Walter’s Willow

A splitting headache. One that went on for days. That was the first irregularity Walter made observation of, though it certainly wasn’t the last.

Over the course of the next week, he was increasingly bothered by a series of discomforts, and nothing appeased them. Not taking a spell of rest nor the snake oil rubbed on his temples nor the concoction his grandmother forced him to consume. Perhaps in a different age she’d already lived through cider, wormwood, and cloves had been a cure-all, but they were nearly halfway to the year 1400 and that witchcraft had passed.

He’d tried to tell her so, but she’d wagged a finger at him. 

“I’ve seen enough to know what’s good for you, Walter,” she’d said. “Drink this, and I’ll have another dose for you tonight before you sleep. They say it’s best to let the medicine run its course through you when you’re not up and about, anyway.”

“Who, Grandmother? Who says that?”

She’d bustled around the room he was convalescing in, tidying and straightening where no such efforts were needed. The family didn’t have possessions enough to demand constant diligence in keeping the house in order. Knowing Grandmother, though, she probably had the itch to fetch her broom to sweep the floor or a rag to keep the already clean window pane speck-free.

“Mother,” Walter’s own mother had stuck her head in then, “let my boy rest. He needs sleep, that’s what.”

And the two women had gone away together to a different part of the house. To a room that perpetually smelled of baking bread. That had herbs hanging from the rafters to dry. That they shared as a collective domain, doing what it took to foster all the warmth and sustenance the house and its occupants needed.

In all, it was Walter, his mother, Grandmother, and cousin William who came to sleep under the same roof at the end of the day. Walter and William, boys who’d grown up together and were only separated by a handful of months, shared a room just as the two women shared their own. Together they lived humble yet happy lives. They had their sorrows of passing parents and spouses, but they carried on with aplomb. 

Grandmother, in particular, was renowned in their simple village, offering tinctures and tonics for any and all ailments. She was trusted at every birthing bedside and cared for every soul with diligent prayers Sundays at Mass. There was a long-standing tradition that their lineage would, with every generation, carry on knowledge of healing and of faith. Ideally, it would have been a girl Grandmother took under her wing, but she’d been blessed with two grandsons and two only.

So, instead, Grandmother had Walter. 

When he’d been but a lad, she’d taught him things she knew about important herbs and tricks for getting bleeds to stop and cures for rashes. Some of her prescriptions struck him as odd. Some of them seemed to be for situations he couldn’t imagine finding himself or anyone in. 

“Sometimes people find trouble,” she said once, sharing some sage insight, “and sometimes trouble finds them. You must be prepared to set any and all kinds of trouble to rights, if you can.”

Then, in due course, Walter had become apprenticed to the local physician, a man from the congregation who’d pitied the women doing their best to raise fatherless boys. It developed into a much different education than the one he’d been receiving from his grandmother, as practices and treatments were focused on what he quickly learned were the four humors. Blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm: the human condition could boil down to one of these four substances.

“What does that mean to you?” Grandmother had wanted to know, when he’d told her what he was learning.

“Surely, it means knowing how to treat a patient has become that much more simple and straightforward.”

Grandmother had merely arched a brow at that. It’d been reproach enough, and he knew she was skeptical of anyone claiming the complexities of man could follow such an elementary train of thought. Well, Walter figured, he was paying the price now of trying to set aside all the practices she’d been passing along to him because he was laid-up with an unknown illness with nary a good idea for how to cure himself. 

With William’s return later in the evening came the most refreshing time of the day. He made it a point to report the day’s gossip and news to Walter in as much detail as he could recall, and it gave Walter something else to ponder than his own trouble. Not that their small village was rife with curiosities or crises. They were a collection of humble citizenry, farmers and shop owners and craftsmen. Generations of families were born, lived, and died under the same roof, and the most excitement anyone ever knew was on Lammas Day when great feasting marked the beginning of the harvest season. The swift currents of time flowed in and around their homes and streets in no great rush.

