Hurdy Gurdy Page 5

  There were a couple of the mummers who enjoyed copying our brothers. One would walk behind the Abbot, imitating his heavy, swaying gait, thrusting out his belly to seem as substantial out front, then pursing his fat lips, making the sounds of passing wind. But whenever Abbot Benedict turned or stopped, he would twist back to his normal posture, all the while looking solemn and sad.

  We brothers prepared ourselves for the storm to come.

  We scoured our minds for forgotten sins, that had maybe slipped into the cracks of memory, lest we die unconfessed, in some small way unrepentant. We took fastidious care to snub any pleasures the Devil might cast in our path to distract us. We incessantly reminded ourselves of our moral state as transgressors, miscreants, reprobates, malefactors. So passing in the cloisters, we’d help each other with advice, to ease our moral jeopardy.

  ‘You’re depraved, Brother Thomas. Pray God you repent.’

  ‘Blessings, Brother Diggory. May God forgive you. You pitiful sinner.’

  We prayed for forgiveness, for ourselves, and all the sinners of this depraved and wicked world.

  Each day Brothers Fulco, James and I took the time between prayers, at Terce and Sext, and between None and Vespers, to prepare the infirmary for the sickness from the miasma that surely blew towards us.

  Our hospital was a low, rectangular stone and thatch building, thirty paces by forty. It was set apart from the monastery with the herb garden lying between. In the main chamber we had a central stove with its brick chimney. There was a water trough to the side which we filled by wooden bucket. Around the west wall were spaced six wooden cots for the sick. To the other side was a passageway lined with four cells. One for each of us infirmarers, with one to spare. We would sleep close by our patients.

  And, when the disease struck, we should keep ourselves separate from the rest of the monastery. We would shout our messages to our brothers across the herb garden, or leave detailed instructions, written in chalk on board, or ink on parchment.

  We dried our herbs – henbane, hemlock, poppy, hemp, juniper, cumin, hyssop, dill, rosemary. We mixed our ointments with duck fat and sheep grease. We ground our powders. We bottled our tinctures. We cut waste cloth for bandages. We kept our leeches prepared – half of them plump, gorged with cow’s blood, and half of them hungry. We sharpened our knives on the grinding-stone. We oiled the saw-blades for amputations – the small one for fingers and toes, and the large one for limb-bones.

  We made our perfume from flower petals and volatile spirit. Brother Fulco and I took twenty trips to the cesspits, collecting the mixed slurry of shit and piss, in our wooden buckets, till we had filled a large cauldron. We kept the vessel outside the infirmary. But Fulco advised we should regularly stick our heads over the edge and avail ourselves of the fumes, and draw in the strong, wholesome vapours, to keep the miasma away and our lungs clean.

  For, to fight the plague with our full force, we would need both. The fragrant and the rank. The best of smells and the worst of smells.

  ‘Is that you, Brother Fulco?’ I ask.

  For the figure that looms before me has Brother Fulco’s height and shape. He wears Brother Fulco’s feet in Brother Fulco’s sandals, attached to his legs, reaching into his robe, with his muscular hands and slender fingers emerging from the sleeves. Only he has a head like a giant crow’s, black with a long pointed beak, and two glistening, black, button eyes.

  ‘This will be our protection.’ Fulco draws the mask off his pink perspiring head. ‘I’ve made one for each of us. Together with leather gloves and a waxed cape. The miasma will not be able to penetrate. It is my very own invention …’

  He shows me the inside of the mask, with the dark glass eyes, and the beak packed with straw, mixed with herbs, impregnated with essences.

  ‘I have used rosemary, myrrh, mint, lavender, rose petals and pepper.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It will take a mighty miasma to overpower the scent of all those.’

  ‘Indeed, Brother.’ His is a clever, wise and ingenious mind. This is a reassurance. Still, even so … I have an unease I cannot name.

  Between Vespers and Compline, after the lighting of the candles, the mummers perform a drama for our gathered brotherhood. The Abbot has permitted this on the strict promise that the performance should address the sins of Man, offer guidance for redemption, be innocent of any comfort or cheer, and entirely stripped of pleasures.

