Ralph was mystified. What was coming now?
Gregory went on: "For many years, this document was in the hands of someone who could be relied upon, for various complicated reasons, to keep it safe. Lately, however, certain questions have been asked, suggesting to me that the secret may be in danger of getting out."
All this was too enigmatic. Ralph said impatiently: "I don't understand. Who has been asking embarrassing questions?"
"The prioress of Kingsbridge."
"Oh."
"It's possible she may have simply picked up some hint, and her questions may be harmless. But what the king's friends fear is that the letter may have got into her possession."
"What is in the letter?"
Once again, Gregory chose his words warily, tiptoeing across a raging river on carefully placed stepping-stones. "Something touching the king's beloved mother."
"Queen Isabella." The old witch was still alive, living in splendor in her castle at Lynn, spending her days reading romances in her native French, so people said.
"In short," said Gregory, "I need to find out whether the prioress has this letter or not. But no one must know of my interest."
Ralph said: "Either you have to go to the priory and search through the nuns' documents...or the documents must come to you."
"The second of those two."
Ralph nodded. He was beginning to understand what Gregory wanted him to do.
Gregory said: "I have made some very discreet inquiries, and discovered that no one knows exactly where the nuns' treasury is."
"The nuns must know, or some of them."
"But they won't say. However, I understand you're an expert in...persuading people to reveal secrets."
So Gregory knew of the work Ralph had done in France. There was nothing spontaneous about this conversation, Ralph realized. Gregory must have planned it. In fact it was probably the real reason he had come to Kingsbridge. Ralph said: "I may be able to help the king's friends solve this problem..."
"Good."
"...if I were promised the earldom of Shiring as my reward."
Gregory frowned. "The new earl will have to marry the old countess."
Ralph decided to hide his eagerness. Instinct told him that Gregory would have less respect for a man who was driven, even just partly, by lust for a woman. "Lady Philippa is five years older than I am, but I have no objection to her."
Gregory looked askance. "She's a very beautiful woman," he said. "Whoever the king gives her to should think himself a lucky man."
Ralph realized he had gone too far. "I don't wish to appear indifferent," he said hastily. "She is indeed a beauty."
"But I thought you were already married," Gregory said. "Have I made a mistake?"
Ralph caught Alan's eye, and saw that he was keenly curious to hear what Ralph would say next.
Ralph sighed. "My wife is very ill," he said. "She hasn't long to live."
Gwenda lit the fire in the kitchen of the old house where Wulfric had lived since he was born. She found her cooking pots, filled one with water at the well, and threw in some early onions, the first step in making a stew. Wulfric brought in more firewood. The boys happily went out to play with their old friends, unaware of the depth of the tragedy that had befallen their family.
Gwenda busied herself with household chores as the evening darkened outside. She was trying not to think. Everything that came into her mind just made her feel worse: the future, the past, her husband, herself. Wulfric sat and looked into the flames. Neither of them spoke.
Their neighbor, David Johns, appeared with a big jug of ale. His wife was dead of the plague, but his grown-up daughter, Joanna, followed him in. Gwenda was not happy to see them: she wanted to be miserable in private. But their intentions were kind, and it was impossible to spurn them. Gwenda glumly wiped the dust from some wooden cups, and David poured ale for everyone.
"We're sorry things worked out this way, but we're glad to see you," he said as they drank.
Wulfric emptied his cup with one huge swallow and held it out for more.
A little later Aaron Appletree and his wife Ulla came in. She carried a basket of small loaves. "I knew you wouldn't have any bread, so I made some," she said. She handed them around, and the house filled with the mouthwatering smell. David Johns poured them some ale, and they sat down. "Where did you get the courage to run away?" Ulla asked admiringly. "I would have died of fright!"
Gwenda began to tell the story of their adventures. Jack and Eli Fuller arrived from the mill, bringing a dish of pears baked in honey. Wulfric ate plenty and drank deep. The atmosphere lightened, and Gwenda's mood lifted a little. More neighbors came, each bringing a gift. When Gwenda told how the villagers of Outhenby with their spades and hoes had faced down Ralph and Alan, everyone rocked with delighted laughter.