Until William strode into the boys’ shared room, swung around the wooden chair at Walter’s bedside so he could sit with his arms folded atop the back of it, and said, “Have I got somethin’ more than a mite interesting for you today, cousin. Thank goodness you’re precisely where I left you this morning so I can tell you about it.”

“Please,” Walter vaguely gestured for him to go, curiosity piqued, “I’m dying to hear your news.”

William threw a swift glance toward the open door and receding hallway before shaking his head at Walter. A small smirk played at his lips. “Don’t let Grandmother hear you use such a phrase. Why, just now I heard her in the kitchen at her prayers, again. The way she was speaking to the Almighty about you…She must really think you’re on death’s doorstep.”

“Ah,” he smiled back at his cousin, “I’ll live. Just you wait and see. Now, what’s got you excited today?”

As if what he was about to relay was highly sensitive, confidential material, William leaned forward over the chair back and dropped his voice to a whisper. “There’s a rumor going about, Walt. They say someone’s poisoning the wells.”

“What?”

The sharp concern in Walter’s tone was justified, if there was any merit to such a rumor. There wasn’t a person whose existence was detached from this concern. Poison in their drinking water was a catastrophe, to say the least.

“Now, now, cousin, don’t fret just yet. It’s not our wells.”

“Why didn’t you start with that?”

William shrugged. “Well, I suppose, because it could be, if matters aren’t settled soon and the culprit apprehended. The authorities have quite the case on their hands, let me tell you. People are falling ill everywhere you look, practically. Dorset, Bristol, Southampton…And there’s speculations it's all got to do with the wells. Now, what do you think of that, Mister Medicine Man? Do you suppose that’s what’s wrong with you?”

No, no, that couldn’t be it. Walter was confident in supposing so because, if it’d been something in the water, their whole house would have succumbed, wouldn’t they have? 

He was no closer to uncovering answers as the days passed and more rumors circulated, as word spread that more and more people were falling sick. As he woke up one morning to coughing from the other bed.

Walter propped himself up so as to better peer over at his cousin. “Willy? Are you all right over there?”

Another cough then, “I’m fine, Walter. Just a tickle in my throat.”

While William went off for a day’s work, Walter convinced his ever-diligent caretakers that he simply must get out of bed and get some fresh air in the garden. Mother was opposed.

“I’m so restless,” Walter took to arguing his side, “laying about all day in that bed. I need to feel the sun on my skin and the breeze in my hair and the grass beneath my feet. It is stifling to remain inside so. Please, help me down there.”

It was Grandmother who gave in, and she so willingly drew up beside him to serve as his human crutch through the house and out the back door. 

Immediate was the effect of the outdoors upon Walter. His lungs, he felt, worked easier, the aches all about his limbs receded, and that pounding headache dulled to a light throb. The soil beneath his feet made his soles tingle. Not even glimpsing his mother fretting in the kitchen window curbed his quiet joy.

“She’s worried, you know,” Grandmother murmured then, “because people are dying, and they don’t know why. She fears you’ll be among them.”

Yet, it was William they all grew concerned for when, arriving home much sooner than he normally did, he all but staggered through the door, overcome with a raging fever and feeling weak. Strengthened by his time in the sunshine, Walter was well enough to help his cousin settle into bed and make him comfortable. 

The physician, naturally, was sent for, even as Grandmother got to mixing together a tincture of her own. Mother, looking more than a little worn, was encouraged to rest a spell.

Except, the good doctor would not so much as cross the threshold of their home to see the patient directly. Instead, he waited in the lane for Walter to come out to him so they could speak of symptoms and a larger pattern emerging in their country.

“If you are feeling up to it,” the physician said, “try to help your cousin sweat this fever out. If his condition worsens, you may have to bloodlet. Above all else, he must not leave his bed until he is better. None of you should leave until he is better.”

Walter cocked his head at that last piece of instruction. “We’re to stay contained to our house? What of our water supply? What of—”

“This is not optional, Walter. This is not a mere suggestion. Do you understand? I’m telling you that you and your family must quarantine immediately. The rumors that have been on everyone’s tongue has solidified into a terrible truth. It is a disease, Walt, and it is spreading. If we don’t attempt to curtail it, it will wipe out our entire village. Then who knows where else will go wreak havoc.”

