World Without End

  Saul accepted this dismissal and went out. Godwyn buried the ornaments, the priory charters, the relics of the saint, and almost all the money. The monks replaced the soil in the hole, tamped it down, and put the altar back in its place. There was some loose earth left over, which they took outside and scattered.

  Then they went to the refectory. The little room was crowded now, with the addition of the Kingsbridge men. A monk stood at the lectern, reading a passage from Mark's gospel, but he fell silent when Godwyn walked in.

  Godwyn motioned the reader to a seat and took his place. "This is a holy retreat," he began. "God has sent this terrible plague to punish us for our sins. We have come here to purge those sins far away from the corrupting influence of the city."

  Godwyn had not intended to open a discussion, but Saul sang out: "What sins in particular, Father Godwyn?"

  Godwyn improvised. "Men have challenged the authority of God's holy church; women have become lascivious; monks have failed to separate themselves completely from female society; nuns have turned to heresy and witchcraft."

  "And how long will it take to purge these sins?"

  "We will know we have triumphed when the plague dies away."

  Another St. John monk spoke up, and Godwyn recognized Jonquil, a large, uncoordinated man with a wild look in his eyes. "How will you purge yourself?"

  Godwyn was surprised that the monks here felt so free to question their superiors. "By prayer, meditation, and fasting."

  "The fasting is a good idea," said Jonquil. "We haven't got much food to spare."

  There was a little laughter at that.

  Godwyn was worried that he might lose control of his audience. He banged the lectern for quiet. "From now on, anyone who comes here from the outside world is a danger to us," he said. "I want all doors to the precinct barred from the inside day and night. No monk is to go outside without my personal permission, which will be granted only in emergency. All callers are to be turned away. We are going to lock ourselves in until this terrible plague is over."

  Jonquil said: "But what if--"

  Godwyn interrupted him. "I haven't asked for comments, Brother." He glared around the room, staring them all into silence. "You are monks, and it is your duty to obey," he said. "And now, let us pray."

  The crisis came the very next day.

  Godwyn sensed that his orders had been accepted by Saul and the other monks in a provisional way. Everyone was taken by surprise, and on the spur of the moment they could think of no great objections; and so, in default of a strong reason for rebellion, they instinctively obeyed their superior. But he knew the time would come when they would have to make a real decision. However, he did not expect it so soon.

  They were singing the office of Prime. It was freezing cold in the little church. Godwyn was stiff and aching after an uncomfortable night. He missed his palace with its fireplaces and soft beds. The gray light of a winter dawn was beginning to appear in the windows when there was a banging on the heavy west door of the church.

  Godwyn tensed. He wished he had been given an extra day or two to consolidate his position.

  He signaled that the monks should ignore the knocking and continue with the service. The knocking was then augmented by shouting. Saul stood up to go to the door, but Godwyn made sit-down signs with his hands and, after a hesitation, Saul obeyed. Godwyn was determined to sit tight. If the monks did nothing, the intruders must go away.

  However, Godwyn began to realize that persuading people to do nothing was extraordinarily difficult.

  The monks were too distracted to concentrate on the psalm. They were all whispering to one another and looking back over their shoulders toward the west end. The singing became ragged and uncoordinated and eventually petered out until only Godwyn's voice was left.

  He felt irate. If they had followed his lead, they could have ignored the disturbance. Angered by their weakness, he at last left his place and walked down the short nave to the door, which was barred. "What is it?" he shouted.

  "Let us in!" came the muffled reply.

  "You can't come in," Godwyn shouted back. "Go away."

  Saul appeared at his side. "Are you turning them away from the church?" he said in a horrified tone.

  "I told you," Godwyn replied. "No visitors."

  The banging resumed. "Let us in!"

  Saul shouted: "Who are you?"

  There was a pause, then the voice said: "We are men of the forest."

  Philemon spoke up. "Outlaws," he said.

  Saul said indignantly: "Sinners like us, and God's children, too."

  "That's no reason to let them murder us."

