Pilgrims

by Matthew Kneale

  Not that the time had been of much use to them. ‘We’ve both been waiting and waiting,’ Matilda said glumly. The Welshman, whose name was Iorwerth, had been trying to make his plea at the pope’s court for a cause his abbey was making, which was why he was here, Matilda said. As for her, she’d been waiting for Jesus’ gift. ‘I hoped it would come when I first got here,’ she said, trying to keep a smile on her face. ‘I’m sure it’ll come soon, whatever it is.’ Then she wanted to hear news of our party. As if I could spend all morning gabbling? I told her we’d be at the English Hospital that night and we’d see her there, but that started her all over again. ‘We’re not staying there,’ she said, looking like I’d thrown muck at her good name. ‘Iorwerth would never keep with Saxons.’ As there was no Welsh Hospital in Rome they’d gone asking at all the rest and they’d ended up at the Hungarians’. ‘They said they had room even for foreigners, and they’re most kindly and friendly folk,’ said Matilda, giving me a look, as if to say, which is more than I can say of your fellowship. Iorwerth, who had a gift for languages, so she said, had been learning Hungarian from them, and Roman too, to pass the time. ‘We’ll come and visit you,’ I offered, not thinking I ever would, but just to get away.

  Now the fiend slowed us with other pilgrims, as the closer to Saint Peter’s we got the more there were, till it seemed like we were in a sea of cloaks and hats with crosses. We went over a bridge where I used my staff and my elbows like clubs to keep them from shoving my poor boy. On the far side we went into a street lined with sellers and that was so dark and narrow and thronged with pilgrims that I knew we must almost be there. Sure enough, out we popped like rabbits from a hole, into a wide square, and on the far side was a grand stairway covered with pilgrims pouring up like so many ants. Joan said we must stop at a big round fountain where pilgrims were stripping off and washing themselves, and though I said, ‘Do we have to?’ she told me of course we must, as I had to clean my body before I asked Saint Peter to have God clean my dirty, sinful soul. The water was cold and it was as well there was a good flow going as you never saw any so black. Then up the great stairs we went, squeezing our way past a crowd of sellers through an archway and into a courtyard with cloisters and a grand fountain in the middle, and which was filled with yet more sellers. Joan was telling me, ‘This is where we should’ve got our straw. I can see from the fingers he’s holding up that it’s half what you paid on the street last night.’ Then she wanted to look at a belt, and at candles and rosaries and little phials of oil, till I told her, ‘Not now, Joan, not now,’ and I didn’t care that she sulked.

  But now we were slowed again, not by the fiend this time, but by good Saint Peter himself. I suppose he was just making sure we did our penance right. First we had to join the throng to get through the great doors till, wonder of wonders, we were inside, and I swear I could feel him there, sweet Saint Pete, looking at us with a kindly smile and rattling his keys to heaven. I wanted to throw myself down on the ground but even that wasn’t easy, as I couldn’t find an empty space. No surprise it was such a crush as I saw there were sellers by the dozen even here inside the church. Rome really was a big marketplace and they’d sell you anything anywhere. I found an emptier spot and down I went. Paul was beside me and so was Joan, though she wasn’t flat but more sort of crouched. I shouted out loud, ‘Dear good Saint Peter, I beg you, ask God to forgive my wickedness and stop tormenting my dear boy,’ and it was like I could feel him answer me, ‘I’ll talk to him, my poor sinner Constance, don’t you worry. I’ll do my best for you,’ and my eyes were wet with tears.

  ‘Hold on tight,’ I said to Paul, and to Joan when we got up. ‘If we’re pulled apart in this crowd we mightn’t find each other ever again,’ and the three of us went round side by side holding hands. Then it was all waiting. First we were in the throng for mass, though it seemed to take half the morning before our turn came for Jesus’ flesh and blood. As we waited I was looking round at good Saint Peter’s Cathedral and though it was handsome, no denying, and had very seemly columns in different-coloured stone, I’d thought it would be bigger. I said to Joan, ‘It’s very fine but Norwich is longer, don’t you think?’ ‘By a good stretch,’ she agreed. ‘And Norwich has a proper tower and spire,’ which was right too.

