Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (40 page)

Then, mercifully, the morning wind came up, and the
Astarte
gave one quick lurch. It lifted the trapped ship up and out as the rowers picked up the stroke and the sail, billowing like a great wing, caught the wind.

The freshening wind grew stronger and carried them past the furious anger of Vodenix, who stood impotent on shore, watching his prize slave and newborn dreams of great wealth move beyond his reach, past the Great Menhir and through the rough surf of the bay’s edge.

The
Astarte
flew into the ocean like a bird set free from a cage.

The deck was red with blood. They pulled the worst of the injured to one side of the
Astarte
; the dead lay on the other. Akmu-en-Swnw was busy; he counted three dead and six with serious injuries.

Sabrann was on the side with the injured. She leaned against the side of the ship under the withy shields lashed to the railing that usually sheltered the deck from rough seas. Today the shields helped deflect arrows—some were still caught in the withies. A shadow fell across Sabrann’s face, and she looked up into the black eyes of Akmu-en-Swnw.

“Young maid! Again you are saved from Poseidon and the gods who rule beneath the sea.” His voice sounded light, even though his hands were marked with the blood of dead and injured seamen.

He crouched beside Sabrann and gave her an appraising look. His physician’s eye did not miss anything, and her ragged tunic did not conceal much. With a small sigh, he noted the cut and swollen feet, the livid bruises on her face and arms. And the blood still caked on her thighs.

“I see you have lost your bandages. Tsk, Tsk,” he scolded, his bald head cocked to one side. He lightly touched first one raw foot and then the other. “And now you have other new wounds.”

His eyes returned to the trail of blood on the inside of her thigh and made sad note of the bruise marks that were red now, but would soon turn purple. It was apparent a rough hand had laid these marks. Her young girl’s skin had been wantonly violated as, he suspected, so had other things less visible and even more tender.

Akmu’s warm gaze was kind and knowing. Sabrann’s tears welled up and she did not try to conceal them. He smiled and touched her forehead, his fingers light as thistledown.

“Come, we go to my cabin and put new bandages on your feet.” He cocked his head to one side with a quizzical look, like some little water bird, with his bald head and long nose.

“Garlic and honey and malachite. The usual. Oh yes, and perhaps a new tunic,” he muttered to himself.

“But Glas,” she cried. “I must see him and tell him ...”

“Tell me what?
Carenta
, I am right here,” Glas said from her other side.

Carenta
—dear one: the childish name that Maigrid and her family always called her. Only she was not a child anymore, and would never be that child again. Her heart wept.

Glas moved to her side, clasping her hand tight, his smile full of love and trust.

“I wanted to say you are safe now,” she said, and tears both happy and sorrowful ran down her face.

ENGLAND

June 2006

Queen’s Hospital

London

June 28, 2006

“What’s happening to her? She’s crying!” Alarm filled Aubrey’s voice. After three weeks with no signs of life, tears ran down Germaine O’Neill’s face.

Nothing else moved. Dark bruises marked her eyes. A large cut scored her forehead, and deep abrasions still covered her arms and the parts of her shoulders that were visible. Aubrey Clarke stood by one side of the hospital bed, his body curved over the unconscious woman in a protective way. Nicholas Greenwood hovered near the head of the bed.

He pushed the call button. Almost immediately a nurse came running—they answered calls fast in the Neurological Intensive Care unit.

“Why is she crying?” Nicholas’s voice echoed Aubrey’s alarm.

“I don’t know yet,” the nurse said. She pointed to a blinking screen. “Her heart rate is elevated and way too high. I’ll call her doctor.” She punched a number on her mobile phone and turned to the web of machines constantly monitoring Germaine: the EKG, the automatic blood pressure cuff on her leg, the red clamp on her finger for her oxygen level. Her pulse, the urine catheter, the IV line for the saline drip—modern medicine kept an up to the minute check on the comatose woman. She shook her head. “Everything seems fine.”

Dr. Ramachandra, the neurologist, entered the room. His dark blue turban announced he was a practicing Sikh and he brought an air of calm into the room. He carefully examined Germaine then quietly ordered a new round of tests and x-rays to make sure nothing new had occurred.

“I’m starting an IV of morphine. It should help bring down the heart rate.”

“But why is she crying?” Nicholas said. “Is she in pain? Can you tell if she’s hurting?”

“The truthful answer is we can’t,” the doctor replied, and he was the best neurologist in London. “But everything physical has been checked over many times and there are no internal injuries. Whatever is happening to her is in her mind. Something she is thinking is causing her tears. That in itself is encouraging; for it shows us her brain is functioning. How well, we don’t know yet.”

