Hurdy Gurdy Read online

  In my dream, this is the way of Hell –

  i. Thousands of demented souls, as numerous as the stalks in a field of wheat, are all screaming without pause.

  ii. The sinners are suspended by hooks through their bellies above an orange cauldron. You smell your own flesh roasting. And feel the burn of your scorching fat.

  iii. Demons with the heads of snakes and lizards come sup upon you, tearing the flesh from you.

  iv. Then the flesh grows back so you may be gobbled again.

  When I wake, I find myself panting like an exhausted dog. I believe my own howling woke me. I am curled up in a ball, like an unborn. And sucking my thumb. The dark shadow of a visitor is cast over my body.

  It is a tall, thin man, perhaps six foot-lengths in height. He is stooped over my cot. His head is sunk in the dark depths of a baggy hood. He wears a thick black habit reaching to his feet, so I guess he is a Benedictine brother. He has come straight from harvesting – for he has brought his scythe with him, laid close by his feet.

  I sniff the foul, tainted air.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ I ask.

  ‘Smell?’ His deep, croaking voice sounds hurt, taken aback. ‘What smell?’

  ‘It is rotten meat, and fusty mildew, and shit. All rolled up together.’

  ‘Is it me?’ He sounds hurt but resigned.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I say, ‘I meant no offence.’

  ‘People do say I carry a certain smell,’ he concedes, ‘but I do not have the nose to tell …’

  When he turns to regard me, I see a white, hollow-cheeked, tight-lipped face, the skin drawn taut across the skull. His gums have receded into his lipless jaw, so he displays a fine set of long, horsey teeth.

  His black eyes carry silvery clusters of speckled stars, as if the whole night sky rotates within the orbits of his head.

  It is not clear if he is smiling, scowling, or grimacing in some private pain.

  He makes a clanking noise when he gestures. It is like the dull clatter of bone on bone.

  ‘Are you a stranger to these parts?’ I ask.

  ‘I come. I go … I am here. I am there … I am everywhere …’ He sounds weary with his lot.

  ‘You meet many people?’ I say. ‘In your travels?’

  ‘I meet everyone in time,’ he concedes, ‘but just the once.’

  ‘I suppose you are well known, then?’

  ‘I am famous. My craft is legend. And my work is never done.’

  ‘Is there not a quiet season for your trade?’

  ‘Autumn drops the leaves. Winter blows chill winds. In spring many shoots don’t sprout. In summer fresh fruit always tumbles from the bough.’

  ‘You’ve come here to see me?’

  ‘I have,’ he says. ‘For, in time, I must call on everyone …’

  ‘There’s some mistake? You’re surely looking for someone else?’

  ‘No. I am come just for you.’

  He sniffs and looks away. There is a long rattling sigh of bone resonating on bone.

  ‘I never expect a welcome.’ He splays his arms. He shakes his hooded head. He shows his empty palms and long bony fingers. ‘I come unasked, for the truly ungrateful. Everyone blames the messenger. I get no thanks … Most plead for more time. As if it’s mine to gift …’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘Bold men draw their swords to fight me. Cowards hide under the table. Fools pretend not to know me. Women offer me the bribe of love, saying they will lie in my grasp, if only they can rise again after. The rich try to gift me money. The poor beg, or offer up their soggy crusts.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Or they plead they’re the wrong person, and I should take their neighbour instead.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Enough,’ he snaps. ‘Come … your hourglass has emptied. All the sand has run out … We have to move on.’

  Then I hear my soul’s slithering, gurgling departure. It is the last sound of my body.

  I go out moistly, through my throat, with a long croaking sound, like an indignant toad.

  I lift up, weightless, to the rafters. I ride the air like a gull. I look down to my still body, the mouth splayed open in a stupid smile, the tongue poking out to the side, my open eyes gazing blankly up.

  I am calm. My thoughts are clear.

  Now I am dead, I feel more alive than ever before.

  Now I am free of that bony brain-box with its tufted top, that awkward lumpy jacket of flesh, those clumsy, gawky limbs, those troublesome holes, venting those messy tubes, always sucking something in and squeezing some other stuff out.