Such dire, drastic news Walter had to relate to his family. It made the fear in his mother’s eyes grow. It made the expression on his grandmother’s face harden, even as she tenderly cared for her other grandson. 

Only, no amount of care seemed to do much for William. Between Grandmother and Walter, they had enough tricks and tactics to try, and he should have been well on his way to cured.

But he wasn’t. He worsened, and the young and the old scratched their heads, worried their hands, and did their best as he developed awful buboes that wouldn’t drain. Chills racked his body. Every day found Willy weaker and weaker.

Until he wasn’t the only one bedridden.

Mother was next, and, only too soon, Grandmother was, too.

Where Walter’s condition stagnated, one by one his family fell into rapid decline. Their fevers wouldn’t break. Dreadful coughing, hacking, troubled their lungs. Body aches, troubling their whole beings, kept them from finding true rest, even when they reclined for long hours at a time.

Walter, too, could not find rest. He compared the early symptoms he’d experienced to his family’s and couldn’t understand why he hadn’t gone down this road of illness. It was so extreme. It was far different from what he was feeling. 

The urge to be out of the house, to wander off somewhere in the countryside—or, at least, out in the garden—became more and more difficult to stave off. He couldn’t up and leave his family, though. Not now. Not when they needed help just sitting up in their beds to sip the broth he made them.

Oddly enough, when that antsy energy spiked within him, stretching alleviated the worst of it. He’d reach his hands high above his head, trying just for the fun of it to see if he could scrape his fingertips against the ceiling. Leaning from side to side, he felt the pull of the muscles along one length of his abdomen then the other. Toe touches came next. Simple movements, simple motion, that made him feel a touch less restless. That mattered, when he spent his days increasingly uneasy and unsettled.

One afternoon, his stretching routine was interrupted by a question. William lay drained and ragged in his bed, watching Walter strain himself to make contact with the rafter over head.

“Have you…Have you gotten taller?” William asked.

“Taller?” Walter glanced at the prone figure, mind leaping to worry that he’d grown so ill he was now hallucinating. “I’m sure I haven’t.”

“Good. Because I…” William struggled to infuse his words with his comedic touch. “I can’t have you outgrow me…little cousin.” 

Still, after William had drifted back into a fitful doze, Walter appraised himself and made a handful of observations. The first of which was that it was actually easier to touch the ceiling than it had been previously. The second was that his trousers no longer fit him as they used to; they no longer fell over his ankles but came up short.

And the final—more concerning than interesting—thing of note was a skin ailment he knew not how to identify nor control. He couldn’t make it go away, whatever it was, and it was slowly spreading from his belly button. It gave his skin a mottled look, almost. It was causing a hardening, blistering.. Yet, it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t causing him any discomfort whatsoever.

In some ways, the brownish coloring and the texture called to mind the bark of a tree. Funny imagery, that, though he wondered if it might serve as some sort of protective layer, if it stayed.

This last change was easy enough to hide from his family, for the time being. William spent so much time unconscious or delirious that Walter dressed in their room without worry of being asked questions. The spreading was then contained easily enough beneath a shirt. It was trouble he need not think too much about—yet.

Referring to this skin condition as trouble made him think of what his grandmother had been trying to teach him for years and years. All her healing knowledge and experience was meant to help people, whether because they found trouble or it found them. Strange experiences didn’t catch her off-guard; it was almost like she spent her whole life bracing for them. What would she do, though, with his latest predicament? What could she do, if she were not herself ill also?

He wanted to ask her one night sitting by her bedside. He wanted to ask many questions of his family. 

With Willy, he wanted to know whatever happened to that lass down the lane with the rosy cheeks and the friendly laugh? The one who’d made him happier than Walter could ever remember seeing his cousin. There’d been hope for a springtime that seemed impossibly far away now. How had that all come to pass?

