Stifling a shriek, I knelt down, my whole body shaking. Terrified, I made a short and desperate prayer to Saint Giles, imploring his blessings on the priest and on myself. That done, I ran away.
God, I was certain, had completely abandoned me.
12
SOMETIMES I RAN, SOMETIMES all I could do was walk. All I knew was that if the steward overtook me—and he with horse—I’d not survive for long.
With every step I took, and with every look back, I shed tears of grief. That the death of Father Quinel had to do with my mother and me, I didn’t doubt. I wondered if it was because the priest was helping me, or if it was because he was about to tell me about my father or something more about my mother.
I forced myself along, keeping to the road, though to speak of the muddy path I took as a road was a gross exaggeration. Though uneven as well as muddy, and barely half a rod across, it’s what I followed.
I had gone for but a short time when I realized I’d lost the sack of food Goodwife Peregrine had given me. I halted, even considered going back to find it, but knew that would be folly. I’d have to forage as I went.
I did touch the thong around my neck. The little pouch the old hag had given me—with the cross of lead—remained. Grateful to have that at least, I pushed on.
At first the road took me by open areas, but soon it led me into a forest of densely twisted trees that allowed neither moon nor starlight to seep through. After going a little more I halted, too exhausted to go on. I sank down, back propped against a tree.
Though worn out from my flight, my close escape, not to mention my churning emotions, I could not rest. I kept thinking of all that had happened, trying to make sense of what had occurred, of how I had become a wolf’s head. As for what would happen, I could see little but an early death in an unmarked grave—if I were lucky to have even that. What’s more, I knew that that if I died alone, without the benefit of sacred rites, I’d plunge straight to Hell, and my torments would go on forever.
Unable to sleep, I sat midst the swarming darkness, starting at every random rustling and crackling that came to ear. Then the wind began to moan, causing branches to stir and trees to creak and knock one upon one another. These sounds were lanced by the hooting of the Devil’s own bird, an owl. Far worse were the sudden silences that suggested something lurking near.
At length I flung myself upon my knees and prayed long and hard to Our Savior Jesus, to His Sainted Mother Mary, and most of all to my blessed Saint Giles, for mercy, guidance, comfort, and protection.
This putting myself in God’s merciful hands brought me a little relief, enough to allow me to fall into an irregular sleep, unsure what the next day would bring.
13
NEXT MORNING I AWOKE TO THE sound of galloping hooves. Greatly alarmed, I pressed myself upon the ground and lifted my head just enough to see the road. It was John Aycliffe, the steward, as well as the man I’d seen with him in the woods. The bailiff was there too. The three went racing by, sweeping quickly out of sight.
“Thank you, Saint Giles,” I whispered, “for protecting me.”
In a sweat from fright, I rolled upon my back and stared into the branches above. A cold rain was falling. The light was dim.
Stiff in limb, chilled in bone, numb in thought, I shifted about. As I did, some tiny animal scurried into the underbrush. Oh, how I then wished that I could be such a wee creature, small enough to hide so well.
As I lay there, I remembered Goodwife Peregrine’s pouch that hung about my neck. With a spurt of hope, I sat up, and emptied the contents into my hand. To my dismay it contained three seeds, one of wheat, one of barley, and one of oats—plus my mother’s cross of lead.
Sorely disappointed, I tossed the seeds away but decided to keep the cross in the pouch as the solitary connection to my past.
If I hoped to live, I knew I could not return to Stromford. Yet my fear of the open road was just as dire. What if I were to be seen by the steward? And, beyond that, recalling Father Quinel’s description of towns and cities, I was too timid to press on.
I, who had already gone farther from my home than I had ever gone before; I, whose life had become so quickly altered; I, who had never really had to make important choices about anything—now I had to decide everything for myself. The result was that I stayed where I was. In truth, I dreaded going far from the road lest I lose the muddy thread that connected me to the only life I knew. In faith, I did not know how to do otherwise.