  Time is gone. Colours are brighter. All is serene. There’s a bright light beckoning.

  And I see the journey of my life, from birth to death, played out in its entirety, with every movement and thought and feeling, every sight and sound and smell and touch. It lasts forever, and yet it comes and goes in the blink of an eye.

  Then beneath comes a billowing darkness, a thick smoky blackness, and I know this is the worst there was, could ever be, a separateness, an isolation, an interminable loneliness. Foul nothing. Without end.

  And the smoke draws around me, and I realise if it swallows me I shall be lost, gone for all eternity with no hope.

  And I realise there are other lost souls about me, but they too are wrapped in their own fog and unable to reach out and make any contact. So all I know is their presence, and the impossibility of any connection. That no one here can ever touch anyone else. For we are all lost. And will be for all eternity.

  And I scream it out –

  ‘God forgive me. God spare me.’

  Then suddenly I lift up, angling off to the left. Now, I’m jostled by things friendly, but I can’t tell by what, by whom. There’s a hazy greyness, stretching into a tube, brightening as I rise. Incandescent specks are drifting past, some fast, some slower, like specks of dust, dancing in a sun-beam. And I understand. We’re all family together, all souls on our journeys, drifting our individual paths. The sides of the tunnel come clearer, silvery. The light at the end is glowing golden, brighter and close.

  The light beckons, inviting. This light loves me. It understands everything. It forgives all.

  I need to bathe in that light, like I’ve never needed before.

  There’s the grumble of distant thunder, then an explosion of light rolling out all around me. Its golden joy shines brighter than the sun. But it doesn’t dazzle the eyes. I am at the centre of the light, which shines entirely for me.

  I am the love of the world.

  My past, my present, my future have come together, layered in fluorescent skeins around me. Now I see my life, in all directions, all times. I see how the smallest happenings piece together to make the whole. The bee-sting, the curdled milk, the grazed knee, the pig-squeal and the fallen leaf are all inevitable and connected. None can happen without the other. There’s no guilt or regret, just how you judge yourself.

  ‘I am the light,’ the radiance tells me. ‘I am the Love Eternal.’

  ‘And I am Brother Diggory,’ I tell him, ‘from the Order of Odo at Whye. Carried off by the plague. Perhaps you’ve been expecting me?’

  Go forth, angel.

  Now, it doesn’t voice itself, the light. Instead, it shows profound. It leaks this luminous, radiant music, of a harp sounding heart-strings, and a horn blown by kindness, scented with camomile, rosemary and sage, resonating into shimmering waves of truth that dance into the spaces, filling the gaps in your mind with joy.

  ‘We live to love.’ I know it now. ‘We must only love.’

  Then there’s the gorgeous riff, of seven luminous chords, telling me all there is to be known, about Our Lord, our life, our purpose. It’s utterly simple, extraordinarily strange, and unspeakably beautiful.

  ‘God’s truth?’ I gasp. ‘And I never knew.’

  ‘Man never knows,’ the light confides, ‘until he sheds his blinkered body.’

  ‘I can’t wait to tell them all. Those down below,’ I s
ay.

  Dear Lord, Blessed Jesus, you know that feeling? When you’ve said something terribly wrong? Or out of place? And there’s no way you can unsay it, or make amends?

  It’s even worse when you’re addressing the Almighty, King of Kings, the Light of the Ages.

  The light leaps back. The radiance dims. There’s a chill wind with icy spits of rain.

  ‘You are come too early,’ the light murmurs, and wanes. ‘You are still attached to your heart and sinews.’

  ‘Can I not stay?’ I plead. ‘After I’ve come so far?’

  But the gloom and the cold are unrelenting.

  ‘Can I keep the truth? And take it back down to Earth?’

  Then, there’s an almighty clack and a dismal whirr. It’s the seven chords played backwards, harsh as finger-nails scraping slate tiles, crushed hopes, howling babies, splintering bones.

  And suddenly it’s dark, and I’m tugged downwards, like scum through a cold, slimed piping.

  The tube is sucking me deeper, darker.

