XXXIX - The Plague Doctor's Apprentice (Part 1 Finale)
Sir Godwin stood alone outside of Avice’s forge when Vlad and Sybil arrived just after dawn. The blacksmith was nowhere to be seen. If Godwin had any thoughts regarding the terrible shape that the Plague doctors were in, he did not betray them.
“She ultimately put up no resistance,” the knight explained after Vlad had asked him where Avice was. “Once you were gone, Madam Avice immediately laid down her arms and surrendered.”
Vlad frowned. He found this difficult to believe. “Strange of her to submit so easily when she had been so vehement just moments before.”
“Avice is an intelligent enough woman,” Godwin said. “She likely understood the futility of her efforts once she realized that you had eluded her. She knew that to face me would have been rather foolish indeed.”
Or perhaps she disliked the thought of killing you, Vlad wanted to say. Instead, he chose different words. “I am not so certain of that. The Avice I knew would have died by your sword if she felt her cause was just. If you fancy my opinion, I’d say she saw the error of her ways and had a change of heart at just the right moment to evade bloodshed.”
Godwin glowered at him. “And when have I ever asked for your opinion, Vlad Albescu?”
Vlad did not need to ponder on that for even a moment, but he made a brief show of it. “I suppose not ever, assuming my memory serves. That said, I would hope some leniency might be in order for her, considering the circumstances.”
“Your fondness for her blinds you,” the captain said. “The circumstances are that she has not only committed at least one murder, but she has also abetted in the deaths of many others, and in the process, allowed a reign of terror to fall upon this village.” He shook his head in disgust. “Anything short of immediate execution will certainly be more than lenient.”
“While I do not disagree, I would still ask that you show her some form of mercy,” the Plague doctor said. “She only acted in what she believed to be the best interest of Finnian, misguided though she may have been. Avice was wrong, but she was far from malicious.”
“Were that her lack of malice could bring the dead back to life.” Godwin paused. “That said, it could be rather difficult to prosecute her to the full extent of the law without describing every detail of the charges placed against her, and I am not so certain that the people of Fenwick are prepared to know the extent of what has happened here during these early days of winter. With that in mind, Avice may yet receive the mercy that you so crave for her.”
“So you will keep the truth hidden from the village, then?”
“Only what I deem unnecessary for them to know, so long as you do the same.”
Vlad nodded. “I too believe it is for the best that they never know the full extent of what happened here—both for the preservation of Finnian’s memory, as well as for their own wellbeing. To force them to grapple with the entire truth would not do them any good. They already know far too much about a world that should otherwise remain hidden from them.”
“So then we are in agreement,” Godwin said. “A rare occurrence, indeed.” He allowed another pause. “As for you, Vlad Albescu, do not think for even a moment that I have forgotten about your involvement in all of this. And while I am willing to overlook your transgressions considering the service that you’ve rendered to this village, just know that I will not hesitate to place you behind bars with that blacksmith, should you provoke me again.”
“Understood,” Vlad said. “Thank you, Sir Godwin, for all that you do.”
The knight turned to leave. When he spoke next, it was with his back to them, his head only partially turned in their direction. “I recommend you depart from Fenwick with all haste, just as soon as you are well enough to do so. The longer you remain here, the more you risk landing back on my irritable side.”
“Of course,” Vlad said. “Now that the lycanthrope is slain, we shall have no further reason to trouble you. Farewell, Captain Godwin. Until we meet again.”
“Aye,” Sir Godwin said. “If the Mother is kind, such a reunion shall not occur in this lifetime.” He turned his head away from them and smiled. “Though I suppose we shall just have to see about the next.”
___
“Are you certain you must leave so soon? You’ve hardly had a chance to recover from your ordeal.”
The query came from Amabel Cook. She stood outside of The Dusty Pumpkin with Vlad and Sybil, as well as Gaston Dupont, who, while on his feet, was forced to lean against the wall of the old building in order to keep himself upright. The strain of his effort weighed heavily upon his face, but he did his best not to let it show. Poniard rested on the ground at her master’s feet, seemingly uninterested in the conversation going on around her.
“The lovely Amabel is correct,” the mustachioed man said. “You both look scarcely better off than I do at the moment.”
Amabel shot him an irritated leer. “‘Miss Cook will do coming from you, Mr. Dupont.” He hardly seemed to notice her words.
Vlad nodded. “A Plague doctor can hardly rest on their laurels, I am afraid. There is always work to be done, and those that require our aid. Which reminds me, how fares your… acquaintance, Miss Cook?”
Amabel looked mildly embarrassed at the mention of the man. Her face all but flushed. “He’s…. much better now.”