Thus for the next two days I kept to the forest, only now and then meandering off at short distances in search of food. All I found were acorns and bitter roots.
All in all, I spent my time in an aimless, crushing sadness, consumed by an alternating dread and desire that I might be caught. If I were caught, at least my misery would have ended.
It was during the afternoon of the second day that I saw the bailiff again upon the road. Alone, he was, I supposed, heading back toward Stromford.
While somewhat reassured, I wondered where the steward was. I could not help thinking he was waiting ahead for me.
But once the bailiff passed I made myself recall my mission: a need to get far from Stromford to some city or town that had its own liberties. It was what Father Quinel had told me to do.
Such thoughts forced me back upon the road, where I continued on. Sometimes I stumbled. Sometimes I sat by the roadside, head tucked within my folded arms while waiting, I knew not for what. Then yet again—pushed by the need to act—to move—to do anything—I went on.
Late that day, besieged by fears, very lonely and quite famished, I fell to my knees and prayed with deep-hearted, sobbing words. In these prayers I acknowledged my great unworthiness to my Lord Jesus and searched my heart for every sin to which I could confess. This time I begged Him to gather me that I might join my mother in His holy Heaven. The truth was—and how great my shame—I no longer wished to live; which was, I knew, a sin.
14
ON THE THIRD MORNING OF MY escape I woke to a wool-like world of misty gray. Thick and clammy air embraced me like the fingers of some loathsome toad. Sounds were stifled. Solid shapes were soft as rotten hay. No sun jeweled the sky. My entire world had shrunk down to the frayed margins of the sodden road. I walked as solitary as Adam before the creation of Eve.
As I pressed on through the boundless mist, my damp feet sucking soggy soil, the road went up an incline. Suddenly, I spied what appeared to be a man hovering in the air. Heart pounding, I halted and peered ahead.
Was it a mortal? My first thought was that it was the steward. Or was it a ghost? A demon perhaps? Or was it an angel come from Heaven to take me to the safety of God’s sweet embrace?
Then, with a lurching heart, I realized what it was: a dead man swinging from a crossroads gallows.
I drew close.
It was a man—for so he had once been. Now his face was moldy green and much contorted, with a protruding tongue of blue that reached his chin.
One eye bulged grotesquely. The other was not there. His body oozed from open wounds. Swollen legs and arms flopped with distended disjointed-ness. Bare feet pointed down with toes that curled upon themselves like chicken claws. Such clothing as he wore was nothing more than a loincloth of filthy rags. Sitting on his left shoulder were blue-black crows feasting on his corruption. He stank of death.
A piece of writing was affixed to him by a broken arrow that stuck out from his body. Since I couldn’t read, I had no idea what it said.
Terrified, I sank to my knees and made the sign of the cross. Perhaps there were some outlaws lurking near. Then I thought that it might be some thief brought to his lawful end. I tried to imagine what awful thing he might have done to deserve such a fate. Then with dread, it came to me that God had set the man before me as a warning. The next thought that took hold was that I had already died. That here were the gates of Hell.
How long I stared at the corpse, I do not know. But as I knelt, the mist seemed to ensnare my body like a
sticky shroud, intent on dragging me down.
Except—as Jesus is my Savior—as sure as my heart understood anything—I knew then how much I wished, not to die, but to live.
I can give no explanation how I came to this understanding, save that I did not want to become the blighted man who dangled before me, pillaged by the birds.
Knowing how wondrous are the works of God, I thought that perhaps He—in His awful mercy—was speaking to me with this dreadful vision. For I knew that, from that moment on, I was resolved to stay alive.
But which of the crossroads was I to take? North, south, east, or west?
“Please, dear God,” I cried aloud, my eyes streaming hot tears, “choose a path for me.”
In the end I followed the path of the misty sun, which stared down at me from the gray sky like the dead man’s blank and solitary eye.
