by M. K. Hume
Lorcan was horrified at the condition of starving dogs that had reverted to the wild and were hunting farm animals for food, often in packs. But domestic pets were the worst. If no other form of sustenance was available, farm cats and dogs weren’t averse to feeding on the corpses of their dead masters.
In every case where human deaths were involved, Lorcan felt obliged to give the dead the last rites so that their souls would be freed from Limbo. Gareth and Germanus collected firewood and once Lorcan had finished the prayers, they set fire to each cottage to ensure that the plague would find no further unwary victims who visited the farm.
Nor were they the only persons carrying out these sad and necessary duties. As the miles to Reims passed by like a steadily unrolling scroll, the three travelers saw great plumes of smoke rising in the distance on both sides of the road, evidence of the steady march of Death as it strode inexorably forward. Carrion birds grew fat and sluggish on dead beasts and other unclean meat.
There weren’t enough arrows in Gesoriacum to kill all the predatory birds or stop the farm and wild animals taking whatever food they could. Death and his followers grew fat on the road to Reims, while all other living things went sadly malnourished.
One day, a shy pale young man approached the trine carefully, while all three noted that his body was noticeably thin from a recent illness. His eyes never left the three travelers, as if he was waiting for an inevitable attack. He ensured that he was beyond the reach of their long swords as he carefully approached them. The priest drew Berry to a halt and looked down at the anxious stranger.
“You’re a survivor of the pestilence, aren’t you? What’s your name, young man, and where are you going?”
The thin young man was obviously frightened of the three warriors. His eyes darted from their scabbards to their armor, their packhorses, and even Germanus’s pallor that was so like his own. Finally, still wary, he made his way to the verge of the road, sat on his heels, and haltingly told his story.
“My name is Louis and I was a baker’s apprentice in Reims. My father’s name no longer matters because my whole family is dead. It all seems to have happened so long ago that I can’t imagine life before waking under a tree and finding I was surrounded by my dead family. When the illness first came to our village on the outskirts of Reims, my mother insisted that we should run. I would have preferred to stay because the illness travels faster than human feet can move, but we packed up everything we could carry and fled into the west.”
“How far did you get before the illness struck, Louis?” Lorcan asked.
“We were only two days from home, so it was a nothing in distance. We were already infected when we left, I suppose. When my mother and my sister became ill, we settled into a copse of trees close to a streamlet and strung blankets between the trees to keep us under cover. Then we cared for each other as, one by one, we all began to sicken.”
“And when it was all over, you found you had survived,” Germanus said dourly. “Like me, you endured when better and stronger people perished.”
“Exactly so, friend! I thought you were a survivor as soon as I saw you. We all wear the same look—and the same guilt!”
The young man examined his hands closely, as if trying to make up his mind.
“Do you have anything to drink? I have some food, but fresh water frightens me at the moment. The streams are fouled near their sources, and most of the wells are contaminated. Sufferers of the pestilence burn up with inner heat, and they will do almost anything to obtain cold water to ease their symptoms.”
“We have milk and you’re welcome to share it with us,” Gareth replied, and smiled at Louis. With exaggerated care, he dismounted and placed a leather bottle on the ground a few feet from the stranger’s hand. “There are cows enough that need milking on abandoned farms, so there’s no need to suffer from thirst during your journey.”
Louis moved swiftly, snatched up the bottle, and emptied it in three gulps.
“Excuse my bad manners, but those persons who survive the disease are considered to be in league with the powers of darkness. I’ve been attacked several times by folk who don’t understand the illness.” One hand indicated a nasty contusion on the side of his head. “They nearly got me with that attack.”
“What of those few persons who are immune to the plague?” Gareth asked.
“Is anyone truly immune?” Louis asked. His eyes were wide and amazed.
“Aye! Father Lorcan and I have been exposed to the disease on many occasions. We have nursed sufferers of the plague, but we haven’t become ill at all, not even a sniffle.”
