by Tanith Lee
It was difficult to traverse the river. The upper City had set the source of the plague on the other bank, fount of all villainy and misadventure, and sometimes extempore guards patrolled the south and west ends of the bridges. It was also pointless to attempt to escape the City, for the roads beyond the walls, rife with infection, fringed with rotting bodies, were also blocked by wagons and carts of which the drivers had perished, dead horses and sheep, while the fields and woods were said to be choked by wildmen who had lost their minds, and by desperate wolves which had come to a feast that, in the event, repelled them.
In the new world, Jhane took her way. Dressed as a nun, she was accorded respect. The female orders of the City had proved valiant and thorough, where the priests had frequently made off with their lives. Even the topaz cross on the girl's breast was not taken from her. What use were riches now? Could you bribe King Death? The plague was everywhere, (they said), civilisation was ending. And robbers who thieved food or apparel, let alone gold, they contracted plague from them.
It was simple and easy to tend the sick, when once all barriers were down in brain and heart. In just such a manner, she had found it simple and easy to do harm, to murder.
Not so much did Jhane expect death: she expected nothing. She walked among the victims of the pestilence, unafraid, and in itself this gave them a sort of courage. Jhane proposed no remedy for the symptoms of disease. She offered only her cool hands, into which they drove their nails in agony, which they clasped in dying, and only her quiet voice that murmured nothing important to them, and her nun's robe which symbolised divine respite and forgiveness. She heard ten hundred confessions. When hoarse whispers pleaded for God's grace, she nodded. Her eyes carried a wonderful conviction. She had done far worse than any of them, or so it seemed to her, and she herself had been consoled by an angel. That they called the world's Lord by the wrong name, this she overlooked. It was not, this hour of their death, any time to quibble.
Though sometimes she glimpsed other religious at similar work, she met no nuns of the order she had adopted. She met, however, with many forms of human fear and anger, acted out as if upon a stage. She saw pageants with banners, and orgies, when beer and naked limbs swilled down the street. She saw men who whipped themselves with thongs studded by nails, and women dancing in their skin to the pound of a drum. She saw a death-cowled priest who screamed that the Day of Wrath had come, and a young maiden embracing her lover's corpse, begging it to kill her with its infection, she would go with him. Jhane paid little heed. It was the new world. But then again, the earth, and all things in it, had never seemed familiar or sane to her.
The brown days of smoke, the blind nights, went by. Sometimes a Biblical, yellow-lit cloud stood over the higher City after sunset.
She saw and held children as they gave up the ghost, young men, maidens, crones. She learned all the degrees and stages of the illness, and all the guises of it. When they should begin for her, she would acknowledge them. They did not begin for her. Like a weightless feather she floated on the tide of misery.
"Oh, sister, devout lady, come to the bridge with us. You'll help us? They can't turn backjioa."
It was in fact a funeral procession, though not clothed in mourning, which, in any case, most of it would never have afforded. Cartloads of the dead outnumbered the living. Everyone wept, which was now unusual, for apathy and despair, the greatest of the sins, had settled on Paradys.
A tall old man stood looking down into Jhane's face.
"We must get over," he said. "There are no places left here. Holy ground. They must be got into holy ground. Or when the last trumpet's blown, they won't hear it."
Jhane did not say to the man, It will not make any odds. There is enough life for all. She did not say, He remembers even the fall of a sparrow. She bowed her veiled head in assent, as she had recently done whenever any request had been made to her that she was capable of granting. She led them towards the South Bridge.
There was a huge bonfire half-way across, uncared for and almost out. Even so, they must pick through the crackling rims of it, and a black fume rose.
Over on the other shore, some men in mail coats were standing about. They were soldiers, or a company from some lord's guard. One stepped forward, on to the bridge, as they came near, and drew his sword.
"No farther."
The carts rumbled to a halt. Women began to cry and wail loudly. Jhane walked on. As she came closer and closer to the soldier or guard, his face engorged - firstly with fear, and then with amazement.