“Wonderful news.” Vlad smiled. “And again, I greatly apologize for my recent intrusion on your… intimate affairs.”
“Intimate affairs?” Gaston frowned. “And here I thought you and I were growing so fond of one another, Amabel!”
The innkeeper promptly ignored him. “Well, you’ll always have a room at The Dusty Pumpkin, should you find yourself out this way again.”
“That is much appreciated,” Vlad said, “though I doubt we shall ever be returning to this village. Sir Godwin would likely not be too fond of my presence here, and beyond that, my business in Fenwick begins and ends with Avice. Without her, I should not see any reason to return.”
“A shame what’s become of her,” Amabel said. “I’ve known the woman since childhood, and it pains me to see her locked behind iron. But for her to have aided the werewolf that slew her apprentice is truly unforgivable.”
“Such a terrible fate to befall that poor lad,” Gaston said, shaking his head. “Would that the Goddess had only been more kind to him.”
“It is not the Goddess who needed to show him kindness,” Vlad said.
“Aye,” the younger man agreed sadly, “I suppose you’ve got it right.”
“And I suppose,” Amabel said, “that unless she provides the details herself, we shall never know who that stranger was to her, seeing as the beast was incinerated in that chapel fire before its identity could be discerned.”
“And I doubt that Avice will ever be forthcoming with such information,” Vlad said. “Such a revelation would hardly help her circumstances, and if I know Avice at all, then I know she will keep her private affairs to herself.”
“But this just goes to show that you can never truly know another person,” Amabel said. “You can be within a stone’s throw of them for your entire life, but you could never predict that they’d wind up doing something like this.”
Vlad offered a somber nod. “Aye. I would say you are spot on with that, Miss Cook.”
There was a brief pause, which Sybil quickly broke. “What of you, Mr. Dupont?” she said. “Where will you go once you’ve fully recovered?”
“To the gallows, more likely than not,” Gaston said, his countenance turning grim. “And I deserve nothing less for what I’ve done. I’ve already asked the lovely Amabel to take care of poor Poniard once her master is gone from this world.”
“To resign yourself to death is to let your mistakes define you,” Vlad said. “Allowing yourself to hang would be simple enough, but the truly difficult task would be to live on in spite of what you have done, and to atone for it by whatever means that you can.”
“A honeyed outlook,” Gaston said, “and one that I may even be inspired to adopt, were it not for my current situation. I doubt that Sir Godwin would allow me to leave this village alive, even if I wished to do so.”
“And you’d be correct to believe as much.” They all turned at the sound of the familiar voice and watched as Lucia approached from down the street.
“Ah,” Gaston said, “and here comes my escort to the gallows.” When Lucia came to a stop, he lowered his head and raised his arms before him as if awaiting to be slapped in irons. “My life I give up to you, Lady Lucia. I only ask that you not allow me to rot in that accursed dungeon for terribly long before sending me to the Mother. I know that it is passing bold for a man such as I to ask for mercy where none is due, but I cannot help but allow some cowardice to shine through, as my weakness of character often encourages from me.”
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“I’ve not come to arrest you,” she said. “Not yet, at the very least. Your actions have caused much harm to this village, to say the least, and as such, you deserve to face your due consequences for them.” She paused. “That said, Sir Godwin has asked me to tell you that he would prefer to arrest you personally, and seeing as he is quite busy dealing with all that has transpired recently, he regrets to inform you that it may be several days before he is available to come collect you. He asks that you patiently wait here in the meantime, for if you were to, say, slip away in the dead of night and escape from the village through a loose palisade in the wall, he would be far too preoccupied to send anybody after you.” She gave him a knowing gaze. “Is he understood?”
Gaston hesitated, then nodded once. “Yes. He is understood perfectly, Lady Lucia.” He paused. “Please extend my most sincere gratitude to Captain Godwin.”
“I’ll try my best to remember your request.” She turned her attention to Vlad and Sybil. “I am glad I was fortunate enough to catch the two of you before your departure. Sir Godwin seemed rather certain that we would not be seeing you again, so I wanted to properly thank you before you left.”
“No thanks are necessary, Lady Lucia,” Vlad said. “In fact we are the ones who ought to be thanking you. Your aid in this grizzly affair proved to be quite crucial, after all.”
“Well, if you shall accept no thanks, then neither shall I. After all, we were merely performing our respective duty, were we not?”
Vlad nodded with a smile. “That we were, Lady Lucia.”
“Now,” she said, “I had better be off. That same duty calls me to other tasks. Take care of yourself, Plague doctors. And despite what Sir Godwin may have you believe, you’ll both always have a place in Fenwick.”
