The Raven Girl by Kathy Cecala

Author:Kathy Cecala [Cecala, Kathy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

14.

Brother Paulus found the letter Aedan wrote to Lord Fulke, just where the boy had left it, on his neatly arranged sleeping cot. He read it, but did not give it to his superior.

For during the night, Fulke had become quite ill, burning with fever. He did not leave his bed the entire next day, and by day’s end had slipped into a coma, barely breathing. Physicians were brought in to treat him, applying leeches and administering strong potions and medicines, but nothing would revive the vicar. He was given Last Rites, and was not expected to survive until Easter Sunday, only a few days away.

But on the morning of Good Friday, Fulke emerged from his unconsciousness with waxen face and sunken eyes. It seemed as if the fever had consumed his very flesh; always a thin man, Fulke now appeared almost skeletal. But he asked for water and bread, and the other priests and brothers took joy in his reawakening. It seemed a Paschal week miracle, coming as it did just before Easter Sunday.

But very soon it became apparent that the vicar of St. Alban’s had undergone a profound change. Gone was his quick intelligence, the mild sense of humor and gentle, if discreet, sense of superiority. Gone, too, was his piety, perhaps his faith as well. This new Fulke was now a frail, frightened, angry and bitter sort of man, given to startling, blasphemous oaths and irrational rants. It was as if, Brother Paulus noted sadly, the disease had eaten away parts of his brain and soul, changing the man forever.

“Our boy Aedan has left us, and our poor Lord Fulke has gone mad. ’Tis the work of Satan,” Paulus declared in a dark tone to the others. “It’s the curse of Inis Ghall. The island of foreigners—it has always been a sad, mad, evil place!”

But he did not reveal the contents of Aedan’s letter, which he burned. And so the other brothers and priests of St. Alban’s did not know what to think. They could only imagine what had happened on the small island in outer Connemarra, and to the young charge who had lived among them for so many years.

They kept their superior in a small cell off the infirmary and tried to calm him with sedating herbs and teas. They tried to keep all visitors away, but one imposing, middle-aged foreigner came stomping in the morning of Holy Saturday, demanding to see the man he claimed was ‘imprisoning’ his son.

Jacobo De Adamo now stood over the priest Fulke. He considered the priest, his son’s foster-father, an odd, bookish sort of man who had always been formal and distant, never warm to Jacobo. A secret rivalry or silent war had always existed between the men: their prize, Aedan.

“Where is he?” Jacobo demanded. “Where is my son!”

Fulke stared up at the Spaniard, his eyes watery, only a small oval of sallow face showing from the strips of linen the priests had used to bind his head.

“Where is Aedan! What have you done with him?”

“Aedan…” said Fulke, now dreamily.

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