Daughters of the World

By Stephen Elder

The Shining Man and his wife return on another mission. When Filiae Mundi, a wealthy but secretive organization, nominates Elaine to its governing Council, Frank and Elaine go to Washington, a nexus of power and multilayered danger. Elaine proposes an initiative to put more women into elective office in an effort to fix the dysfunctional Congress. If successful, her plan may save the world, but it could mean exposing Frank as well as the organization itself to unwanted public attention. Frank manages to maintain his ongoing ministry to the animal world, but an unexpected turn of events taxes his powers to their limit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304811707

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Daughters of the World

DAUGHTERS OF THE WORLD

Copyright  © 2014 Stephen Elder

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means--whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic--without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this book is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN 978-1-304-81170-7

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Prayer Attributed to St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much

Seek to be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Chapter 1

Frank

Saint Francis did not feel like an instrument of peace though he had every reason to be a contented man. Now known as Frank Azerian, he was living in a small North Carolina town, he was married to a wonderful woman he loved with all his heart, and he was blessed with close friends for the first time in centuries. Nonetheless, something was gnawing at him, like a little mouse in the pantry nibbling holes in various containers.

Lying around in bed was not going to stop the Gnawing Something, so Frank got up, threw on a bathrobe, and went into the kitchen to make coffee. He ground the beans and waited patiently for the water to drip through. The saint was good at waiting patiently. When enough coffee had trickled through, he poured a mug full and replaced the carafe to continue filling.

It was a pleasant late October Monday in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Saint Francis grabbed a bag of animal treats from its place next to the back door, opened the door, drew in a lungful of the fresh morning air, and carried his mug out to the small patio.

Frank was an air connoisseur. The air quality in the modern world was generally poorer than in the past, particularly in the distant past of the thirteenth century of his first life. There were so many more people in the world nowadays, and far less pollution-fighting greenery. Despite that, modern cities usually smelled better because the streets were not full of horse dung anymore and people normally didn’t dump night soil in the gutter. Foul odors from industries like tanneries were also not normally found in urban centers. Frank remembered eighteenth century Paris as especially noxious.

This air was good. He sat at the table under the large oak tree in the back yard, home to Bentwing and Singer, a pair of barred owls that had adopted the twoleggers as pets and watched over them. The owls were asleep at the moment, but Frank would not be alone for long. As soon as the wild creatures in the town learned that Saint Francis was living among them, they flocked to see the Shining Man. Neighborhood pets would also drop in at the Azerian back yard to chat with him (and to get snacks that always seemed to fall from the table).

The first to show up today was Beethoven, a large male mockingbird with an amazing repertoire, even by mockingbird standards. It included the song of every other neighborhood species as well as a comically accurate imitation of the neighbor’s lawnmower. The bird’s white wing markings resembled a flying pinwheel as it flapped toward the table.

As it perched on the chair back, it gave the Common Greeting: May you be full and safe, Shining Man.

Full and safe, Allsinger. What news?

The bird cocked its head to survey the tabletop for the food that usually appeared with Frank. All is well. Where is your mate?

Elaine was far away at the moment, and that was what was gnawing at him. He had been walking the earth on various assignments from God for over eight hundred years. The first seven centuries had seen changes, as happens in every civilization, but the pace of change had quickened in the past hundred years, even more in the past two decades. His medieval sense of order was being challenged. He managed to cope with modern life when Elaine was around, but it was harder when she was not. Her new responsibilities were keeping her away from home for up to a week at a time.

The responsibilities began three years ago. While Elaine and Frank were visiting a national park in South Dakota to solve a mystery involving animals and pollution, they rescued a bison herd from a grass fire. The dramatic adventure was captured on film and broadcast nationwide. The publicity generated from the film clip of Elaine riding an enormous bull bison soon led to appearances on several talk shows, and Elaine became a national celebrity. During her appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s show Elaine conceived the idea of starting a foundation to bolster the sagging finances of the National Park Service. Thus STAPL was born—Save The American Park Lands. Elaine’s duties as the head of the foundation had kept her very busy ever since.

Frank broke off his introspection to answer the bird.

She is away. She returns in four daynights.

Actually, Elaine wouldn’t be back for five days, but that was hard to explain to animals whose grasp of numbers usually stopped at four. Two wings and two legs, or four legs. After four came many.

