Sylvia

by Bryce Courtenay

  I sighed. ‘It is the only way.’

  ‘Nay, but it’s not! I have it now, the silent choir! The only time our voices are heard is when we sing. We never beg. In fact we never ask to be fed. No child speaks a single word, no matter what.’ He danced around me and took up his flute and composed a funny little tune. Then withdrawing his pipe he called, ‘Sing after me, Sylvia.’

  Not a syllable spoken, never a squeak,

  We love to sing but we never do speak.

  Voices that charm birds from the trees

  Sing praises to God on bended knees.

  It was simple little rhyming couplets put to a happy little tune and the children loved it and repeated the rhyme, singing it constantly, though of course we had no idea if our silence would work. We plaited crude grass baskets to place at our feet when we stood to sing. We prayed that God would reward our efforts, and we practised two hours in the morning and then the same again in the afternoon for several days. The singing and instruction helped to take our minds off the state of constant hunger we endured and, as well, seemed to make the path to Genoa a little shorter.

  I think God must have had His eyes on us because the children’s voices proved, without a single exception, to be quite lovely. Some were more talented than others but none there were who couldn’t sing or hold a note. Reinhardt proved an excellent teacher and, if I may be permitted to say so, I think I was a capable one as well. We worked together and surprisingly I proved better with the boys and the ratcatcher with the girls. Children, especially boys of around ten years old, have wonderful voices and if we could manage to fill their bellies, I knew they would sound better and try harder.

  It seemed to work in the smaller towns and then the larger ones we passed through, where we soon developed a manner to attract a curious crowd. If we were lucky it would be market day with lots of peasants in from the surrounding countryside. We’d tarry outside the town and I’d enter alone and, as usual, seek out the priest and ask him formally to administer extreme unction to any dying children who had preceded us. There were always several I would pass on the way to the Church, but it was not until I received the priest’s refusal that I would return to give them the final blessing of a penitential psalm. Then I would return to the waiting group and we would enter the town and make our way to the square that invariably fronted the church where I had recently visited the priest.

  We’d enter a town to the usual jeers and shouts of abuse, with the dogs set upon us. Reinhardt would put his silent flute to his mouth and the dogs, as they did in the village on the evening of the first day we met, would drop to the road with their heads on their paws, tongues lolling. This almost immediately gained the attention of the townsfolk. Then as we climbed silently to stand on the steps of the church, it didn’t take long for a look of bemusement to appear on the faces of the people in the square. It took enormous courage and discipline from the small children with empty stomachs to pass the market stalls, to remain silent in sight of the piled produce, loaves of bread, crisp apples and plump ripened peaches and apricots, cauldrons of steaming soup or rich stew they only dreamed they might eat just once before they died.

  The ratcatcher waited until a curious crowd gathered. Some called for their dogs to return to them but the animals refused to move, even if severely beaten. This always added to the curiosity as the news spread among the folk that the dogs had been put under a spell. Then Reinhardt would play a few bright notes and hold up his hand for silence. Intrigued, people waited, quickly drawn to silence. ‘Good people, we bring you the Silent Choir of God’s Little Children!’ he would announce. ‘If we please you, then feed God’s little flock. If we do not, then we shall trouble you no further.’ We had managed to learn how to say these words in the regional tongue with the correct degree of pathos, though the description of the choir would usually bring a few titters from the more insensitive among the crowd who assumed the stupid Germans had mangled the local language by announcing a silent choir. Reinhardt started to play and there would be a gasp as the children’s voices rose to the sky.

  I would take four solo parts in the performance and two of the children, a ten-year-old boy Heinrich and an eleven-year-old girl Hilda, would each render a solo. Both had most remarkably pure and innocent voices, but Heinrich’s was truly wonderful, and while he sang I would call out the various bird calls as if they were a part of the solo and the hymn. The birds would soon begin to arrive, to the astonishment of the crowd. Every bird of the air to be found in their region came to sit on the shoulders of the children or to land on their outstretched hands, adding their avian notes to Reinhardt’s flute and the beautiful voice of little Heinrich. It was at this point, with Heinrich singing like a veritable angel, that people fell to their knees. The Silent Choir of God’s Little Children had charmed the birds from the trees and they were certain that they’d witnessed a miracle.