15
ALL THAT DAY I CONTINUED walking. Nothing blocked my way. The mist lifted. The air turned light. Still I saw no one, not even from afar. From time to time I found streams to slack my thirst but not so much as a crumb of food.
Sometimes I traveled through woods. More oft I passed abandoned fields. While I saw birds aplenty heard them too—wood pigeons, cuckoos, thrushes—I wondered if England had no human souls. Would I find no life or food anywhere?
More than once I reminded myself of the times when my mother and I had gone without sustenance. If we could survive then—and we did—I could do so now.
During the afternoon of the following day, still going westerly and while coming off a rise, I saw ahead what looked to be a village situated in a dell. It was a cluster of cottages, and, taller than the rest, a church of stone. At first glance it seemed as if the hamlet contained fewer dwellings than my own Stromford.
Still, my heart began to race. Perhaps this was where God had led me, where I would gain my liberties, where people would treat me kindly. And where there would be food for me.
Yet as I drew close I began to sense something greatly amiss. There was no rising smoke, no people, sheep, or cows. No living thing appeared, not so much as a single cock, goose, dog, or pig. Nor were there smells, no dung, no manure. The fields I passed had long been unplowed.
As I came into the village proper, I saw that all lay in ruin. Roofs had collapsed. Walls had fallen in. Carts and wheels were broken. Tools lay scattered on the ground. The roof thatch that remained was worn to shreds, full of gaping holes. House daubing had crumbled and remained unpatched. Wattle had unsprung. In the middle of the hamlet I came upon a well whose surface water lay thick with clotted scum.
My skin crawled with trepidation. Something ghastly had occurred. I was put to mind of my nightmarish thought, that I had come to Hell.
But gradually, I began to grasp what it was I’d come upon: the remnants of a village destroyed by the Great Plague of some years back.
In Stromford there had been much talk of this devastating pestilence, “the Great Mortality,” as it was called. Our village had lost more than half its inhabitants, some by death, others by a desperate fleeing. It had caused my own father’s death.
The cause of this blight was well known: God had sent it as punishment for our sins. All one could do was pray to Jesus and run—and even then, there was no escape. As Father Quinel had always warned, God in His sweet mercy and unforgiving anger touches whom He wants. No soul can escape His wrath.
Here, not one person appeared to have remained alive. The profound stillness that embraced all was its own sad and lonely sermon.
Still, desperate to find some food—even a tiny morsel—I crept with care through what remained, fearful my steps might waken restless spirits. To protect myself, I gripped the cross of lead in my hand.
In search of food, I made myself enter one of the better structures, an empty cottage with half a roof. Some of its walls remained. In a collapsed corner sat a brown-boned skeleton. About its open ribs lay shreds of old cloth. Once fair hair dangled from its skinless skull. Its fleshless hands clutched a tiny cross.
I made the sign of the cross over my own hammering heart and retreated, then rushed through the village, wanting nothing more than to flee.
But as I was passing the broken church I heard a solitary singing voice:
“Ah, dear God, how can this he
That all things wear and waste away!”
16
STARTLED, I STOPPED. THEN I became afraid. After what I had witnessed in the village, I could not believe I was hearing a living voice. But when the voice sang out again—and I realized it was coming from the abandoned church—I told myself that a church was an unlikely place for evil spirits to abide. Besides, food was uppermost in my thoughts, and I had desperate hopes that I might have come upon a survivor.
Trying to make no sound and clutching my cross of lead, I went around by the side of the church, where windows had once been but where only gaping holes remained. As I drew closer, the voice sang out again. This time it was accompanied by the beating of what sounded like a drum.
“Ah, dear God, how can this be
That all things wear and waste away!”
Cautiously, I peeked inside.