  After mass we joined another crowd waiting to go to Saint Peter in the crypt, and though it was very fine, no denying, I had thought we’d see more of him. Down the steps we shuffled and along an alleyway till we came to a big metal grate with another alleyway leading off. At the end a candle was burning and I could see a red wall with a niche in it, where he’d be. I’d thought we’d be able to see him, or at least see the handsome casket he was in, but no, that was all, and as I prayed with all my strength the ones behind were pushing to get us out of the way. Yet when I got to the altar I still gave him not one but two shillings and I didn’t care when Joan cast me a look. I had to give two, couldn’t she see? We’d come all this way to get his help, while everyone knew how irked saints got if they weren’t honoured rightly.

  Finally at long last we were finished. Though Satan wasn’t over with his slowing us down even then. We’d hardly got into the courtyard when I heard a voice call out, ‘Constance, Joan, thank heavens. Can you come and help us?’ It was Sir John, with Dame Alice and Gawayne, all standing beneath what looked like a huge pinecone made of stone. His face was red and I could see he’d got into another altercation. ‘You know French, don’t you?’ Sir John said. ‘What’s the word for robbery? I need to tell this dirty cassock here,’ he said, pointing at a monk standing beside him. ‘You’ll not believe this. Because he says it’ll be a week at least before I can have a script to show I’ve been here. A week! And he says I must pay for it, too. Sixpence, he wants.’

  I’d heard him before then trying to speak French, and getting himself stuck searching for words in his head like needles in a haystack. But though I knew more than him, I had no wish to wait here for an hour, helping him make his cause. God will understand my saying a little untruth, I thought, seeing as we’re here to worship him. So I told Sir John, ‘I’m sorry but I hardly know a word,’ and wishing him all God’s good fortune I led us on through the throng and out into Saint Peter’s Square. Finally we were free.

  But I wasn’t free of my kin. ‘It wasn’t much of a breakfast we had,’ Joan said, ‘and we hardly ate a thing last night. The food smells so tasty here.’ So we had to stop at a stall for some bread and bean stew, which was good I’ll own. Then Paul, who wanted to see the famous things that Father Tim had read about in his book, said we should hire a guide from the ones who kept following us and calling out. ‘We’ve no time,’ I told him, but then I couldn’t bear to see his sorry little face, and so I took one in the end, for three farthings in real coin, and who said he spoke English though it wasn’t much. I told him most sternly, ‘You’re only to take us to a few places, understand, in between all the churches,’ which he gave his accord to.

  Some of the things he showed seemed pure truffle to me, like a little pile of rubble that he said was grain that Saint Peter had brought with him to Rome all those years ago, and that wicked Emperor Nero had tried to steal from him so God had turned it into stone to thwart him. But Paul liked Romulus’ tomb and I hadn’t known Rome was founded by Noah’s son just after he got off the ship with all those animals. But the best thing the guide brought us to was a kind of tall cross, which he said was from Egypt and was called an obelisk, and that had a hole near its base. Because if we crawled inside, the guide said, then we’d be cleaned of all our sins. Of course there was a crowd waiting their turn but I thought this was worth a little time. In the end I managed to creep in, so did Paul, and Joan almost did though she couldn’t quite fit. And even though I knew it might all be foolish tales, I thought, there’s no harm, is there?

  After that I told the guide to take us to Saint John on the Lateran Hill, which was the second after Saint Pete’s. This Rome’s a strange city though, I thought, as we fought our way thr
ough more narrow lanes, and I waved my staff to make the Romans give us way. It wasn’t like any usual place I’d ever seen, though I’d been to a good number now, from Norwich to here. I wasn’t sure I much liked it. Everywhere we went there were more of those giant stone walls that Paul was so curious about, towering over the houses, and which seemed almost like the bones of a huge dead beast. In some there were little doors and I saw someone coming out of one so it seemed he had his home in there. The guide said they were left over from great buildings that had been made by Romans in pagan times, when the city had been much bigger and finer. He showed us a long wall with arches that he said had once carried water, just like the Conduit in London, while in Rome there’d been a dozen of them, though hardly one still worked now. ‘It must’ve been wondrous,’ Paul said, which I didn’t like the sound of, so I told him, and sharply, ‘But it was wicked too, remember, being pagan.’ Everywhere I looked there were fortress towers above us, sprouting out of grand houses. The guide said all the great families had them as they were always fighting one another, especially over who among them would be pope next. Which didn’t seem very godly to me. Then these Romans didn’t strike me as godly, trying to sell us trinkets even inside their greatest church.

