“How else is a poor man to eat and hope for advancement?” For outside the church, there was little scope for a youth who had no money and connection, and who wanted to be anything more than a humble apprentice.
Adam could be recognised half a mile away, not only because of his loud voice, but because instead of a modest habit he wore a tight-fitting tunic, a cotte hardie, and a broad belt embroidered with gold, just as if he were a young man of fashion. Irrepressibly foolish as Adam was, the quiet mason could not help liking this cheerfully outrageous extrovert, with his childlike honesty.
“See, Mason,” he shouted, so that his voice echoed round the precincts, “the world has changed today. Only you and I about and not a priest to be seen.”
It was remarkable. At a time when one in fifty of the population was in some form of holy orders, the cathedral city was teeming with priests. That morning however, it was as if they had melted into the moss on the walls of the buildings. “The silence is wonderful,” Adam called, and his raucous guffaw of laughter seemed to shake the shutters.
“Aren’t you afraid of the plague?” Nicholas asked.
“Me? No. I’ve the cure.” He pointed to two pouches that hung from his magnificent belt. “Six garlic in one. Six onion in the other. The plague won’t come near me.”
Nicholas wondered if this was a joke, though it was no stranger than the other remedies people were trying.
“It’s true,” Adam assured him, and his big, open face broke into a happy smile. “Watch me, Mason, and you’ll see.” And he strode away towards the town.
Nicholas spent the day working in the cathedral. In the evening he returned to Avonsford where he learned that the buboes had appeared on Rose de Godefroi. Two more people in the village, both women this time, had been afflicted, one with the terrible buboes, the other in the lungs.
The next morning he went up to the high ground again. This time he stopped well outside the circle of stones.
“Stay where you are. Do not come down,” he told them. “The plague is everywhere and it is spreading.”
Yet never in his worst nightmares had Nicholas imagined what, in the next ten days, was to follow. The start of the plague had given little hint of it.
At times, he wondered if everyone at Sarum would die. The contagion seemed to swirl and eddy round the city like the waters when the river flooded.
Some were consumed by the plague at once, and died within hours; in others it took the pneumonic form and its victims died coughing blood and mucus; the stronger went down more slowly with the buboes that, in their final stage, spread across the body in a terrible, pestilential swelling that left the body of the dead victim a loathsome and infectious mass of suppurating sores. Of those who caught the plague in its pneumonic form, none lived. Of those who suffered the buboes, about sixty per cent died.
Each day he watched the carts roll through the city picking up the dead. By the end of the first week they were being buried indiscriminately in trenches outside the city gates. One morning he saw the door of the Shockley house open and three pairs of arms unceremoniously drop the bulky form of William Shockley on the ground outside, before slamming the door again. He lay there for two hours before a passing cart decided to pick him up; the next day his wife followed. The day after, two of their children and a servant. But these events were hardly remarked in the general horror. Nor was the news that Rose de Godefroi had died at Avonsford.
The close fared no better than the rest of the town. For two days the gate was closed, in a useless attempt to seal its sacred precincts off from the contagion in the town, but then the porter at the gate succumbed, and it was left open.
Some of the priests emerged to do their duties in ministering to the dying. The friars never hesitated, moving quietly from door to door, apparently undisturbed in their holy work.
But over the whole city a strange fear and lethargy had fallen. The evil spirit of the plague had seeped like a noxious vapour into every nook and cranny of the city. And when the suppurating corpses of the victims were brought into the streets, there was indeed a sickly, terrible stench that turned the stomach. It seemed to Nicholas that men’s souls were filled with terror, and the sense of that, too, was almost palpable.
Only one figure seemed untouched, and this was Adam. Each day he was in the city, Nicholas would see the strange fellow ambling about, in his tight tunic and his broad belt with the pouches of onions and garlics swinging from it. Astoundingly, he still seemed cheerful. People said he was mad.
Nicholas himself remained calm. He reasoned, fatalistically, that if he were a chosen victim, then there was little he could do about it. He was careful all the same. Like most people, he held a cloth over his mouth and nostrils when he walked the streets. He kept himself to himself, ate alone, and avoided any contact with those who were infected. Taking these precautions, he went into the city most days, working quietly in the cathedral and returning periodically to the sheep house on the high ground to give his reports.
The event that caused him to panic took place a week after Shockley’s death. He was carefully crossing the street in the city when, as he stepped over the water channel that ran down its centre, a corpse he had not seen tumbled sideways off a cart in front of him and fell heavily into the stream, splashing him from head to foot. The sudden soaking shocked him. It was as though he had been attacked, and afterwards he felt defiled. The next day, when the family in the cottage next to his at Avonsford came down with the plague, he decided to take further precautions.
“I shall be coming only every two days now,” he told Agnes and the family. “Because I shan’t be in Avonsford any more. I’m going to a safe place until the plague has passed.”
“Where?” John asked him.
And now Nicholas smiled.