  I hear a foul, sniffy, slurpy sound.

  Shhlooooop …

  That’s my spirit, returning. Going back the way it came, snuffled up my nose, then down my throat, like a lump of gory phlegm.

  Time returns. Worry follows. Pain comes close behind. Colours are dull and tarnished now. The air stinks of piss, must and rot.

  Yes, I’m back in my awful, aching, needy body, shivering with cold, my teeth chattering.

  I lie day upon day upon day – four or five, I cannot be sure – writhing on my cot, sometimes roasting, sometimes frozen, far too weak to rise, but just too strong to die.

  When I next wake, my mind seems clearer, my body stronger.

  My eyes are drawn to a scurrying shape. I spy it from the corner of my little eye. A small brown furry thing is moving across the floor of my cell. It jerks forward then stops, raises its whiskered snout to sniff the air, then scampers forwards, then stops again. There is some object on the floor before it.

  It twists its head. Its popping black berry eyes regard me. Its whiskers twitch. It opens its mouth. To disclose its yellow teeth.

  It is a small brown rat. And it is trying to carry off my candle, which is too large to clutch in its jaws. So Brother Rat is trying to roll it across the floor, pushing with its snout, then prodding it on with its front paws.

  And I wonder what good Christian use a rat could find for a candle. Being a beast and an unbeliever, without need of the redemptive symbolism of a shining light, and well able to see unaided in that dismal gloom we humans call the dark.

  Then I see the tooth-marks along the length. Then I realise.

  Of course.

  The candle is made of rendered mutton fat.

  It is food.

  It is fine, greasy, sustaining food.

  Then I understand too. That I am being robbed. I am being robbed of what I most need.

  Robbed by a rat, attempting to carry off the only food I have left in my cell.

  And yet I thank the Lord, who has provided in this time of need. Who has shown me, through the admirable example of this small, industrious, thieving creature, how I might secure the means to sustain myself.

  He always provides.

  ‘Scat,’ I say, with all the clamour and menace I can summon.

  Brother Rat looks to me, then looks down to the candle before him. He pauses. He twitches his whiskers. Then he starts to roll it again. But more hurriedly now. He is headed for the narrow gap beneath the wooden door of my cell.

  So now the race is on. Between two impeded contestants. A monk disabled by the plague, and a rat labouring to roll a candle many times his bulk.

  I can take little pride in emerging as winner. It was an uneven contest. For the Almighty has already favoured me with every advantage – superior bulk, a cleverer mind, and an immortal soul to weigh the moralities.

  But I am panting from the efforts of moving two paces from my bed, then reaching down to grasp the candle.

  Brother Rat emits a high-pitched squeak of distress as I pull the candle up and away.

  I slump backwards onto my bed. I do not pause, for Grace or anything. No, I straightaway commence to gnaw upon the lower, stubbier end of the candle.

  Although it is crumbly and dry upon the palate, it is a greatly satisfying waxiness with its unctuous richness and smoky, gamey flavours. I believe I have never enjoyed a candle so completely, before or since.

  Brother Rat releases a pitiful squeal. I see him watching me intently, grieving his loss, perched upon his back legs, with his front paws raised, as if in prayer, with his pink tongue lolling.

  So I relent. I take a thick flake of candle and toss it down to him.

  As he helped me, so I help him. For we are kin – brothers in misfortune, both struggling to survive.

  He looks to me. Then he looks to the morsel. Then he hesitantly trots forward, sniffs my scent upon it, before he lifts it up to claim it between his grasping front paws.

  Soon we are munching in unison, in hungry harmony.

  I chew off more than I can swallow, scattering more pieces his way.

  It is then, I believe, that our true friendship forms.

  I call him Frater Rattus, in the Latin manner. And within days he learns to answer to that name, and comes when I call him. And perches on my shoulder. And rides in my pocket. And will submit to having his back stroked and his cheeks rubbed, and his whiskers tickled.

  And so I baptise him.

  Partly as amusement and partly so I should have another Christian for companion. Whatever the moral shortcomings of a rat’s soul. For, as you shall hear shortly, I will be in need of any company I might find.

