by Alis Hawkins
Finally, I succeed in loosing the knots on one corner and pull the canvas up, resisting the temptation to put my chilled fingers in my mouth so that I can suck the sting and ache from them.
I lift the saint, wrap her in the blanket from my shoulders and lie her gently behind the cart’s head-board. To be sure that she lies flat and will not be joggled about as we make our way down to the island, I run a hand beneath her; and there, where there should be nothing but wooden slat, I feel something soft and loose. I wrap my fingers around it and pull it up far enough to see.
The money-bag. What is it doing out of the press?
Hefting it, it seems less full than it was, but I cannot be sure.
I glance swiftly at Hob but he is staring down at the priory, apparently unaware of my find. Did he take the money-bag from the press and put it here, where he could more easily get at it?
Or was it you — I hear my demon’s voice — you that took it from the press as you slept and did my bidding?
Did I nod off on my watch, despite the one-legged stool? Did the demon take command of my limbs the moment sleep claimed me, did he prevent the stool from tipping me onto the ground and steer my limbs to the cart? If so, I took the bag from the press without the smallest stirring of will or sense.
But why would an imp of Satan’s want me to move the money-bag? Unless, the thought chills me, he did not want me to move it but to throw it away, pauperise myself. Is that it? Did the demon try to force me, last night, to fling every penny I possess into the darkness as Hob slept?
The very thought makes the wind seem colder.
The guest hall and dormitories being full of the sick and dying, Hob and I find a place near the priory’s kitchen wall, where the heat of the bread ovens warms the stone. With our fire built and the trestle-board butted up between cart and wall to keep the swirling wind off us, we put the pallet on the ground, pull the bundle of blankets from the cart and prepare to sleep in turns, the waking one feeding the fire lest both of us freeze to our deaths in the night.
Snowflakes are hurled around the courtyard by the bitter, scouring wind but they are few and do not settle.
‘Snow or not, I’d rather be out here than in there,’ Hob says, shuffling the pallet another inch towards the fire and pulling his blankets over him. He refused a place in the stables with the mare, saying he would rather sleep with the cart than with servants who had dealings with the sick. Unwilling to leave him alone with the cart and the money-bag, I opted to stay with him.
As I wrap my blankets around me and make myself as comfortable as I can, I glance up at the infirmary on the other side of the yard where, even now, souls are barely clinging to bodies and others lie in mortal fear of their end. I mutter a prayer for them and commence staring at the fire. I dare not close my eyes or I shall be asleep.
‘God keep you, my son.’
The words startle me like a kick. Above me stands a figure in a heavy, hooded cloak and the habit of a monk, a pair of thick but aged boots just visible beneath the hem. He must have come straight from compline instead of going to his bed.
I make to rise but a hand is laid gently on the blanket that covers my head. ‘No. Don’t get up. It’s too cold to be standing about.’
Taking his own advice, he swings a long-legged stool to the fireside and lowers himself carefully on to it, its long shanks sparing his old bones the need to bend too far.
‘So,’ he smiles, ‘this is a strange time to be travelling.’
I mutter agreement. When he says nothing more, I feel compelled to justify my presence. ‘All my family’s dead but one brother.’
He nods, like a man weary of hearing the same story.
‘I’m travelling to Salster to pray for their souls.’
‘A long journey.’
I look into what I can see of his firelit face. I would put him older than my dead grandfather but his face has a well-fed, fleshy look that Gransher’s never did. Nevertheless, his is a kind and patient countenance and — for once — my courage does not fail me.
‘There’s a shrine outside the city —’ I hesitate and his silence gives me leave to stop if I wish. ‘On the site of a woodland cave. The home of a saint.’
He does not remind me that Salster is known only for Saint Dernstan, does not ask me about this forest saint. He says nothing; and it is a quiet, accepting nothing.
‘Her name is Saint Cynryth and my father was devoted to her.’