When it came to his mother, Walter wanted to know if she still remembered days long gone when his father wrapped them both up in love and warmth. Did she remember how quiet he could be yet, when he opened his mouth to sing, it was as though an angel dwelt within him. Walter wanted to know if she missed those days of being invited into a song.

And Grandmother, oh, Grandmother. Many were the things Walter could ask her, more than just what she thought about his condition. She’d lived through long, hard days, and, in all his life, he never knew her to waver. How had she done that? How had she stood straight and strong? How did she never bend to the winds that blew her way?

More importantly, when she’d wished for a granddaughter to teach but had wound up with him, had he been enough? But she was finally at rest, and he knew he couldn’t disturb her.

Instead, he thought about earlier that morning when he’d pressed a cool rag against her forehead and she’d smiled at him. Or, rather, smiled as much as she could. It was the same affectionate attempt he’d seen grace his cousin’s lips one final time the previous day. The same one Mother had as she, too, had found her peace in the hour before dawn. Now Grandmother sported it. Walter figured, when it came his time, he’d do his best to wear this gesture his family had handed down.

By the light of the morning sun, Grandmother had drawn in a weary breath, and she’d watched him with eyes that gazed between this world and the next. She’d said, as if musing to herself, “She was so worried you’d be among us. But you will live, Walter. I can see that now.”

Evening had fallen onto a lonely house, onto the shoulders of a now lonely young lad who’d cared for his loved ones, long hours at their bedsides, only to find, in the end, the work had been beyond his hands. Had been out of his hands probably since the beginning.

It took some time for the change and loss to sink in. Then, one morning, Walter awoke with a desperate desire to no longer dwell inside this home he’d known all his days. He wanted to be out. He wanted what he’d been left out of: to be among those who’d gone.

In a great hurry, Walter sprang out of bed, finally giving in to the urges that had wrestled within him over the last few weeks. Every piece of his being demanded rays of golden light, soft earth, and sustenance he could only find in one place.

On with his clothes, out of the house, and down the road. Hurrying, hurrying then running. He couldn’t stop until he got there. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop. He had outgrown his old life, and the new one was before him.

The greenest, lushest grass grew on the far side of the church yard, and that’s where he finally came to a stop. Nearby was freshly dug dirt, a hole filled and filled and filled. Then covered—and the earth would be asked to grow again there atop buried sorrow.

Walter had been asked, though he knew not by whom, to do the same. Feet hidden in the tall blades and face turned toward the sky, Walter stood and let himself be rooted. There would be winds, but they would not blow him over, either.

– – –

England, 2015

A young girl stands with her family and watches a tour guide gesture to a small graveyard beside an old, old church. The gravestones are weathered beyond belief, and she’s more interested in those stones than the facts being monologued at the group she’s a part of.

Except, then the guide says, “And, if you look towards the back, you can’t miss that gigantic specimen of a tree, no? Well, having such a large tree among the graves isn’t a common practice, as the root systems, naturally, get in the way of grave digging. That tree, though, is connected to a legend around these parts. It dates back to the first wave of the Black Death, and it’s known as ‘Walter’s Willow.’

As the legend goes, a young man was the sole survivor of the Plague after having cared single-handedly for his dying relatives. Unfortunately, they succumbed, but Walter’s care wasn’t finished. Right there, at the base of his tree, it’s said that many of the village’s Plague victims—Walter’s family included—were buried there. Mass burials were necessary in the face of such a high death count. It’s a bit of a flight of fancy, but the locals swear that the tree is that young man watching over his loved one’s final resting place. Now, onto the next…”

How morbid, she thinks, and she can’t envision it, the idea of such a terrible sickness ravaging an entire country much less a small village. She can’t imagine what it must have been like to be a survivor of such a thing, left to tend to the dead. She can’t imagine being buried in a giant hole in the ground with who knows how many other people?

Her eyes shift over to the big tree the guide had pointed at. As her eyes seek out its great, thick trunk and take in all the bowing branches, she wonders why, out of nowhere, she’s struck by images of gnarled, wrinkled hands; a charming, boyish smile; and a song, a song that sounds of the angels.