  It may seem immodest to say that we were good, very good, and that we quickly became outstanding. But nevertheless it was true. At the end of the performance there would be a great deal of applause and tears from the women in the crowd as we brought the town square to a standstill. When eventually the applause died down, in order to alter the sombre mood Reinhardt would do a few little dance steps in front of the first grass basket and play a little tune, then on to the next, a different melody for every basket, ten in all. The local folk would quickly get the idea and warmed with piety and goodwill would start to fill the baskets. As each brought something and placed it into a basket the choir, in perfect harmony, would sing the single word, ‘Hallelujah!’ As the baskets filled with more and more folk bringing something, it would soon become a continuous chorus: ‘Hallelujah . . . hallelujah, hallelujah . . . haaaa . . . leee . . . luuu . . . jah, hallelujah!’ until the square echoed with this single glorious word of praise to the Almighty God who so generously fed us that day.

  Then, when the baskets burgeoned, we would silently gather them up and move on, our children smiling and nodding to the townsfolk but with never a word spoken. It was as if fifty-six mute children had marched into town, where they had been touched by the hand of God to sing His praise, then as silently as they came, departed, leaving the townsfolk feeling very good about themselves.

  Always, as we were about to leave the square, someone would come running up shouting, ‘The dogs! What about the dogs?’ Whereupon Reinhardt, in his best exaggerated Pied-Piper-of-Hamelin manner, would smack his forehead and mime his abject apologies. Then he’d take up his flute and appear to blow, then look expectantly at the dogs, who hadn’t moved, their jaws seeming locked to their forepaws. This was the sign for our children to sing out a single cry of concern in perfect harmony, ‘Ooooh!’ The ratcatcher would jump into a crouch with his hand cupped to his ear as if to test the pitch of the note they sang out. Then he’d replicate it on the flute pointing to the dogs, but with no better result than before. The choir would sing out again, ‘Oooooh!’ a single pitch higher, with the same failed result and performance from the ratcatcher. This would continue until the choir hit a pitch seemingly as high as their voices could reach.

  Whereupon Reinhardt would jump from the crouched, cupped-ear position and into the air and do a ridiculous little dance, clapping the choir, then indicating with his forefinger held up that if they tried one more time he felt they’d find the answer for certain. But again he’d fail.

  Reinhardt would examine his flute carefully and move his fingers over the holes looking quizzical as if he was trying to remember the right combination. Then he’d shake his head in an exaggerated gesture of concern and appeal silently to the crowd, spreading his hands and hunching his shoulders to indicate that he was unable to undo the spell. When looks of consternation began to appear on people’s faces he would turn to the choir and fall to his knees and, clasping his hands in prayer, he’d silently beg them for a note just one pitch higher. This time it was the children’s turn to shrug, lifting their chins by touching the underside and throwing back their lit
tle heads, in effect miming that they’d given him their best shot and could take their voices no higher.

  Reinhardt would burst into tears (a remarkable trick involving real tears) whereupon he’d place his forehead in the dirt and bang the ground with his fist. After a few moments he’d rise up sadly into a sitting position and place the flute disconsolately to his lips, a dejected and defeated expression upon his face, appealing to the crowd for their sympathy.

  ‘Our dogs! You can’t go and leave our dogs to lie!’ shouted the crowd.

  The ‘Ooooooooh!’ suddenly emanating from the choir was so perfectly achieved and pitched so high that the people watching covered their ears in fright. In turn, the ratcatcher timed his flute for the silent note he blew to make it appear that the pitch the children had reached with their voices had released the canines from the spell.

  The dogs jumped back to their feet, their tails wagging furiously, as if they too had much enjoyed the performance. To which the choir sang a beautifully rendered harmonious ‘Ahhhhh!’ as if a single grand note from a cathedral organ. The children loved this part and believed that it was they who had brought the dogs back to life. They would laugh (permitted) and clap as the dogs seemingly came back to life.

