To Kill the Christ! - Chapter Fourteen: A Contest of Wills

       The year flew. Progress was made in many directions, but no one was satisfied for an especially cold winter and inadequate finances had hindered the start of Long Reach. Fortunately, they could learn the language even in the cold.

       There was great difficulty staring them in the face. All three time-travelers were convinced that it would be easier and faster to get farmers, sheepherders, and craftsmen to change their ways if they were in different accommodations and on different land. Peasants, especially, could be tradition bound. Villagers weren't much better, they were finding. It was imperative that Long Reach get started.

       It was an unusually warm day for the beginning of May, AD20, with clouds drifting in a deep blue sky when Carl and Rebecca surveyed the Long Reach site with Marcus, who was using a long tape made from the new metric standard with Sertorius as his helper. He was now familiar with Arabic numerals.

       Closer to earth, a gentle breeze was blowing north, dulling the noise of an approaching mob until it was a quarter-mile away. Finally hearing the babble of voices, they vaulted into their saddles, prepared to fight or flee, as the guard who had been posted to the north galloped up to report.

       "Sire," he saluted, "people from the north are making their way to Nottingham. They're fleeing the redspot plague."

       Smallpox, the scourge of Europe and the world. Literally hundreds of thousands had died from the disease during the Middle Ages, Carl recalled. Particularly virulent forms of the disease had reoccurred from almost time immemorial. He sent Catuvolcus back to Nottingham to alert the cavalry and to bring them through Sherwood Forest. Access to the village was to be sealed off. No one could enter or leave the village from Sherwood Forest.

       "No one not a part of our party, Catuvolcus. Do you understand?"

       "Yes, my lord," he exclaimed before rushing off.

       "Well," Carl said, looking at Rebecca. "Any ideas?"

       "My bio-terrorism classes may finally come in handy."

       "Think on it. You're our medical specialist. I remember something about the Chinese inventing inoculation and passing it to Europe through the Turks, but I don't remember much about how they did it."

       He turned to get Marcus and his men ready to protect the entrance to the forest. They carried short swords for close combat. Guards armed with bows and swords patrolled the perimeter when a group was working on the Long Reach site. Both Carl and Rebecca carried rifles and small arms, always, and they hastily put on their helmets and jackets, which they had laid aside while surveying. The five horsemen could withstand the panic stricken peasants without difficulty. The problem was to so without injuring anyone.

       The troop gathered on the road to face the peasants, who, seeing the soldiers, stopped but did not quiet.

       Marcus spoke in Latin. "Sir, they look very desperate. They may try to get by us anyway they can."

        Carl reacted. "We'll break them up." They galloped toward the peasants. As they neared them, they could see the fright in their eyes, then like the splitting of the Red Sea, the crowd parted, pouring into the plains on either side of the road, running for their lives.

       The horsemen reined in.

       "Where is your leader?" Carl shouted in Gaelic and Old German.

       Two men cautiously returned to the road, but his pointed sword kept them at bay. Their story was simple. The smallpox had hit many of the homes east of the Trent but north of Long Reach. Those who still lived were driven south. They had crossed over the river to reach Nottingham. "We no have redspots," one leader said. "We flee it."

       Rebecca motioned for the crowd to move into the fields on the east side of the road, away from the Long Reach site. She didn't want that lovely spot to gain further reputation. Carl had the leaders break the mob into families. He promised them food, whereupon he dispatched a soldier to Nottingham to mobilize the village for food and coverings and to dip into the king's stores where necessary. The refugees, Coritani from the regions of Dun and Ger, had brought little with them.

       Neither Rebecca nor Carl had been vaccinated, because the World Health Organization had declared smallpox eradicated in 1980.

       "Our training in bio-terrorism," Rebecca said, "focused on vaccinations in the case of smallpox, though we were brought up to snuff on how it spreads and how it develops in the body.

       "I remember how to make a vaccine from cowpox. I wrote a paper on Edward Jenner for an upper middle school science project. It builds an immunity against smallpox, but it won't help us now."

       "Did you see anyone in Nottingham who was pockmarked?" Carl asked.

       "Yes, Dannoius. He probably has immunity."

       Carl groaned. Dannoius would be able to move among the refugees without fear, showing his power over the disease if he knew he was protected. This incident gave him a perfect opportunity to claim Carl had been wrong in setting the Roman prisoners free and in doing away with the sacrifices that appeased the earth gods. The epidemic was caused by his gods, for they had been spurned.