Lucia turned and walked away. Vlad knew that he would likely never see her again, but he supposed he could never be perfectly certain of what the future had in store.
___
Sybil knelt in front of the grave that, like too many in that small cemetery, was far too fresh for her liking. She remained there for a long time, hardly noticing as the day approached its end.
“Ready to be off, Night Owl?”
Sybil, remaining knelt to the cold ground, turned to watch her mentor’s approach. He had to meander through the cluster of messily distributed graves in order to reach her.
“I will be shortly,” she said. “I was just saying goodbye.”
“Very well,” he said. “I shall prepare Elpis to depart; come join us when you are finished here.”
The Plague doctor walked away, and she turned back to face the grave. Several lonely minutes passed. The girl had remained silent for most of her tenure in front of his grave, but she eventually mustered the strength to speak the words that she had once been entirely unable to produce through her sorrow. Speaking them now brought a finality that she had feared would overwhelm her, but which instead brought her an incredible feeling of relief. “You have been set free.”
Sybil pulled the silver bolt from her quiver and looked it over briefly. Its sharp head was still encrusted with a layer of dried blood. She turned the quarrel over so that its head was pointed toward the ground, then plunged it into the cold earth in front of the grave. Satisfied that it was sufficiently secured, she rose to her feet and followed after her mentor.
They departed from Fenwick with little fanfare in the early evening, when the sky was already burned orange by the setting sun. They didn’t journey far; the village’s tall wooden walls were still visible when they finally stopped for the night. Neither of them had said as much, but they were both eager to leave the village behind, and though they could have spent one more night sleeping in relative comfort, they both much preferred the familiar embrace of the wilderness and their bedrolls after all that they had endured in Fenwick.
Mentor and apprentice spent a long time in silence on either side of their gently crackling campfire. Sybil, her legs tucked between her arms, sat atop her log and stared into the ochre blaze with barely blinking eyes for what may have been several hours. The smell of smoke in her nose was the only thing that seemed to keep her chained to her body. Her mind felt farther away than even the most distant stars in the bright nighttime firmament; her heart, aching with guilt, felt ready to burst beneath the glow of the Celestial Curtain’s bulbous, powerful moon.
“Lord Winter certainly makes himself known this night,” Vlad said, “but I must admit that I quite enjoy his unforgiving embrace. I fear I was growing far too comfortable during our brief stint in Fenwick.”
Sybil, barely hearing him, glanced up at her mentor briefly before returning her gaze to the fire. “Aye.”
There was another space of silence that could have lasted moments or hours before Vlad spoke again. “I never told you the most significant reason that I so greatly dislike slaying lycanthropes.”
This time he had Sybil’s full attention. She looked up at him, and found that their gazes instantly met. Once the connection was secured, he went on. “It is possible, and even likely, that you already know the reason for yourself, but I chose to keep it from you until now in case you were ignorant of the burden that came with its knowledge.”
“I’d hear it,” she said, “burden and all.”
He nodded. “The worst part about slaying lycanthropes, as I am certain you understand all too well, is grappling with the humanity that yet remains inside of them. For a vampyre, that humanity is forever lost the moment the curse has been placed. Even if the soul remains trapped inside, the only way to see it freed is to slay the monster that suffocates it. The same cannot be said for a lycanthrope. By day they are the same as you and me, often without the knowledge of the curse that they carry. They feel, they think, they mourn, and they plan for the future. And yet even so, they must be destroyed. In an even more cruel circumstance, the safest and easiest way to slay them is to do so while that humanity we aim to liberate is at the forefront, during the brightest hours of the day when your doubts are at their peak.”
Vlad paused, giving Sybil some time to absorb his words. When her heart was sufficiently heavier, he went on. “This is all to say that slaying a werewolf will always be a far more demanding task than slaying a strigoi. It will always take far more out of us to do so, even if the battle is more brief, or if there is never even a battle to begin with. And yet you rose to that challenge, and not only that, but you saw it through. And I am immensely proud of that fact. When the matter came down to choosing between Finnian and myself, you made the most difficult decision possible—one that I would never have placed upon you, had I been able to help it. It was because of my own inability to slay him that you were forced to make such a decision, and for that, you have both my greatest thanks and my most sincere apologies.”
“I’ve no need for either,” she said.
“Perhaps not,” he said, “but this old fool feels the need to offer them. I chose to wait until now to do so because I knew such sweetened words would only ring hollow against your grief, as I’m sure they continue to ring hollow even now, but even so, they needed to be said. You saved my life, Night Owl, and for that I owe you eternally.”
Sybil shook her head. “You owe me nothing, Mr. Albescu. You’ve saved my own life more than once, do not forget.”