  We stopped at a big round building that I wasn’t sure we should go inside, as the guide said it had been built by the Pagans as a temple where they worshipped their wicked false gods, though he said it was all right now, as it had been made into a church centuries back. But there was a giddy thing, because when I looked up I saw a great hole in the roof. Whoever heard of making a place like that? ‘What happens when it rains?’ I asked, but then I could see, as it was coming down again and I saw it splashing on the floor. The guide said it drained away through little holes. Still it seemed an idiot notion to me. I said to Joan and Paul, ‘You see, those Pagans may have built tall and high and had lots of conduits and such, but they hadn’t an ounce of good sense.’

  Then I wondered if the guide had taken us the wrong way, because all of a sudden we’d left the narrow winding streets behind and were walking through fields, where I saw folk weeding the land and pruning trees. I was sure we hadn’t gone out through the wall again as I’d have noticed, yet it didn’t seem like we were still in the city. ‘We’re still in Rome,’ the guide told us. It was just that the city had dwindled so since ancient times that most of the land inside the walls was empty now. Then Paul was pointing at a building up ahead that was a great gogmagog of a thing, huge and round, though one half seemed broken. It had towers growing out of it and was a fortress now but our guide told us that in ancient times it had been the Temple of the Sun and had been topped with a dome with a hole in it, just like the place we’d just seen. ‘What a sight that must’ve been,’ said Paul. ‘I wish I could’ve seen it.’ ‘No you don’t,’ I told him, ‘because it was ungodly, remember.’

  Of course he wanted to go inside, which was more of our time gone, but I was glad of it in the end. We were just going in through the arch when I heard a squeaky voice call out, ‘So how many have you got?’ and there was Hugh with Margaret just behind him. ‘How many what?’ I asked. ‘Years off purgatory, of course,’ he said, and when I answered that I didn’t know he looked at me like I was a proper fool. ‘I’ve already got five years and two quarantines,’ he said. ‘At this rate I’ll have more than a hundred by the time we leave.’ ‘And you’ll need them all,’ said Margaret. I saw she had a shiny new badge in her hat, of Paul with his sword and Peter with his keys. She hadn’t wasted any time. ‘But you should come over here,’ Hugh said, pointing at a big cross at the far end of the flat, grassy space we were in, ‘as this is one of the easiest.’ If I touched it and prayed, that was worth three quarantines, he said. ‘A hundred and twenty days out of purgatory just for touching a cross. Not bad, eh?’ Another thing he told me was that this wasn’t the Temple of the Sun like our guide had told us, but was called the Colosseum and it was where the emperors kept their lions to eat the Christians. They must have had a lot of lions, I thought, looking at the size of the place.

  I walked up to the cross and I swear that just for a moment I could feel the kindly, loving souls of the poor martyrs whom the lions had so cruelly eaten. I put my hand on the cross and I prayed, ‘Dear God, I beg you, make my boy well again.’ Because I knew it wasn’t right, but there were times when I had foolish fears that, even though we’d come all this way and done everything godly like we’d been told, still it would do no good and he’d be no better. It was a thought I could hardly bear. ‘Please God, don’t let this all have been for nothing,’ I prayed. And when I said it, just for a moment, it was like I felt a little warm touch on my shoulder.

  After that I got rid of our guide, seeing as he’d been wrong about what this great gogamog had been. He said I was fussing over nothing, as nobody knew what any of these places were, while he’d found that most pilgrims preferred it as the Temple of the Sun. Paul wanted to keep him anyway but I stuck firm and though the guide stamped his foot and said I must give him his full three farthings or he’d fetch the watch, in the end he walked off scowling with two. Nor did we need him, as Hugh had just come from Saint John’s on the Lateran Hill and he pointed us down the right road.