Aubrey moved to a chair by the bed and sat down. He looked pale and drawn. Germaine was like his own child and hovered in a coma that was neither death nor life, but somewhere in-between.

Nicholas kept a watchful eye on Aubrey. Since that first day over three weeks ago, when the medical helicopter transported Germaine to Queen’s Hospital in London, he had kept long vigils in the brightly lit hospital room. He was an old friend of Aubrey’s and wanted to help him through this trying time. And Nicholas felt a personal bond with this headstrong woman that was impossible to explain.

“If she is not in pain, then what caused this?” Nicholas reached down and wiped the tears from her face. A deep frown on his face, he gave Germaine’s hand a gentle touch.

“What goes on inside people who are in a coma?”

“Stranger things than we can imagine,” Dr. Ramachandra replied. “Comatose patients are in a unique and largely unknown mental state: physically alive, but living in another plane of being far beyond their normal waking life.”

The doctor carefully watched the red, blinking numbers on the machine that monitored Germaine’s blood pressure and heart rate, and nodded his head. Her heart rate slowly returned to a more normal range. She stopped crying. Whatever had caused the storm of tears was over.

“Let’s step out into the hall. We can talk more freely there,” Dr. Ramachandra said. It was long after visiting hours and the hallway was deserted.

“There have been some studies where doctors have asked patients to report their experiences after awakening from a coma,” he said. “They are quite varied. And dramatic. Some patients reported experiencing great love stories or titanic battles for their soul. And many reported a spiritual connection that had long-lasting effects after they recovered from their injuries. A few had vivid memories from their own lives, or attempts to connect to the outer world, and a great many recalled some kind of reaction to the surrounding environment, although they could not speak or respond.”

Dr. Ramachandra paused, as though to make an important point.

“Always assume the patient can hear. That is why I asked you to step out of the room. Never talk about her as if she is not here. Speak to her in as normal a way as possible. Keep her sensory input active. Sing to her. Tell her stories. Read to her. She may hear everything you say and not be able to answer.”

The doctor’s pager interrupted with a small, but insistent beep. He glanced at it and turned to go.

He placed his hands together in a small Indian gesture and said “An emergency. I will check on her again tomorrow. Remember; treat her as if she was awake. Namaste.”

Always assume the patient can hear.
Nicholas passed through the hospital’s revolving doors the next day wondering what Germaine heard, locked in her silent coma. What thoughts went through her mind, closed off from the world and people who cared deeply about her? Or maybe she did not think anything, just rested in some deep sleep oblivious to anything that was part of the living world.

Nicholas shivered at that thought. It was too close to the way many people envisioned death, and he didn’t think death was like that at all. Not for one minute. Germaine might be in a coma, a puzzling kind of sleep, but he was sure life did not end in some blank, dark nothingness.

He lived close to the earth at Tavistock Farm where the stars wheeled in a never-ending cycle, and the seasons followed each other without fail. How could man think his spirit would escape that cycle and just disappear? So, no. He was sure there had to be something beyond death. And he did not want her to die.

When he entered Germaine’s room, he saw no visible change. Fragile, but still alive. Her bright hair framed a pale face; her translucent skin looked like a mask. Only the dark gray shadows around her eyes and the vivid marks on her face showed the realities of her close call with death.

In the beginning he had stayed around the clock, faithfully reporting her condition and holding Aubrey up through the first terrifying hours and days when she lay silent, never moving and barely breathing. Somehow she had been saved by the timber that fell across the rubble of the burial chamber. When they finally reached her. she lay next to the skeleton, one arm thrown up over her head, as if warding off something, and one arm over the skeleton. It was a miracle she was alive and not crushed.

Nicholas was still amazed at her bravery in entering that underground chamber, though from the first, despite all her bravado, he had glimpsed an insecure being behind her brisk outer shell.

He thought back to that night at the conference when he first met Germaine. She had such a quick edge to her, as though angry feelings simmered just below her skin, waiting to bubble up and spill over. She had been tart, willing to spar with him about everything. He liked her spirit, her willingness to challenge even the sacred cows in archaeology.

Later that first night, he came back to the conference room, looking for a lost notebook. The big room was empty, except for her. She stood looking out the window as a storm brewed outside. He was caught by a far different impression of her from the combative woman he had met earlier. Her shoulders drooped a little, and her head tilted down in a dejected way. At the time, he thought he had a glimpse of the child she once was: a small, solitary child.