  And I call him my Franciscan brother, because he too is a comrade of the animals, a dirt-poor beggar, and, like the followers of Saint Francis, he wears the coarse coat of shabby brown.

  IX. The Cure for Life

  As I lay in my filthy cassock in my sweat-sodden bedding, smelling the warm ferment of my juices, I become aware of the frisky motions of my fleas making free with my steamy flesh, hopping here and there, wherever I took their fancy, then nipping me hard. Perhaps, in my inactive state abed, I had become an easy target, an invitation to a feast, so had gathered more fleas than my fair share.

  It was Brother Fulco’s opinion that fleas were given to mankind at Creation. So Adam had them. And even Eve. It was Fulco’s further observation that a monk of average size and customary cleanliness was likely host to four or five fleas. But we should not presume to call them our own. For they were a gift of God, besides being mobile, fickle in their affections, and, like mosquitoes, would move from brother to brother, favouring the sanguine more than the bilious for the savour of their blood. Or simply preferred a change of home and varied diet.

  Scholars are fiercely divided on the moral character of the flea.

  We know Saint Francis of Assisi called them the pearls of the poor, and said the more you hosted, the holier you were. He observed they were ornaments to wear upon our skin, God’s gift to us, and argued they depicted the Ladder of Creation, how we were all animals of the Lord, dependent on each other to live and let live. So, if we eat meat ourselves, we should not begrudge the flea some small supper of us.

  But James of Rochester had a sterner judgement, claiming that the flea was amongst the cruellest and fiercest of beasts. Hence its scale. For he said that the Lord had given the animals their size in proportion to their mildness of character. Thus the whale and elephant were allowed their largeness because they were gentle and kindly beasts, unless roused by attack. And that if the flea was built to the same proportion it would be the worst monster of Creation, for its sole ambition was murder, and would leave in its wake a trail of bloodless corpses, with all the humanity sucked out of them, just dry, empty husks of skin. So to temper the flea’s malignant nature, God had made it very small.

  I had noticed, these last few days, how the monastery had fallen quiet. There was no sound of movement in the passage past
my cell, no noise or talk from the infirmary, no distant chant or plainsong from the chapel, no calls of the brothers at work, no summoning the animals in for their fodder, no ringing of the bell calling the brothers to prayer.

  All I heard were the beasts. The snorting swine, rooting close by the wall. The forlorn bellowing of our cows, as if still waiting to be milked, tormented by their low swinging udders. The crowing of the cockerel. The night howls of the vixen. The mockery of the cuckoo. The hoot of the owl. Lost souls rustling the leaves.

  I knew I was growing stronger – that by some miracle, and gift of God, I had suffered the plague and survived, which none thought was possible.

  I garnered from this miraculous survival that I was special. Perhaps that I had been saved by my innocence and my goodness, though I was not sure, since babes and saints had perished. Or that I had simply arrived in eternity too early. Or, more likely, that the Lord had saved me to fulfil some purpose, such as he had spoken to me when I visited him briefly in Heaven, but which conversation I had – regrettably – forgotten. But which, I prayed, would return to my memory in the fullness of time. I could stand now on my own two legs, with near steadiness. But I was parched as the desert and knew I must find release and water.

  I commence to shout for help.

  ‘Brother Fulco …’ I call. ‘Brother James …’

  The birds fall silent briefly. A goat bleats at a distance. But no man answers.

  ‘Brother anyone …’

  I strike the door with my palm, then hammer it with a fist, but there is just a dull unrelenting thud with no resonant give to it.

  ‘Let me out,’ I cry.

  I kick low down at the cross-piece. I barge the door with a shoulder, and hear a sharp splintering and sense a rumour of movement. The door gives to a finger’s width. I heave again and again with my shoulder until, at the fifth collision, the door gives a tearing, splintering sound and swings wide open.

  I want the outdoors. I am stumbling down the passageway to the door to the monastery garden. I dunk my head in the water barrel through the surface film and swallow down the brackish water. The frog-spawn, green slime and water-snails must mind for themselves.