"You can't," he said, when she too halted, a pace or so from him.
"Yes."
"No, sister. Take them back. There's no grave-ground here. Christ's nails. They're burning them, that's all. Look east, up there. Those aren't the pest fires. It's corpse fires now. Too many dead to bury."
"Then," she said, "the fires."
"No," he said again. "We're keeping the riff-raff away. We've checked the sickness this side. It's less here. But not if they all come over. They stink of death."
Jhane stood motionless. She looked into his eyes and said, "When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink. I was sick and you tended me, in prison and you visited me. The Lord says, Even as you have done to the least of men, so you have done to me."
The mailed man began to cry, just like the people around the carts, but perhaps only the smoke of all the thousand fires of Paradys was in his eyes. He stepped away, lowering his sword. The other men shifted."Let them by," he said to these others. "What does it matter." They moved, and the carts began again to jolt forward. Another man in mail ran at Jhane and pushed the point of his sword against her breast. The first man came and eased the sword aside. As Jhane went on with the carts, she heard him say, "Can't you see, you fool, she's the Virgin. It's a miracle. We'll be saved!"
As they proceeded off the bridge, the last cart toiled beside Jhane, and when she looked into it she saw the face of the thief, Conrad, but upside down. He was lying across several other bodies, which they had tried to arrange in a seemly way, although this was not possible. The tall old man trod by the cart. He said, "That was my son. He was a wicked sinner. A cut-throat. He started doing evil as a child. I knew then he was lost. Whatever ground he goes in, or if he's burnt, it's the same - he'll be baking in Hell already."
"You're wrong," said Jhane. "A woman saw an angel in Conrad's hut."
The old man stared at her, but they were coming level with the outer yard of the church of Our Lady, and a fearful smell was in the air, worse than all the rest. Between the church and the quay boats had earlier been dragged ashore and set alight. This had laid the foundation of a pyre for multitudes, but was now mostly crumbling, a tower of glowing ashes. From thick smog a ragged priest or two was emerging. One ran forward and waved them away. "Not here. No more. Go on to the east wall, the Roman wall. Up there." Then he drew Jhane aside. Unconcerned with her now, the death procession moved by, and left her behind. "Sister, I can see you've had the Death, and survived it."Jhane said nothing. "It's plain, you bear all the marks. I too. Look, you see? Like the mark on Cain's brow. There was one good doctor, he gave me myrrh and saffron, and bled me. On the fifth day the boil burst and I recovered. To show my thanks to God, I serve the City. When this is over, this terrible reckoning, I'll kill myself." He paused, waiting to complete his catechism.
"Why?"
"Can you ask? There will be so few of us left alive. The whole world will have to begin again. Besides, God's punishment is so cruel. I'll thank, but I can't worship such a God. I defy him."
"If someone must be the enemy of mankind," said Jhane, "and not Satan, then God, perhaps."
"Blasphemy," said the priest. He laughed. "Stay here," he said. "If you go up there, you may get caught in some building. When the pest comes, the soldiers wall them up alive inside, the sick, the hale, the dead together."
Jhane turned from the priest. He said again, "Stay, pale rose. We have wine in the church." But Jhane slid
from him and was gone, climbing up the hills of Paradys, quickly lost to him in smoke.
Over Satan's Way, the ribcage of the unfinished Temple-Church had the look of a ruin, something which had been, but now decayed and fell to bits. A large fire had been built in the midst of the sheds, but it was out. No one was by.
Peculiar noises, often indecipherable, ascended and sank constantly in the City, generally isolated. One such now began in the street that circled beyond the Temple. Jhane came out on the street. It was not as she remembered. The decent houses, the ornate well and trough, the burned house, were in position as before, and yet everything seemed subtly to have misplaced itself. There were no fires here, as if once had been enough, and smoke coloured the air, but only that. Far along the wall of the old garden-park - which had not yet been utilised as a crematorium - mailed riders on thin horses sat under a battered, stained banner. They were directing the actions of some labourers in the process of boarding and plastering over the doors and lower windows of one house.
