Chapter One: The Man Who Came Back
{Part 1}
{Part 2}
After his hair had been cleaned, the wound sterelized with a cloth and alcohol and bandaged up, I set to work cleaning as much from his forehead and jaw as I could.
‘Don’t try to open your eyes yet.’
‘Your father must be very proud of what you’re doing for others, and for your country. Is he out in the field?’
‘No. I don’t think he’s proud, either. He thinks I can do nothing for my country. The war is lost, every cause is lost. He never says it aloud but I know that he thinks it.’
‘My father told me that hope is a hard thing to hold on to, but as long as there is hope, there is life.’
I imagined that this was a proverb a soldier would have held on to until the end of his life, but the truth in it had long since drained from his voice, and now all that remained was a habitual lie.
‘You’ve seen the battlefield for yourself. Do you believe it?’
‘Do you?’
I hadn’t expected the question to be deflected straight back at me. He didn’t force me to answer. I was always afraid that if I thought on it too much I would find an answer that I didn‘t want to hear myself say. ‘You are young, and ignorant to the ways of the world. You have the ability to defy these ways and to change them. You can’t do that without hope.’
‘To defy the ways of the world, yes. To defy my father, that‘s another matter.’
He grinned and leant forward. ‘Never stopped me from going on an adventure or two.’
Yes, but you’re a farmer’s son, I thought.
‘I bet your father wouldn’t have had the royal guard out searching for you,’ I said, as if I were joking.
‘You never knew my Dad.’
I laughed. ‘Perhaps.’
I liked him, a lot. I could almost ignore that feeling inside me that perhaps I only liked him because he couldn’t see me.
‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
I took the water bucket to refill at the well, near which two large pots were boiling. One of the young men near by with a head of thick blonde hair and half-healed scratches on his face, offered to help out. In any other circumstance I would have objected, but he was taller and stronger than me, which was an advantage I was willing to accept simply to avoid scalding myself.
By now my bleach-white sleeves were smudged with scarlet and dust, and the smooth, black fabric of my trousers were splashed and discoloured by the dirt I’d been kneeling in.
He filled the bucket half way first with cold and then I held it with both hands while he carefully tipped in water scooped up with a metal ladle. He was one of many soldiers who did their best to help simply because they had nowhere else to go. They were far from home and clung to the only thing they had. Empathy. The knowledge that they weren’t alone in their sufferings.
Mathius was still sitting where I left him, staring at the ground.
‘I need you to keep your eyes closed as tight as possible,’ I said. It made sense to get rid of the surrounding dirt first, but I wanted to use the cleanest water on the slits of his eyes. He was quiet and patient, and even though he was almost completely still I occasionally saw the muscles on his neck tense and the colour flush through his cheeks and forehead. ‘You’re doing well.’
‘You’re very kind,’ he grinned. ‘It is always encouraging to find a good-hearted youth. Someone worth fighting for.’
Yes. Until he could open his eyes. ‘Alright, it’s done. Open them slowly.’
At first he frowned and squinted against the light, and I saw the first glimpse. His right eye was glassy and bloodshot. The left the same but with a darker, yellowish tint making the blue of his irises look different colours.
He blinked painfully a few times and reached out blindly to take the cloth and dunk it in the hot water. He pressed it against his eyelids and rubbed carefully until the rest of the residue was gone.
‘It feels like the air is full of sand.’
‘I’ll go to the medical store and get some eye drops, but we don’t have much adequate medicine available.’
‘If it will help.’ He pressed the cloth against his eyes again.
I jumped to my feet and ran across the field to the store, weaving in and out of people and trying to shake the stiffness from my legs. The man in charge of the store handed over the drops with much reluctance and I ran back to Mathius.
When I thumped down on the floor he lifted the towel and looked straight ahead. My heart pounded when I realised he was looking directly at me. As he tilted his head and glared my insides started to twist.
‘I got you the drops,’ I said, trying to act casual. Instead my words came out course and flat.
He took the bottle from my hand and twisted the cap roughly, then looked at his own fingers, and at mine, before realising with the same distain as I had with the boy near the hot-water pot that he had no choice but to accept my help.
Silence hovered between us like a lingering curse and I knew that if I didn’t hold my nerve I would fall into clumsiness. His stare was unsettling. I dipped my third finger into the liquid to catch a drop, and only then did he look up so that I could pull his eyelid back and shake my finger for the liquid to fall in.
He hissed a little and blinked. The left eye would hurt more, we both knew, and he did his best to be brave. As I screwed the lid back on he closed his eyes tight and opened them again.
‘A little better,’ he said.
‘We don’t have much. There is a local apothecary. He can get you the right medicine. You’d have to ask him.’
Mathius sighed heavily and pushed the cloth back into my hands. ‘I still owe you thanks.’
‘It’s no problem.’ I could hear my heart racing now as I soaked the cloth and put it back to his forehead. Inside me was that childish feeling of desperately trying to belong - wishing so hard that he didn’t hate me. He closed his eyes again.
‘I thought, your hands are very gentle. I guess you can afford to be gentle when you never have to work a day in your life.’
‘It’s not so bad,’ I said. I had thought this answer up during one of my long periods of reflection and royal angst. ‘Quite luxurious, actually. I get all the credit without ever committing the crime,’ I said. He smiled in amusement. ‘I get all the stress and worry without ever having to do anything about it.’
‘You have done good for me. Just don’t expect any overdue respects.’
‘I could do without them.’
He laughed and opened his eyes again, and I hoped his vision was blurred enough to not see my pity. He would need a real doctor if there was hope of his sight being restored, and nobody in these times could afford real doctors, especially not the son of a farmer.
He parted his lips to speak, but a series of shouts from the other end of the camp captured both our attentions.
A wave of ‘what-is-it’s’ and ‘did-you-hear’s’ washed across like an incoming torrent of rain. There was a man - not a soldier. A blue eyed man dressed in rags. The tips of his ears, his lips and his fingers were blackened with frostbite. His shoes were in rags and his feet swollen.
Mirdall.
The name reached us. Mathius suddenly perked up and climbed shakily to his feet to see. He cursed in frustration and started walking forward, tipping one way and another.
I ran as fast as I could to grab a crutch and forced it under his arm.
‘Mirdall?’ I asked. ‘Who is he? What happened to him?’
‘He’s back!’ Someone shouted across our path. ‘He came back!’
‘Did he make it?’ The receiver shouted back.
When we made it to the front I could see better the ashen colour of his cheeks, the patches of hair that were missing from his head. His eyes were sunken and cheeks drawn, as if someone had sucked the soul right out of him.
Mathius marched forward on his crutch. I stayed at his side and a hush fell over the crowd. I stopped - and they watched him.
‘No…’ Someone whispered.
‘Is that him?’
‘It can’t…’
For once, the world wasn’t looking at me. I felt a new sense of wonder and admiration. He stood straight and his shoulders back, even though it was talking a lot of effort to hold himself up. He was brave, and strong, and many things I wished I could be. But he was something else too.
He was Mathius. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but for whatever reason that I was yet to find out, the whole world had stopped and fallen silent before him.
/End part two