At first, all I saw was rubble and rot. Then, partly hidden in the shadows, I saw a man who was anything but a skeleton. On the contrary, he was a mountain of flesh, a great barrel of a fellow, whose arms and legs were as thick as tree limbs, and with a tublike belly before all. Legs extended, he was sitting with his back propped against a crumbling baptismal font. He was, moreover, garbed like no man I had ever seen before. Upon his head was a hat which seemed to have been split into two, like the points on a cock’s comb. At the end of these points hung bells. Moreover, the flaps of his hat came down along both sides of his face, encircling it, then tied below, making his cheeks plump.
As for his face, most striking was a bushy beard of such ruddy red it seemed as if the lower part of his face was aflame. He also had a large, red, and fleshy nose and hairy eyebrows of the same hue, as well as a cherry-lipped mouth big even for such a face as his.
He wore a wide-sleeved tunic of black, and ankle-length hose with a different color for each leg, one blue, the other red, though the colors were faded. His brown leather boots were long and somewhat pointy at the tips. Yet, for all this rare color, his clothing was ragged, torn, and patched in many parts, enough so that I could see his dirty, hairy skin in several spots.
A ballock dagger was fastened to his hip. On the ground by his side lay a fat sack, which contained, I prayed, food.
His eyes were closed, but clearly he was not asleep. Instead, he was singing raucously while beating a small drum with his massive hands. As I looked on, he continued to tap the drum with his big fingers, bleating out his song. After repeating the words a few more times, he let loose a booming laugh as if he’d just heard a rare jest. He laughed so hard he put down his drum and opened his eyes.
Compared to the rest of him, these eyes were small and wet. Old pig’s eyes, I thought, shrewd and wily. But what he must have seen was me, staring at him. For he dropped his drum and his hand went right to his dagger.
We gazed at one another in silence.
“Good morrow, lad,” he cried out, even as his hand eased off his weapon. “May God keep you well.”
“God be with you too, sir,” I managed to say, though I was in awe of such a monstrous man.
“And where, by Saint Sixtus, do you come from?” he asked. “Not, I suppose, from this Godforsaken village.”
I shook my head.
“Then what place?” he said.
“Far … away,” I answered evasively.
“East or west?”
I pointed in the direction I had come from.
Scrutinizing me, head cocked to one side, he ruffled his beard, while a sly smile played his lips. “You have a gifted way of speech,” he said. “To what purpose do you travel?”
“I’m … going to meet my father,” I said, this being the answer I’d decided to give if asked.
/> “And, pray tell, does this father of yours live close?”
“In … some large town.”
He considered me for yet a while with his shrewd, wet eyes. “So if I understand you, boy,” he said at last, “you know only somewhat from where you come, but go toward … some other place.”
“As God is true, sir.”
“Do you have any idea how you look?”
“No, sir.”
“Your tunic is equal parts dirt, rags, and rents. Your face is scratched and mucked as are your naked arms and legs. Your hair is long and unkempt. I can barely count your fingers for the caked filth. In short, you’re more cur than boy. How old are you?” he asked. “And, as God is merciful, don’t be so vague.”
“Thirteen, about.”
“About” he returned with something like a sneer, plus another scratch of his beard.
I said nothing, trying to make up my mind if I should run away. But, still hoping that such a barrel of a man must have some food, I stayed.
For his part, he continued to consider me steadily with his small intense eyes. “Might you,” he said, as if reading my mind, “be hungry?”
My mouth began to water. “Yes, sir, as God is kind and if it pleases you.”
“Hunger never pleases me,” he roared. “Though our great if doddering king surely means well, his loyal subjects go hungry. And why? Because the officials of this most holy kingdom are all corrupt gluttons. His councilors and parliaments—all dressed in that new Italian cloth, velvet—sit upon the backs of the poor and eat their fill of venison and sweetmeats. Not to mention the Flemish foreigners who loot our country’s gold. But such is the will of His Gracious Majesty, that poor souls like you and I are not part of his daily reckoning. ‘It is as it is,’is his motto. Mine is, ‘Let it be as it may be!’
“What think you of that sermon?” he said, cocking his head, as if he really wished me to reply.