"Stay away, sister. It's here." The man who rode towards her on the sorry horse did not meet her eyes. "The only method to stop it, lady."
Then he drew closer. He leaned towards her. On his face was a terrible invisible unmistakable shadow. He murmured, so the other men should not hear, "I have it. I'm hot and cold, and a pain in my groin. Some live through. I might. I shan't. When this job's done, I'll go up on the waste land, where the fires are. It's like the Pit up there, the damned all crying in torment, and the flames. Confess me?
They say anyone can do it, but a holy nun's better if I can't have the priest."
"Yes," said Jhane.
Leaning from the horse then, as if he discussed ordinary things with her, he gabbled his confession, a sibling to so many others she had heard. And when it was over, he added, "And they're on my conscience - the mason in the house there. He was at work on the Temple-Church. His wife and servant were taken out, dead, but then the order came, close the house. It's him and some lunatic son he's got, dying in there and hearing the plaster shutting round them. Better to go in the open. But I don't care. Rot the lot of them. Rot 'em." Suddenly, no longer bothering with life, he rode headlong through the street, going eastward. His men did not pay much attention to him, the labourers none; they were at work on the final window.
"Let me go in," said Jhane to the labourers, when she reached them. They looked at her, then at the mounted men under the banner.
"Trying to earn Heaven, sister?" one of them sneered. "Go on then. It's up to you. If you can squeeze through the window, skinny nun."
But two of the labourers assisted her politely through the narrow aperture, even fisting out some of the fresh plaster. When she was through, they asked her blessing. She rendered it as she had seen the Mother do. Then, she stood in the house and listened to the wood smacked back and the slap of the putty, and watched the light fade.
The house already reeked of the Death, but the odour was customary to Jhane. She climbed a stair and midway up she was confronted by a man - the dying mason. He raved at her, an intruder in his home. He asked her what she meant by it. But his breathing was hard. He coughed fluid into his sleeve.
"Forgive me," said Jhane. "Something made me come in here. I'll care for you. Recovery may happen." She saw that this was unlikely. When he staggered, she supported him back to his bed. He had stopped reviling her. He smiled at her in a frightened and placatory manner, like a sick child.
Presently he said, "Nothing, no chance for me. But the boy - '
"Your son."
"Not my son. I wish I'd had - such a son - still-births were all she could manage, poor bitch. She's dead, poor bitch." He coughed and choked and recovered, and said, "Not long. The boy - might live. He's been sick a while - not this, before. That can - make them stronger to fight - I've seen it before. Before. He's lived through trouble before. Wits - gone - the worst of all - better any crippling - though not the hands - ' The mason's speech wandered with his thoughts. He then said, "Having seen what he was capable of, I asked him if he'd train to work in stone - well - he'd drink and go after - that sweetest part of a woman's frame - but he was young. Anyway murdered for it, we thought. Then on Fool's Day, over - the - river - I found him. Some slut had taken him in. Well
- he was useless - to her. She told me. She'd come on him -crawling in his blood. Oh the Devil burnt up that house, oh - yes. The Artisan Motius - they said the Devil rode over his roof and hauled him up through a window - all alight. Dead, anyhow. So 7 took the imbecile in. How could I leave him - in her hovel? Perhaps
- did him - a bad turn. This fell on us." Then he was feverish and screamed that he also was burning, Fire! Fire! And then he choked and drowned and died.
Jhane went further up the house and came to a small room with a slender bed filling it. On the mattress a young man with wringing-wet yellow hair, writhed and tossed in unemphatic delirium. His skin was blotched by darkness, and beneath one arm nested the black knots of the plague. He was however recognisable. And so Jhane looked into the face of her brother, Pierre.