As I speak the words, the spittle dries in my mouth and I feel my heart swell and beat. I wait for his frown to match Thomas Hassell’s, for the words which will tell me that there never was such a saint, that the church recognises no Cynryth, knows of no miracles wrought by her. But there is no frown, no words of doubt.
‘Her story’s a moving one,’ I tell him.
‘I’m sure it is, son. But it’s too cold for stories. I came to see whether you might be in need of a confessor. None of us knows when we might be struck down, these days, and those on a long journey might find themselves in particular need.’
Guilt and failure and cowardice and suspicion and mistrust rise within me and fill my throat so swiftly that I cannot swallow, can barely breathe. I long for release, for the relief of absolution and the knowledge that my soul is clean and pure; for the certainty that, if I am struck down by man’s hand or nature’s accident, my soul will not be imperilled. Until this moment, I did not know how weighted with sin I had become.
‘Are you a priest?’
He shakes his head. ‘No. There are no priests left here, nor many of us professed brothers, either. But I may hear your confession, nonetheless.’
‘How?’ Only a priest, ordained by a bishop consecrated by the Pope himself, can offer absolution to the confessed.
He draws in a deep breath. ‘Out of compassion for these mortal times, a decree has been issued that, if there is no priest present, in extremis, a man may make his confession to a lay person and be absolved.’
‘To a layman?’ No. Such a thing is impossible. No layman can wipe away another’s sins.
‘Yes.’ His eyes meet mine. ‘It has been decreed. The decree also says that if men resolve not to leave repentance until they’re sick, if they seek out a priest in good time, while they’re still well, they are to be given an indulgence of forty days remission from Purgatory.’
He is urging me to confess, now, while I have the opportunity.
I glance across at Hob, a motionless mound beneath his blanket. Is he awake, his ears pricked? I can hardly confess my suspicions of him within his hearing.
The monk seems to read my thoughts. ‘We could go into the nave. It’s out of the wind, even if it doesn’t have the warmth of your fire.’
I rise, stiff with cold, keeping the blanket about me.
‘And your companion?’
‘I’ll ask him in the morning,’ I say. ‘For now, let’s leave him to sleep.’
Hob does not stir when I get back to our fireside, so I make myself comfortable for the rest of my watch; comfortable, at least, in body, for my confession — and the knowledge that I was making it to somebody who could not give me penance — has left me feeling uncleansed.
‘Don’t be troubled,’ the monk said when I gave voice to my unease. ‘Have faith in the sacrament. It’s the sacrament — and the Lord who gave it — that saves, not the hand that administers it.’
But if no more than faith in the sacrament is needed, then what in God’s holy name is to become of the church? If the church and its clerics are not set apart to do God’s work amongst men on earth, if any man can hear confession, then why should men, ever again, revere priestly ordination and submit to penance? Why should we pay tithes to a church if it offers nothing we cannot find amongst ourselves?
My teeth chatter and I pull my blanket closer. Perhaps the murmurings we heard at Tredgham were right. Perhaps the pestilence is here to cleanse the church as well as the world.
God has abandoned you all my demon whispers. You’ve pr
oved unworthy of Heaven, He’s given all of you over to Satan. And when this generation is all gone, He’ll create a new race of men who will please him more.
If that is true then there is no comfort in pilgrimage or in prayer for our dead, and all my hopes are without foundation; I am nothing more than a plaything of Satan, my pilgrimage a hellish amusement.
In the wind-blown silence, I stumble, terrified to Hob’s side. Shaking him, I feel the solidity of his shoulder beneath the blanket, feel the force of him, even in sleep. His grumbled complaints about the hour and the cold soothe me like honey on a burn and, as he stands and pisses a little way off, I let his bawdy speculations about what the monks get up to in their dormitories drown out my terrors.
CHAPTER 22
We are ready to go well before prime. The wind dropped some time before dawn, but the day is raw and cold, as if the night’s raging has flayed everything in its path.