  "Perhaps we should find out whether that's what they intend." Saul went to the window on the right of the door. The church was a low building, and the window ledges were just below eye level. None of them was glazed: they were closed against the cold by shutters of translucent linen. Saul opened the shutter and stood on tiptoe to look out. "Why have you come here?" he called.

  Godwyn heard the reply. "One of our number is sick."

  Godwyn said to Saul: "I will speak to them."

  Saul stared at him.

  "Come away from the window," Godwyn said.

  Reluctantly, Saul obeyed.

  Godwyn shouted: "We cannot let you in. Go away."

  Saul looked at him with incredulity. "Are you going to turn away a sick man?" he said. "We are monks and physicians!"

  "If the man has the plague, there is nothing we can do for him. By admitting him, we will kill ourselves."

  "That is in God's hands, surely."

  "God does not permit us to commit suicide."

  "You don't know what is wrong with the man. He may have a broken arm."

  Godwyn opened the corresponding window on the left of the door and looked out. He saw a group of six rough-looking characters standing around a stretcher that they had put down in front of the church door. Their clothes were costly but dirty, as if they were sleeping rough in their Sunday best. This was typical of outlaws, who stole fine clothes from travelers and made them shabby very quickly. The men were heavily armed, some with good-quality swords, daggers, and longbows, which suggested they might be demobilized soldiers.

  On the stretcher lay a man who was perspiring heavily--even though it was a frosty January morning--and bleeding from his nose. Suddenly, without wishing it, Godwyn saw in his imagination that scene in the hospital when his mother lay dying, and the trickle of blood on her upper lip kept returning, no matter how often the nun wiped it away. The thought that he might die like that made him so distracted that he wanted to throw himself from the roof of Kingsbridge Cathedral. How much better it would be to die in one brief instant of overwhelming pain than over three, four, or five days of mad delirium and agonizing thirst. "That man has the plague!" Godwyn exclaimed, and he heard in his own voice a note of hysteria.

  One of the outlaws stepped forward. "I know you," he said. "You're the prior of Kingsbridge."

  Godwyn tried to pull himself together. He looked with fear and anger at the man who was evidently the leader. He carried himself with the arrogant assurance of a nobleman, and he had once been handsome, though his looks had been marred by years of living rough. Godwyn said: "And who are you, that comes banging on a church door while the monks are singing psalms to God?"

  "Some call me Tam Hiding," the outlaw replied.

  There was a gasp from the monks: Tam Hiding was a legend. Brother Jonquil shouted: "They will kill us all!"

  Saul rounded on Jonquil. "Be silent," he said. "All of us will die when God wills it, and not before."

  "Yes, Father."

  Saul returned to the window and said: "You stole our chickens last year."

  "I'm sorry, Father," said Tam. "We were starving."

  "Yet now you come to me for help?"

  "Because you preach that God forgives."

  Godwyn said to Saul: "Let me deal with this!"

  Saul's internal struggle was evident on his face, wh
ich looked alternately ashamed and mutinous; but at last he bowed his head.

  Godwyn said to Tam: "God forgives those who truly repent."

  "Well, this man's name is Win Forester, and he truly repents all his many sins. He would like to come into the church to pray for healing or, failing that, to die in a holy place."

  One of the other outlaws sneezed.

  Saul came away from his window and stood facing Godwyn, hands on hips. "We cannot turn him away!"

  Godwyn tried to make himself calm. "You heard that sneeze--don't you understand what it means?" He turned to the rest of the monks, to make sure they heard what he said next. "They've all got the plague!"

  They gave a collective murmur of fear. Godwyn wanted them frightened. That way they would support him if Saul decided to defy him.

  Saul said: "We must help them, even if they have got the plague. Our lives are not our own, to be protected like gold hidden under the earth. We have given ourselves to God, to use as he wishes, and he will end our lives when it suits his holy purpose."

  "To let those outlaws in would be suicide. They'll kill us all!"