Under his black humor, the young warrior was grim and angry, and Louis recognized his rage.
“I’d heard that some people don’t sicken, but I thought the tale was a fable,” the young man replied. “Such persons are said to be demons and are killed on sight, along with Jews, Huns, and old women who are skilled in herb lore.”
Louis examined the three warriors carefully from under his lowered eyelids. They were obviously experienced fighting men, possibly mercenaries, and Louis smiled as he wondered how the bullies who had tried to kill him for the sin of survival would tackle men such as these.
I hope these warriors kill every one of the bastards who tried to kill me, he thought with grim relish.
“Where are you going then, now that all your family members are dead?” Lorcan’s voice remained calm, although inwardly he shuddered at the tale of innocents being killed out of hand in the name of superstition.
“I’m heading for Orleans. I have an older brother who lives near there, so I’m hoping I’ll outstrip the disease if it hasn’t reached there yet. How can I know? I could be heading into even worse conditions than exist in this hellhole.”
Lorcan moved forward on his huge horse, and the young man finally had proof that the old man was a priest when he saw his vestments, his tonsure, and the beads that hung from the cord round his coarse robe. Bowing his head respectfully, the baker’s apprentice rose to his feet, handed the bottle back to Gareth, and prepared to set off on the road once again, when a sudden thought caused him to stop and turn back.
“Please forgive me, but my illness has caused me to forget my manners. Should you come to Orleans, look for Louis or Bernais at the bakery on the Street of the Metal Workers. You’ll always be welcome there. After all, we survivors should stick together.”
Germanus touched his forelock in salute, as did both Lorcan and Gareth. In the weeks to come, Lorcan would comment that Louis had been the only person who had even pretended to be civilized during their experiences on the road to Reims.
A day later, they reached a small village where thin dogs lurked just beyond the reach of cast stones, while gangs of feral children ran from their approach like wild creatures, shaggy with dirt and sly with unhealthy wisdom.
No adults appeared to be alive, although half the houses in the village were blackened and burned like the hollow, broken shells of diseased teeth. The stink of rot hung in the air and seemed to seep into hair, clothing, and the folds in the travelers’ skins.
Several other groups who were ahead of them had run, spurred their horses, or rushed their carts through the main street of the village. All that the strangers desired was to brush the dust of this hellish place off their bodies as soon as possible. Nevertheless, Germanus raised his fingers to his lips and then drew his sword from its scabbard with a nasty little hiss. Gareth and Lorcan followed suit.
A thin, high-pitched scream ululated through the air, grating along stretched nerve endings and raising the hair on the arms and backs of the three travelers.
Gareth dismounted and handed the reins of his horse and pack animals to Lorcan, while gesturing to the priest that he should wait with his sword at the ready until he returned. Almost as quickly, Germanus did the same and trotted after Gareth as nimbly as he could.
As Lorcan wai
ted, a lone figure on a huge draught horse on an empty road with deserted and ruined houses on each side, he began to feel his anxiety increase as the moments dragged by.
He could hear shrill, childish laughter teetering on the edge of hysteria. It reverberated across the fields from a row of cottages along the edges of a road leading north. “Sounds like wild children!” he muttered softly to himself. “Dear God, who could conceive of such a thing? But then, if their parents and siblings are dead, what can children do? They must eat and they must drink, so it’s logical that they’ll band together to steal, or do anything that will help to fill the emptiness in their bellies.”
Lorcan’s voice sounded old and thin, even to his ears.
Time stretched out painfully and his friends still hadn’t returned. Lorcan’s nervous eyes scanned the street and the ruins for any signs of life. His warrior instinct was screaming at him that something was terribly wrong in this godforsaken place.
Then, another scream made the priest jump. This time, the voice was clearly masculine, and the naturally baritone voice rose up and up in an extremity of agony too terrible to be imagined. In quick succession, Lorcan heard the laughter and giggles of children, followed by another ghastly scream that, this time, was suddenly cut off. Almost immediately, he heard the clatter of running feet.