“No folk or animals where I’m going,” he replied. “I’ll go to Salisbury tower.”
The cathedral was quiet as dusk fell, and there was nobody to see as he climbed the steps that led to the tower. No one had questioned him when, saying it was for maintenance work, he asked for the keys of the tower doors the day before. Probably it was already forgotten that he had them.
He was carrying a bucket containing bread, two flagons of ale, cheese, salted meat and a quantity of fruit: enough to last several days. Carefully he made sure that the stairs in all four corners of the tower were locked before he made his way up to the parapet. Now nobody could disturb him.
Soon it was dark. The great cathedral below him was silent. It was so warm that he decided to spend the night on the parapet under the stars. He looked up at the soaring spire above him. He knew that, nearly forty years before, his great-grandfather Osmund had climbed to the top the year before he died. Perhaps he would do so too, to celebrate, when the plague had passed.
How pure the air was, far above the stench of the city streets. With only the grey stones for company, and the open sky, he lay there comfortably, feeling safer than he had done for a week, and fell asleep.
He stayed in the tower all the next day. It was strange how much of the life of the city he could see from up there. He noticed that in the city, the dead were being brought out and carried away soon after dawn; three corpses were brought out of houses in the close that morning. He watched a dispute between the carriers and a junior clergyman about how much they should be paid. He could not hear their words, but it was clear what was being said. The carriers offered to leave the canon’s body where it was. Then they were paid. He could see everyone who came in and out of the close; he saw the carts rolling on their dismal journey to the city gates. Several times he watched Adam in his broad belt, walking jauntily back and forth into the town, and laughed aloud with pleasure at the sight. That night, once again, he slept comfortably under the stars.
But the next morning he received an unpleasant shock. He had decided to pay another visit to the sheep house, and so that he could get safely clear of the city before the contagious corpses were brought out, he had started to descen
d from the tower a little before dawn.
He fumbled his way down the endless spiral tunnel of the stairs, locking the door carefully behind him. As he emerged into the cathedral however, he saw a faint light flickering in the shadows, and out of curiosity, he went towards it. He soon wished he had not.
The little family must have sneaked into the cathedral during the night. They were standing now, five of them, with long candles in their hands by the tomb of Bishop Osmund. Obviously they had carried their father in with them; for now they had laid him, stripped entirely naked, on the tomb.
There had been many claims of miraculous cures from people touching or standing near the revered bishop’s tomb. The priests, still hoping that one day the pope would be persuaded to canonise Osmund, did nothing to discourage these claims. Now silently, hopefully, a middle-aged woman and her two sons and two daughters gazed at the wretched figure before them.
It was an eerie and terrible sight. He was in the last stages of the disease. The buboes had spread all over his chest, and the poor fellow, hardly knowing what was happening, was shaking uncontrollably on the cool, hard slab.
Nicholas turned quickly and hurried away. He continued to shiver until he was well out of the city.
At the sheep house, the family appeared calm. He offered to bring them more food, but they refused.
“We have enough grain,” Agnes told him. “That and water – it’s all we need.”
But the strain of their isolation was obviously taking its toll.
John seemed sullen, though after his description of what was taking place below, he showed no inclination to move from their sanctuary. The children were silent and withdrawn. Agnes too looked tired.
After standing for several minutes and giving them what words of encouragement he could from outside the circle of stones, he left them.
He was installed in the tower again early that evening with a fresh supply of food when the extraordinary movements in the cathedral’s structure began.
At first he thought he must have been mistaken – the whole thing just a trick of the eye.
There was a light, refreshing breeze that was sending small white clouds drifting across the evening sky. It was just as he lay back and watched them pass overhead, that it suddenly seemed to him that the top of the spire had moved.
It must have been the motion of the clouds. He waited until the sky was clear again and looked up once more. There was the cross, high above.
And again it moved.
Not very much, to be sure. He sat up. But as he did so, he felt the building below him shift, so that he fell back against the edge of the parapet. Then he sat very still. A feeling of sickness and panic came over him. Was the cathedral settling on its foundations yet again? Could it be that, after all, the bending pillars below were at last going to break and the whole mighty structure come tumbling down in a colossal ruin? He stared up at the spire again, in dread.
He started to get to his feet. And now he could feel the whole structure shifting – so much that he had to steady himself. A bead of perspiration broke out on his brow, which suddenly felt very hot. Glancing up he saw with horror that the spire was swaying wildly; the stone floor under his feet was tilting. Dear God, the cathedral was coming down! The floor tilted violently as he fell face down upon it.
Several minutes later, he came to. Strangely, the spire, the parapet, the masonry were all in place. In the west, the sky was glowing a deep magenta red and in the sky above, the first stars were starting to appear.
He put his hand to his forehead. It was burning. A momentary giddiness and nausea enveloped him.
Now he realised. The cathedral had not moved at all.
