They have built a room for waiting, and no other purpose. Think on that. A whole chamber, walls high and clean as a lord's chapel, floor scrubbed brighter than any table I have eaten from, and in it the sick do nothing but sit. No straw to spread, no water to haul, no beast to tend.
They sit in rows on cushioned benches and stare at a glowing pane upon the wall where little men move and laugh, and they wait to be called, as souls wait at the gate.
I have known sickness. When my Alys took the fever we laid her by the hearth and I dug, and I prayed, and I held her hand and there was no one to call, for the good Lord had already decided and only waited on my learning of it. Here they do not dig.
Here a woman in white cloth speaks a name, gentle, as if summoning is a kindness, and the named one rises and is led away to be tended. Not to die in a ditch. To be tended.
There is a child with an ill leg, and he does not moan. He is given a small painted horse to hold and grows quiet. No fever-sweat. No teeth-clench against the wagon's jolt to the abbey. Only the waiting, and the horse, and the low hum in the walls like bees that never tire.
I sat a long while. I could not find the suffering. That is the sorcery of the place, that a man may be sick and yet unafraid.
We prayed for such mercy and got the ditch.
These folk have it and complain the wait is long.