“Father Lorcan! Dear God, you’re needed! Bring the horses and hurry,” a high-pitched adult voice was yelling from across the field. “Just come, Father!”
Lorcan recognized Gareth calling for him.
When Gareth realized that Lorcan had heard his call and was responding, he ducked down a laneway between two cottages. In a fecund garden bed, spring cabbages had been allowed to rot, and the stink caught at the back of his throat. The young man picked up the pace to run across a neglected field towards the cluster of stone houses on the north road.
Kicking Berry in the ribs, Father Lorcan dragged the packhorses behind him as he caught up with Gareth. Cursing as the reins became tangled, Lorcan slowed to speak to his companion, but Gareth simply waved him on. The younger man’s face was as white as new bone.
“Ride ahead, Lorcan! You’re needed! I’ll see to the horses. For God’s sake, hurry, Father.”
The sense of urgency in Gareth’s voice drove Lorcan onward to where the tall figure of Germanus had stepped out from behind a fieldstone wall.
Germanus’s face was as white as bleached linen and Lorcan could smell the stench of vomit as he approached his friend. Something had shaken Germanus to the core, so badly that Lorcan could see the shock written in his stiff expression and the rigidity of his shoulders as if the Frank had tensed every muscle against something truly frightful.
“What’s wrong, Germanus? You look as if you’ve seen a whole host of demons.”
Germanus shook his leonine head and pointed to the back of a cottage. “See for yourself! There’s a man out there who needs extreme unction, if he’s still alive! I think he’s a Jew! But all dying men need the comfort of Heaven—Jew or not—don’t they?”
Lorcan dismounted and picked up the small bag which held his holy oil and the precious tools of his trade. He moved behind the cottage and found the obscenity that had been enacted in this nameless village.
An entire family had been crucified on the timber frames used to hold their vegetable vines in place during the summer. Where beans, peas, and gourds would normally have been entwined and flowering, five bodies were hanging from nails that had been driven through their wrists.
“Dear God!”
In a daze, Lorcan began with a towheaded boy of about five whose contorted corpse was an abomination against nature. As he struggled to breathe, the real suffering of crucifixion, the young boy had torn his wrists from the cruel nails that bound him into position and had actually managed to free one hand. The torn and broken wrists continued to leak slow drops of blood to join the huge, drying puddle that had formed at the foot of the frame.
With his trembling fingers on the boy’s throat, Lorcan confirmed that the boy-child was dead. His sister had obviously been raped before she had been nailed into place, as her swollen genitals and a snail trail of blood and semen on her thighs revealed. Her wide-open brown eyes stared out at eternity with a sick horror. Fortunately for her, Lorcan was certain she had died quickly from the shock and pain of the indignities she had been forced to endure.
The last and eldest child, a boy of twelve or so, had obviously fought back because his body was covered with bruises, scrapes, cuts, and deep stab wounds. Even in such a weakened state, the boy had survived on the agonizing frame for longer than could have been expected, because his body was still warm. Perhaps he had released those first terrifying screams as he gave up his spirit. Lorcan closed the boy’s staring brown eyes and smoothed the spiky matted black hair on the lad’s forehead.
“Sleep now, my child,” Lorcan whispered with tears prickling at the backs of his eyes. “Whatever your name was, you were a brave boy.”
The mother of the household had been raped repeatedly and half strangled before she was nailed up. From the stiffly fixed state of her body, the clustering of flies that were already laying their eggs in her mouth, and the clammy discoloration that had begun in her feet where the blood from her body had pooled, this poor woman had died quickly. Muttering a hasty prayer, Lorcan was glad that she had been dead before her children perished.
Then the funereal silence of the afternoon was shattered by an agonized howl. Belatedly, Lorcan realized that the hanging man who had been left to last for attention was still alive.
Lorcan shouted for Germanus and Gareth to join him.
