The Codex Lacrimae: The Book of Tears

Chapter 3: The Dawdling Hospitaller

The return of Jacob's motion and words coincided with his mother, Rebecca, walking unsteadily around the corner. Her eyes lit first upon the old man.

"Finally, Brother Nicholas, there you are!"

Jacob's relief at seeing her combined with a realization that she'd seen neither Dietrich's violent interactions, nor his threats.

She appeared dazed but rejoiced at seeing her son stumbling toward her as the dwarf helped the boy to his feet.

"Ah, you did find him, Brother Nicholas," she said, repeating the old knight's name. "And, you're still here, Master Dietrich? Well, here's my one remaining pride—my son, Jacob. Jacob, this is Master Dietrich."

"We just met. A fine, strapping lad he is, too, Milady," Dietrich said gruffly. He brought a heavily gauntleted glove onto Jacob's shoulder. "Reminds me of some ... knights I used to know. He's all right, just a little dusty from taking a fall, aren't you, son?"

Jacob winced at the dwarf's slap, but checked his anger. From the way Dietrich's fingers dug into his flesh, the dwarf seemed willing to make good on his earlier threat. Jacob wouldn't put his mother in harm's way for the satisfaction of an angry retort.

Instead, the boy simply shrugged off the dwarf's hold, knelt, and retrieved his sword. He embraced Rebecca, and held her for a long moment. Whatever the two men were discussing didn't seem to concern him, and his mother looked deathly ill. Her well-being took priority over all else.

"Ima!" he said, holding her shoulders as he stepped back to look down at her. "Are you well? What happened here?" His questions tumbled after one another in his relief. "I thought you were in a room behind that collapsed section over there?"

"Oh, Jacob, I don't know. I don't know. The room's beyond that pile, but we came another way. Brother Nicholas gave me an elixir that he brewed—"

"No, not I!" interrupted the old Hospitaller sharply, rapping his cane on the stone floor. "Belvedere made it! I merely delivered it to you according to his instructions."

Rebecca paused, regarding the old man curiously, then continued. "Yes, well, wherever it came from, I began responding to the medicine better than anything I've taken before."

"Do you think it's the cure that Ibn-Khaldun's trying to find for you, Ima?" Jacob asked, unable to hide the excitement in his voice.

"I don't know, but we can hope. Anyway, Belvedere thought I was responding so well, that he moved me from the general ward to a pilgrim's cell." She sighed and waved an exasperated hand, "Then, Brother Nicholas came to check on me, we saw a flash of blue-green, and Dietrich appeared—"

"Und, ‛Brother Nicolas,' Frau David-son, I must be off," Dietrich snapped. He inclined his head toward the group and strode away in the direction from which Jacob had come.

"Oh, Lord," Rebecca murmured, moving past the knight. Her eyes widened at the sight of the destroyed ward beyond her son's shoulder.

She approached the nearest corpse, but Jacob caught her under the elbow before she stumbled over a post that protruded from a ruined bed frame.

"No, Ima, no. I don't care how you think you were doing, you look exhausted now. You should be back in bed, and ... I already checked here. There's no one left alive."

"No one?" She turned toward him, horrified. "But, there were at least forty men in here."

"Thirty-six were killed by the blast," he said. "I've seen no one else."

"Oh, Jacob, no!" Rebecca looked in confusion at Braunen. "But, we heard nothingBrother Nicholas! How could this happen without us hearing any kind of explosion?"