The Plague Tales

by Ann Benson

  “Messieurs, you are all a credit to your profession. I am delighted with your diligence and eagerness to learn. Each of you has become more skilled in your craft, and we trust that you will carry your accomplishments abroad with you when you represent His Holiness in the noble courts of Europa. Be conscientious in the application of your craft, and serve your God well. You are charged with the protection of our interests, and our prayers for your success will be ceaseless.”

  He then took each man aside separately, and gave him individual instructions particular to his final destination. He expressed his encouragement, and gave assurances of the pope’s personal blessing. One by one the physicians left the salon to begin their travels in strange foreign lands.

  Alejandro was left to the very last; the others were all gone and he remained alone in the room with de Chauliac.

  “Doctor Hernandez,” he said, “how marvelous you look! Just as a physician should look, prosperous and noble. I had no doubt that your appearance would improve in the proper clothing. Please sit down. I have many things to say to you and you will be more comfortable.”

  Alejandro did as he was bidden, wondering how any man could ever be expected to feel comfortable in such tight breeches, and found himself once again facing his undecipherable instructor and colleague. How can such a learned man, such a fine thinker, such a purveyor of logic, he so bigoted and arrogant? he wondered as he regarded him. Can these dissonant qualities exist in a single man without warring to the death, or at the very least to distraction?

  “I have watched with admiration as you acquired your new skills these last days,” he began, “and as I have told you, I am impressed with your intelligence and knowledge. I have therefore, in consultation with His Holiness, selected you personally to serve in the court of King Edward III, whose original request for protection led to this entire undertaking.”

  Alejandro swallowed and nodded.

  Expecting a more effusive reaction, de Chauliac said, “Well, are you not pleased? This is a great honor for a physician.”

  He said quietly, “I am immensely honored, sir. Your confidence in me is undeserved.”

  “Again, I think not, Dr. Hernandez. I see in you a part of my own youthful self, I see that same burning desire to achieve greatness. Oh, no, monsieur,” he said with near vehemence, “I do not think I overestimate you. But your task will be a difficult one because of the nature of the royals you will serve.”

  He paused for a reaction from Alejandro, but got none. He let out a long sigh, then continued, his tone darkening as he spoke. “I can appreciate your reticence, but please understand that your work in England is not a matter of choice. There is much at stake for His Holiness, and we will be in frequent contact with the English court to be sure that you are performing diligently. It will not go well for you if you do not.”

  Alejandro looked up from his hands and stared at de Chauliac. The undercurrent of coercion he had felt throughout the training period was now confirmed. The possibility of leaving the papal palace had entered his mind and he had toyed many times with the idea of escape, but all such notions now left him. I do not know what he knows about me, he thought, searching de Chauliac’s penetrating blue eyes for some indication. What he saw there was de Chauliac’s desire for him to wonder and the certainty that he would submit, and he thought with sadness that it would be the wisest thing for him to do.

  With a deep sigh of resignation he said, “How are these royals different from the others?”

  De Chauliac smiled almost wickedly, his thin lips curling upward in something akin to a sneer, and launched enthusiastically into an explanation. “They are Plantagenets,” he said, accentuating the name as if it should have some meaning to Alejandro. “They think themselves to have the noblest lineage in all of Europa. They are all giants, and fair, with hair of spun gold and eyes of sapphire; one can see the mark of the Norse upon each and every one of them. They are haughty and ruthless and an altogether vicious lot. And they do not like to take orders that might come from His Holiness, despite their outward appearances of conformity to the will of the Church. And though Edward has asked specifically for a physician to be sent to him, he will not take your instruction without giving back an argument.”

  “They sound terribly unpleasant, these English royals,” Alejandro said.

  De Chauliac laughed. “Oh, not at all. Edward and Philippa hold the most lavish and sumptuous court in all of Europa. They pride themselves on providing the most wonderful accommodations for their guests. They have spent a fortune enlarging their castle at Windsor, and no doubt you will find it quite spectacular.”