  In truth I almost preferred Saint John’s to Saint Peter’s even though it was less renowned. In Saint Peter’s all I’d seen was the red wall but here in the main church we saw the Ark of the Covenant that once had Moses’ stone tablets in it, and then in the pope’s chapel we saw Saint Peter and Paul’s heads, which we could look on with our own eyes in their beautiful caskets. Nor was that all, as they had some of the loaves and fishes Jesus had made when there hadn’t been enough supper, they had milk from the Virgin’s own paps, and they even had Jesus’ wrinkly from his member, which Jews cut off their boy babies, as it was one of their strange and wicked ways. And though the priests stopped Joan and me from going into Saint John the Baptist’s chapel, as they said women weren’t allowed, so only Paul could go in, they told us we’d get the same years off purgatory just by touching the door, which we both did.

  By the time we’d done mass there it was already getting late so we only managed two more main churches that Father Tim had told us to see, and then a few tiddlers, which didn’t seem much for a whole day, so I felt sour at myself when we went back to the inn and moved our packs to the English Hospital. Another thing that made me ired was that, being the last to move, we got the worst place, in a bed that stank in the corner of the lower dormitory. It was small too, and though we were three and Hugh and Margaret, who were next to us, were only two, theirs was larger. When I said that wasn’t right Hugh said yes it was, because Margaret had a sore leg, which was nothing to do with it, I thought, though it was hard to gainsay them seeing as they already had all their things spread out.

  Being tired all I wanted was an early night but there was no chance of that with all the celebrating. I was just closing my eyes when in came Beatrix and Warin, who’d drunk a jug of wine by the sound of him. Though I didn’t ask him he told me he was merry because he’d found a guide who spoke fair English and who knew an officer of the church who could get them to the pope, so he’d promised. Then he crashed into one bed and another singing, ‘We’re off to see the pope, we’ll tell him what is what, we’ll tell him who’ll be raised, and who’ll be on a pyre, to squeal out as he’s braised, and all the flames grow higher.’

  They’d just started snoring and left us in peace when all the Dame Lucys came up, not singing but whispering and sniggering. And though I didn’t ask her either, she told us that she’d found an advocate who said he’d help get her divorce while Lionel had found a fellow who said he could arrange for them to be married in a fine ancient church, and who knew a famous cook of Rome who’d make them a great banquet. Then Dame Lucy held up her candle and showed us a ring on her finger which, she told us proudly, Lionel had got her. Which didn’t seem right to me or to Joan, we agreed later, seeing as by law she was still married to the other fellow. N
or was it much of a ring, I thought, and Joan said the one she’d been given by her Robert was finer, though Joan’s was iron while Dame Lucy’s looked like good silver. Still it was a poor thing compared to my own, which was gold and had a big, beautiful ruby. Lionel’s scarce, I thought. Not that Dame Lucy saw it. Having shown us her ring she told us that after they were wed she and Lionel would go to Monte Cassino to pray to Saint Benedict, just the two of them and their servitors, Brigit and Dobbe. ‘It’s not the praying she’s looking forward to,’ Joan said afterwards, and though I know I shouldn’t have, I couldn’t help but smile. Then Dame Lucy had no shame about her. When they went to their beds I heard her whisper, clear as a bell, ‘Come on, where’s the harm, seeing as it’s as good as done.’ Though at least Lionel had some righteousness to him, and I heard him whisper back, ‘Then we can wait a little longer, can’t we, my sweet.’

  After all that crashing about in the night keeping us awake, it was no surprise I had a hard task getting Paul and Joan awake at first light the next morning. ‘But it’s Christmas Eve,’ Paul moaned. ‘All the more reason to get up,’ I told him, ‘as there’ll be masses right across Rome.’ Hugh, who’d told me it was one of the best days in the year to get indulgences from purgatory, had already left, together with his Margaret. I’d just got mine out of their beds and we were stumbling out of the dormitory when Satan tripped us, like he loved to, and I heard someone whispering behind us, ‘Constance, Joan, I was hoping it was you.’ It was Ragged Tom. He followed us out to the stairway where he started moaning about how he was worried about the two Jews, Mary and Helena. Hadn’t we noticed they hadn’t been with us for supper last night? I hadn’t in truth, but then it was easy to miss them when they kept themselves so quiet. ‘They never came in,’ Tom said. ‘My bed’s next to theirs and I kept watch.’ ‘I wouldn’t trouble yourself,’ I told him. ‘They probably just stayed the night somewhere else.’ ‘But then why are their packs still there?’ he asked. Then he made us all go back and look, though there was nothing much to see, just an empty bed and a couple of full packs lying on top.