  "We are men of God. For us, death is the happy reunion with Christ. What do we have to fear, Father Prior?"

  Godwyn realized that he was sounding frightened, whereas Saul was speaking reasonably. He forced himself to appear calm and philosophical. "It is a sin to seek our own death."

  "But if death comes to us in the course of our holy duty, we embrace it gladly."

  Godwyn realized he could debate all day with Saul and get nowhere. This was not the way to impose his authority. He closed his shutter. "Shut your window, Brother Saul, and come here to me," he said. He looked at Saul, waiting.

  After a hesitation, Saul did as he was told.

  Godwyn said: "What are your three vows, Brother?"

  There was a pause. Saul knew what was happening here. Godwyn was refusing to engage with him as an equal. At first, Saul looked as if he might refuse to answer, but his training took over, and he said: "Poverty, chastity, obedience."

  "And who must you obey?"

  "God, and the Rule of St. Benedict, and my prior."

  "And your prior stands before you now. Do you acknowledge me?"

  "Yes."

  "You may say: 'Yes, Father Prior.'"

  "Yes, Father Prior."

  "Now I will tell you what you must do, and you will obey." Godwyn looked around. "All of you--return to your places."

  There was a moment of frozen silence. No one moved and no one spoke. It could go either way, Godwyn thought: compliance or mutiny, order or anarchy, victory or defeat. He held his breath.

  At last, Saul moved. He bowed his head and turned away. He walked up the short aisle and resumed his position in front of the altar.

  All the others did the same.

  There were a few more shouts from outside, but they sounded like parting shots. Perhaps the outlaws had realized they could not force a physician to treat their sick comrade.

  Godwyn returned to the altar and turned to face the monks. "We will finish the interrupted psalm," he said, and he began singing.

  Glory be to the Father

  And to the Son

  And to the Holy Ghost

  The singing was still ragged. The monks were far too excited to adopt the proper attitude. All the same, they were back in their places and following their routine. Godwyn had prevailed.

  As it was in the beginning

  Is now

  And ever shall be

  World without end

  Amen.

  "Amen," Godwyn repeated.

  One of the monks sneezed.

  65

  Soon after Godwyn fled, Elfric died of the plague.

  Caris was sorry for Alice, his widow; but aside from that she could hardly help rejoicing that he was gone. He had bullied the weak and toadied to the strong, and the lies he had told at her trial almost got her hanged. The world was a better place without him. Even his building business would be better off run by his son-in-law, Harold Mason.

  The parish guild elected Merthin as alderman in Elfric's place. Merthin said it was like being made captain of a sinking ship.

  As the deaths went on and on, and people buried their relatives. neighbors, friends, customers, and employees, the constant horror seemed to brutalize many of them, until no violence or cruelty seemed shocking. People who thought they were about to die lost all restraint and followed their impulses regardless of the consequences.

  Together, Merthin and Caris struggled to preserve something like normal life in Kingsbridge. The orphanage was the most successful part of Caris's program. The children were grateful for the security of the nunnery, after the ordeal of losing their parents to the plague. Taking care of them, and teaching them to read and sing hymns, brought out long-suppressed maternal instincts in some of the nuns. There was plenty of food, with fewer people competing for the winter stores. And Kingsbridge Priory was full of the sound of children.

  In the town things were more difficult. There continued to be violent quarrels over the property of the dead. People just walked into empty houses and picked up whatever took their fancy. Children who had inherited money, or a warehouse full of cloth or corn, were sometimes adopted by unscrupulous neighbors greedy to get their hands on the legacy. The prospect of something for nothing brought out the worst in people, Caris thought despairingly.

  Caris and Merthin were only partly successful against the decline in public behavior. Caris was disappointed with the results of John Constable's crackdown on drunkenness. The large numbers of new widows and widowers seemed frantic to find partners, and it was not unusual to see middle-aged people in a passionate embrace in a tavern or even a doorway. Caris had no great objection to this sort of thing in itself, but she found that the combination of drunkenness and public licentiousness often led to fighting. However, Merthin and the parish guild were unable to stop it.