Then she came to the events of today, and she descended into despair again. "Everything was against us," she said bitterly. "Not just Ralph and his ruffians, but the king and the church. We had no chance."
The neighbors nodded gloomily.
"And then, when he put a rope around my Wulfric's neck..." She was filled with bleak despair. Her voice cracked, and she could not go on. She took a gulp of ale and tried again. "When he put a rope around Wulfric's neck--the strongest and bravest man I've ever known, any of us have ever known, led through the village like a beast, and that heartless, crass, bullying Ralph holding the rope--I just wanted the heavens to fall in and kill us all."
These were strong words, but the others agreed. Of all the things the gentry could do to peasants--starve them, cheat them, assault them, rob them--the worst was to humiliate them. They never forgot it.
Suddenly Gwenda wanted the neighbors to leave. The sun had gone down, and it was dusk outside. She needed to lie down and close her eyes and be alone with her thoughts. She did not want to talk even to Wulfric. She was about to ask everyone to go when Nate Reeve walked in.
The room went quiet.
"What do you want?" Gwenda said.
"I bring you good news," he said brightly.
She made a sour face. "There can be no good news for us today."
"I disagree. You haven't heard it yet."
"All right, what is it?"
"Sir Ralph says Wulfric is to have his father's lands back."
Wulfric leaped to his feet. "As a tenant?" he said. "Not just to labor on?"
"As a tenant, on the same terms as your father," said Nate expansively, as if he were making the concession himself, rather than simply passing on a message.
Wulfric beamed with joy. "That's wonderful!"
"Do you accept?" Nate said jovially, as if it were a mere formality.
Gwenda said: "Wulfric! Don't accept!"
He looked at her, bewildered. As usual, he was slow to see beyond the immediate.
"Discuss the terms!" she urged him in a low voice. "Don't be a serf like your father. Demand a free tenancy, with no feudal obligations. You'll never be in such a strong bargaining position again. Negotiate!"
"Negotiate?" he said. He wavered briefly, then gave in to the happiness of the occasion. "This is the moment I've been hoping for for the last twelve years. I'm not going to negotiate." He turned to Nate. "I accept," he said, and held up his cup.
They all cheered.
70
The hospital was full again. The plague, which had seemed to retreat during the first three months of 1349, came back in April with redoubled virulence. On the day after Easter Sunday, Caris looked wearily at the rows of mattresses crammed together in a herringbone pattern, packed so tightly that the masked nuns had to step gingerly between them. Moving around was a little easier, however, because there were so few family members at the bedsides of the sick. Sitting with a dying relative was dangerous--you were likely to catch the plague yourself--and people had become ruthless. When the epidemic began, they had stayed with their loved ones regardless, mothers with children, husbands with wives, the middle-aged with their elderly par
ents, love overcoming fear. But that had changed. The most powerful of family ties had been viciously corroded by the acid of death. Nowadays the typical patient was brought in by a mother or father, a husband or wife, who then simply walked away, ignoring the piteous cries that followed them out. Only the nuns, with their face masks and their vinegar-washed hands, defied the disease.
Surprisingly, Caris was not short of help. The nunnery had enjoyed an influx of novices to replace the nuns who had died. This was partly because of Caris's saintly reputation. But the monastery was experiencing the same kind of revival, and Thomas now had a class of novice monks to train. They were all searching for order in a world gone mad.
This time the plague had struck some leading townspeople who had previously escaped. Caris was dismayed by the death of John Constable. She had never much liked his rough-and-ready approach to justice--which was to hit troublemakers over the head with a stick and ask questions afterward--but it was going to be more difficult to maintain order without him. Fat Betty Baxter, baker of special buns for every town festivity, shrewd questioner at parish guild meetings, was dead, her business awkwardly shared out between four squabbling daughters. And Dick Brewer had died, the last of Caris's father's generation, a cohort of men who knew how to make money and how to enjoy it.