“Aye,” Vlad admitted, “but never at the cost of another.” He paused. “There will be times, even many years from now, when you will wonder whether what you did to Finnian was right. In these moments, you must remember beyond a shadow of a doubt that it absolutely was. You must remember that what you did for young Finnian is a greater service than anybody has ever given him in his life. This you must know beyond any other fact.”
Sybil considered this for a moment, then nodded. “I shall try. Thank you, Mr. Albescu.”
Silence suffocated the world again. At length, Vlad wordlessly rose to his feet and made his way to the coach resting in the flickering shadows just beyond the light of the campfire. Sybil watched his silhouette vaguely shuffle around in the rear of the coach before he returned to the campfire and sat beside her on her log.
“I’ve some items that I’d like to give you, Night Owl.”
She looked down at her mentor’s hands, which each grasped a new object. The hand farthest from her was largely obscured, but the hand closest held a quiver filled with bolts. He presented it to her, and she accepted it despite being mildly confused. Sybil pulled free one of the bolts and found that its head glistened in the bright moonlight.
“Silver-tipped,” Vlad said, “every one of them.”
Sybil twirled the quarrel between her fingers as she met her mentor’s gaze. “Madam Avice finished them?”
Vlad nodded. “Aye.” He reached behind his back with his newly free hand and produced a pistol that looked nearly identical to his old one. “It would appear that she had time to finish all of our items before her betrayal. I took one final look in her forge before we left, and I found that she had honored her commitment to us after all.” He returned his pistol to its holster. “But a quiver of silver bolts is not all that I had her create for you. You’ve a haubergeon of silver mail and a sturdy cloak waiting for you in the coach. And that is not all.”
Vlad presented his obscured hand. Sybil placed her new bolt back into its quiver and looked at the object that he held. It was a Plague mask; similar in appearance to his own, but white where his was black, and with a short, sharp beak and two dark voids for eyes set in a pair of large, sunken saucers.
“She even finished my Plague mask?”
Vlad nodded, but when she hesitantly reached for it, he gently pulled it away. “But I believe we need to have a brief discussion before I hand it over to you.”
Sybil met his gaze, stole another glance at the mask in his hand, then brought her eyes back to his gaze. She nodded. “Of course. Whatever you think is best.”
“On the contrary,” he said, “you are the one who needs to make a decision tonight, Night Owl. Tonight you must decide if you truly wish to become a Plague doctor.”
She frowned at this. “I don’t understand. We’ve already had this discussion. What decision is there left for me to make?”
“The most important decision of all,” Vlad said. “Yes, I have presented it to you before, but much has transpired since then, and it is only correct that I allow you an opportunity to make it again. This shall be the final time that I do so, because after you’ve accepted this mask, there will be no turning back. If you don this mask, you will no longer have the privilege of returning to your old life—or of trying to forget the nightmare that you’ve endured since the day we first met. You have already suffered along a dark, brutal road, and I regret to inform you that you have only more suffering to look forward to on the road that lies ahead. Much of it I shall walk with you, but, if the Goddess is kind, there will also be long stretches that you must travel on your own.
“This is your final opportunity to leave the nightmare behind, for once it is embraced, it shall not end save for in blood.” He paused. “I recognize the gravity of this decision, and I understand if you need take some time to ponder it.”
Sybil quickly shook her head. “There is no need,” she said, “because I already know my answer. It has not changed since our last time discussing this. Maybe it should have, considering all that I have done and seen since leaving my village, but it hasn’t. Come what may, I want to walk this road with you. I want to continue on the path of the Plague doctor.”
Vlad looked at her gravely, his weathered face partially hidden by the shadows made by the campfire, and for a moment, Sybil thought that she had made the wrong choice. But then that sternness melted away, and through the gloom she could see his warm smile. “Very well then, Night Owl of Fenwick. Don your mask, knowing that once you do, your life will be forever changed. And remember that once the mask of a Plague doctor has been worn, it shall forever remain transfixed upon your face.”
Sybil accepted the mask and pulled it over her head. When it was settled in place she found that it obscured her peripheral view and made her feel slightly claustrophobic, but it also brought her a sense of warmth and comfort that she had not expected. Through her new eyes, the Plague doctor’s apprentice saw that her mentor had donned his own mask in solidarity. A grey stitch in the center of his mask ran parallel to his scar, bringing together the two halves that had been torn asunder by the Vampyre Vivienne. How long ago that night felt; how distant in her memory it already seemed. She knew that far away night, once seen by the girl that she used to be as one of the most horrific of her life, would one day pale in comparison to what was yet to come.
Their new faces danced in the gloom of the moving shadows.