  “More spectacular than this?” He gestured at the surrounding court area with its rich furnishings. “How can that be?”

  “Edward would outdo the French at every turn. After all, it is only natural for him to want to do so, since he claims the French throne for himself through his mother. You will see that the French are a far more decorous and enlightened people than the English. He must be up to the task of ruling them should that honor fall to him.”

  He paused for a few moments to let Alejandro absorb what he’d been told. “You are to pay particular attention to the Princess Isabella, for His Holiness has designs on the arrangement of her nuptials. I warn you, she is a headstrong and willful girl, and a great beauty. She will try to charm you into leniency, but you must not let her persuasive nature deter you in the performance of your important work. You will find the others, the Black Prince, the queen, their retainers, to be of a similar nature, but less forceful. But Edward and Isabella will keep you quite busy, I think.” He stood, indicating that their interview was at an end. “I do not envy you the difficulty of your work there,” he said, “but I envy you the excitement. I wish it were I going in your place.”

  Alejandro loathed the idea that his knowledge would be put to such an offensive purpose, for he could not condone this ambitious pope’s desire to meddle in the affairs of European states, and wanted nothing to do with any such silliness. Yet he could not deny that de Chauliac was right. It was an opportunity beyond compare. He silently vowed to use this opportunity to learn as much as possible.

  “Sir, I will do my best,” the Jew said.

  De Chauliac bowed low, and approached the pope from the far side of the pontiff’s sumptuous salon. He listened again to the pope’s complaints and offered sweet words of sympathy, but would not relent on the confinement.

  “There is a Spaniard among them,” he told Clement. “He is clever and skilled, and will do better than any of the others, I think. I have sent him to England.”

  Clement smiled his approval and fanned himself with a fan of peacock feathers. “Well done, my friend. No doubt Edward will be pleased that we managed to send a physician who is not French.”

  “We shall be traveling for approximately twenty days,” the captain told Alejandro. “His Holiness has given us ten guards, for in these times of anarchy the roads are none too safe. We shall travel as swiftly as possible. I do not wish to stay in one place too long, for fear of the pest.”

  A wise course of action, Alejandro thought as he mounted his horse, a fine dark steed wearing the handsome ornamentation of the Papal Guard. His saddlebag strapped firmly behind him, he followed the captain as he led the group out of the palace courtyard. The entourage rode out at midmorning under the pope’s protective banner.

  Their progress was swift and uneventful until the fourth day. Traveling roughly parallel to the Rhône, they had passed through Lyon heading to Dijon, three days north, when they encountered an eerie procession of ragged, filthy peasants clogging the road and impeding their advance.

  “Why, they look like skeletons,” Alejandro said, guiding his horse past the moaning caravan, breathing through the sleeve of his coat to filter out the smell. “There must be two hundred or more of them.” He rode up next to the captain and questioned him. “What in God’s name are these pathetic creatures doing?” he asked.

  “They are ever
ywhere throughout the countryside, traveling from city to city, flagellating themselves for all to see. They claim to be the saviors of humankind, and think that the atrocities they perform upon themselves and each other will be viewed by God as a penance, atoning for the sins of the world and thereby causing God to end this plague. Their followers grow in number every day.”

  “But I saw no leader before them. How are they organized in this gruesome pilgrimage?”

  “Each group is said to have a master, to whom the members swear complete obedience, and all vow to remain with the group for thirty days or more. They pledge a stipend for their own support in this crusade, but God alone knows what nourishment these skinny fiends get. One need only look at them to see that they are made of bones alone.”

  Each one was naked to the waist, and caked with blood-soaked ashes. Their constant wailing was an affront to the ears, and it filled the air with a discordant song of desolation and woe. Anxious to proceed, the riders spurred their horses forward.

  When they were safely past, the captain said, “Were I God, I would look down upon these wretches and send them a plague of their own.”