       "Morius is pocked," Carl remembered. "He must be immune, too." He recalled the numerous scars and pockmarks on his rugged body.

       Rebecca searched her memory. "You're right, the Chinese practiced inoculation long before Jenner discovered vaccination. The Turks learned the practice from the Chinese and we got it from the Turks. The problem's that inoculation uses a live virus, and it requires at least a week or longer at body temperature to attenuate it."

       She dismounted and paced near the road. "If we can keep them quarantined for two weeks, the disease will show itself or die away. Meanwhile, I can go through the peasants to find those who have had smallpox. It's possible they'll get a mild case, and we can use their scabs to make an immunity for us."

       Carl interjected. "That's risky! We get smallpox as well as any other disease they have!"

       "There's no choice. We can move and work among these people if we wear masks and cover ourselves with sheets then boil them to avoid contamination. The virus lives for over a week outside of the body."

       She turned toward the refugees, who looked longingly toward Nottingham. "Surely some of them are infected."

       "But, you said we have to wait a week or longer for the scabs to lose their power."

       "That's the safest way. But we can use them after several days, especially if the scabs fall from someone who previously had smallpox. Their antibodies weaken the virus. The likelihood of getting a more virulent disease increases the less time we allow the scabs to attenuate. Interferon is developed, too, the longer we wait."

       "Did you get that from books or the bio-terrorism classes?"

       "Both."

       Next morning, after a trip to Nottingham for supplies, Rebecca decided to walk among the refugees. She could recognize those who once had smallpox, and she could tell who was coming down with the disease. Carl joined with her, reasoning that if she died from smallpox he would be devastated, so he might as well risk it too.

       The food and blankets from the village had made the people surprisingly docile, though both of them took great care. Several people already exhibited smallpox symptoms: high fever, chills, and backaches, and a few showed imminent signs of skin eruptions or rashes. Rebecca had those people moved into a separate part of the meadow, closer to the river but away from Sherwood and the other refugees.

       She found two women with pockmarks and a few smallpox scabs. Theirs would be a minor case, not deadly to them and potentially less deadly to those to whom they would give the disease. She collected the scabs, which were contagious, in a small piece of vellum, which she placed into an airtight plastic container from the medical kit. That would be warmed by her body for as long as she and Carl dared to go without inoculation. If the disease should begin to spread rapidly among the refugees, she and Carl would have to inoculate sooner.

       Villagers learned to avoid them as they moved through the throng, fearing they were sorcerers who communicated the disease, especially as Rebecca gathered smallpox scabs nearly every day. Each day after inspecting the refugees, they carefully changed clothing, washed their bodies with antiseptic soap, and boiled their clothing and face masks. It was cumbersome but absolutely necessary.

       The warmer days aided their efforts. The Pennines protected this part of England from most of the wind and rains from the west, and clear skies were more abundant here. The villager's remained on the plains. Then several days of rain made their lives miserable, but their misery was shared either by Rebecca or Carl and the ever present soldiers. Every other day, one or the other would return to Nottingham to attend to affairs there, make arrangements for food, and renew the guard around the refugees.

       On the tenth day, Rebecca decided to inoculate Carl and herself. So far they had escaped contamination, but they challenged the gods of disease every time they moved among the refugees. One slip and they could catch a virulent virus.

       Gaio visited them, which allowed Rebecca to explain the process to him. She ground the dried scabs into dust and mixed them with sterilized water so the mixture could be administered easily. She showed what she and Carl were going to do.

       "I want all of you to see that the king and I are being inoculated with the dreaded redspots, what we call smallpox," she announced.

       The officers and soldiers were astonished at her temerity in challenging the gods.

       Then, in sight of the entire refugee camp and the Nottingham guards, she scraped an inch of skin from her arm, punctured the raw skin, and put the attenuated pox of the first specimen in it, repeating the process with Carl.

       Carl spoke in English. "I'd crack a joke, but I can't spit the cotton out of my mouth. I sure hope this works the way you've planned."

       She covered the inoculated area to keep it from becoming infected.

       They waited.

       Morius reported the next day that Dannoius was claiming the two of them would die because they had offended the earth spirits.

       It was time to worry and past time to get earnest in prayer. They had prayed for guidance earlier when making the decision to inoculate. They hoped what they were doing was of God.

       Incubation usually took a week or two, and every ache and pain, every skin eruption took on new meaning. Neither returned to Nottingham after inoculation, and they stayed away from their own men. Rebecca developed a fever on the twelfth day, Carl on the thirteenth, and both ached. A rash showed up four days later, evolving into clear pustules. They ate broth and little else, losing weight and becoming lethargic. Then the clear pox began to turn brown. Finally, the scabs began to fall off. When they lost all of them they were no longer contagious. Now both were protected for life. It had taken a month from infection to freedom from contagion.