Caris and Merthin had been able to slow the spread of the disease by canceling major public gatherings. There had been no big Easter procession in the cathedral, and there would be no Fleece Fair this Whitsun. The weekly market was held outside the city walls, in Lovers' Field, and most townspeople stayed away. Caris had wanted such measures when the plague first struck, but Godwyn and Elfric had opposed her. According to Merthin, some Italian cities had even closed their gates for a period of thirty or forty days, called a trentine or a quarantine. It was now too late to keep the disease out, but Caris still thought restrictions would save lives.
One problem she did not have was money. More and more people bequeathed their wealth to the nuns, having no surviving relatives, and many of the new novices brought with them lands, flocks, orchards, and gold. The nunnery had never been so rich.
It was small consolation. For the first time in her life she felt tired--not just weary from hard work, but drained of energy, short of willpower, enfeebled by adversity. The plague was worse than ever, killing two hundred people a week, and she did not know how she was going to carry on. Her muscles ached, her head hurt, and sometimes her vision seemed to blur. Where would it end? she wondered dismally. Would everyone die?
Two men staggered in through the door, both bleeding. Caris hurried forward. Before she got within touching distance, she picked up the sweetly rotten smell of drink on them. They were both nearly helpless, although it was not yet dinnertime. She groaned in frustration: this was all too common.
She knew the men vaguely: Barney and Lou, two strong youngsters employed in the abattoir owned by Edward Slaughterhouse. Barney had one arm hanging limp, possibly broken. Lou had a dreadful injury to his face: his nose was crushed and one eye was a ghastly pulp. Both seemed too drunk to feel pain. "It was a fight," Barney slurred, his words only just comprehensible. "I didn't mean it. He's my best friend. I love him."
Caris and Sister Nellie got the two drunks lying down on adjacent mattresses. Nellie examined Barney and said his arm was not broken but dislocated, and sent a novice to fetch Matthew Barber, the surgeon, who would try to relocate it. Caris bathed Lou's face. There was nothing she could do to save his eye: it had burst like a soft-boiled egg.
This kind of thing made her furious. The two men were not suffering from a disease or an accidental injury: they had harmed one another while drinking to excess. After the first wave of the plague, she had managed to galvanize the townspeople into restoring law and order; but the second wave had done something terrible to people's souls. When she called again for a return to civilized behavior, the response had been apathetic. She did not know what to do next, and she felt so tired.
As she contemplated the two maimed men lying shoulder to shoulder on the floor, she heard a strange noise from outside. For an instant, she was transported back three years, to the battle of Crecy, and the terrifying booming sound made by King Edward's new machines that shot stone balls into the enemy ranks. A moment later the noise came again and she realized it was a drum--several drums, in fact, being struck in no particular rhythm. Then she heard pipes and bells whose notes failed to form any kind of tune; then hoarse cries, wailing, and shouts that might have indicated triumph or agony, or both. It was not unlike the noise of battle, but without the swish of deadly arrows or the screams of maimed horses. Frowning, she went outside.
A group of forty or so people had come onto the cathedral green, dancing a mad antic jig. Some played on musical instruments, or rather sounded them, for there was no melody or harmony to the noise. Their flimsy light-colored clothes were ripped and stained, and some were half-naked, carelessly exposing the intimate parts of their bodies. All those who did not have instruments were carrying whips. A crowd of townspeople followed, staring in curiosity and amazement.
The dancers were led by Friar Murdo, fatter than ever but cavorting energetically, sweat pouring down his dirty face and dripping from his straggly beard. He led them to the great west door of the cathedral, where he turned to face them. "We have all sinned!" he roared.
His followers cried out in response, inarticulate shrieks and groans.
"We are dirt!" he said thrillingly. "We wallow in lasciviousness like pigs in filth. We yield, quivering with desire, to our fleshly lusts. We deserve the plague!"
"Yes!"
"What must we do?"
"Suffer!" they called. "We must suffer!"
