A Cloud of Outrageous Blue

by Vesper Stamper

  I stand in the water on the second step with my hands on my hips, watching Mason and enjoying the warmth seeping into my bare feet. He slings off the sack and reveals what’s inside.

  It is a small memorial stone, a pointed arch framing a carved re-creation of the page from the Gospel book. He slides it into place against the yew tree, opposite the steps where I’m standing.

  I get out and embrace him. “You trusted me. Even in all this chaos.”

  “To think, this spring was here all along, but who else would have found it in time?”

  “I just decided to listen and say yes, that’s all.”

  “Maybe you’re actually a saint,” he teases. “Maybe you’ll levitate next. You’ll float up into the stars, and I’ll have to hold your skirts to pull you back down to earth.” We both laugh and trade legends of improbable saintly phenomena. We grow quiet, letting the after-laugh wash over us. We pray. We hold each other close before it’s time to fill our buckets and go back. Here, in this nest on the top of a little Yorkshire mountain, we feel free.

  “There’s not much left to do in the chapel,” he says. “Now that I’m not digging as many graves, I’ve been able to put up more wooden scaffolds. Once I’m done with the capitals, I can collect my pay—and probably haggle for the pay of the other builders, who…ah…didn’t make it.”

  I turn to him, scandalized. “Mason, that’s awful! You can’t take money from dead people.”

  “I did the work of several men, and dug their graves, Edie. A worker’s worth his wages.”

  “You’re right,” I admit.

  “After I get paid, though,” he continues, “I want to leave. Together.”

  “I can’t leave yet, Mason. I have to see this through. Not just the water, but I’ve got to get Alice out, somehow. That hasn’t changed.”

  “There’s nothing saying you have to be the one to give the water, though, is there? Can’t you tell someone else where it is? Like Joan? Now that it’s got a marker, they can find it easily.”

  “No. Absolutely not. Can you imagine Agnes finding it—or Felisia? If the prioress dies, Agnes will take over, and I don’t know what she’d do with something like miraculous healing water.”

  He looks disheartened. I know what he’s thinking—he’s scared that I’ve entrenched myself here, that I won’t leave the priory with him after all.

  “Let’s start back,” he says as the shadows turn purple. “We’ve stayed too long.”

  We emerge through the last grove of trees, and the priory reappears downhill. Suddenly we hear the leaves shush some distance away.

  It’s the Anti-Pri. And there’s nowhere for us to hide.

  Agnes has been in the forest, too. She’s thin and pale, her habit dusty and her veil disheveled. She advances quickly toward me and Mason, gripping a basket of long blue flower cuttings in one hand, a pair of shears in the other.

  “Sub-Prioress,” I greet her, bowing my head. “We were just—”

  “You two,” she says accusingly, pointing the shears at us. “This is the evil that has brought this holy house low. You and your secret sin. I knew it had to be you, wicked, vile creature.” She puts down her basket and throws the shears on top.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I try to pass but Agnes blocks the way. Water sloshes in the buckets hanging from my yoke.

  “We are dying in the church, and your infirmary is sending people dancing out of the priory gate,” she says. “Why is that, do you think?”

  “Maybe Joan found the right tincture,” I lie.

  “See how she speaks to authority,” she says into the air. “This is why you don’t let them rise above their estate. Probably not even baptized. But what’s to be expected from the child of cursed parents?”

  “Edyth, let’s go,” says Mason. He tries to lead me around her, toward the gate. “She’s starved. She’s delirious.”

  “You’d think you’d be loyal,” says Agnes, her tone changing slightly to something like pity. “To the priory. To me. I helped you to rise. The prioress never would have known about you otherwise. I did everything I could to lift you out of your pathetic state. From a conversa, a nothing!”

  “You didn’t do anything for me,” I fume. “You hated me from the moment you met me! You only wanted me in the scriptorium so you wouldn’t feel so bad about leaving it yourself. You beat me like a dog!”

  “You see! This! This is what comes from heresy,” says Agnes, wagging her finger in my face, her breath sour. “Pushing the boundaries, until you’re fornicating in the woods like pagans!”

  Mason puts his body between us. “You hypocrite!” he rebukes Agnes. “You want to talk about secret sin? Let’s talk about yours. The proof is right there in your basket. Monkshood. You’re a murderer!”

  He kicks the basket and sends the stems flying. Agnes stumbles back as though someone’s shoved her, and now I see how thin she’s become, how dark the bags under her eyes as she holds Mason’s gaze. She knows that if she says anything about us, we will expose her.

  “Ha,” she finally sniffs, sizing up Mason from bottom to top. “What does a vagrant like you know about me?” She picks up the empty basket, fishes in the leaves for her shears and makes her way to the forest gate.

  She’ll never face justice for her slow murder of the prioress or Alice’s entrapment. The image of my father flashes, hung from a bridge with no recourse to a trial, murdered by his own townspeople on a flimsy accusation. With the world in such turmoil, true justice is the first thing to go.

  “She won’t say a word about us,” says Mason. “We’re going to make this right. We’re going to get Alice out.”