Frank pulled several raisins out of the bag and dropped them on the table for the mockingbird. The sight of its favorite treat effectively shut its little beak and Frank was spared further questions. He scattered some crumbs on the ground and went back into the house. He set the cup in the sink and went into the bedroom to get dressed.

In his first life, he had died at the age of forty-five, frail and sickly from twenty years of fasting, illness, and exertion. However, God had prepared him well for his centuries of frequently rigorous missionary work—the figure staring back at him from Elaine’s full-length mirror was average height, but with broad shoulders, a sturdy frame, and long arms that ended in strong long-fingered workman’s hands. Tousled brown hair topped a Roman nose, generous lips, and amazingly calm brown eyes.

He glanced at his watch. It was time to go to the clinic to help Manuela.

Chapter 2

Elaine is Troubled

Zoom in.

The satellite camera zoomed in on the back yard of a Thirties-era bungalow and focused on a man sitting at a patio table. A bird alighted on the table and the man shook something out of a bag.

Enhance.

The image sharpened. The bird was a mockingbird. The something was a small handful of raisins.

Elaine Azerian could now see her husband. The camera resolution was so good it was like sitting at the table with him. She could even read his expression. He looked pensive. She watched for another minute, long enough to see him pick up his coffee and go back into the house. She glanced at her watch. It was almost time for him to go to the clinic.

Elaine was sitting at a console located in a large interior room on the top floor of a ten-story building on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, not far from the National Zoo. Both the system and the building were owned by Filiae Mundi, a private organization founded over one hundred fifty years ago by a small group of wealthy women who had combined their fortunes and put them to work for good causes, especially causes involving women. The Daughters of the World were immensely wealthy and intensely secretive.

Filiae Mundi’s IT department occupied the whole tenth floor. The main room had a central semi-circular array of large monitors surrounding the console. There were also several other smaller workstations staffed by busy technicians. The console controlled a sophisticated surveillance system fed by six geosynchronous satellites. Elaine nodded to the technician and walked to the elevator.

Filiae Mundi had given Elaine access to its satellite surveillance system and office space in return for finding the source of a problem on its estate in West Virginia, which started a chain of events culminating in the buyout of an adjacent coal mine. Filiae Mundi then donated the mine to the National Park Service and built a brand new Museum of American Mining on the donated land. The Filiae Mundi headquarters, a rambling estate building, was converted into a hotel to serve visitors to the new National Park, and the organization picked up and moved to the nation’s capital.

STAPL’s first floor office suite consisted of a reception foyer, Elaine’s office, a large computer room staffed by four data techs, and two smaller offices belonging to STAPL’s CEO and CFO. For her office Elaine had chosen spare décor, yet the vibrant earth colors and floral arrangements managed to radiate warmth and a certain feminine softness. On one wall was a large copy of the Ride Through Fire, the painting that LeRoy Neiman had graciously donated to the Barnes Cave National Park in commemoration of Elaine’s feat. On the adjacent wall hung a decorator piece, a sheet of water constantly coursing down a rectangular slab of grey-green slate into a trough where it was pumped back up to the top. The piece overlooked a conversation area featuring comfortable chairs matching a coffee table that could elevate to a thirty-inch working height at a touch of a button.

Her peaceful surroundings notwithstanding, Elaine was troubled. Even worse, she was troubled that she was troubled, the first step in the kind of circuitous logic that can paralyze the mind if not controlled.

The immediate cause of her unease was Bobby Ray Thibodeau, an aging Republican Creationist from Louisiana who appeared with her yesterday on The Congressional Round Table, a local Sunday morning talk show. Thibodeau was now serving his seventh term in the House, propped up by large contributions from oil interests.

The program topic was Special Interest groups. Congressman Thibodeau had seen fit to question the considerable sums of money Elaine’s foundation was receiving. With Christian patience, Elaine explained that she had founded STAPL because the Bush administration had dealt drastic cutbacks to the Park Service budget. She also explained that STAPL was not a lobby. It was not seeking special legislation nor advancing any particular ideology. Its sole concern was the National Park system, which was in bad shape. STAPL was trying to repair it by soliciting and dispensing funds. STAPL’s books, unlike those of lobbying organizations, were open and published online daily.

Unsatisfied with her detailed and lucid explanation, Thibodeau had announced that he was going to take a close look at STAPL because special interest groups had gotten out of control and had too great an influence.