  The leader of the group, who goes by the title of Thomas Jack-Rabbit, or Clever-Legs, or sometimes Johnny-Bare-Arse, comes forth alone to address us. He wears a long coat patched of red and green quadrants. His hose have one yellow leg and one orange. He has one silver shoe and one gold shoe. He doffs his feathered cap and waves it with a flourish.

  But when he spins around, and sways from side to side, we see the back of his costume and hose. His reverse is all black, and on it are drawn in white the bones of the human body, topped by a skull, so it seems we are facing a swaying skeleton. When he wiggles his backside, the dead seem to dance.

  Then he twists back again, and we see his merry dress, his smiling face and his bulging eyes.

  ‘This is the tale of Life and Death,’ he says. ‘And it is the oldest story on Earth. And yet man will rarely believe it … Memento mori,’ he says. ‘Nous devons mourir … We all must die.

  ‘One day a beautiful lady, a rich merchant and a powerful prince set out on the road together …’

  Then three more mummers enter from the right, formed in a line, jerking up and down, each riding an invisible horse, their hands reaching forward as if holding the reins. One has long golden hair and wears a long dress. He purses his lips, shakes his long, yellow locks, and winks at us brothers.

  The second has a large paunch. The third wears a crown.

  Then three more figures appear, coming the other way, all bags of bones with skulls for heads. They carry dripping lumps and tubes, which are parts of their bodies but keep falling out.

  And the beautiful lady stops, scowls at the first, and says, ‘Why stop me, hag? You are as old as the grave and ugly as sin.’

  And the first corpse says, in a low coarse voice, ‘I was fresh beauty, fair as a flower, scented as roses. Men fell at my feet. But now the putrid flesh falls off me and I smell of spoiled meat.’

  And the merchant turns to the second dead one, and says, ‘Why stop me? You are a bag of bones with nothing to sell and no money to buy.’

  And the second corpse says, ‘Once I was rich like you, stupid and fat as a pig, but you die empty-handed and poor as your soul.’

  And the prince turns on the final living corpse, and commands him, ‘Be gone. You trespass on my time, and you’re blocking my path.’

  And the third corpse says, ‘Like you, I used to be king of all I surveyed. Then I bit the dust and gave up the ghost. Now all I’m fit for is to be supper for worms.’

  ‘Beauty flees the body,’ says the first-dead. ‘Time chases it from the face.’

  ‘You can’t take your wealth with you,’ says the second. ‘It belongs in the world.’

  ‘We are all food for the worms,’ says the third-dead. ‘They go in thin and they come out fat.’

  Then the six figures all link arms together, three living and three dead, and begin to swirl in a circle. They dance faster and faster, until they merge to a blurred ring. And the band plays and the music speeds too, led by a Hurdy Gurdy, sounding like a flock of demented bleating sheep.

  Thomas Jack-Rabbit steps towards us, the dancers circling behind, until they suddenly all tumble to the ground in a heap.

  And Thomas spins around and shows us his skeleton back.

  ‘My name is Death,’ he says, ‘and I am coming for you. Such as I was, you are. And such as I am you will be. Wealth, beauty and power are lost. The dark door swings open. You cross over to death. The worms are waiting. They are waiting for you.’

  Then he clears his throat and commences to sing in a rasping, creaky voice. ‘Oh, Death’. We have
heard the song before. We know it well.

  I am Death, who none can cheat.

  I’ll snaffle your soul and leave your meat.

  I’ll clamp your feet so you can’t walk.

  I’ll lock your jaw so you can’t talk.

  I’ll seal your eyes so you can’t see.

  Feel my chill fingers. Come with me.

  I’ll rot the flesh from off your frame.

  For dirt and worms both have their claim.

  Then he sways, wearing a sad, perplexed grin.

  Then he releases a quiet, inadvertent gurgling sound, like water leaving a bottle.

  Then he topples towards us, hits the floor-stones, full face, with a muffled thud, and lies deadly still.

