The Saint & The Healer (Ch. 2: Ember)

The next morning broke without color. A wind stirred the dust along the road to the lower quarter, where the buckets hung dry over the old well.

Matthias walked alone. The herbs in his satchel rustled like.

He did not know if she would see him. He did not know what he expected to find. Only that the apothecary had said her name as if it mattered.

Tova.

He repeated it under his breath, unsure if it was a request, a warning, or a prayer.

At the edge of the quarter, where the well held only shadow and the smoke smelled faintly of vinegar, Tova had boiled her hands three times before dawn.

Once for what she had touched. Once for what she might have missed. Once because she no longer trusted the first two.

The vinegar stung the raw places between her knuckles, but she made no sound. Pain was proof. Silence was safety.

Her home was a single room at the edge of the quarter. Herbs hung low, windows shuttered, the door latched with a cloth soaked in rosemary oil. Nothing entered without burning. Nothing left unwashed.

She moved like a woman who had already buried too many names.

I have tried to enter. I have tried in breath, in cloth, in the skin of a neighbor she once tended. But she is relentless. I retreat from her. Not in fear. In reverence.

The knock came mid-morning. Not frantic. Not hollow with grief. Just three firm taps.

Tova stood still. She waited to see if the knock would come again.

It did.

She unlatched the door slowly, hand wrapped in a clean cloth.

On the other side stood a man in a monk’s robe, hood lowered. He didn’t step forward.

“You’re Tova?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “And you’re breathing. That’s always a start.”

He gave a faint nod, the corners of his mouth twitching with something close to a smile.

“I don’t want to waste your time,” he said. “But I think I’m already wasting mine.”

“Are you ill?” she asked.

“No, I want to help the ill.” he responded.

“Step inside” she said. He entered, and she closed the door behind him.

I watched them both. The one who seeks to name me. And the one who already has.

The door closed behind him with a soft wooden click.

Tova moved ahead of him, silent but precise. She motioned to a stool beside the hearth. Clean, wiped, waiting.

“Sit,” she said. “Don’t touch anything.”

Matthias obeyed. He could smell the vinegar, thick in the air, sharp enough to sting the corners of his eyes.

“I’ve heard things about you, you know.” she said without turning.

“All of them disappointing, I’m sure.”

That got the barest flicker of a smile.

“You’re not the first to come looking for answers,” she said. “You might be the first who doesn’t pretend to already have them.”

Matthias looked around the room, herbs hanging in rows, powders labeled in a language he couldn’t read.

“You must have been shunned as a witch. So, why haven’t you left?” he asked.

“Why haven’t you?” she snapped.

He paused. “Because I couldn’t.”

“Neither could I,” she said.

They speak gently, but not softly. I hear in their silence what no chant has ever sung. Not defiance, but resistance. They do not beg me to leave. They study me instead. It unsettles me.

Tova poured a dark liquid into a shallow dish and placed it between them.

“Your hands,” she said.

He hesitated. “This will burn.”

“Yes,” she said. “That means it’s working.”

Tova watched as Matthias dipped his fingers into the disinfectant. He winced but didn’t pull away.

“Good,” she said. “Some men flinch at pain. Others pretend not to feel it. Both are liars.”

She moved to a low shelf and pulled out a bundle of cloth. Unrolled it. Inside were vials, dried roots, and two clean blades.

“Tell me what you know,” she said.

Matthias glanced at the items. “Rue. Camphor. Garlic. Vinegar. Not holy, but sharp.”

“Those are names, not knowledge.”

He met her gaze. “You’re right. Teach me.”

She narrowed her eyes in calculation. 

“What causes the death?” she quizzed.

“Putrid air?” he said slowly. “Corruption of the humors?”

“They say Miasma. They also say burning saints’ hair can drive it away.”

“I’ve heard that too,” he said. “They burned a child’s doll in the village square yesterday. Called it penance.”

Tova’s face hardened. “And did the child live?”

“No,” his face fell. His limbs became stiff. Rife with anger. 

“Then forget what they say,” she said.

She pointed to a crude drawing etched in charcoal on the table. Rat, flea, man.

“I don’t know what this is,” he said.

“It might be the thing that’s killing us. I just don’t know how yet.”

“You’re guessing,” he said, gently.

“No,” she said. “I’m observing. Guessing is what priests do when they pray for rain and call it prophecy.”

He didn’t take the bait. Instead, he asked:

“Do you believe in anything you can’t measure?”

That silenced her. Just for a moment.

They do not kneel to the same god. But they kneel to something. Even she, with her sharp eyes and boiled hands, searches for shape in the void. And he—he wants reason to match his grief. I feel it in them both.

She turned to her mortar and pestle and began grinding something with more force than needed.

“What I believe doesn’t keep people alive,” she said.

Matthias tilted his head slightly. “But it might keep you alive.”

She didn’t look up. “That’s a dangerous thought for a monk.”

“It’s just a thought,” he said. “I have fewer rules than I used to.”

Tova poured the crushed mixture into a jar without replying. Then finally, she spoke softly.

“When my father died, they said it was the will of your god. When my sister died, they said it was because we did not kneel. Now the streets are full of bodies, and still they say it is judgment. All are sinners but them.”