One of the followers dashed forward, flourishing a whip. It had three leather thongs, each of which appeared to have sharp stones attached to a knot. He threw himself at Murdo's feet and began to lash his own back. The whip tore the thin material of his robe and drew blood from the skin of his back. He cried out in pain, and the rest of Murdo's followers groaned in sympathy.
Then a woman came forward. She pulled her robe down to her waist and turned, exposing her bare breasts to the crowd; then lashed her bare back with a similar whip. The followers moaned again.
As they came forward in ones and twos, flogging themselves, Caris saw that many of them had bruises and half-healed cuts on their skin: they had done this before, some of them many times. Did they go from town to town repeating the performance? Given Murdo's involvement, she felt sure that sooner or later someone would start collecting money.
A woman in the watching crowd suddenly ran forward screaming: "Me, too, I must suffer!" Caris was surprised to see that it was Mared, the browbeaten young wife of Marcel Chandler. Caris could not imagine that she had committed many sins, but perhaps she had at last seen a chance to make her life dramatic. She threw off her dress and stood stark naked before the friar. Her skin was unmarked; in fact she looked beautiful.
Murdo gazed at her for a long moment then said: "Kiss my feet."
She knelt in front of him, exposing her rear obscenely to the crowd, and lowered her face to his filthy feet.
He took a whip from another penitent and handed it to her. She lashed herself, then shrieked in pain, and red marks appeared instantly on her white skin.
Several more ran forward eagerly from the crowd, mostly men, and Murdo went through the same ritual with each. Soon there was an orgy. When they were not whipping themselves they were banging their drums and clanging their bells and dancing their fiendish jig.
Their actions had a mad abandon, but Caris's professional eye noted that the strokes of the whips, though dramatic and undoubtedly painful, did not appear to inflict permanent damage.
Merthin appeared beside Caris and said: "What do you think of this?"
She frowned and said: "Why does it make me feel indignant?"
"I don't know."
"If people want to whip themselves, why should I object? Perhaps it makes them feel better.
"
"I agree with you, though," Merthin said. "There's generally something fraudulent about anything Murdo is involved with."
"That's not it."
The mood here was not one of penitence, she decided. These dancers were not looking back contemplatively over their lives, feeling sorrow and regret for sins committed. People who genuinely repented tended to be quiet, thoughtful, and undemonstrative. What Caris sensed in the air here was quite different. It was excitement.
"This is a debauch," she said.
"Only instead of drink, they're overindulging in self-loathing."
"And there's a kind of ecstasy in it."
"But no sex."
"Give them time."
Murdo led the procession off again, heading out of the priory precincts. Caris noticed that some of the flagellants had produced bowls and were begging coins from the crowd. They would go through the principal streets of the town like this, she guessed. They would probably finish up at one of the larger taverns, where people would buy them food and drink.
Merthin touched her arm. "You look pale," he said. "How do you feel?"
"Just tired," she said curtly. She had to soldier on regardless of how she felt, and it did not help her to be reminded of her tiredness. However, it was kind of him to notice, and she softened her tone to say: "Come to the prior's house. It's almost dinnertime."
They walked across the green as the procession disappeared. They stepped inside the palace. As soon as they were alone, Caris put her arms around Merthin and kissed him. She suddenly felt very physical, and she thrust her tongue into his mouth, which she knew he liked. In response, he took both her breasts in his hands and squeezed gently. They had never kissed like this inside the palace, and Caris wondered vaguely whether something about Friar Murdo's bacchanal had weakened her normal inhibitions.
"Your skin is hot," Merthin said in her ear.
She wanted Merthin to pull down her robe and put his mouth to her nipples. She felt she was losing control, and might find herself recklessly making love right here on the floor, where they might so easily be caught.
Then a girl's voice said: "I didn't mean to spy."
Caris was shocked. She sprang guiltily away from Merthin. She turned around, looking for the speaker. At the far end of the room, sitting on a bench, was a young woman holding a baby. It was Ralph Fitzgerald's wife. "Tilly!" said Caris.