Robert Salvatore: Mortalis

They knew, and they would tell Bou-raiy.

Taking comfort in that, Francis turned his attention to the tussie-mussie bed, bathing himself in the aromas, losing himself in the colorful sights and fragrances. He felt as if those very smells might lift him up, up, might separate his soul from his body as surely as would the hematite. He could float on a cloud of aromas to God, to a judgment that he no longer feared.

He hardly heard the horses gallop up to a stop a short distance behind him, hardly heard the gathering crowd-and surely they were gathering, led by Merry Cowsenfed, several hundred people coming to say farewell to Brother Francis of St.-Mere-Abelle.

It would have made Francis happy, if he had known.

Jilseponie knew before she ever moved beside the man that he-like several of those she had encountered in Palmaris, like one she had found on the road here to St.-Mere-Abelle-was beyond her help, that even if she went to him with all of her magical strength, she would buy him only a few minutes or hours, and those he would spend in pain.

She knew by his emaciated form, lying listlessly, that the plague had won this particular fight. She knew by the look in his eyes that he was seeing as much on the other side of death as in the material world.

Jilseponie would never have recognized the man had she not heard his name as she had crossed the field. When last she had seen Francis, he had been strong and stout, even a little portly, clean-shaven and with hair neatly cropped. Now he was a ragged thing! His hair and beard had grown wild, had thickened as his body had thinned.

She went to him and knelt beside him, and took up his hand in her own.

He stared at her for a long while, seeming not to recognize her.

"Greetings, Brother Francis," she whispered. "I have heard of your work here, of your courage and compassion."

Francis continued to stare at her curiously, and then a smile widened on his face, a light of recognition. "Jilseponie? " he asked.

She nodded and reached for her soul stone, though she doubted she could even get into the magical energy in time for Francis.

Francis' smile turned down suddenly. "Can you forgive me?" he asked, his voice a rasping thing, for a discernible rattle came from his chest with every word and every breath.

Jilseponie paused and looked back at him curiously.

"Your brother," Francis remarked, "Grady Chilichunk. I was the one."

Jilseponie moved close to him, trying to suppress a scowl.

"I killed him," Francis admitted, "on the road from Palmaris. It was an accident… I did not mean…"

Jilseponie put her finger against Francis' lips to quiet him. That battle seemed so far removed now, that hatred so irrelevant to the current situation.

"Forgive me," Francis said again. "We were all so confused then, and all so wrong."

"And now you see the truth? " she asked him.

Francis' smile returned, but then he winced and closed his eyes. Jilseponie started to reach for her soul stone again, but, as if he had read her mind, Brother Francis reached over and held her arm. "I go without fear," he whispered, and it seemed to Jilseponie as if he were speaking more to himself than to her.

"I do not fear justice," he finished, never opening his eyes, and those were the last words that Brother Francis Dellacourt of St.-Mere-Abelle would ever utter.

It hurt Jilseponie more than she would ever have believed to watch this man die. She held little fondness for Francis, had once been his avowed enemy; and even in those last days when she had been with him in St. Precious after the fall of Markwart, even when he had declared that she should become the mother abbess of the Abellican Church, she had not been overfond of him.

And he had died peacefully, contentedly, it seemed; and yet, to her surprise, Jilseponie found that his passing had wounded her.

She gently removed his hand from her forearm and placed it over his chest, then slowly rose and turned, first to regard the teary gathering of plague sufferers and the one-eyed woman who led them, then to turn and face the dark and foreboding walls of St.-Mere-Abelle. It took her a while to steady herself, to get over the emotional shock of looking at this place.

The place that had served as prison for Bradwarden. The place where her adoptive parents had died horribly.

She took another steadying breath, reminding herself of her purpose and her need, and she forced her gaze to drift up, up, to the dark, cloaked forms standing along the wall. She took Dainsey's hand and walked toward them.

"Francis is dead? " came a call down, a sharp voice she did not recognize.

"He is," Jilseponie answered.

The snort that she heard next seemed to her one of derision.

"They never was likin' him much for comin' out to us," came a voice from behind. Jilseponie turned to see the one-eyed woman standing there. Behind her, the others were gathering up the body of Francis, wrapping it lovingly in sheets.

"They put him out when he came down with plague? " Jilseponie reasoned.

The woman shook her head. "He came out of his own doin'," she answered, "and not a sign o' the plague in him. And he worked with them," she added, turning back to motion to the crowd of the sick. "All of 'em. And he helped one or two afore the plague caught up to him. Ah, a good man was Brother Francis. A saint, I say! But them on the wall don't know it." She spat on the ground. "Bah, they're not knowin' anythin' but their own scaredness. Won't come out and will shoot us dead, any of us, if we walk across their precious flowers."

Brother Francis, a saint. The incongruous notion rolled around in Jilseponie's mind as she stood there, staring at his body being borne away by the peasants. His last words, the proclamation that he did not fear justice, weighed more heavily on her, then. Had Francis truly found the light and the truth? Was his contentment at his death as real as it had seemed? Could he so understand that he had redeemed himself, and thus, need not fear the judgment of his God?

Jilseponie turned back to look at the monks on the wall, and many more had come up by then, no doubt to watch the last journey of their brother.

"I need to speak to the Father Abbot," she called to them.

"You cannot come in," came the reply from that same, sharp voice, and in a purely condescending tone.

Jilseponie looked at the great doors of the abbey, her hands going reuexively to the gemstones hanging at her belt. "Ah, but I could if I wanted to," she muttered under her breath. She looked back up at the wall, at the harsh speaker, and only then did she note that one of the monk's sleeves was tied off, as if he was missing an arm.

"I will speak to him in the gateway, from across the tussie-mussie bed," she said.

The monk scoffed at her and started to turn away.

"Do you know who I am?" she cried out, stopping him in midturn. "I am Jilseponie Wyndon of Dundalis, friend to Avelyn Desbris, friend to Braumin Herde, wife of Nightbird! I am she who destroyed the demon of Father Abbot Markwart!"

The monk walked back to the edge of the wall and leaned out through the break in the batdement, peering at her intently.

"Tell Father Abbot Agronguerre that I have come bearing the most urgent news," she went on. "The most urgent."

"Tell me, then," the monk replied.

"Bid him meet me by the tussie-mussie bed," Jilseponie continued, ignoring the man's command. "If you wish to hear my tale, then join him. I've not the time to tell it more than once." Then she turned away, gathering the one-eyed woman and Dainsey in tow and walking toward the other peasants.

The monk called out several times to her then, mosdy cries for her to stop and explain herself and a threat or two that he would not bring Agronguerre to meet with her.