“Help me to get him down from here. He’s still alive, for Christ’s sake, so we might still save him—if we hurry.”
Lorcan’s companions came around the corner of the building and, although they were obviously aware of the man’s condition, neither of them responded with any degree of urgency.
“He doesn’t want to be moved, Father Lorcan,” Gareth told him. The ruined and battered head nodded vigorously, as if all the destroyed body’s strength was focused on its neck muscles.
“Then he’ll have to tell me so himself,” Lorcan retorted as he dragged a battered stool across the cobbles in the garden bed to stand on while he attempted to pry the nail from the dying man’s wrist.
“He can’t speak, Lorcan. They’ve cut out his tongue,” Germanus replied, and then grabbed the stool away from his friend. “Ask him to nod if he agrees with me. I’m sure he’ll let his wishes be known.”
“Do you want us to cut you down, sir?” Lorcan asked. “The position of your arms is causing you to choke slowly, so you’ll die if we don’t move you soon.”
The man’s bruised, bleeding, and lacerated head shook vociferously in denial.
“I think he wants to see someone,” Germanus explained softly, “A religious man, I imagine. Perhaps he needs to be blessed by his rabbi? I’ve tried to explain that there’s no one of the Jewish faith alive in the village. And there’s no one else living in the village that I can find.”
“I can shrive him, but I’m a Christian priest. Does he understand the difference?”
The man nodded emphatically, and two fat tears slid out of his eyes to roll down the slick of blood, sweat, and dried tears that dirtied what was left of his face.
“There is no sin in what we do,” Lorcan stated. “But if there is, I will accept any blame on my own soul. You can stand in front of your God and mine, washed clean of all the sins of a lifetime by the wounds inflicted on you. You have finally atoned for any transgressions you’ve committed during your time on this earth.”
Lorcan’s voice grew in strength and authority as he decided how best to comply with the dying man’s wishes, despite the tears that ran unchecked down his craggy, grey-whiskered face.
“Could you guard the horses, Gareth? There is something evil in this village, and
it wishes to inflict harm on us. I’d like to know we can escape from this shithole if the need arises.”
“I’ll kill anything that moves if they threaten us,” Gareth snapped grimly. He turned and ran back to the road where the horses had been tethered.
Lorcan returned to the task at hand.
“Find me something that will support my weight, Germanus. This stool’s too rickety to hold my extra poundage for too long. I want to be able to look our friend here in the eyes when I give him extreme unction.”
“Can you be burned in Hell for giving this ritual to a Jew, Lorcan?”
When Lorcan didn’t reply, Germanus shrugged and found inside the cottage a bench table, which he dragged into position.
“I can’t believe that a loving God would deny comfort to any of His children, regardless of their beliefs. If our God objects, then He’s not worth worshipping!”
Germanus’s voice was rough with emotion, but Lorcan blotted out his friend’s agony of spirit. Another soul was suffering hideously and needed urgent help.
Then the most holy of all Christian rituals began.
When Lorcan had completed his solemn task, the crucified man closed his eyes briefly and his smashed lips smiled beatifically through his pain. Lorcan could see from the delicate bones of his face that the victim of this atrocity had once been a handsome man. The breath was dragged into the dying man’s lungs slowly, and his chest heaved in response to the enormous effort, so Germanus tried to support the hanging body at the knees to minimize the pain. But he soon realized that this simple act of mercy was placing almost unendurable agony on the man’s body where the nails were still holding the torn feet in place.
“Fetch the poppy juice from my saddlebag, Germanus. At least we can give him some release from his agony.”
Once a heavy and almost lethal dose had been dribbled through the man’s mashed lips and his head started to nod, Germanus and Lorcan struggled to release the survivor from the cruel frame that had killed his family. When he was lying on his back on the spread cloaks of his benefactors, Lorcan was able to check his wounds more carefully. With a shudder, the priest discovered that the dying man had been castrated before he was crucified.