  * * *

  —

  The infirmary is filled with the agonized cries of the sick, who queue out the door and into the churchyard. The sound of a baby’s anguished wail makes me instantly crumple and put down my yoke clumsily, splashing the healing water on the gravel. Mason puts his buckets down and leads me away, over toward the north wall of the priory enclosure.

  “Give yourself a minute,” he says. The moon shimmers in the river below, the water there anything but clear. He puts his arms around me and holds me as I weep.

  All of a sudden, his head perks up and he lets go of me.

  “Look down there,” he says. “What is that?” He points toward the distance, to one of the churches in town.

  I squint at the light glowing from the windows of Saint Mary’s. It’s hard to make it out all the way across the river, but we hear shouts, and they’re definitely coming from the church.

  “I wonder what’s going on down there,” he says as we walk back to get our buckets.

  “Let’s hope whatever it is stays in Thornchester.” I take a deep breath and take up my yoke. “Right, I think I’m ready.”

  He kisses my shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “We have a long night ahead of us.”

  We go to work, giving water to the sick. Three patients died before we arrived; nothing could be done for them. Mason wraps them and lays them in the churchyard. But we give the drink, listen to confessions, hold the crying, pray with the devastated.

  There’s one man, at the end of the gallery, whose voice rises above the din and suffering. He’s shouting obscenities and shaking the furniture in the tiny cell. No one can come near him. We’re only glad he doesn’t rage through the whole room.

  “I don’t even know why I’m here!” he hollers. “It would have been better to die alone in my own bed!” The man paces, covered in sores, tearing at his own hair.

  Mason takes a tin cup and fills it with the spring water. “Sir, drink this. It will help,” he says, gesturing at the rest of the people. “See how the others are beginning to improve even now. Take—”

  The man thrusts his hand out and hits the cup, sending it spiraling into the air. It lands on the ground, ringing like a b
ell, and the healing water absorbs into the porous brick floor.

  The prioress gets up from her pallet and approaches the man to comfort him. He grabs her by the shoulders and shouts in her face: “Get out of here with your goddamned potions and let me be!”

  He shoves her, hard, to the ground. Several pilgrims come to her aid and help her up as the man staggers down the long gallery, running his arm along the length of the table and knocking pottery and remedies to the floor on his way out.

  In the morning, the man is found dead on the gatehouse threshold.

  — 40 —

  This man will need to be buried. So will the ones who died before they could get the water, and that’ll mean digging a new trench, but Mason’s the only builder left alive at the priory. He and I go down to Thornchester to see if he can persuade anyone to help him bury these poor people.

  It’s far worse than the last time I came down here, and I have to brace myself to keep from retching. Bodies are everywhere in various states of decay. Dogs drag limbs they’ve scavenged from the streets. Two pigs wrestle over a piece of flesh wrapped in cloth.

  Stumbling down the deserted high street comes a band of seven men, singing bawdy songs, piss-drunk and filthy, seemingly oblivious to the death and stench all around them. So we force ourselves to play along.

  “Hey!” says Mason. “Having a good time?”

  They explode into uproarious laughter.

  “A good time?” says the biggest man. “It’s the end of the feckin’ world, brother! We aim to fall right off the edge!”

  “Apparently the taverns are still open. Do you fine lords want to earn some more drinking money?” Mason proposes.

  “What do you have in mind?” slurs the ringleader. One of them trips and falls into the mud, smashing his cheek against the ground. He doesn’t get up. No one helps him.

  “Up at the priory, there’s some digging to be done,” Mason tells them.

  “Bodies, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve done that kind of work. Not worth it.”

  “And you’re not sick?” I say. “Must mean you’re some of the lucky ones. You’ll be able to enjoy your pay.”

  “And you know those nuns are rich.” Mason has to say that, even though neither of us has any idea where the priory stores money, nor whether the Pri will give it to us. This stops them and makes them consider it, though.

  “I’ll come,” says a thin fellow in a yellow shirt.

  “Sure, me too,” says a grizzled man with what looks like dried vomit on his sleeve. Finally the ringleader coaxes all six into coming, and they stumble up the hill to the priory with us.

  Men like this would normally never see the inside of a priory. I convince them at least to splash their faces in the cloister fountain. They don’t notice the scenery, in any case.

  “Is it true?” says the yellow-shirted man. “About the healing waters? Fella came through from the East Riding talking of the young girl who’s not afraid, like the Savior Himself, to touch poor lepers.”

  Mason gazes at me, eyebrows raised, and I laugh it away. “What,” I say, “the girl with rabbit-skin glue under her fingernails and a bucket of water by the infirmary door?” It’s funny, but strange, to think you exist to people outside of your own four walls.

  * * *

  —

  While the men extend the trench in the churchyard, I go into the infirmary to talk to the Pri about getting them paid. At first I don’t see her; another group of pilgrims have trickled in, seeking a cure, and it’s busy. Maybe she’s hearing confession or giving the Sacrament. Finally I find her, but not ministering.

  She’s in a bed all the way in back, drenched in sweat, no veil, wearing only her shift. She can’t bear anything to touch her, not even a blanket. When she sees me, she waves me in.

  “Mother,” I say, “let me get you the water.”