He was shaken by several spasms of trembling that night. In the bright starlight, he found that his eyes were swimming. Several times not only the spire but the constellations: Orion, Cassiopeia, the Bear, joined in a wild dance around the sky after which, each time, he was sick.
In the morning, he felt the boils in his armpits.
At dawn he prayed:
“Mother of God, save your servant.”
He had served the cathedral all his life. They said that people could survive the buboes. Surely the Blessed Virgin would protect him.
He did not try to move from where he was; even if he had wanted to, he did not think he could have made it down the deep spiral stairs. He tried to drink only a little ale at a time, realising that he might need to conserve his supply of liquid.
By the afternoon the agonising pains had spread to his groin as well. He wanted to weep, but his body refused him even that relief.
He spent another night alone, while the plague continued remorselessly to take over his body.
By the following dawn, he knew he would not survive. He remembered the wretched man he had seen in his last extremities, stretched on the tomb below, and the grotesque, rotting corpses he had seen carried through the streets. He had no wish to be reduced to that final, loathsome state.
Painfully he dragged himself to the edge of the parapet. The city was gradually stirring below.
He gazed out, over the sweeping ridges to the north, and as he did so, he was vaguely aware of a tiny stone face, in a niche in the masonry a few feet to his right, gazing in the same direction.
For an hour he remained there. Three times he was forced by the pain to cry out.
Then he saw the figure of Adam in his broad belt walking jauntily through the close. He watched him until he had gone out, past the belfry and on through the gate into the town beyond.
Only when he could see the strange fellow no longer did he drag himself to the parapet and launch himself, with a huge effort, as far out into the air as he could go.
Gilbert de Godefroi forgot entirely about the Mason family and the sheep house. Half of Avonsford had died.
He himself sat, day after day, in the hall of the old manor. Often he would pick up the poem of Sir Orfeo and read it to himself while his eyes filled with tears as he thought of his own vanished wife.
Each day he waited, too, for news of his son.
For two weeks, none came.
Agnes Mason and the family remained on the high ground for a total of six weeks.
For Agnes, the week after Nicholas’s last visit was the worst.
On the second day when he did not appear, all the family knew what it must mean. John said nothing, but she knew what he was thinking – she had been thinking the same thought herself. For each time he appeared, still healthy, after she first turned him away she had known with greater certainty: he was not contagious when I refused to let him in – if he catches the plague now, it will be my fault. Now, day after day, she prayed that he would come again, and each day, John’s sullen silence was worse than a hundred accusations.
There was another problem too. She had chosen the deserted spot so well that no one ever came there, and as the weeks passed it was impossible to know whether it was safe to leave or not.
A month passed. Their food ran low; worse, the weather was so dry that the dew pond became almost empty, with only a small chalky puddle at the centre.
“One more day and we shall have to leave,” John stated, and she could not deny it.
But that night it rained, and the next morning the whole family walked over to the dew pond and found a fresh supply of clear, clean water.
They held out for two more weeks, living off grain and water. A kind of lethargy descended upon them. They walked slowly, like people in a dream. Each day the bare ground around the circle of stones was empty and there was nothing to do but watch the clouds.
It was a morning in mid-September when, at last, Agnes turned to John and stated:
“I can’t go on any more.”
It was her first and only sign of weakness. When she said it, she wanted to break down and cry. But she could not.
An hour later, taking an almost empty cart with them, the bedraggled little party slowly made their way across to the edge of the valley.
A
nd when they came down into Avonsford, they discovered that in their absence, the world had changed.
1382
When Edward Wilson looked back, he could not deny that it was old Walter who had changed the family’s destiny.
How fortune’s wheel had turned: what a tale of triumph it was. And of vengeance.
What a pair they had been.
But it was Walter who had seen his family’s moment in history. Like a sailor sensing the turning of the tide, he had known exactly when and how to move; he had seized his opportunity and driven them forward.
For the Wilson family, the critical moment was the Black Death.
He was fifteen when the plague arrived. When young Peter suddenly fell sick he and his other brothers and sisters were ordered out of the house. They stayed in Grovely Wood, sleeping out, but returning periodically to the cottage to collect scraps of food. Then the rest of the family went down, one by one: his mother, his brothers and sisters – some with the disease in the lungs, others with the buboes, until only he and his father and his brother Elias – a half-wit but with the strength of an ox – were left. Elias stayed at the cottage then, while he remained in the wood. And finally, even Walter succumbed. He saw the swellings under his father’s arms; then he fled.
Three weeks he stayed in Grovely Wood, and lived well enough, for the Forest Laws were temporarily forgotten. He set snares for a variety of small animals; he even killed a young deer. And no one came by to trouble him. Several times, he wandered towards one of the nearby villages, watching cautiously from a vantage point; but as he saw the people there carrying out their dead for burial, he retreated back into the safety of the wood. Often he considered returning to Shockley farm but the terrible memory of his family dying there made him tremble and he avoided the place.
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