Sylvia

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Trusting lot, aren’t you?’ I said tartly, feeling good about being back to myself and no longer a celestial being. ‘Go then, take Brother Aloysius with you.’

  The two monks took the still-bleeding Father Pietro by the arm and led him up the steps. The children stood to one side of the doors while Reinhardt and I stood on the other, thus to allow the bishop’s former entourage to pass through into the church unimpeded.

  ‘What do I say about the ravens?’ I whispered to Reinhardt.

  ‘Nought. Let it seem the will of God.’

  ‘Ratcatcher, that’s blasphemy!’ I hissed.

  ‘Are you sure it isn’t?’

  ‘Isn’t what?’

  ‘The will of God.’

  Father Pietro had almost reached us and now stopped and turned towards me, shrugging free of the arms of the two monks. Then to my surprise he sank to his knees, his hands held in an attitude of prayer. ‘Forgive me for my eyes were blinded by Satan,’ he said, turning his bloodied face up at me with a pleading expression.

  No longer the Angel of the Blessed Fish, I was unsure what to do. The only priest who had ever knelt in front of me was Father Paulus when he had first witnessed the blood on the virgin’s rose. That had not been meant as obeisance to me, but to the blood-tinted petals of the pure white blossom. I did not consider Brother Dominic’s prostration, since that was done while my back was turned. I sank to my knees in front of the supplicating priest. ‘Nay, Father, it is not for me to forgive you. I am but a poor sinner much in need of confession.’

  If he heard my protest he did not react to it, instead he closed his eyes and recited the Actus Spei: ‘O Lord God, through Thy grace I hope to obtain remission of all my sins, and after this life eternal happiness, for Thou hast promised, who art all-powerful, faithful, kind and merciful. In this hope I stand to live and die. Amen.’

  There seemed no reply I could safely make. So I sought quickly for a prayer of my own to recite so that I might at least show some initiative. The Actus Caritatis seemed the only one that might be appropriate: ‘O my God! I love Thee above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because Thou art all-good and worthy of all love. I love my neighbour as myself for the love of Thee. I forgive all who have injured me, and ask pardon of all whom I have injured. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ I heard Reinhardt say beside me. Later he would laugh and say that of the two combative prayers mine had won.

  I recall saying to him, ‘Oo-ah, Ratcatcher! God is listening to all of this and some of the blasphemous things you say are written down in the Book of Life and you’re going to be in big trouble when you get to heaven!’

  He had sighed and looked a little woebegone and then said quietly, ‘I don’t think they accommodate my sort in heaven, Sylvia.’

  After I completed my prayer, Father Pietro stood. ‘If you wish to make confession we can do it now,’ he said, indicating the church doors with a nod of his head.

  ‘Father, you must attend to your face and neck. Any of the other priests may hear my confession.’

  He shook his head. ‘I would consider it a privilege, Sylvia. I have seen that you are truly blessed by our Lord.’

  During the months on the road I had grown shameless and an expert at mendicancy, with all my senses tuned to seize any weakening of resolve. The priest’s sudden softening towards us provided me with an ideal opportunity. ‘Father, my children have not eaten and are hungry. We had intended to sing again for the townsfolk in the hope that they might provide a little sustenance.’

  I referred to them as my children so as to wring, to the very last drop, the newfound respect he seemed to possess for me. ‘We are God’s little children and do not beg,’ I added, hoping he wouldn’t see through this beggarly ploy.

  It was at this moment that the Sister Infirmaress arrived and seeing his bleeding face and neck started tut-tutting, wincing and crying out her sympathy. ‘Wait, sister, can’t you see I am busy!’ he remonstrated, brushing her aside. The newfound charity he had evinced but a moment before was a very thin crust and underneath it the same hard-nosed bishop’s assistant lurked. For all his suddenly professed piety, this was a churlish man who must be carefully handled.

  ‘Nay, Father, please enter the church where the good sister may attend to you.’ I pointed to the crowd. ‘They grow restless. We will sing for them and when you are ready perhaps you will come out again and thank them for coming and ask them if they will provide a little food for the choir?’