  This became known as the Miracle of the Birds and the Dogs, and by the time we reached Piacenza, just five days journey from Genoa, our children were bright-eyed and putting on weight. The scattered groups that had gone ahead had been treated in the same harsh manner as had formerly been the case with us, and in Piacenza children lay dying in the streets and squares. As was my custom I went immediately to the parish priest and asked him in Latin to give them absolution. The church in Piacenza was a large one, not quite a cathedral but much bigger than usual. The priest also seemed a more educated type but no friendlier than any of the others. As usual he refused my request, but this time he claimed to have received strict orders from the bishop in nearby Cremona, forbidding the administration of last rites to the dying German children.

  He produced a missive sent to the local clergy and began to read it aloud to me. ‘This innumerable multitude of German boys, babes at the breasts, women and girls all hasten to the sea to fulfil the prophecy of an angel of God that they would recover the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the iniquitous Saracens. This is a movement inspired by the devil. It is not God’s will to allow His children to be sent on such a false errand or to die in the numbers that perish each day in our towns and villages. If not God, then who? We know whose dark spirit lies behind this. Do not administer the last anointing to these children from Cologne. You may not see their calloused feet as likened unto cloven hooves, but that is how they managed to scramble across the rocks and crags of the Alps to swarm down upon us as a pestilence visited upon our land!’ He shrugged, and looking me in the eye the priest said, ‘Now I must ask you to leave my church!’

  ‘God’s house, Father,’ I replied. Then looking directly at him I asked, ‘Will you take my confession, please, Father?’

  A look of shock was followed by one of real fear. ‘Nay, get out, devil’s child!’ he admonished. Then visibly trembling he pointed a finger at me, then quickly withdrew it and made the sign of the cross. ‘A peasant maid that speaks Latin! Get thee away from me, Satan!’

  ‘I will pray for your bishop and for you, Father. “Suffer little children to come unto me,” saith the Lord.’ With this I walked out of the church knowing I must contain my anger and that I had already said too much for my own good.

  I began to say a penitential psalm to each of the dying children in the vicinity of the church, where many had come, too weak to continue but wanting to be as close to God as they might get. The church was always where most of the dying children would be found and it was here where we would invariably sing. If this sounds insensible, I can only say that we tried to make these dying children feel that their own kind was with them to the last and that the songs of praise the children sang would comfort their final hours on earth. Before we left we would leave food from our baskets for those of the dying we hoped might still take sustenance, and water to quench their parched lips. There was nothing more we could do and I had long since spent my allotment of tears on this earth.

  I was kneeling beside a dying child trying to hear his murmurs when I felt a pair of strong arms clasped around me, pinning my arms to my side, and then a grunt as I was jerked backwards to my feet. I lashed out backwards with my feet and felt my heel land against a shin and then a cry of pain and a curse and then another huge black-bearded brute grabbed me around the legs. I sank my teeth down hard into the coarse hair that covered the arm of the male who held me but he continued to hold me in a vice-like grip, cursing the while. Then a cleric appeared and grabbed me by the hair and pulled viciously so that I was forced to release my grip on the arm of the man who held me, and a taste of blood entered my mouth. The cleric, still gripping me by the hair, brought his face right up to mine and began shouting in the local language so that I felt his warm spittle landing on my face.

  The two brutes now held me parallel to the cobblestones, the back of my head and shoulders against the chest of one and my legs held under the locked arms of the other. The cleric, himself a big man, stood on my left gripping a fistful of my hair and pulled backwards so that I was restrained from biting my assailant. They carried me thus out of the sunshine that flooded the square into the dark interior of the church and down the centre aisle and into a room near the sacristy.