She turned to him then, eyes steady but not unkind.

“I believe in clean water. In ash. In patterns that repeat. If something else exists beyond that…”

She paused.

“There’s been no answer given to me.”

I know longing when I see it. She watches the sky as if waiting for it to speak. She keeps her silence sharp, but it is still a silence.

The silence between them was taut, like a string drawn too far.

Then three knocks at the door. Urgent. Uncontrolled.

Tova’s posture changed instantly. She moved not like a woman surprised, but like one accustomed to being summoned. She crossed the room in two strides, peeled back the cloth from the latch, and opened the door only a hand’s width.

A boy stood there, breathless, red-faced, mud on his knees.

“My brother,” he gasped. “The boils came this morning. On his neck. Mama said you’d know what to do.”

Tova didn’t speak. She grabbed a satchel already half-packed by the door, slung it over her shoulder.

“Tell her not to touch him,” she said. “Burn the straw where he’s slept. Do you understand me?”

The boy nodded fast. Tova turned back into the room, locking eyes with Matthias.

“You want to understand something?” she said. “Come.”

He followed without thinking.

She walks toward the dying without fear. Without prayer. Only knowledge. I have followed many. Few walk as she does.

Outside, the boy led them down a narrow lane, past closed windows and cloth hung from doors. Matthias kept pace with her, eyes on her face, noting every glance, every gesture.

She was not cold. She was not careless. She was calculated and, somehow, kind.

When they reached the house, she did not hesitate. She entered.

Matthias hesitated. Then crossed the threshold after her.

The air inside the house was heavy. Not just with heat, but with grief half-buried and waiting.

The mother stood wringing her hands by the hearth, whispering to herself. A single candle burned beside the bed. The boy, maybe twelve, lay curled on his side, fever-glossed and moaning. His neck was swollen, one dark boil rising like a blistered moon.

Tova entered without ceremony. She didn’t offer comfort. She didn’t make the sign of the cross.

“Open the windows,” she said. “Your name is Matthias, yes? Boil water in that pot.”

He moved instinctively. “Should I pray over him?”

“Later,” she said flatly. “Boils come first.”

The mother flinched. “Is it too late?”

Tova didn’t answer. She was already cutting the boil’s edge with a sterilized blade, her movements quick, clean, without flourish. The boy winced but didn’t cry out. His fever had softened his reality.

Matthias lit the fire and poured water into the pot. He watched her hands. They moved like they’d done this hundreds of times. Maybe they had.

“Take the cloth from that chair,” she said. “When I lance this, you’ll press down. Hard. Understand?”

He hesitated. She looked up, eyes sharp. “Not with pity. With pressure.”

He nodded and took position.

When the boil broke, Matthias nearly gagged. The stench was thick, metallic and strong. He pressed the cloth as she’d said.

“You think faith is clean,” she said, not looking at him. “It isn’t. This is faith too. Holding rot in your hands.”

He didn’t respond.

The mother began to weep quietly behind them. Matthias turned toward her.

“Should I sit with her?” he asked, already moving.

“No,” Tova said sharply. “You sit with him. She’ll bury him or bless him later. He needs you now.”

That stopped him.

He knelt again, cloth in hand, eyes on the boy. The room spun slowly…prayer and death and vinegar and blood.

And in the center of it, Tova moved like she belonged there, not by choice, but by calling.

I watched him watch her. And something inside him shifted toward another kind of knowing.

The house had grown still.

The mother sat in the corner now, eyes wide, lips moving in silent prayer. Not to thank Tova, but to beg for a continuation. It didn’t matter. Tova didn’t need thanks.

The boy slept. Shallow but steady. His fever had broken like a storm moving off the coast.

Matthias sat near the bed, blood-specked cloth in his lap, watching the boy’s chest rise and fall as if he’d never seen breath before.

“He’ll live,” Tova said, rinsing her blade in boiled water. Her voice was flat, factual, but not unfeeling.

“I thought he wouldn’t,” Matthias murmured, in shock.

“So did I.”

She wrung out a rag and wiped her hands, one finger at a time. Each motion was exact, almost ritualistic.

“Do you always speak so plainly?” he asked.

“Only when it matters.”

He nodded. “Then say something plain to me now.”

She met his eyes, quiet. Not cold. Just measuring.

“You want to help,” she said. “But you’ve been trained to observe, not act. To name suffering, not touch it.”

It stung. Because it was true.

“She died,” he whispered. “The girl. The little…”

Tova sat across from him now. Not close, but not far.

“They got help too late,” she said. “And you tried too gently. Like you were afraid to break her. Plague rot doesn’t care how softly you hold it.”

His throat tightened.

“I thought kindness would be enough.”

“Kindness is medicine,” she said. “But it’s not the cure.”

He looked down at his hands, still damp with vinegar and blood.

“Teach me,” he said.

She studied him. Not the way one studies a rival. The way one gauges capacity.

Then, finally—

“Come back tomorrow. Bring a clean blade.”

And I felt it then. Something small. The beginning of an alliance. Of pursuit. They will not stop me. But they will try. And in trying… they will change everything.