  I had returned the initiative to him, allowing him on behalf of the Church to regain control of a crowd that clearly appeared to have lost respect for their local bishop and his churchmen. I could see that he quickly grasped this opportunity to reassert the Church’s authority and be seen to make amends for the original purpose of the gathering.

  ‘In thee I see a future saint, Sylvia,’ he said clumsily. I could see he was pleased with the notion of regaining the authority, the advantages of my suggestion immediately clear. He indicated my priest’s vestment. ‘We will arrange for suitable raiment and perhaps you would like to wash at the convent?’

  I looked down at my blackened feet and grinned. ‘Perhaps I shall be named Saint Bootblack?’ I said, thinking how frightful my general appearance must be and how far from the vision of a saintly personage I would seem. But judging from his slightly bemused expression my irony was lost on him. So I added quickly, ‘Yes, thank you, Father, I would very much like to bathe and wash my hair.’

  He turned to the nun beside him. ‘See to it,’ he instructed in Latin.

  The nun looked confused and I realised, as he should have done, that she did not understand Latin other than the prayer rote and had not been following our conversation.

  ‘She does not understand Latin, Father,’ I said.

  ‘Stupid woman!’ he exclaimed, then spoke to her in the local tongue and I saw the nun nod. He must also then have instructed her to attend to his wounds because they both turned and entered the church.

  ‘Father, if we may have Brother Bruno to translate?’ I called after him and saw him nod.

  ‘We will need to entertain the crowd if we are to eat today,’ I said to Reinhardt.

  ‘They have had more entertainment than they will receive in a lifetime, Sylvia. They will speak forever after of the Miracle of the Rats, then the birds, then God’s wrath . . . er, the incident with the ravens and the priest. We have sung to them gloriously, what else?’

  ‘The dogs? The trick with the choir?’

  ‘Oh my God! I had forgotten them! They are all assembled beyond the square with their noses upon their paws. It is hot – they will be much in need of water.’

  ‘Will they hear your pipe?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And come?’

  He looked surprised. ‘They cannot resist the pipe.’

  I nodded, confident that with the dog trick we could leave the crowd in a merry mood, enough so that they would be happy to feed us, though Reinhardt seemed confident that they would do almost anything we asked of them. ‘First let us talk to these people,’ I said.

  At that moment Brother Bruno arrived and looked pleased to be with me again. I was surprised to see Brother Aloysius was at his side. I was later to learn that they were seldom separated and that Brother Bruno, who was four years older than the black monk, when they’d both been children in Genoa had rescued Brother Aloysius from a mob of boys who had attacked the dark-skinned child calling him an infidel and a Saracen. They were in the process of kicking him to death when Brother Bruno intervened, in fact, risking his own life. ‘We are truly brothers in God’s name and even as if we were born as kin,’ he’d told me, smiling.

  ‘Will you translate for us, please?’ I asked him. ‘Tell them we come in the name of God and will soon be gone. That we are the last of the Children’s Crusade and after we have departed we wish them peace and happiness.’

  Brother Bruno took a step forward and Brother Aloysius did the same, the two huge monks ma
king an imposing sight. Brother Bruno held up his hand and called for silence from the crowd. But they had no sooner been hushed than a short fat man stepped forward and appeared to be asking him something in a loud voice. Brother Bruno turned to me and asked querulously, ‘Dogs? He asks if you can bring the dogs back to life?’

  ‘Aye, in God’s name. But I will need twenty pails of water placed around the steps.’

  He looked at me as if he didn’t understand. ‘Twenty pails of water?’

  ‘Aye.’

  He translated and several of the townspeople broke away, presumably to do as he’d asked.

  ‘Shall we sing while we wait?’ I asked Reinhardt.

  ‘No more hymns, eh?’ he said. ‘The mood grows too sombre.’ Taking up his flute he blew the first few notes of a folksong the children all loved. It was a most merry little tune and while the people wouldn’t have understood the words it was intended as a jig and soon the people in the square were dancing. Reinhardt had once again correctly guessed their mood. We played two more songs until the pails of water were all positioned below the steps.