The words You should know, Congressman! were almost out of Elaine’s mouth before she remembered that Washington considered it unsporting to take potshots at Thibodeau, a famously easy target. She throttled her response back to, Congressman, it sounds like your office needs some technical support. I’d be happy to send someone over who can operate a computer.

Thibodeau’s expression had shown that he wasn’t aware that he had just been zapped. The show’s producer quickly cut to a commercial because the show’s moderator was cracking up.

After the show, Elaine continued to be bothered by the Congressman’s attitude because she couldn’t understand why he was picking on STAPL, possibly the most transparent organization the nation’s capital had ever seen. The show’s producer assured Elaine that the Congressman was renowned for shooting off his mouth before his brain was loaded, and he had once again proven that he was a fool. The producer even sent her several viewer e-mails showing overwhelming support of both her and STAPL.

Frank had also called her with reassurances. Her beloved’s soothing voice reminded her that he was the other reason for her unsettled mind. As her saintly husband was driving her to the airport last Friday, she had mentioned moving to Washington since she was there so much. Frank the Unflappable had said it was something to consider, but she caught the brief tightening of his hand on the steering wheel. Not many people really like to move, but Frank’s whole second life (and much of his first) had been nomadic. True, he had occasionally stayed in one place for up to a decade, but then it was on to the next mission.

Elaine doubted if leaving the quaint little town of Pittsboro was the reason for his reaction, but if not that, then what? Elaine considered the notion that her husband might be intimidated by what he called the mondo grande. He was not drawn to glitz and celebrity like so many people, but by the same token, he’d never had a problem dealing with the so-called high and mighty. Eight centuries of life experience will tend to do that for you. The expression been there, done that reached its fullest dimension with Saint Francis. She thought it unlikely that the Washington scene would discomfit him after spending time at the court of the Borgias, which had a similar atmosphere. It was not a milieu he would seek out by nature, but he could certainly handle it if he had to.

Maybe it was something else. Elaine reviewed their communications over the past several years, parsed the structure of their relationship, and examined her husband’s habits and actions for signs of discontent. She found nothing that rose to the level of needing attention or repair. He showed every sign of still being madly in love with her and the sight of him still warmed her from the top of her head to the pit of her stomach. He brightened her world, but then, her wonderful husband had been secretly brightening everyone’s world for centuries.

Could it be that he just missed her because she was on the road half the time? Perhaps that was it. He had been alone for eight hundred years and had acquired just a bit of self-sufficiency, but it didn’t mean he didn’t miss her company. She was about to board this train of thought when the phones started ringing. Her day had begun.

Chapter 3

The Hunter and the Woodsman

The hunter had an uneasy feeling. With today’s high-powered weaponry, there wasn’t as much danger from animals, but hunting certainly wasn’t risk-free, especially if you were hunting bear. The creatures were large, powerful, intelligent, and as fast as greased lightning when they wanted to be. She-bears were of unpredictable temperament and even more dangerous when cubs were present.

Just like women, the hunter reflected.

He didn’t like hunting a bear when it was about to lair up for the winter. Eastern black bears are generally mild-mannered compared to grizzlies or polar bears, but there is always an occasional nasty one and you can’t tell the animal’s temperament just by looking at it.

Also, black bears get lethargic before denning, but not all of them den at the same time. You can’t always tell whether a bear is still stuffing itself in preparation for hibernation, or already sleepy and heading for bed. A lot of inexperienced hunters got hurt by misjudging the alertness level of bears.

But he was experienced. He had been tracking this bear for several miles now. His uneasiness stemmed not so much from the No Hunting signs, but that this land belonged to a large private foundation held in high esteem by the locals. There’d be no sympathy for him if he got caught. And he knew that the tract was watched over by someone he absolutely did not want to mess with.

He slowed. He was downwind from his prey so the animal could not smell him coming. As he came to the top of a rise, he heard the familiar whuff of a bear in the clearing below. Carefully he knelt and moved his rifle around to the front and screwed the silencer on. He set the stock against his shoulder and sighted his quarry. The distance was about seventy yards, an easy shot. The gun emitted a slight cough, and the bear dropped.