       "I meant to tell you earlier," Rebecca slyly mentioned to Carl, "but there is a small chance that a person can die from even the mild smallpox. When we inoculate the villagers, some of them may die."

          "Thanks for sparing me that info! Actually, I think people may die from starvation rather than the disease."

          Their scabs were placed in yet another container, and they began to work among the refugees without fear of infection, though they still had to disinfect their clothes.

       Rebecca systematically placed scabs in different containers, dating them as she did so, in order to determine relative potency. She was teaching Gaio how to conduct science. Gaio consented to be inoculated for if he were going to work among infected patients in the future he needed to be protected.

       While he was in isolation, Rebecca prepared to inoculate the refugees. Further delay would result in more deaths among the people of Dun and Ger. An attractive young woman had already come down with smallpox, and though she seemed to be making it through the fever and aches, she was going to be disfigured for life with deep pockmarks on her face.

       Then the seeming truce between Carl and Dannoius ended. He arrived the morning they were to inoculate the refugees, accompanied by eight women from Nottingham, his two assistants, and his ever present mastiff. He was not surprised that both Carl and Rebecca lived, for his informers had reported what was happening, but their presence would serve his purposes well. He announced to all: "I will take the Nottingham women among those refugees who have red spots to show the spirits are powerful enough to protect them, because I have prayed and sacrificed for them."

       Rebecca looked closely at the women who accompanied Dannoius. They were a mixture of young and old, but all stood in deep fear of the old priest and none wanted to go among the refugees who had smallpox. More important, all had pockmarks.

       "Look at them, Carl. All of them have had smallpox. That old faker knows they won't catch smallpox again. He knows the principle we've been working with, but he's using it for his own ends!"

       Her fury knew no bounds. She planted herself in front of Dannoius, arms on hips, nearly half a head taller than the wizened priest.

       "You fraud!" she yelled in Gaelic and English. "You know they won't catch smallpox because they've already had it. Why haven't you helped your people before this, instead of playing around with their lives!"

       Dannoius recoiled under her verbal attack, then gave a sly smile. Rebecca was speaking so rapidly that none of the Nottinghamers could understand her, including Dannoius, though he guessed the intent of her words.

       It was a humorous scene. An outraged Rebecca, a slightly amused Dannoius with a bristling dog, women cowering in the background, and two very quiet assistants.

       Carl was unamused. Dannoius presented a real dilemma. There's no way Dannoius can take the women among the refugees with smallpox, he thought. That will give undeserved credit to the Druid spirits. On the other hand, I can't refuse him a chance to prove the wood spirits' power, otherwise the people will think I'm afraid of the Druids and their spirits.

       He pulled Rebecca away. "Look, we could get in a contest, pitting Jehovah God against the earth spirits, us against Dannoius, but we would end up doing what he's doing by making a scientific concept religious. We've got to confront Dannoius, but not head on. We've got to channel these concepts so the villagers see what is happening and learn from it."

       He swept his arm toward the refugees who were huddled together, ringed by Nottingham soldiers, and separated from relatives and friends who were either sick or dying of smallpox in the group isolated near the river.

       "We weren't going to inoculate all of these villagers. Not all want to be inoculated, and that will help us because the people can see the effects of the smallpox inoculation." His voice tightened. "Well, we'll let those who want to be protected by Dannoius' spirits choose to do so. We'll inoculate those who're willing to be inoculated."

       Rebecca rechanneled her anger and turned on Carl. "That's murder!"

       "No. Some will die anyway if we allow them to separate themselves out. This way we can show the effects of science against religion in a game where the rules don't favor religion."

       He called Dannoius over and explained that the Nottingham villagers would not be allowed to take part in his charade. Carl's slow speech was understood by all, and relief showed on the Nottinghamers' faces. Dannoius's fury erupted, but Carl deflected it by telling him he would have a chance to show the power of his gods to protect people.

       "You said the earth spirits will protect people if you ask them to do so. Good, ask them to protect these refugees against red spots and we will inoculate"—he used the English word—"many of the others against the disease. After fifteen days we will take those we inoculate and those you pray for among their relatives and friends who have smallpox so they can help them recover. We then will see who catches smallpox, those who have been inoculated or those who are protected by your spirits."

