RAMPION IN THE BELLTOWER
by Merrie Haskell
n the third day of the plague, no priests emerged from hiding to perform mass consecration and burial, as they had on the previous mornings. The hot sun rose to silence, and silence reigned in the square below, while corpses rotted and pools of blood dried.
In the shadows, the plague-dead slept.
"I wish I could ring a peal," Rampion said, standing beside her grandfather in the lunette window's tall arch. It was not the first time she had said this since sealing the brass doors of the campanile.
"Perhaps tomorrow, Rampion," the grandfather lied.
"Perhaps, Grandpa," she said, answering lie with lie. Neither of them would ring the bells again. The water was gone, finished that very morning.
"Take me to the western parapet, Ramp," the grandfather said, not adding, "While you can still carry me."
They sat quietly in the shade of the belltower, staring up at the cloudless sky and the wheeling birds until the sun topped the campanile and bathed them with hot, candescent light.
"I wish it would rain," Rampion said, her voice as high and fragile as a child's. She fanned herself with one hand, and held her heavy hair off her neck with the other. She did not look like a child anymore, but rather a revenant of her mother. But Rampion, inheritor of her mother's dark hair and dark eyes, showed no sign of inheriting her mother's dark arts. Once, the grandfather had prayed that she would not turn to witchery and abandon his belltower. But that was before the plague. Now he wished for many things he had prayed against before.
"I wish you had gone with Simen," he said.
"No. You don't."
"You wouldn't have had to marry him."
She laughed. "Not marry him? When brave, strong Simen rescued me from the blood death, would I have been allowed to be so ungrateful? His mother would have finished sewing my veil before we passed the city walls." Her gallows humor brought tears to the grandfather's eyes. She squeezed his still-strong hands. "I wish I had wings to fly us away from here," she whispered.
He said, "You should not have stayed for me."
She embraced him quickly, and laughed into his ear. "Grandpa, I stayed for the bells!" He could not hide the comfort this gave him, and she smiled. "And when the prince returns for his mother, you and I will ring the bells together. And then he'll know we are here, and ride to our rescue!"
The prince had been far from his capital when the blood-plague descended, and the grandfather did not think the young man would risk himself even for his mother. But he had no wish to dash the girl's dream with his cynicism, not when she had stayed for him.
She moved his chair to the lancet window in the clavier room, then went to the eastern parapet to stare for a while at the city gate. The gate never opened, despite her fervent prayers.