  There was palpable tension in the air as I stepped from the ranks of the choir. Then, with my arms lifted and my head raised heavenward the crowd fell silent. I called out in Latin for the dogs to return. Beside me Reinhardt blew his special silent signal. Moments later there came a startled murmur from the crowd as several packs of dogs rushed barking into the square and made directly for the church steps where they lapped frantically at the water in the pails, three or four dogs to each pail. Then, as each dog or bitch had drunk sufficient from the pails, they moved about the mob quite peaceably looking for their owners.

  I had not noticed that Father Pietro had now come out of the church and stood close. I felt sure he would not have seen or known about the dogs but had only seen them lapping from the pails. I knew somehow, just by looking at him, that he had undergone some sort of epiphany. ‘I am deeply ashamed, Sylvia. You who have nothing think to provide water for our scavenging dogs while we, who have everything, refuse to provide your dying children with a final anointing. May the heavenly Father have mercy on us for we have sinned most terribly.’

  I knew at once that I had seen a special moment in a man’s life, that moment when God restores his faith. But I wasn’t a priest and wasn’t sure whether I should console him for his wicked past or congratulate him on his new redemption. ‘Father, what has been done cannot be undone except by the grace of God.’ It was all I could think to say.

  ‘We will begin our repentance at once. I will send every priest from the monastery to find your dying children and we will give them extreme unction.’

  His sudden and unexpected repentance and desire to make amends had quite the opposite effect on me to the subservient gratitude he might have expected. If I had spent my allotment of tears for one lifetime I had not used up my anger. I suddenly found myself consumed by a terrible fury and a bitterness that rose up in me and which I felt I could not contain a moment longer. My sensibility told me to bide my tongue, that my first duty was to the living, to finding food for our children. The thought of our beautiful children, their tiny broken bodies reduced to skin and bone, their arms and legs thin as twigs, covered in suppurating sores, thrown into a common pit and covered with quicklime without a prayer was too much to contain a moment longer. ‘May God forgive me!’ I shouted, then pointed to a small heap of rags that lay against the wall near the steps of the church. ‘When your two brutes dragged me away this morning that precious child who belongs to God wished only to hear a few final words of comfort before passing from this earth. Now he is dead! He died alone under a blazing sun with no one to give him even a sip of water.

  Now he will be discarded like a lump of shit, thrown into a lime pit in unconsecrated ground. You and your fellow priests will answer for this on the final Day of Judgement! May your souls rot in hell!’

  Father Pietro fell to his knees. ‘Please, please, you must forgive us!’ he begged.

  I could feel the devil tugging further at my temper. The mob had never seen a priest go down on his knees in obeisance to a simple peasant maid. Or perhaps they thought I was an angel and he must bow down to me, and so they did the same, hearing only the Latin tones, the speech of heaven, contained in my furious voice. ‘We will depart this vile place as hungry as we entered, but we shall not beg for your food, you can stick your charity up your arse!’ To speak thus to a priest as a peasant might to his goatherd was nigh blasphemy, but I no longer cared. If my temper landed me in hell I knew I’d have the satisfaction of his company there and with him all the priests and monks and clerics and ugly little monkey bishops who had scorned God’s children. I also knew I would continue there to scream my anger at these hypocritical sons of bitches, my voice rising above the moans and cries of the condemned and adding to the roaring flames of hell.

  Father Pietro now lay prostrated on the flagstones, weeping like a child, with Brothers Bruno and Aloysius bending over him not knowing what to do. I must say he was making a proper job of his contrition but I remained too angry to care. ‘Take the priest into the church, let him weep in front of the Virgin – maybe She will forgive him!’ I said scornfully in German to Brother Bruno.

  To my surprise he straightened up and turned to the crowd. ‘Who among you will feed a hungry child?’ he called out.

  A hundred hands shot into the air and a roar of ‘Ayes’ followed. The townsfolk surged towards the steps beckoning our children to come to them. Reinhardt, as usual, took control. ‘Go, eat!’ The children, who throughout had not spoken a word except to sing, now gave a joyful shout. ‘We will all meet here at Evensong, you may go,’ he said dismissing them. The children could not contain their joy as they ran down the steps knowing that on this day their bellies would be satisfied.

