The Journal

The wind sighed in a way that sounded like her.

“There is nothing for you here,” her soft voice came from the root of the wood. “I command no army now.”

“Quite fearsome when you did,” Lorenzo said.

Her pause hung in the air for what seemed like years before Duessa finally spoke to him.

“…You all…tire easily. Or you die. And before that, you are mostly ineffective. You‘re no use to me now.”

Lorenzo lowered his gaze.

”Apologies for being such a disappointment.”

She paused.

“I regret that so many of you found yourselves caught up in this.”

Lorenzo sat down and placed the basket beside him. The woodland fae still refused to come out of her shadow.

“You still think this pestilence is a war between you and Hauroth?” Lorenzo asked.

Duessa’s response did not wait this time.

“Certainly. I thought Agnes and I killed him. But perhaps Hauroth managed to escape. Survived somehow.”

”You sent a nine-year-old on your stead. That was…reckless.”

”Armando was wrong,” Duessa admitted. “Agnes can follow commands. Though it wasn’t the cleanest job.”

Lorenzo deemed it too absurd to respond, so Duessa spoke again.

“Alas, now that I am no longer bound to a runt of a child and my might diminished, Hauroth cowers and hides. But make no mistake, I will find him. This misery will not last much longer. This has to be the reason. How else can one explain it?”

Lorenzo exhaled.

“We have but a few medical theories…Not a war, but…some kind of contagion that is recurring. It enters via the ports. Then it spreads: city to city, village to village, house to house… person to person.”

“Hm. Interesting idea, certainly,” Duessa said. “Keeps you entertained at least, while I prepare to vanquish its true cause.”

After a brief, arrogant silence, Duessa walked out of the shadow and leaned, languid and majestic, against the oak tree.

Lorenzo turned to face her.

“Why would you offer protection to the cloister alone?”

“When one’s confined to the body of a nine-year-old child and finds her strengths depleted, it‘s always preferable to preserve the most useful among you. Why are you not more grateful I tried to save the rest of you?”

“So you used them. The sisters.”

Duessa seemed genuinely puzzled by his question.

“What else does one do with useful people?”

Lorenzo looked away.

”I must say, Plague Doctor Lorenzo, I don’t recall you being half this contrary when we would talk.”

”Because I thought I was talking to Agnes.”

”Sometimes you spoke to Agnes,” she said. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t obvious.”

Lorenzo was dismayed, but he sighed at length.

”There were moments when… her phrasing was such…”

It was pointless to continue, so he went silent.

“It is expected that our minds would eventually seep into one another. I’ve become a vast deal more petulant than I already was. Oh, don’t be vexed with me,” she said then. “After the knight, I liked you the best.”

He lowered his head after another moment.

“After all this, when all was said, and all was done… Cedric died alone,” Lorenzo said.

”Who told you that?” Duessa spoke quietly now.

They were both quiet and allowed the late fall wind to pass between them.

“He was my believer, was he not?” Duessa asked then. “No, Plague Doctor Cedric did not die alone.”

Lorenzo didn’t speak right away as Duessa took a turn around the grove. She then sat down on the same fallen mossy log where he sat.

”I don’t know how you do it,” she said. “The smell. The darkness. That agony… If I touched you now, you’d be able to see how dreadful it was...”

Lorenzo observed when tears began to fall. He then held his hand out.

”What?” she asked through a sniffle.

”I want to see.”

”But he was a friend. It would be painful for you.”

Lorenzo still kept his hand extended.

”Agnes says that when you share your sadness, the other person carries the other half,” Lorenzo said. “Unless, of course, that was you speaking.”

Duessa smiled and shook her head.

”That one is all Agnes.”

Lorenzo kept his hand extended, but Duessa took it and then brought it to her heart.

”All you have to know is he wasn’t alone. He had many stories. Two grandchildren. Even while running out of breath, that man talked far too much.”

Lorenzo let out a gentle, breathy laugh.

”I… did not know that about Cedric,” he said softly. “We never spoke about our lives before this. There was talk of nothing but the work.”

”Life under the code, Ignatius told me once,” Duessa said. “Oh. When he died, he was holding this.”

She moved his hand from her heart to place Cedric’s journal there instead.

”I read it. He documented his suffering. In great detail. In disturbing, graphic detail… Not only of how he suffered, but also what brought him relief. What did not. He called it the same name you just said… oh yes, a journal,” she said. “Perhaps it can be of some use to you.”

Lorenzo continued to turn the pages. His fingers hovered over the pages that had bloodstains.

”Cedric… you clever old goat,” Lorenzo uttered under his breath.

He then closed it, put it away carefully, and stood up.

“I have patients waiting.”

Duessa remained seated, eyes on the mossy ground.

”Come back to see me,” she said then quietly.

“You said I was no use to you.”

Duessa gazed at him.

“Come anyway.”

He nodded.

“I will.”

Then, he turned around and walked away.

Duessa gazed behind him long past the leafy crunch of footsteps had faded.

“Fool,” she lamented.

Then, a panic settled over her lovely visage.

”Oh, dear…” she said. “Am I in love with this one too?”

She bit her lip as she violently blushed.