  “From the looks of it, He already has,” Alejandro said, “—a plague of madness.”

  They rode on briskly, hoping to increase the distance between themselves and the terrible horde. In a few hours they came to the outskirts of a town, and stopped to gather their group more closely together before passing through.

  Although Alejandro knew nothing more of war than what Hernandez had told him, he knew that the horrors of war could not be more gruesome than the scene that greeted them in the town’s open square. Six fires raged, thick smoke billowing up around six poles, each one bearing the charred remains of what had been a human being. Encircling this atrocity were several dozen wailing demons, more gruesome than any he had seen in the caravan, stripped to the waist, the rest of their bodies covered only with rough sacks. They beat themselves with thorny branches and whips tipped in metal, and when they could beat themselves no more they turned and beat each other. Blood poured down their legs and pooled on the ground; everywhere the dirt was tracked with red footprints and shreds of bloody cloth. They circled their burned prisoners in a frenzied dance, encouraged by a large crowd of townspeople who had gathered to watch. The bells of the church pealed in wild accompaniment to their hideous hymns.

  Alejandro and the captain watched in horrified fascination, their horses prancing skittishly, as one of the flagellants left the circle to whip one of the staked bodies. Alejandro nearly retched when he saw that the man strapped to the pole was still alive, writhing in reaction to the fierce whipping. He rode forward to look closer, and when he saw the sooty remains of a yellow circle on the man’s sleeve, he bolted forward on his horse in anger.

  The captain had been watching as his charge lost control of himself, and lashed his horse viciously to catch up. He grabbed the reins of Alejandro’s horse and brought the animal to an abrupt halt.

  “Monsieur! I beg you to keep your wits about you! They are only Jews!”

  Alejandro tried furiously to escape, but to no avail; his captor was much bigger and stronger, and he could not break free. The captain saw the rage in his eyes, and knew that he could not restrain him indefinitely. Through the confusion he shouted instructions to a nearby guard, who jumped off his horse and swiftly nocked an arrow in his bow. With stunning accuracy the bowman let his arrow fly, piercing the heart of the prisoner suffering at the stake and killing him instantly.

  The hideous circle of penitents ceased their dancing and moaning, and turned as one to locate the betrayer who had deprived them of their pleasure. They spied the pope’s entourage and, ignoring the protective banner, surged forward to confront them.

  The captain once again grabbed the reins of Alejandro’s horse, then spurred his own furiously to escape the lunatic crowd. The entire train sped off, quickly outrunning the demented, bleeding horde, and didn’t stop until they were deep in the woods, certain of their safety.

  Their horses were lathered from the hasty escape, and as dusk was nearing, the captain decided it would be wise to settle in for the night. As the accompanying guards went about the business of setting up their tents, the captain took Alejandro aside.

  “That was careless behavior,” he said sternly, “and the results could have been disastrous.”

  “But the man was suffering! They were burning him alive, and I could not—”

  “I understand your compassion for those who suffer, Physician,” he interrupted, “but there was nothing that any one of us could have done to save him.”

  “But you yourself ordered your man to kill him. You felt his suffering too.”

  “It was a waste of a good arrow,” he said. “He was only a Jew. Jews are meant to suffer. You would be wise to refrain from such worthless heroics in the future, if you wish to complete this journey in good health.”

  Alejandro’s rage rose within him, and he struggled to contain it. Do not give yourself away, he warned himself. One Jew has died today. Do not allow yourself to be the next.

  They headed slightly west as they passed Dijon on a road that would take them north of Paris; eventually it would take them to Calais, where they would obtain passage over the Channel.

  When they were one day east of Calais, one of the guards began to complain of an aching head and a sick stomach. Alejandro immediately examined him; as he feared, the man’s neck and armpits were beginning to swell. He begged the captain to stop the train to allow the man some comfort, for he was growing sicker with every mile. The next morning another guard showed similar signs of affliction. By afternoon two more were ill.

