Constellations in a Glass

The beaked mask made every labored breath more of an effort as he ran, and the glass eyes fogged and reduced his periphery down to nothing. He could have easily tripped and killed himself while trying to walk at this speed.

He had worn the plague garments long enough to know how to navigate the village in them, even while making haste. This should have been a smoother journey. Yet, now, he traversed with difficulty. The few pedestrians still braving the streets crossed themselves when he passed. Doors and windows slammed shut at the mere sight of him. Everyone avoided him. That is, unless they were stopping him mid-street with an urgent request.

”Please, come see my mother,” a woman fell to her knees. “Her forehead burns, and she’s talking nonsense…”

”Sponge her with cooled boiled water,” Lorenzo tried to free himself. “I will come back when I can.”

A man with a swollen neck blocked his path, pleading to be seen, so Lorenzo examined him against the garden wall. Sure enough, the telltale buboes were already visible on his neck. Same advice for swellings. More juniper. More garlic.

“Shutter your door. I will come see you this evening.”

”Thank you, oh, thank you…”

Lorenzo did not look back.

Another interruption.

”It’s my son, Plague Doctor Lorenzo…He is sixteen. Please come to the house.”

But he arrived just in time to ascertain the absence of a pulse and to label the door for the laborers to retrieve the body while everyone in the household wept.

“Doctor…”

“I do not have time for this!”

But then he stopped and turned his attention towards the desperate elderly man.

”I will call on the way back. I know where you live, Harold,” he said. “Don’t despair.”

After having said this, he continued to rush past the old tithe barn. Cedric’s was a low room above the founder’s shop. He did not have to go up the steps as the wife intercepted him.

She wiped her hands on her filthy apron.

”Cedric’s at the butcher’s. They called for him again two hours ago.”

He turned left.

More running.

Breathing felt damp and flavored with sage. His lenses began to fog again. This time, he nearly tripped over a corpse cart that had stalled over a ditch. He paused for a moment to help the men free the wheel.

Once done, Plague Doctor Lorenzo was sprinting somewhere again.

He found Cedric in the middle of another elaborate lecture about the virtues of rue as the feverish butler could barely keep his eyes open. The mysterious little blue vial was already uncorked in the hefty plague doctor’s hand, and the butcher's mouth was open and eager to receive the liquid.

“Do not give him that!”

Cedric, a shorter and stockier man than Lorenzo, turned towards the commanding voice at the door.

“What?” Cedric asked. “Why?”

”We don’t know what’s in that,” Lorenzo replied.

”The abbey just sent it,” Cedric said, moving the vial closer to the patient’s open mouth again. “I can’t stop the swelling. You have something better?”

”I haven’t had a chance to study its composition.”

”Then we use what we have…”

But Lorenzo snatched away the vial, despite the butcher continuing to chase it with his open mouth.

“I do not know what it is,” he said through gritted teeth, and placed it on the window sill. “That is why you will not use it.”

The second plague doctor’s shoulders slumped with a sigh.

“I-I truly have no will left to fight you, Lorenzo,” Cedric said. “I haven’t slept in four days.”

”Forgive me, Cedric, but I simply don’t know if this will worsen or even accelerate…”

Cedric’s laugh cut him off. For half a minute, the shorter plague doctor’s cloak shook and a few bitter cackles issued from its depths.

”Make it worse…?” Cedric snickered. ”Well, suppose we’ll find out soon enough…”

Lorenzo watched him quietly begin to gather his tools and supplies.

“…Since Edgar administered his blue vial yesterday evening to the widow at the far end of the green.”

Before anyone could stop him, Lorenzo was sprinting out the door again.

Cedric looked after him for a moment, then closed the door and sighed.

“Look at him go…” the butcher remarked, glancing over the dirty glass of his window.

“Could have beaten that speed in my younger days,” Cedric said.

He then looked at the forgotten blue vial that still sat on the window sill. He and the butcher met eyes.

✨✨✨

Lorenzo arrived at Edgar’s dwelling with the sun soaring overhead.

”Edgar…I just… where…?”

He was too breathless to finish the query as Edgar’s landlord regarded him with confusion while calmly sweeping the new fallen green leaves amidst a blanket of yellow pollen off the floor. Lorenzo was bent over panting, his hand over the pain on his side.

”No one’s seen the tall one since last night,” said the landlord. “Or his patient, the widow, for that matter.”

Lorenzo didn’t reply.

“But since you’re here... Someone has to take care of his patients. The baker’s wife has been looking for you…” he said. “So has her neighbor.”

Lorenzo’s panting head slightly dropped. The landlord continued sweeping.

✨✨✨

Twilight.

The path to his own lodging took Lorenzo down the muddy track towards the smaller cottages on the outer skirts of Eatonbur.

The uneven door opened to reveal a small room. Inside, a dirt floor and a narrow bed with a table and a trunk waited for him. His shutters were still closed from who knows when. They had trapped the scent of old ash and stale dried herbs.

And exhaustion.

He lit the single beeswax candle on the table. The gloves came off first. He peeled them and set them on the desk. Next, the heavy, stiff cloak dropped to the floor with a dull thud. The straps of the mask were the usual struggle, until the beak came free. Four sachets of lavender flowers, mint, rosemary and dried roses tumbled out. The air cooled the stubble that shadowed his jaw. His pair of gray, sleepy eyes closed for a few seconds under two bushy eyebrows.

Cedric said he had not slept for four nights.

Losing five nights was a mercy versus missing seven ever since he arrived at this village.

He heard the squeak of rats nearby, so he reconsidered leaving his coat on the floor. Best put it away in the trunk. While lifting it, he heard a delicate clink of glass colliding with metal buckles.

Once the garment was off the floor completely, he discovered a small vial had fallen out of it. Must have been tucked inside one of the pockets.

He picked it up with bare hands.

There it was, that deep cobalt liquid, sloshing about.

Why, that mischievous little… When did she even place this here? I never once saw her move.

He examined it closer and then turned to hold it against the light of the candle.

Inside, little specks of gold, a pattern of sparkles, danced prettily inside the substance, like a starry midnight firmament shifting its constellations inside the glass.

”What is this…?” he whispered out loud to no one.

The parchment label showed a small hand-drawn star.

Lorenzo placed the vial carefully on his table.

The air inside his small room continued to chill as night fell, but he did not light the hearth. He did not wonder if there was any of yesterday’s cold stew left. He simply sat on the edge of his narrow bed and let the quiet of the cold room settle around his tired bones. Even without the cloak, he felt like a ghost.

The beaked mask seemed to scrutinize him from the stool.

So Lorenzo blew out his candle.