  Just at the moment when the townspeople needed their spines stiffened, the flight of the monks had the opposite effect. It demoralized everyone. God's representatives had left: the Almighty had abandoned the town. Some said that the relics of the saint had always brought good fortune, and now that the bones had gone their luck had run out. The lack of precious crucifixes and candlesticks at the Sunday services was a weekly reminder that Kingsbridge was considered doomed. So why not get drunk and fornicate in the street?

  Out of a population of about seven thousand, Kingsbridge had lost at least a thousand by mid-January. Other towns were similar. Despite the masks Caris had invented, the death toll was higher among the nuns, no doubt because they were continually in contact with plague victims. There had been thirty-five nuns, and now there were twenty. But they heard of places where almost every monk or nun had died, leaving a handful, or sometimes just one, to carry on the work; so they counted themselves fortunate. Meanwhile, Caris had shortened the period of novitiate and intensified the training so that she would have more help in the hospital.

  Merthin hired the barman from the Holly Bush and put him in charge of the Bell. He also took on a sensible seventeen-year-old girl called Martina to nursemaid Lolla.

  Then the plague seemed to die down. Having buried a hundred people a week in the run up to Christmas, Caris found that the number dropped to fifty in January, then twenty in February. She allowed herself to hope that the nightmare might be coming to an end.

  One of the unlucky people to fall ill during this period was a dark-haired man in his thirties who might once have been good-looking. He was a visitor to the town. "I thought I had a cold yesterday," he said when he came through the door. "But now I've got this nosebleed that won't stop." He was holding a bloody rag to his nostrils.

  "I'll find you somewhere to lie down," she said through her linen mask.

  "It's the plague, isn't it?" he said, and she was surprised to hear calm resignation in his voice in place of the usual panic. "Can you do anything to cure it?"

  "We can make you
comfortable, and we can pray for you."

  "That won't do any good. Even you don't believe in it, I can tell."

  She was shocked by how easily he had read her heart. "You don't know what you're saying," she protested weakly. "I'm a nun, I must believe it."

  "You can tell me the truth. How soon will I die?"

  She looked hard at him. He was smiling at her, a charming smile that she guessed had melted a few female hearts. "Why aren't you frightened?" she said. "Everyone else is."

  "I don't believe what I'm told by priests." He looked at her shrewdly. "And I have a suspicion that you don't either."

  She was not about to have this discussion with a stranger, no matter how charming. "Almost everyone who falls ill with the plague dies within three to five days," she said bluntly. "A few survive, no one knows why."

  He took it well. "As I thought."

  "You can lie down here."

  He gave her the bad-boy grin again. "Will it do me any good?"

  "If you don't lie down soon, you'll fall down."

  "All right." He lay on the palliasse she indicated.

  She gave him a blanket. "What's your name?"

  "Tam."

  She studied his face. Despite his charm, she sensed a streak of cruelty. He might seduce women, she thought, but if that failed he would rape them. His skin was weathered by outdoor living, and he had the red nose of a drinker. His clothes were costly but dirty. "I know who you are," she said. "Aren't you afraid you'll be punished for your sins?"

  "If I believed that, I wouldn't have committed them. Are you afraid you'll burn in Hell?"

  It was a question she normally sidestepped, but she felt that this dying outlaw deserved a true answer. "I believe that what I do becomes part of me," she said. "When I'm brave and strong, and care for children and the sick and the poor, I become a better person. And when I'm cruel, or cowardly, or tell lies, or get drunk, I turn into someone less worthy, and I can't respect myself. That's the divine retribution I believe in."

  He looked at her thoughtfully. "I wish I'd met you twenty years ago."

  She made a deprecatory noise. "I would have been twelve."

  He raised an eyebrow suggestively.

  That was enough, she decided. He was beginning to flirt--and she was beginning to enjoy it. She turned away.

  "You're a brave woman to do this work," he said. "It will probably kill you."