  “No,” she says. “It’s not for me. This is not the pestilence; you know that.”

  “But who says it’s only good for the pestilence?”

  “No, Edyth. Let this unfold as it should. I’ve made provisions. Remember what I said—fear kills, but it won’t win.” She lays her head down again and falls asleep.

  The prioress must see the frustration on my face. Why won’t she drink the water? Doesn’t she know that if she dies, Agnes will take over the priory?

  * * *

  —

  After the men dig the trench, I get them paid and fed, and we show them to the gatehouse, with barely enough daylight left for them to find their way back to town. But as we step onto the main path, we hear a grisly sound.

  It’s all chaos and orange sparks and billows—a jumble of shouts and chants and howling. We had locked the gates when we returned from town, but the dull red pounding of bodies thrusting against them makes the lock give way, and the doors fling wide on a wild procession.

  There is a boy of about twelve right at the front, carrying a cross made of hazel poles. Behind him, three other boys bear torches at full flame. Following them are hundreds of men, walking two by two. They are stripped half naked, their white robes rolled down around their waists and trailing down to the ground like upside-down lilies. They’re yowling a pitiful song of penance—

  Dilexisti malitiam super benignitatem

  Iniquitatem magis quam loqui aequitatem.

  Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity

  And in sin did my mother conceive me.

  —and in their hands they hold leather whips.

  Thwop. Thwop.

  They are beating their own backs bloody.

  My head swims, and I shut my eyes against the nausea and shock. I’ve heard of monks doing things like this in secret, but everyone knows it’s shameful.

  A lot of fat men trying to make themselves feel better about their gluttony, Da would say.

  The Lord already shed His own blood, Mam would say. Why try to add to it?

  The men come in, tearing at their flesh with the whips—and then, as though they’re given a signal, the whole line of them hits the ground prostrate and spreads their arms out wide on the ground like living crosses, still singing. From the rear of the line, the last two men stand, pick up their flails and begin stepping over each man in front of them, a whip to each back, and they become first in line.

  The procession completely blocks the bridge, the only way out of the priory without going upriver. There’s nothing to do but stand aside and try to slip past them once they all come in.

  “Who are they?” Mason asks the diggers’ ringleader. “Were they the ones in Saint Mary’s the other night?”

  “They took over that church all week.”

  “Why did they come to the priory?” I ask.

  “Guess those bloodsuckers ran out of donations,” says the man. “They pick up desperate stragglers in every town. I think there’s double the number that came into Thornchester. Murdered the priest.”

  The priest—he didn’t make it out after all.

  The sight of two hundred men beating themselves to a pulp is shocking enough. But all along the edges are women, shrieking like fanatics. They reach out their hands to the grisly men, get a palmful of blood and call out while smearing it across their own faces—

  O holy man of God, pray for me!

  Just a touch of the hem of your garment will heal me!

  Say the word, O anointed, and I will be healed!

  —starving for someone to tell them how they might escape wrath. We lean against the high wall flanking the gatehouse, but there’s no escaping the notice of the agitated crowd. Suddenly the men at the front of the throng turn their attention toward the gravediggers. The new leader points his flail at them.

  “Sons of the devil,” he says, “with drink on their breath in this holy place, at the very time
they should be killing their flesh!”

  Mason and I duck into a recess in the wall at just the right moment to avoid the fate of the hired diggers, watching with horror as the mob descends, and beats all six of them to death.

  The men’s hysterical shouts reach a crescendo and the church doors swing open. There stands Agnes de Guile and, right by her side, the Dragon. The blaze of the church candles and the torches in the procession turn the nuns into silhouettes and specters.

  “Ave, favored ones,” says Agnes, her voice loud and hoarse. “Our prophetess told us you would come. You honor us. You are most welcome. Come share your message with the faithful here. The dormitory and guesthouse are no longer occupied. You may spend as long as you wish.”

  “That’s not hers to offer,” I whisper to Mason, thinking of the prioress, still clinging to life in the infirmary.

  The boys at the front of the procession part to the side, and the first two men approach, kneeling before Agnes on the church steps. She holds out a thin hand and lets them kiss it.

  “Come and bless my humble flock. Come, come. And the holy women, too,” she says. “I am Prioress Agnes de Guile.”

  — 41 —

  Agnes de Guile—the prioress of Saint Christopher’s.

  The sick probability of that rolls around in my aching head as I wake in the chapel. As the real prioress fades, I know it will soon be true in more than just Agnes’s imagination.

  The weather’s turned at last. It’s been snowing and melting for days, and a veil of fog hangs so thick, I have to feel for the walls of the buildings. This damp air can’t be good to breathe, and I think of sick travelers as I wrap my cloak tighter and blow in my hands, scrunching my toes in my shoes. When I get to the infirmary, I kick something on the doorstep. I look down—it’s the foot of a dead man.

  The man is covered in a light dusting of snow. His legs are bare, as is his chest, blood frozen into slush. Only a rolled-down linen tunic covers the rest of him. He’s one of the penitents from the church—and he has the marks of the disease. Mason and I lug his body to the new trench in the back of the churchyard. Did someone dispose of him here? Or did he come seeking the water?