As we leave the town behind us, common gives way to heathland and heathland to wood. Little hawthorn trees grow on the poorly-cleared margin of the track, along with bracken and broom. A hawthorn twig brushes my tunic and I catch it in my fingers; beneath the soft new bark the knobs of leaf-buds are swelling. It’s the first sign I have seen that spring will come, that we will not be prisoners of winter as we are of the pestilence.
I break off the twig and stick it in my belt as a sign of hope.
Hob is staring at me. ‘Do you feel it?’
‘What — the spring?’
‘No. Eyes. Watching.’
I look around, beyond the bushes into the standards and coppiced wood a hundred yards or so away. With the trees naked and the undergrowth winter-low, there is precious little cover for watchers.
I turn back to him. ‘Have you seen somebody?’
‘No. But I can feel them. Somebody’s there.’
I look over my shoulder, back down the track. No figures dart away out of sight, no bracken stirs.
I gather the mare’s reins and walk on. Hob is not used to woodland, does not know that the trees have eyes and the wind both voice and ears.
‘Thieving gangs trouble your King’s Forest of Dene much?’ he asks.
‘No. Collyers and miners don’t take kindly to being robbed.’
‘Well, this is a perfect hunting-ground for gangs.’ Hob’s head moves as he looks this way and that. ‘Travellers with money and goods. No villagers wandering past. Plenty of cover.’
Robber gangs. Everyone who has occasion to travel fears them. And I fear them more than most, for I have already encountered a robber. Encountered him, seen him felled, watched him havering between life and death, and buried him.
By the time we break out into open ground, Hob’s twitchiness has even the mare jumpy and wild-eyed.
The sky is more blue than grey now, and, in the growing breeze, the high clouds send shadows flowing like pools of day-faded darkness across the heath. Gulls ride the streaming air on their stiff wings, searching for the rich pickings of ploughland. They need to move south and east. Like us.
We soon discover that this heathland is treacherous, that our road dips into sloughs and hollows invisible from a distance. What seemed open and knowable suddenly becomes untrustworthy. I walk warily at the mare’s side, watching for what might come at us from the next hidden dip.
Six feet away, Hob’s vigilance possesses him, his head moving constantly this way and that as he scours the country for anything that might threaten us.
A rook shrieks at its fellows overhead, making Hob duck. As he straightens up, he reaches out to pull the canvas aside and I watch him take out his bow.
‘Are you mad?’
He turns to me. ‘What?’
‘A man with a weapon is dangerous! Any robber’ll know he has to kill you before he can hope to get near the cart.’
A burst of movement ahead turns both our heads but it is no more than a flock of goldfinches whirring up all at once, like a handful of pebbles thrown into the air. I watch them fly away, each bird dipping and rising in time with all its fellows as if they quickly tire then rally. A hundred yards or so off, they descend, all together. And, as my eyes follow them to the ground, I see a movement which is not birdlike.
‘Hob!’ As I pull the mare up, he turns and I point.
His eyes follow my finger. ‘Dogs. Worrying something.’
I strain my eyes towards the darting, circling shapes and, as I watch them, I hear a sound as if my gaze has drawn it to us over the heath; a banging, clanging sound like a cracked bell.
I reach into the cart for a stout stick.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Going to see who’s making that noise.’
Hob shakes his head. ‘Leave well alone, Martin. If you get bitten it’ll be the end of you.’
I heft the cudgel. ‘I won’t get bitten.’
‘Have you ever seen a mad dog?’
‘Yes. And killed one, too.’
As I walk away from him, he makes a great deal of taking the mare’s reins and preventing her from wandering but I am happy to leave him to it. Better to do this on my own than to be hindered by his fear; the dogs would smell it on him and be driven to a frenzy.
Again I hear the same clanging, tuneless sound, accompanied this time by a shout borne on the wind. I break into a run.
As I come within a stone’s throw of the pack, I see that there are only three dogs. They are snarling and rushing at two people in a shallow dip: a woman lying on the ground and a man on his knees next to her. He is beating at a pan and yelling his voice hoarse.
The dogs are bewildered by the noise and they prance back with each blow of wood on copper. If they had hands, they would cover their ears.
