The Black and the White
Page 34
No. No! I stay there, my knees cold on the flagstones, the muscles in my feet cramping painfully from the long-unused position, but I do not move to ease them. Bearing the pain proves my devotion to the saint. Shows her what I will endure for her if only she will come back to me.
For minutes I kneel there, making no answer when the lay brother says he must leave me, not moving aside despite the tutting of a family who come to the altar and seek to kiss the saint.
The muscles in my thighs begin to twitch and then to tremble. And still the saint does not reveal herself to me.
Please, Lady! If you still love me, if you wish me to serve you, please show yourself to me as you once did.
At last, I can kneel no longer and I fall sideways, my newly-knit bones crying out at the impact and the hardness, and I lie there.
After a time I cannot measure, kind hands raise me, a tender voice speaks to me, and I am led with gentle firmness away from the Maiden’s altar. Leaning against a pillar, I can find no words but my rescuer simply pats my shoulder and I am left to recover as best I may.
When, finally, I am able to open my eyes once more, I turn my head to Saint Cynryth. There she stands, in her new white and green, reaching out to pilgrims who would pray to her. But not to me. Not anymore. My heart, which previously beat so fast and so insistently, now seems leaden within my chest. Though I am alive, though my father’s soul is safe, the vision I have cherished all these months is gone.
For the saint has chosen Hob.
If the vision she gave me of a shrine by a well is to be fulfilled, then Hob must do it. She is my saint no longer.
***
Enjoyed The Black and the White? Join the Sapere Books’ mailing list for the latest releases, eBook deals, author news, and much, much more!
SIGN UP HERE
A NOTE TO THE READER
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for taking the time to read The Black And The White.
This book changed my life in quite a significant way. As background research, I went to the Forest of Dean to take part in a charcoal burn done the medieval way — known as an earth burn and carried out as described in the book. Though I’d only intended it as research, my partner and I became hooked on the three-day long process which takes place every year at the Dean Heritage Centre and, even though we then lived in Kent, we started coming to Gloucestershire as volunteers on ‘the burn’.
Eventually, wanting to relocate closer to my family in Wales, we settled in the Forest of Dean. Now, following the sad death of the organiser, Peter Ralph, to whom this book is dedicated, my partner Edwina and I have taken over the running of the earth burn ourselves.
If you’d like to know more about the background to The Black and The White, you can read my historical note below. If you’d like to know even more, the two books that I found most interesting and helpful were: The Black Death: An Intimate History by John Hatcher — a history of the plague as it affected one village in Suffolk, Walsham, and is compelling reading — and The Scourging Angel: The Black Death in the British Isles by Benedict Gummer — a more academic study covering the progress of the plague over the whole of Great Britain.
As you will probably know, reviews make a huge difference to authors and enable us to reach more readers so, if you have enjoyed The Black and the White enough to write a review on Amazon or Goodreads I would be very grateful.
Meanwhile, if you’d like to know more about me and other books I’ve written, I’d be delighted if you visited my website. You can also follow me on my Facebook page, AlisHawkinsAuthor or Twitter where I post regular updates about my work and links to other authors I admire.
Meanwhile, if you’d like to know more about the background to The Black and The White, read on.
Alis Hawkins
www.alishawkins.co.uk
HISTORICAL NOTES
Post-apocalyptic novels are popular at the moment but most of them are based in the near future after some event which has not, in fact, heralded the end of the world. In 1348, when the plague known contemporaneously as the Great Death — and, since, as the Black Death — began to sweep across Europe from Asia, people genuinely thought that this might herald the Apocalypse, the literal end of the world as it had been. Of the four horsemen or harbingers of the Apocalypse, the first was the conqueror of men, seen by churchmen as pestilence. He was to be followed by war, famine and death and, together, the Biblical prophecy was that they would kill ‘a fourth of the earth’. In fact, the great pestilence killed more than a fourth of the people of Europe — somewhere between a third and a half depending on what models are used.
So, the England that Martin and Hob travelled through was one that had been devastated both physically and psychologically by the plague. Nobody knew what kind of England might survive such an unprecedented visitation, if anything and anybody at all survived. Nor did they know why this was happening though there was a general agreement at the time that it represented God’s judgement on sinful humanity.
It’s difficult for us to put ourselves into the mindset of a fourteenth-century person. We no longer live in a world in which the only explanation for what happens is ‘God’. Any ‘apocalypse’ which overtakes us now will be of our own making (war, climate change, nuclear or biological weaponry) or of natural causes (pandemic, meteor strike). The people of the fourteenth-century were not so lucky. They had no idea why this was happening or what to do about it.
As to the specifics of the book, St Cynryth does not exist, I made her up. However, Martin’s attitude to her and her statue are, as nearly as I can manage for presentation to a modern audience, the attitudes of a fourteenth-century semi-educated youth.
Hob’s attitude towards God and the church is different but also representative of what happened as a result of the plague. People felt that the church — whose priests were supposed to keep the peace with God on the people’s behalf — had failed them and, as a consequence, turned away in despair. Clearly, either the church was ineffectual or God did not care. A fatalism overtook many people and England’s attitude to the church changed. The Black Death hastened the popular movement towards clerical reform and a move towards what would later become Protestantism — the notion that each man must make his own way with God, unmediated by the church.
The peasantry’s attitude towards the rigid medieval social hierarchy also changed with the Black Death. The rich and powerful were not given preferential treatment by God in the matter of who lived and died so people drew their own conclusions. Their overlords were no more worthy than they were. Perhaps the notion that each man was born into the station he was fitted for and could not change lest he anger God was wrong. Hob takes this attitude to its logical conclusion.
Published by Sapere Books.
20 Windermere Drive, Leeds, England, LS17 7UZ,
United Kingdom
saperebooks.com
Copyright © Alis Hawkins, 2020
Alis Hawkins has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales are purely coincidental.
eBook ISBN: 9781913518363
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
EPILOGUE
A NOTE TO THE READER
HISTORICAL NOTES