  The priest who had earlier chased me from the church stood beside a very large wooden chair with a high back carved with two angels hovering on either side of a cross. The seat was large enough to accept a giant but, instead, seated in it was a tiny man in bishop’s robes, his boots dangling so far above the flagstone floor that it seemed he must have been lifted into the chair. His tiny fingers were not large enough to curl around the edges of the chair’s arms, and the chair back still allowed a full display of the hovering angels beyond the top of his head. His hair, a mixture of grey and the colour of red clay, was shaved close to his skull. His beard of the same colour grew no more than the width of a pinkie nail around his chin and seemed so fine that an orange light showed through it to give it a closer resemblance to fur than the coarsened hair on a grown man’s cheeks and chin. His eyebrows were denser than his beard and of the same soft fur, and appeared to almost completely surround two bright little obsidian eyes that darted, monkey-like, everywhere at once. He looked to all intents and purposes like a small ape dressed in a bishop’s robes.

  ‘Put her down! Put her down!’ he yelled in a high-pitched and plainly irritated voice that came from a tiny mouth displaying small, sharp, yellow teeth, each of which was separated slightly from the next.

  The brute gripping my legs released them, allowing me to place them on the floor, while the one behind me pushed me upright before releasing me. ‘Shoo! Be off with you!’ the monkey bishop screeched with an irritated backward flick of his hand. The two men dropped briefly to their knees, then rose and left; the cleric who had pulled my hair remained behind. ‘You too!’ he screeched, pointing to the entrance and flicking his forefinger. Or rather, that is what I supposed he said, or something like it, his dismissive gestures making his meaning clear enough.

  I dropped to my knees in front of the chair and moved my head forward so that I might kiss the ring that seemed a gold band too broad and a jewel much too large for so tiny a hand. But he quickly withdrew his hand from his lap. ‘Nay! No blessing! No blessing at all!’ he said in Latin. Then added, ‘We have been watching you, you hear? Every movement! Why do you commit sacrilege?’

  ‘Sacrilege, my Lord?’

  ‘Extreme unction! Last anointings! You have sinned grievously! Sinned! Sinned! Sinned, you hear!’

  ‘Nay, my Lord, it is not a sin to recite a penitential psalm,’ I said, in little more than a whisper.

  ‘What? What did you say? No sin! How dare you contradict me!’ The bishop, grasping the arms of the large chair, pushed hi
s torso forward and glared at me, his eyes momentarily ceasing from darting about.

  Please guide my tongue, Brother Dominic, I thought desperately. ‘There is scriptural instruction pertaining to the last anointing, my Lord. St James, chapter five, verses fourteen and fifteen. But this does not forbid the saying of a penitential psalm. In the absence of a priest, a lay person may be permitted to give comfort to the dying by reciting such a psalm as a help and comfort to the dying.’

  ‘Canon law! Canon law! You may not! You hear? Nay, nay, nay!’

  ‘With the greatest respect, my Lord, the epistle from Pope Gregory to the First Crusade permitted any lay member of the Church, in the absence of a priest, to recite one of the seven psalms for the dying to repeat or, if unable, simply to hear.’

  The bishop looked momentarily confused, then his monkey eyes lit up. ‘Ha! That was a crusade! Thousands dying! Not enough priests! Infidels everywhere! Special circumstances, you hear?’ he screeched.

  ‘This be also a crusade, my Lord Bishop. The Children’s Crusade. Alas, already thousands of children have perished and your priests, upon your instructions, refuse to give them extreme unction.’ A sudden anger rose up in me that I seemed unable to control. I could feel the flush that burned on the surface of my face and neck. ‘I have no choice, I have prayed and asked God’s guidance. These are His little children and they have a right to the comfort of God’s word as they leave this earthly hell and rise up to heaven. “Suffer little children to come unto me,” saith the Lord.’

  The bishop’s tiny simian face turned a deep scarlet and I thought his head must surely split open like an over-ripe melon. His sharp little eyes ceased their darting and fixed on me with a mixture of astonishment, anger and even, deep within, I sensed, a tincture of fear. He pointed a trembling finger at my feet. ‘Take off your boots!’ he demanded shrilly.

  I removed my broken boots, knowing my feet to be sweaty from the heat and dirty from the black road dust entering where the leather had split from the soles. The monkey bishop wriggled his torso so that he sat on the edge of the chair where he peered down at my blackened feet.