Infinite 01 - Infinite Sacrifice

he left, I will never surface again.
    A nobleman in the midst of great delirium proves a good distraction.
    “I’m filthy! I’m filthy! This whole city’s crawling in excrement and disease!”
    I wipe his perfectly clean brow. Strangely enough, this man had come in cleaner than we’d ever seen a body.
    “You are not filthy at all. Actually it looks like you have scrubbed yourself raw.” I look at his extremely chapped and cracked hands.
    “I locked the house up and deprived myself of every comfort. Avoided all contact with any living creature. Subsisted in utter deprivation! Look at where it got me.”
    I remove the last vial I had left, giving them away the way Simon would have wanted. I empty the amber powder into a ladle of water and bring it to his purple lips to swallow. I stand up and throw the glass into the fire. He quickly falls into unconsciousness, but after three days, he improves.
    Upon opening his ice-blue eyes, he asks, “Am I dead?”
    I reply, “Does this look like heaven?”
    I sweep my hand across the sad scene of people coughing on heaps of rags.
    “Am I cured, then?” He whisks the hair from his widow’s peak back behind his ear.
    “I cannot say if you are cured, but your fever broke, and that is a good sign.”
    “It was all the cleaning I did. I know it weakened the disease.”
    Everyone has their own idea of what saved them .
    “Do you know what is happening out there?” He points to the street side of the abbey.
    “No, I have not been outside the abbey for months.”
    I start to spoon-feed him some soup.
    “It is terrible. I lost my whole fortune. So many people are dying, and they have no one to leave their property to. Half the houses in London are vacant, falling into ruin and neglect.” He takes the spoonful I have waiting and swallows rapidly to continue, “Neighbors are robbing neighbors, and greedy peasants are moving property lines with no one to contest. And that is nowhere near as bad as the problems due to the heriot.”
    I have never heard someone complain so soon after recovering before.
    He continues fuming about the death tax, “Normally one gives the king a horse in payment at a death, but there are so many dying, the horses are all running loose in the streets! It has completely ruined the market! All of my herds are worthless now! I cannot even acquire hay to feed them with the scarcity of labor.” He sits up. “Marriage has all but vanished! Society is crumbling. Even the great Edward the III has fled. Animals are dying in the streets and fields because there are no shepherds left to tend to them!” He starts wringing his hands. “I cannot go back! I cannot go back!”
    “If you have survived it, we have not seen one person yet that has suffered a relapse.”
    “It is not the plague I fear but the sounds of the dying and the deplorable state London is in!” He grabs my arm. “Do you know for three nights in a row a man down in Cheapside kept stumbling up and down the streets screaming for his family all night. The lack of sleep I got was probably the very thing that exposed me to the filth. I can still hear it: ‘Christiana! Oliver! Rowan!’—”
    I freeze and drop the spoon into the bowl. He is searching for them.
    “Coughing horribly all the while. It was enough to drive us all mad!”
    Their father must be sick. I get up while Fendel is still ranting and walk out back. Oliver comes up bringing me a bouquet of juniper berries before he runs up to bed. Can I let their father die alone? However, the thought of losing the only two people I have left scares me more than anything could. Nevertheless , he must be brought here, even if he wants them back.
    Emeline tells me she will keep her eye on the children, and I wrap the leather belt Simon wore around me, which holds everything necessary for delivering last rites. I walk down the lanes with lantern lit as a full moon rises. I can’t believe how much has changed. Half the houses have doors wide open, with sows sticking their pink faces out at my approach. Black flags wave from every door, pole, and window flapping down the row like the invading enemy has won. Someone opens a window and screams out in agony, startling me into a run.
    The children’s house looks abandoned, and I almost turn to leave when I hear a rasping cough come from within. The house is in the same condition I left it except that the animals have all gone, turning over the chairs and table in their flight. I walk back to