The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Sixty-Eight

‘Come,’ Roby said, with a sunburst smile, beckoning enthusiastically. ‘This way, Benoît.’

Ben followed the boy over the meadow, wading through verdant grass and sunflowers that grew knee-high and filled the air with their perfume. The mountains twinkled and the sky was an unbroken blue. ‘This way,’ Roby called, further away now, and Ben quickened his pace to catch up with him. ‘Wait for me,’ he called back.

Then he was surrounded by a circle of pearl-white archways that seemed to grow out of the waving flowers, looming tall and splendid all around him. Roby stood waiting for him at their centre, smiling and extending his hand. He took Ben’s arm.

‘See,’ he said, and pointed.

Ben looked, and saw all his old friends stepping through the archways and gathering round to greet him. There was Père Antoine, his flowing robe and mane of white hair catching the sunlight, and his eyes glowing with that inner joy that Ben remembered from another life. Behind him came Père Jacques, and Frère Patrice, and the lay brothers Gilles and Marc and Olivier, the whole gang, all smiling and happy to meet him again. Jeff Dekker was there, too. And Ben’s son Jude, his blond hair shining like gold.

‘Welcome home, Ben,’ Père Antoine said.

Ben asked, ‘Am I in heaven?’

Père Antoine just smiled. He held Ben’s hand and squeezed it tightly with such love in his kind old eyes that Ben could feel his own tearing up and felt like a little boy again.

‘It’s all right, Ben,’ Père Antoine said. ‘It’s all right.’

Then the old man’s voice grew distant and his smiling face seemed to fade into the brightness of the sunlight. The circle of arches melted away, and all his friends, gradually merging into the light until they were gone and all that remained was the brightness.

Ben squinted up at it, blinking. ‘Where did you go?’ he said, confused.

‘I’m right here, Ben,’ said the same voice, only it was different somehow, closer and more immediate. The same warm hand gripped his tightly, fingers meshed with his own.

Ben’s eyes fluttered shut, then reopened. ‘Silvie?’

‘Welcome back,’ she said again, and tears spilled out of her eyes and fell on his skin like the dew from the wildflowers in his dream.

Ben closed his eyes and slept.

He drifted, sometimes on the edge of consciousness, other times floating through more strange dreams, though Père Antoine and the others did not reappear. He slowly became more aware of time passing, days merging into nights and back into days. Through it all he could sense the presence of people around him, and one presence especially.

On the fifth day, he was able to keep his eyes open for longer and sit propped up on an extra pillow in the hospital bed. The private room was white and shiny and full of flowers. Silvie sat at his bedside, where he now realised she’d been sitting for days. Her right arm was in a sling, as his left arm would be when it was out of traction. She moved stiffly, but she seemed not to notice the pain of her injuries now that Ben was going to live. She couldn’t stop crying and apologising for being silly.

‘I thought you were gone,’ he said when he found the strength to speak.

‘Wasn’t as bad as it looked,’ she replied, smiling at him. ‘Streicher was a terrible shot. Both bullets went straight through without touching anything.’

‘Lucky,’ he whispered.

‘It was you I was worried about,’ she said.

He rested again a while. Later, when he was a little stronger, she calmly explained to him how the surgeons had rebuilt his shoulder blade and reset the joint. Hannah Gissel’s shotgun had been loaded with small birdshot. The wound had been spectacular, but the force of the blast had been largely absorbed by muscle and bone and none of the tiny pellets had penetrated with enough energy to find their way to his heart or lungs. It had been the loss of blood that would have killed most men, and things had been touch-and-go for a while. Silvie had been in the room next door until three days ago, since when she’d been at his bedside for as many hours of the day as the nurses would allow her. ‘I’m your guard dog,’ she said.

‘More like guardian angel,’ he replied.

‘Glad I was there after all?’

‘Glad you’re here now,’ he said, and she squeezed his hand.

‘You’re going to be fine, Ben. And so is everybody else.’

He asked, ‘How did we get here?’

‘You can thank Luc Simon for that,’ she said. ‘He was the one who insisted on being kept informed of our movements. Didn’t think you’d take kindly to it. I secretly texted him the location we got from Donath. The police helicopters reached Streicher’s bunker just a few minutes after it all went down.’ She ran through how the cops had safely secured the plague canisters and sealed off the whole area.

‘That Luc Simon is something, isn’t he?’ Ben said, and laughed, and the laugh became a painful cough.

‘You can tell him so yourself. He’s pretty anxious to speak to you. Wants to give you the whole spiel on behalf of the French nation, thanking you for averting such a major disaster, etc., etc.’

‘And then throw me in jail,’ Ben said.

‘I somehow don’t think that’s going to happen,’ Silvie said with a chuckle.

Ben slowly recovered his strength over the next week. Luc Simon did come and see him, and did give him the whole spiel, and made it clear that no charges would be brought for any of the little misdemeanours Ben had committed in the course of saving the world.

‘Cheers for that one,’ Ben said.

‘Oh, I almost forgot to mention. We finally got back the lab results with the analysis of that liquid you were taking. Ever heard of colloidal silver?’

‘No,’ Ben said.

‘Tiny particles separated from pure silver by a simple electrical process, suspended in water. Your friend Antoine used an apparatus he built himself, powered by a nine-volt battery. I’d never heard of the stuff either, but I’ve been reading up on it. There have been a lot of scientific studies that seem to show it’s a pretty potent antibacterial.’ Luc Simon shrugged. ‘Maybe that explains how you were protected from infection down in the crypt. But I guess we’ll never know for sure.’

‘Not while the pharmaceutical industry is calling the shots,’ Ben said.

‘So damn cynical,’ Luc Simon said.