       Too late Dannoius saw the trap of his own making, but there was no way out. He blustered and hurled curses upon Carl's head, but all of the Nottinghamers, including Carl's officers, had heard the challenge. Dannoius would have to take part in the contest or risk enormous loss of face.

       The refugees were split into three camps. Many did not want either the earth spirits or inoculation to protect them, since they were required to help those family members who were diseased. Twenty-one refugees agreed to seek the Druid gods' protection, while only four families, whose mothers and in one case a father, had a glimmer of what was taking place. The women persuaded their husbands to chance inoculation. That meant only fifteen people, including children, but it was enough to compare with Dannoius' group. Thirty-five peasants, supposedly unaffected by smallpox, refused to take part. Without knowing it, they became the control group. Each group was isolated from the others.

       Carl later reported the results to Raphael, who had stayed in Nottingham. "It was almost a scientific experiment," he said. "Rebecca placed those who were inoculated on Long Reach's side of the road. Dannoius took his people apart and for hours poured his soul into loud prayers to the earth spirits. The plague continued to move among the villagers, but not one of those who had been inoculated died, though all caught a fever and had pox." He gave a quick twitch of his shoulders. "We were very fortunate because not all people survive inoculation.

       "All of Dannoius' group contracted smallpox either before or after visiting relatives who had the disease. Several of them died. Others were disfigured. A few in the control group also died, but later all those still healthy asked to be inoculated.

       "God and science blessed us beyond belief."

       Before August was over, according to Carl's reckoning, the plague had run its course among the refugees. Rebecca refined her store of scabs until she had enough to inoculate the entire village of Nottingham. Dannoius' efforts to discredit them had had the opposite effect. The army and most of the people of Nottingham became willing patients though it took several months to complete the task.

       One of the converts was Teutius, an assistant to Dannoius. A husky young acolyte, he had been studying Druidic lore for four years, but the demonstration with smallpox inoculation had shaken his confidence in his received wisdom, and he left Dannoius to follow Carl. Carl immediately began his education in English so he could read the Bible.

       Nottinghamers now were convinced that Carl was stronger than the Druids, and some began to worship him and Rebecca as god and goddess.

       Raphael was incensed. "That's blasphemy. Don't allow them to worship you—Allah will strike you dead!"

       Gaio, ever the artful persuader, argued they should allow the people to worship them as gods. "If you convince the people you are gods, you will get them to do far more for you." Speaking directly to Carl, he said, "Your Long Reach has been greatly delayed by this incident. The people will serve a god faster and more willingly even than a king."

       Raphael was beside himself with such an argument.

       "Gaio," Carl returned, "your argument appeals very much. But I partly agree with Raphael. We aren't gods, and to take the acclaim of people from the true God is blasphemy, although I don't believe God or Allah will strike us dead for doing so. Still, when people proclaimed Paul and Barnabas gods in Lystra, they tore their clothes and loudly proclaimed they were just men, that they were there to point people to the true God."

       He caught himself. That incident won't take place for another fifty years or so, still I'm guided by it. He shook his head in wonderment.

       Turning to Rebecca, he pulled her to him and spoke in English. "A Queen you may be, my love, but a goddess you are not. No goddess would have a pockmark on her rump. Too bad, too. You would have made a dandy Artemis."

       "Speaking of disfigured gods," she retorted, blushing, "I note that you have a birthmark in a rather strange place."

       "Yes," Carl burst into laughter, "that's what all gods have. It identifies them as such."

       Raphael was offended by the talk of gods—even to joke about such a thing was heresy, but unlike Gaio, to whom he explained their banter, he knew they were joking. To Raphael, both Carl and Rebecca were deeply religious people who had imperfect vision. They didn't believe in the same Allah he believed in. On the other hand, Raphael no longer was sure about his own beliefs. There was no Qur'an, no Muhammad, no specific direction from Allah to His people, the Arabs, and there wouldn't be for another six hundred years! It was more than the spirit could bear.

       He burned with envy whenever he saw Carl and Rebecca together. He had no woman with whom to share his thoughts, warm his bed, and bear his children. And his weakness made it less likely he would find a helpmate who would love him for himself. Being a part of the tripartite leadership of Nottingham gave him power and prestige, and in the future it would grow beyond the bounds of Nottingham, but he would always be third in order. And he could never ignore his crippling injury, for it crippled him in spirit as well as body.

       Raphael remained sitting in the great room they used for briefings, chin tucked deep into his thin chest, long after Carl and Rebecca had gone. What should I do about Jesus before he becomes the Christ?