Inside the walled-up house, it was very quiet. The earth, which had formerly condensed to a City, had now become the house alone.
Shortly before midnight, Jhane had managed to drag the heavy corpse of the mason off the bed, and into the chest at the bed's foot. Plague cadavers putrefied rapidly. The chest, of a proper size and air-tight, must serve as coffin and burial together. Having sealed the chest - its linen would be useful elsewhere - with its own iron clasps, Jhane went about the floors, seeing if anything else was to be had there. All access to a well was gone, but previously in the kitchen, perhaps the bounty of the law, she had found a barrel of water. There were also some casks of ale. Jhane now searched and discovered a store of candles, kindling, garlic and withered apples, and some mouldering bread, but if there had been any other provisions, someone had appropriated them.
Above, the young man who was her brother, strove on between sleep and delirium and death. Jhane had sat by him some hours, telling him at intervals that he would live. It was the only panacea she employed, other than to wash his body with the tepid water, and to moisten his lips. She had rolled him aside also, twice, to ease the soiled clothes from under him, replacing them with fresh. When he cried out or shouted, which happened occasionally, she took him in her arms, responding to all he said, replying, whether he spoke with some semblance of logic or only in nonsense, and whether he might hear her or not. (She had been made aware in the strife of the plague that the sufferers suffered far worse when feeling they were ignored, or that the phantom situations of fever went unstraightened. In certain cases she had also pretended to be wives and mothers, daughters and sons, and the victims - crying for these lost kindred - were deceived and calmed.)
It had not surprised her to come on Pierre. She had supposed him dead, but the world had changed. It seemed to her, although she did not dwell on it, that the moment the angel touched her, Pierre had been reborn. Thereafter the mason accidentally located and rescued him inevitably. Ever since then, some invisible cord had been slowly pulling her towards this spot. Reborn, Pierre could not die again so swiftly. And to attend and comfort him as he fought for life was not an expiation. He had been cruel to her, and she had not forgotten it. But what he had done no longer mattered, whereas her own cruel malice had turned her towards kindness and deep pity. Compared to her own wickedness, Pierre's was of a slight order, and probably he had learnt nothing from it.
Because he would survive, too, Jhane did not attempt any of those remedies which the doctors had practiced before her in a number of scenes of the pest-stricken City. Though the black boils were hard and leaking, she did not lance or cauterise them; she did not bleed or radically try to cool or inflame the desperate body on the bed.
For herself, she took no precautions.
She had always been underfed. She ate the apples, and drank a little ale, and slept in separate minutes, sitting on the floor.
A morning
came, blooming up through the upper windows. A day passed, declining down through them. These windows had been left alone as they were too small to provide egress. But they did provide some air, for the smoke seemed less. That afternoon, Jhane heard a distant bell give tongue in Paradys. She had almost forgotten the sound. In a while she realised it was not a funeral knell, but the Nonus, from some church away towards the river. Beyond the window, in the vanishing light, roofs and towers stood in islands among the smokes.
When night returned Jhane took off the topaz cross and laid it under the sick man's pillow. The flash of the jewel as she came from the window had reminded her she wore it. If she had recollected earlier, she would have removed it then and placed it ready for Pierre.
Near sunrise of the third day, Pierre screamed, and the evil pebbles of the Death burst open, freeing him of poison.
When she had cleaned him and given him water, he dropped down into an intent oblivion. After the sun had risen, all that day, she sat and watched his skin begin to clear and change colour, the dark patches gradually leaving it. But the ill-treatment, the assault, the rape, the madness - these as much as the pestilence - had aged him and torn his beauty. Through the empty pane of his unconscious face, Thane could see now a resemblance to his father, Belnard.
He did not know her. This seemed to her a proof that the insanity the mason had spoken of was leaving Pierre. Sane, he would not accept her presence, he would reject her presence - once precursor of such horrors.