes glistening with tears as she silently embraced the other woman. Then the four of them left, hurrying on to a fate as uncertain as hers, Dante again simmering with shame that he approached such a fate with much less hope than the small, maimed woman.