  It is most convincing. And we marvel at his skill in falling so recklessly without care for his cracked head, and acting his own demise so realistically. For truly it is a lifelike death.

  And the band of musicians fall silent, halted in mid-tune. So we know the show is finished. And we sit still on our benches, waiting for Brother Jack-Rabbit to rise to take our applause. For it is a strong moral, grasped by us all.

  Death is abrupt. It comes without warning. It comes for us all.

  The three living and the three dead rise from their heap and mutter to each other. They gather around their fallen leader. They tap his cheeks. They loosen his costume. They whisper close in his ears.

  Brother Fulco turns to me and pats my wrist. ‘Come. We must help. For, I fear, if Brother Death has not passed already, he is certainly unwell.’

  Brother Jack-Rabbit’s eyes are closed. His forehead is smeared with blood. His mouth is open. Two of his front teeth have been broken away. He wears a tense grimace of pain.

  Brother Fulco lowers his head to the man’s chest. Then he draws back an eyelid to reveal a still, bloodshot, staring eye.

  ‘He’s still breathing. Fast and shallow. He has a surplus of black bile. His breath smells of brimstone, ale and onion. He is very hot. The sweat on his brow tastes sour and salty.’

  Just then, at the edge of my sight, I detect a quick brown blur. And straight away I feel a prickle at my neck.

  I know what it is.

  A flea has crossed over. It has jumped from the mummer onto me.

  It is a bad augury. It is abandoning the sick man. It does not have faith in his future. It wants a safer home. It wants fresh, healthy blood to sup on.

  Fulco tears at the man’s collar and draws back his shirt to expose his chest. Then we see it, cupped in his arm-pit. It is a blue lump, the size of a crow’s egg.

  There’s no mistaking. It is the swelling that comes with the pox. The dark, weeping lump they name the bubo.

  Now, the plague is amongst us.

  ‘May God have mercy on us …’ Fulco mutters.

  The bell rang for Compline, our night’s prayers, and the brothers took their place in the line, before wandering in silence to the chapel, not yet knowing what had come amongst them.

  But the mummers seemed to know more. They formed a tight huddle, and watched us attend to the sick man. But when I turned their way again, there were fewer there.

  I counted. Three of them were gone. And there was heated whispering in the group that remained.

  But the next time I turned, there were none.

  They all were fled, scattered, sudden as wary starlings, in the blink of an eye, having discarded their costumes, tossed aside, inside out and torn, alongside their abandoned instruments, beside their trampled masks.

  They had not even bidden us goodbye, collected their possessions, offered their prayers for a safe journey, said farewell to their poxed comrade, nor thanked us for our hospitality.

  We heard the creak of the great door of the monastery opening, the whinny of their pony outside, then the barking of Toby their hound.

  ‘They are fleeing from themselves and hiding from each other,’ Brother Fulco said. ‘They seek to out-run themselves. And I doubt they will succeed.’

  We three infirmarers donned our plague cloaks and masks to handle the man. Now there was a new concern. We had to minimise the chance of pox particles passing through the airs, on the waves of his now thick, sickly aromas, into our own skins.

  We came prepared, but the masks muffled our speech, so we were forced to gesture and shout. And the waxed cloaks were heavy, drew a sweat and hampered our work.

  We lifted Brother Jack-Rabbit onto a bier and wheeled him to the infirmary.

  We laid him on a straw mattress.

  He bore a fierce fever. He was racked by coughing. He twisted and contorted with cramps.

  We watched more buboes in his groin swell and darken from pink to scarlet, grown from the size of an egg to an apple. Meanwhile, more rose in his arm-pits and on his neck.

  He tossed in some delirium, shouting, whispering and hissing. Though we could not grasp the full sense in it, we could make out some coarse, rude phrases.

  He took to vomiting small puddles of black blood, and sneezing red blood in a hazy spray.

  ‘You must repent your sins,’ Fulco leaned over to advise. ‘Before you leave us.’

  The man twitched the closed lids of his eyes and ground his teeth together. But he had nothing to say.

  By dawn his body had slowed and his appearance had worsened. The tips of his toes and fingers, his lips and nose darkened from purple to black.