  The two monks lifted the sobbing Father Pietro and led him into the church. Reinhardt shook his head. ‘Phew! At least our children will eat. Then we must be gone, Sylvia. I fear we have worn out our welcome.’ He grinned. ‘Every word a vituperative gem, well done!’ He saw the sudden tears well in my eyes. ‘No, don’t cry – if I live a hundred years I will not hear a more justified and better chastisement.’

  ‘What will they do to us?’ I asked in a small voice, my anger replaced with concern.

  But as if in reply Sister Infirmaress appeared, and Brother Bruno, returned from the church, translated. ‘Come, we will bathe and feed you. May I call you Sylvia?’ she asked kindly.

  I turned to Reinhardt. ‘What will you do?’

  He laughed. ‘Go, Sylvia, there are a hundred folk here who will feed me, they think me an angel’s consort.’

  ‘Sire, we would be honoured if you would take sustenance with us at the monastery,’ Brother Bruno said.

  The ratcatcher touched me on the arm. ‘I think we’re going to be all right,’ he said.

  And to my surprise we were. The nuns allowed me to bathe and I scrubbed until I felt as though I had removed the top layer of my skin, and when I sat in the sun to dry my hair the sisters came out to marvel at the colour. When I was given a brush to pull through the tangles my hair proved thin and came out in tufts and had quite lost its shine and vigour, yet they collected it as a keepsake, each a small handful as if it was a treasure to be coveted. I recalled the strong golden strands that had fallen so carelessly to the wet floor when Sister Angelica had gleefully hacked it off at the convent of Disibodenberg.

  My stomach had grown unaccustomed to less than a handful of food per day and often not even this much, and despite the tut-tutting and clucking of the kitchen sister, I was able to eat only the smallest portion of the bread and fish she placed on my wooden platter. The wine I needed to water down considerably, yet it still made my poor head spin.

  They clothed me in a nun’s habit but without the wimple. My boots had been brought over from the church but they were pronounced unrepairable and I was given a new pair. How elegant and safe I felt in a new petticoat and my black linen habit an
d stout ankle boots with new wooden soles that would surely see us to Jerusalem, though I knew in my heart and soul that this destination was no longer possible unless a miracle should happen. Even then it would take a lot of persuasion to restore my faith in miracles or in messages from angels. I possessed but one desire and this was to save the lives of the Silent Choir of God’s Little Children. I told myself I would keep my faith with Nicholas and go to meet him in Genoa, but that these children were no longer to be regarded as his responsibility – if ever he had thought they were. I was no longer willing to trust in the divinely received angel’s message that I had come to realise I had helped to instigate with the use of Frau Sarah’s magic mushrooms. If but one child had died as a result of his vision, it would have been one too many. But a thousand precious little souls had perished in our wake. As long as God permitted me to live, I knew I could not do the penance required to account for my role in this terrible disaster. I no longer believed that the blessed boy prophet could take us safely to the Holy Land.

  Moreover, I knew that we must somehow seek to break the sacred vota, that is, our children must be released from the oath we had taken with Father Hermann to undertake a crusade to the Holy Land. I might have lost my faith in miracles but I knew that if we could achieve this end it would only be by a miracle, for the Pope in Rome was the only person in all of Christendom who could rescind the oath we had taken in the name of God. Brother Dominic had once said that the Pope was God’s representative on earth but it was pointless trying to see him as he spoke only to his Master.

  But if His Holiness was an ultimate challenge, I faced a more immediate one. I knew that I must eat humble pie and apologise to Father Pietro for my wicked temper and the way I had spoken to him. If he had had no cause to put me to the whipping post on the first occasion, on this one he had every right to do so. I could not believe that I had willingly used such foul language and knew that it was the devil that lurked within me that had brought it about. I had never in my entire life openly used such words, though it would be untrue to claim that I had not tested them often in my mind or said them in my thoughts. Sister Angelica and the abbess at the convent of Disibodenberg had been frequent but unknowing recipients. To use them openly and with malice at any time was deeply sinful. To use them in Latin against a priest was beyond any possible redemption. I knew that I must confess, beg God for forgiveness and with a glad heart accept any penance demanded of me. But first I must undergo the most difficult task of all. I must face this priest and apologise. Deep within me a small voice cried out that I had meant every word I’d said and given the same provocation would say them again. But I also knew that I must take the responsibility for my profanity and my wilful anger.