The hunter stood and walked quickly down to the dead bear. He put on long-sleeved vinyl gloves, unpacked a folding bone saw, removed the paws, put them in heavy-duty plastic bags, and sealed them. Then he unsheathed a razor-sharp filleting knife and removed the bear’s gall bladder, a somewhat messier operation. He put it in another bag, and then arranged the bags in a canvas bag with a shoulder strap. The whole operation took him four and a half minutes.

As he stepped back from the corpse, he checked to see if any blood got on his uniform. None had. He was native to these parts, and the thought of leaving all that good meat behind was alien to him, but his immediate objective was money. His wife was pregnant, and his state salary was not high enough to support both a child and his unfortunate gambling addiction.

He looked around once more and went back the way he came.

***

The woodsman was tall and rangy, with the kind of lean musculature that is much stronger than it looked. He wore faded blue jeans, sturdy hiking boots, and a worn brown leather jacket. A hunting knife and a large hatchet hung from his belt. Large hands gripped a walking staff.

The woodsman stopped. His nostrils dilated as he sampled the air, his head slowly swiveling from side to side. The smell was coming from there. He changed direction as he stepped forward, feet falling soundlessly on the forest floor despite the abundance of twigs and dry leaves.

He stopped again to check his bearings, and then broke into a small clearing where he came to a halt. In the middle of the clearing was a dead black bear surrounded by several turkey vultures feeding on the carcass. They were hungry because their food supply was thinning out–animals had already begun holing up for hibernation. There was some compensation from deer-hunting season because deer, even though mortally wounded, sometimes eluded the hunters before finally succumbing. The large birds always found them.

A dead bear was a feast.

The woodsman could see that coyotes had also found the bear. They had ripped open the stomach area, making it easier for other scavengers to feed without having to work their way through the hide.

A large raven had joined the vultures and was working on the bear’s tongue when the woodsman came upon the scene. Normally birds take flight if a larger predator or a human approached, but the vultures didn’t leave because the woodsman was no ordinary human. He was as much a part of the woods as they were, and he was a very familiar sight.

The birds stopped feeding and waited to see what the woodsman would do. As he started moving slowly toward the carcass, they hopped back a couple of steps. The raven, however, didn’t move. The man nodded to the bird and examined the bear’s body. He saw that the paws had been cut off.

Although the woodsman was not a hunter, he regarded hunting as a natural predator activity, and man was the ultimate predator, the top of the food chain. Nonetheless, he was angry. It is one thing to kill an animal to feed hungry mouths, and there were plenty of those in the West Virginia hills. It was quite another to kill an animal for just a small part of it, leaving the rest to rot. It was like the great slaughter on the Western plains when hunters took bison horns and hide, sometimes only the horns, and left the rest to rot, as did the elephant poachers in Africa who killed just for the ivory in the tusks.

Whoever killed this bear left a lot of good meat behind, to say nothing of the hide. It had to have been a poacher. This wasn’t the first example of a poacher’s work that he’d run across, but it was the first one he’d found on Filiae Mundi land. It made him angry. These were his woods, and this killing was a personal affront.

The woodsman stepped back from the carcass and motioned to the birds. Oddly enough, the birds understood the gesture. They immediately hopped back and resumed feasting.

The raven cocked his head at the man and pecked at the side of the bear’s skull. It stopped, looked at the man again, and pecked at the skull a second time. The man walked slowly around to the head of the animal and knelt down. This time the vultures did not move. He examined the head and found a bullet hole below the ear. At least it had been a clean shot and had killed the bear instantly.

Suddenly his eyes hardened. He recognized this bear—it was the old sow he had seen when he served as guide for those city people he met last year. The woman was an animal doctor, but as for the man—well, he didn’t know what the man was—he was like nobody the woodsman had ever met. The man could actually talk with the animals.

Since then the woodsman had spent time with the man whenever the couple came to visit his woman, the daughter of Filiae Mundi’s chairman. He enjoyed the man’s company because the two of them got along very well. They didn’t talk much, but when they did talk, it revealed a deep-seated harmony in their worldviews. The man was just as different from other people in his own way as the woodsman was in his.

The man’s name was Frank.

It was time to talk to Frank.