  ‘His flesh is dying,’ said Fulco, ‘from the inside out.’

  The man’s breath came noisy, forced and fast as though it was a mighty struggle. There was an awkward, unhelpful gurgling sound from his throat, as if he was trying to gargle his spittle.

  ‘That is the sound of the soul,’ said Fulco. ‘It is growing restless. It is looking for the best way out of the prison of his body.’

  ‘The soul leaves through the throat?’

  ‘There are nine gateways – the two eyes, the two ears, the two nostrils, the mouth and …’ He paused and coughed apologetically. ‘Sometimes through the organs of excretion, the penis or the anus.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sometimes the soul sounds the trumpet of the bowels as it parts through the back door. Or it trickles out with a final piss. It doesn’t stand on ceremony or plead its dignity. It just wants to be free of the prison of flesh. It just seeks its immortality.’

  When the man finally parted this world, it was at Prime, the early morning prayers, as we heard our brothers chant ‘Salva Mira Creatura’ distantly in the chapel.

  Brother Jack-Rabbit’s soul chose to part Brother Jack-Rabbit’s body through his nose, in a long final sneeze, spraying blood and snot in a hazy ball around his head. Then his head snapped to the side. His chest jerked. Then he breathed no more.

  We felt a rush of wind and a cold breeze brush our faces.

  ‘Did you feel that?’ Fulco asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That was his spirit rushing out,’ said Fulco. ‘Sometimes they linger for hours. But this one is in a hurry to be gone.’

  ‘I have never seen a dead man before,’ I told Fulco, ‘not up close.’

  ‘That’s not a man. It is an empty shell of him. Now the spirit has gone out.’

  Fulco was right. The face was waxy and stiff. It looked nothing like the man who had been alive. It looked like a crude mask. There was no life or emotion to the face, except, perhaps, a look of mild surprise.

  All of a sudden, I felt dog-tired.

  I was in the burning grip of some fever.

  Trickles of sweat ran down my cheeks.

  There was a hammering in my skull, making me wince at every blow.

  I took myself to my new cell in the corridor off the infirmary.

  I laid myself down and the dark took me.

  VIII. God Only Knows

  I cannot tell how much time has passed.

  There is a hammering on the closed oak door of my cell.

  ‘Who is there?’ I call between the thunderous blows. I would rise to answer, but my aching legs refuse the call. I’m
held down in my bed by a fierce grip.

  ‘It is us … Brother Fulco and Brother James.’

  ‘Come in,’ I call, ‘no need to knock.’

  The knocking stops, but the door stays firmly closed.

  ‘We do not need to come in, Brother,’ James calls out.

  ‘Never mind,’ Fulco calls, ‘it’s better we stay outside.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘We are securing your door,’ says Fulco.

  ‘Securing?’

  ‘Closing. With a plank and some nails,’ says James.

  ‘But I’m still inside.’

  ‘Yes, Brother, we know … But it is safer this way. So we keep apart. Sealed by the door.’

  ‘Why so?’

  There is a long silence before Fulco answers. ‘Because you carry the plague, Brother Diggory.’

  ‘Yes …’ I say.

  I guessed as much, from the hammering in my skull, the leaden weight of my body, the trickles of sweat down my face, the lumps – hard as acorns – that my fingers feel on my neck and in the pits of my arms.

  ‘This pestilence,’ says Fulco, ‘it is everywhere. It has spread amongst us like wild-fire. So many brothers have fallen to its clutch. We must separate the sick – like you – from the healthy. Now segregation is our last defence.’

  ‘May God be with you,’ James calls. ‘He loves you so well. As we all do.’

  ‘You are always in our prayers,’ Fulco says. ‘Always. We pray God preserves you.’

  ‘What shall I eat?’

  There is a brief silence, until Brother James replies.

  ‘Trust to the Lord. He always provides.’

  ‘But best think of your immortal soul,’ suggests Fulco, ‘which matters more.’

  I must have fallen again into a demented, fevered sleep. In the cauldron of the illness, with my flesh burning, I dreamed I was in Hell’s Fire.