A Brother's Love - Book 3 - The Frencolian Chronicles (complete)

Chapter Nine

The baroness, LJ and Luke had been riding a circuit of the village every day, taking food to the sick and collecting children who had no one to care for them. The sick were often left to die alone, but where possible, the baron or his sons would read to them while they were conscious enough to understand, and pray with them, urging them to pray for their own souls.

Until Boone's medicine supply was depleted, pain-killing drugs were administered. Some people suffered more pain with the plague than others.

Bodies had been disposed of swiftly at first, but now, it might be several days before they could be buried. There were more mass graves to be dug and the numbers of dead bodies were more than the men left alive to bury them.

Scavenging dogs that had lost their masters, and wolves, became bold, and the picture became more and more grim, until the baron commanded that his wife not ride about the streets of the village. However, he agreed that she sit on the cart in the square, waiting for the sick and abandoned children to be brought to her care. That the children were sick of the plague no longer bothered anyone, the disease had been so close to all of them that they felt it no longer mattered.

However, at Boone's insistence, they washed, and changed their clothes twice a day and at night.

The days merged into what seemed one long nightmare and to the baron's deep concern, they no longer kept the Lord's Day, a day of worship and rest. It was difficult to remember which day of the week it was.

Another week toiled by before Baron Chatelain could take Jobyna out to the graves where Marcus and Ellie lay, side by side, facing the rising sun. Boone traveled with them.

Some days previous, Boone had buried his wife Narda. His grief was doubled, for their baby had died with her.

Jobyna wept for the first time since her illness, and the family cried with her. Boone, unable to control his tears, wept for Narda and his lost baby, as well as for Marcus and Ellie whom he had grown to love.

As the baron read verses for Jobyna's sake, Boone's grief surged into great heaving sobs. No one was embarrassed, and when Boone had cried for a long time, he felt comforted and strengthened as the baron supplicated that he might come to know the God of comfort, and that even in his unbelief, God might show Himself by giving Boone the help he needed to know God is real.

Jobyna, unable to think of the right words to say, chattered her thoughts to the doctor as they sat in the cart for the journey home. "Your baby will be in heaven. I wonder what Jesus has called him. You know God gives us all a name, Boone. We have to have it written in His Book. I'm glad that Narda can see the baby and talk to him. Though the baby won't be a baby any more will it Mother?"

Elissa didn't answer. She was thinking of Estelle, the queen, and her children; Leopold on his own now; so many deaths. If someone had spoken about such things in the winter, no one would have believed it... it did seem unreal, no wonder the child found it hard to accept...

But right now, Jobyna seemed to accept it all, better than any of them...

"So, my baby's grown up, is he Jobyna? Is that what it says in the Book?" Boone's eyes and nose were red, and he felt the same sense of unreality Elissa had, although neither was conscious that the same state affected them both.

"Yes, of course," Jobyna said. Staring up at the sky, she said, fervently, "I'm glad, you know, that your baby didn't grow up like you."

Jobyna's sharpened tone, and the cruel words brought Boone back to reality. Some seconds moved on before he could believe he had heard her aright.

"What did you say?" he asked, then, "No; don't say it again; just tell me why you said that?" The cart was now approaching Chanoine Village.

"Well, Boone, you won't believe, you just won't. And if your baby grew up like you, he wouldn't believe, would he? And he wouldn't go to heaven like he has now, 'cause God takes all babies to heaven you know." Jobyna leaned back on her mother's shoulder, her head raised to the sky.