Chapter 4

Saint Francis at Work

Saint Francis probably understood animals better than any veterinarian in history (with the possible exception of Dr. Doolittle). Nonetheless, since he was not licensed in the state of North Carolina, the de facto head of the Azerian Animal Clinic was Dr. Manuela De la Rosa, an attractive black woman from the Dominican Republic by way of New York City. De la Rosa had been initially wary about joining the clinic because she did not want to take orders from someone who was not a licensed vet, even though that someone was married to the clinic owner, but Elaine Azerian had assured her that Frank’s role would be restricted to consultant and facilitator, and that Manuela would have the final word on the treatment of her patients.

In addition to his unique diagnostic abilities, Frank also translated for the animals, and also for Manuela when her Nooyawk-ese proved too difficult for the locals to understand. When Manuela eventually discovered who Frank really was, her initial awe was soon overcome by Frank’s kindness and approachability. She kept her New York chutzpah, but also her reverence because she was a good Catholic girl.

As Frank entered the clinic, Darla, the clinic receptionist, told him Manuela was with a patient, a cat with a cancerous growth on the left foreleg. He could hear her talking with the cat’s owner in an examining room.

When Manuela heard Frank’s voice in the outer office, she asked him to come in. She had already determined that amputating the leg would save the cat, but the animal was getting old, and she felt that living its remaining days on only three legs was something the cat ought to have a say in. Frank could ask the cat how it felt about being three-legged.

After introducing him to the owner and the patient, Manuela gave Frank a brief description of the cat’s illness. The saint turned to the animal.

May you be full and safe, Hunter.

Full and safe. You are the Shining Man! I have heard of you.

Are you in pain, Hunter?

Yes, the Badgrowth has made my leg sore.

The Healer can relieve your pain, but she will have to remove your leg to do it. You will not be able to move around as you once did. Is this acceptable, or do you want to keep the leg and let the Badgrowth take you?

I do not hunt any more. It would be good to have some time without pain before I join the One. Let her take the leg.

It shall be so.

The cat’s owner was a walking ad for what the well-dressed Soccer Mom was wearing these days—nicely-fitted yoga pants, a boatneck T with a light sweater with the arms tied across the front in New England Yuppie fashion. She looked anxiously from Manuela to Frank to the cat.

What did you just do? she asked.

I’ve rehabbed a lot of animals, Frank said. Dr. De la Rosa makes treatment decisions. She occasionally consults me to see if I think the animal can deal with the rehab. If it can’t, there is not much point to the surgery.

What about Inandout?

Inandout?

That’s what we named him as a kitten. Whatever side of the door he was on, he always wanted to be on the other side.

Ah. Well, I think Inandout will do fine with rehab. A little more time without pain would be good.

That’s wonderful, the owner enthused. My daughter will be so happy. She adores Inandout.

Manuela thanked Frank, who retreated to his office. She told the owner to leave the cat and they would do the operation tomorrow. Inandout would have to stay in the clinic for a couple of days for observation, meaning Frank would talk to him about how to deal with a three-legged life. 

Manuela could not talk to animals like Frank and Elaine, but she had a different unique talent—she could read auras. It enabled her to read an animal’s mood. It helped her read people as well, a more difficult feat because of the wider range and complexity of human emotions. It also made her an infallible lie detector. You did not want to play poker with Manuela De la Rosa.

Saint Francis had an unusually strong aura. It was visible to animals and small children and was why creatures called him the Shining Man. Manuela had read Frank’s troubled aura when he came in and sensed that something was wrong. After her client left, she wandered over to Frank’s office and sat in the chair next to his small desk.

What’s up, Frank?

Oh, nothing.

Manuela dropped her chin slightly and gave him her renowned Don’t mess with me look.

Something’s up. You know I can tell.

I’m just a little out of sorts today. It’s no biggie.

His attempt at current slang clanged against her ear like a dropped cymbal, but playing shrink to Saint Francis was a little too daunting for her to push too hard.

She cast out her line carefully. Elaine will be back this weekend, right?

Ah! There it was! Frank’s normally intense yellow aura was a little dull today, but at the mention of Elaine, it brightened. It might be that he missed his wife—more than usual, it seemed.

Frank sighed. He kept forgetting to guard against Manuela’s handy little talent. She’d obviously read him again and had found him out.

Yes, Saturday afternoon.

Good. Want anything from the General Store? I’m going to lunch.

No, but thanks, Manuela.

She’d pick up a little dessert something for him anyway. That was the end of the conversation because Frank had retreated inside himself.