  Of their ten guards five were eventually affected, so Alejandro sent the remaining guards and the captain to camp at a distance. Wearing his amulet, and covering his nose and mouth as de Chauliac had instructed him, he treated the victims with the herbs and medications he had been given to bring to England.

  The first man died only a day after taking ill, and the others were now in dreadful misery. The captain pressed Alejandro to move on, but the physician would not hear of resuming their journey yet. He had great hope that his newly learned treatments would have some effect on the progress of the disease. But when the second man died, the remaining guards began to grumble, and the captain, mindful of his duty to the pope, pressed even further for permission to depart.

  “I will not leave until these men are either dead or recovered. There can be no compromise in this.”

  More grumbling ensued. The frightened guards were talking of leaving without Alejandro and their sick companions. “I am at my wits’ end,” the distraught captain confided in the physician. “I must see you safely to England, and I cannot do that without a decent escort. We are already down two men, and the others do not wish to stay in this place. They are certain that the contagion lurks in the air here.”

  “I cannot argue with that logic,” the physician replied. “I can say nothing to reassure them. One more now hovers near death and the other two are sure to follow.”

  “How long will it be?” the captain asked.

  “I cannot say. Perhaps one day; perhaps two.”

  The captain went off by himself for a few moments, and returned with a look of terrible sadness on his face.

  “I beg your forgiveness, monsieur, for what I am about to do, but we cannot delay any longer.”

  Alejandro did not understand. He jumped up and followed the captain as he walked to the place where the sick guards were lying. In the brief time since he’d left them to speak with the captain, the sickest of the guards had expired; his unmoving eyes stared blankly upward, flies gathering in the moist corners, and his chest no longer rose and fell. The other two, still conscious, moaned and cried in their misery.

  The captain stood between the two men and said, “Make peace with your God.” Then he drew his sword.

  Their pathetic looks would have tormented the soul of an angel, Alejandro thought. And how should
I look, knowing that my time was upon me? he wondered. No different. They will no longer suffer, at least. He made no attempt to interfere.

  “May God have mercy on their souls, and mine,” the captain said. Then he dispatched the souls of the two remaining sick guards with swift and merciful strokes.

  “And now, monsieur, we shall continue, for we have wasted much time here. God will receive their innocent souls, but His Holiness will see that He does not forgive me for failing to deliver you to England. Please gather your belongings and come along.” And they left the bodies in the forest, having no means of burying them. Alejandro wished with all his heart that he had brought along the sturdy shovel so finely crafted by Carlos Alderón a lifetime ago in Aragon.

  And on the twenty-second day since departing from Avignon, the beleaguered group reached the port of Calais, now under English control; it had been so since King Edward’s forces had claimed it in a fierce and bloody battle the year before. There was much confusion in the island town, and the pope’s French guards complained that they felt as if they were in enemy territory. Were it not for the pope’s banner, their progress would surely have been impeded by the English occupying force, who were not kindly disposed toward any military-looking group such as theirs crossing the water at Calais.

  The captain left the remaining five guards and Alejandro in the town and went to the docks in search of passage. He returned an hour later. “It’s a bit of luck, really,” he said. “The weather is fine for passage. I have found a fisherman who is eager to take our gold.”

  The horses and men boarded the sturdy boat, and the fisherman set sail, taking advantage of the brisk wind. Alejandro had never been aboard a boat in the ocean before, and was at first excited by the prospect of sailing across to England. But when they left the protection of the shore and reached open water, he became violently ill, unable to lift his head up from between his legs. He stared at a bucket of his own vomit until it became too dark to see it anymore.

  The captain showed sympathy for the physician’s weakness. “It is never easy to cross,” he said. “Some are never the same again after a rough passing. But we will make good progress, I think; the seas are calm and the wind is with us. Sometimes it is much worse than this.”