I run at them, laying about me. They leap out of my way, one yelping as I catch his haunch a glancing blow.
‘I’ll try and kill one,’ I shout to the kneeling man. ‘The others’ll run off then.’
I pick out the biggest dog and throw myself at him but he is too fast for me and takes to his heels in the direction of the cart, the other two following. As I stumble after them, my feet catching in clumps of low growth, I see Hob climb on to the cart’s off-side wheel and string his bow.
As best I can, I herd the dogs towards him.
An arrow flies and the lead dog is pinned to the ground by a shaft which pierces its chest. The other dogs pull up, looking about for the source of this swift death, but the second dog does not see the arrow that takes it through the head. The last dog turns tail and flees. Hob looses off an arrow but misses his aim, the animal shies but does not stop.
Certain that we have seen the last of it, I leave Hob to retrieve his arrows and turn back to the man on the ground. He is dressed in clothes better than any but our lord had in Lysington. A townsman, for sure.
He looks up, silently, at my coming. Now that I am not distracted by the dogs, I see that the woman he has been protecting is dead. The wind is blowing away from me, else I would be able to smell her. She has died of the pustules and I can see one, burst and oozing, on her neck.
I stretch a hand towards the man’s shoulder.
‘No! Don’t touch me! I’m sick.’
I do not need his words to tell me that. His face is shining with sweat despite the wind and there are sores around his mouth and nose. The desperation that allowed him to beat the dogs off has gone and I can almost see the life seeping out of him.
‘Coughing blood?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘Fever and pain.’
‘How long?’
He shakes his head, as if his health is of no consequence. ‘I was trying to look after Agnes.’
I look across at his dead wife. She lies in the lee of a hefty handcart piled with cord-fastened bundles. Though she has two blankets and a cloak over her, I doubt that they or the cart would have provided much protection — not in the wind we had last night. A pitiful pile of scorched sticks and tinder that should be a fire is lying on the ground nearby. The man catches my gaze.
‘I’ve never lit a fire before. I couldn’t make it go.’ He puts his head in his hands and begins to weep.
I sit on my haunches beside him and wait. After a little while, he smears the tears from his face with the heels of his palms.
‘Where’ve you come from?’ I ask.
‘Andover — south.’ He swallows, takes a breath to steady himself. ‘Thought going north would keep us safe. But it’s stalked us.’
No need to ask why he and his wife are here, where nothing lives but hares and goldfinches and dogs running wild. No village would have taken them in, even had they asked it.
Hob walks towards us, bloody arrows in his fist. ‘What news?’ he asks from a little way off.
‘They’ve come from Andover. His wife died in the night.’
‘What’s to do, then?’
I put my hand on the man’s shoulder. This time he does not pull away. ‘We must bury your wife, friend.’
He turns his bright, red-ringed eyes on me and I notice a dark patch on his cheek. ‘No! Not unless you bury me too! I won’t leave her.’
‘The church has said —’
‘No! I promised her! I promised I wouldn’t leave her. That we’d be together.’ He drags himself over to his dead wife and pulls her stiffening, stinking body to him.
I look over my shoulder at Hob. When he says nothing, I stand and go over to him. ‘We can’t leave him here to die alone.’ I keep my voice low and my head turned away from the man on the ground.
‘What, you want to take him with us?’
I shake my head.
‘Oh no!’ Now it’s Hob’s turn to shake his head. ‘We’re not staying here to watch him die! No, Martin.’
‘Perhaps he won’t die.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ Hob’s voice is a hiss. ‘I can see the marks of pestilence on him from here. He’ll be dead by this time tomorrow.’
‘Then we should stay with him —’
‘No!’ He grabs my arm with his free hand. ‘If we do that, he’s not the only one who’ll be dead. We’re sitting targets here.’
I shake him off and look at the dying man as he holds his dead wife in a last, wretched embrace. He is willing his soul to Purgatory after her, that much is clear. There will be no long fight for life.