Chapter 5

Frank in the Time of the Black Death

Things were a little slow—unusual at the Azerian Animal Clinic—so Frank went home a little after four. Instead of going straight into the house, he walked up the drive to the end of the yard and slid open the door to his ancient stepvan, a late 70’s model Chevy with a Grumman body. Not very many of them were made. The vehicle had a three-speed column shift, and no luxuries, meaning no radio or power anything.

Frank eased himself into the driver’s seat, two minimally cushioned slabs mounted on a steel pedestal. The seat was only mildly comfortable under the best of circumstances, but to him it seemed like slipping on a comfortable old shoe.

He started up the engine. The inline six idled with a noisy rumble that suggested a newly emergent hole in the muffler. He’d have to look into that. The dependable old stepvan was the last in a long series of vehicles the saint had owned over the centuries.

His mind went back to the first vehicle he had ever owned, a peddler’s cart with wooden wheels and a wooden rack. It was a gift from a grateful family and it served him faithfully for over fifty years. He remembered taking it apart to fire-harden the axle and to drill holes down through the mounts so he could force goose grease onto the axle. The year was 1348…

Traveling through Italy as Brother Bernardone, a mendicant monk, Francis had arrived in Florence in the spring of the year, just ahead of the Black Death, the scourge that wiped out half of Europe’s population.

God had spoken to Francis two months earlier and had directed the monk to the abbey of Badia Fiorentino. At the time, Francis did not know why he would be needed there, but the advent of the plague soon answered his question.

As the plague progressed across Europe, wanderers were viewed with increasing suspicion and hostility. Foreigners, Jews, gypsies, beggars, and lepers were persecuted rather more than customary for the times. Even mendicant monks were not above suspicion. However, Brother Bernardone’s reputation as a healer had preceded him, and as he entered the city gates, he was stopped by the wife of a wheelwright. The desperate woman dragged him straightway to a hovel where her husband was suffering from a strange ailment. Lumps had appeared on his armpits, and they were turning black.

It would take over six hundred years before the causes and treatment of the Black Death were understood, for which reason it kept coming back up into the twentieth century. Physicians were hardly more than barbers in the fourteenth century and had little understanding of disease. They were completely baffled by the Black Death and the virulent rapidity of its spread. At the time of the first outbreak Francis was no different in that respect, but he had acquired significant knowledge of folk remedies. Years of observation had also taught him certain principles of treatment. Cleanliness, he had discovered, was truly next to godliness, and patients who were clean had a far better chance of surviving almost anything. He had also found that sunlight and dry conditions increased a patient’s chances, but it was hard to fight the entrenched disregard for basic personal and domestic hygiene that characterized European life in medieval times. In addition, the medical establishment was hidebound in the Middle Ages and would remain so for centuries to come. Resistance to new ideas was the rule, not the exception.

Francis had the wife clean the hovel and let in some sun while he administered liberal doses of garlic and olive leaf extract, two potions he had found to be good for almost anything. The combination of treatments, along with a healthy dollop of God’s grace and the wheelwright’s good genes, sufficed to pull the fellow back from the brink.

Luckily for the man’s wife, the disease had not quite progressed to the pneumonic stage, where the nasty little Yersina pestis was also spread by airborne droplets coughed out by the ill. Francis had no knowledge of bacteria in general or the plague germ in particular back then, but years of empirical evidence had suggested to him that breathing the vapors of the afflicted was not good. Part of his standard advice to relatives of patients was to cover the mouth and nose in the presence of disease.

The grateful wheelwright gave his doctor a just-completed cart. Francis just as gratefully accepted it because he had been lugging around an ever-increasing collection of medicines. The cart would greatly facilitate his mission.

The wheelwright was one of the first cases of the Black Death in Florence, and by the time Francis reached the abbey several days later, the disease was already well on the way to becoming the epidemic that would eventually kill two-thirds of the city’s ninety thousand inhabitants.

The abbey was located in the heart of the city. Years ago, Francis had spent several months there studying under Badia Fiorentino’s abbot, Fra Donato. The abbot himself greeted Francis at the gate. He was not feeling well, and Francis recognized the first stages of the disease he had just encountered with the wheelwright. He quickly persuaded the old man to take to his bed and began the course of treatment that had saved the wheelwright. Unfortunately, the potions did not succeed with the old man, who was nowhere near as