Hurdy Gurdy

by Christopher Wilson

  I nod my understanding.

  ‘And if someone brings me their shoes to repair …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They rarely come back to pay for my labour.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘For, likely as not, they are dead by the morrow …’

  ‘Oh,’ I observe.

  ‘People are dying too fast to bury them. The bodies are stacked in piles outside the boundary walls. The foul stench of decay carries everywhere. Crows, dogs and wild pigs feed on the corpses and scatter the pieces. So, on your doorstep, you might find here a human head, and here a leg, half-eaten … Maybe some thief has stolen the shoe.’

  I shake my head at his sorry account.

  ‘Do you know who supplies me with shoe-leather now?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nobody … For the tanners are all dead or fled … And when you go to church to pray for salvation, there’s no priest. For the clergy have died too, catching the pox, attending the dying. And the doctors have all run away. For they knew they could do nothing, except save themselves. And the beasts are gone wild, uncared for in the fields, while the crops have rotted, for no one has harvested them. And whole villages are abandoned. While thieves and cut-throats rule the roads. And often the good die ahead of the wicked. So justice is dying too.’

  ‘Yes?’ I say.

  ‘For the pestilence has no mind who it takes. Be they good or bad, young or old. All end up in the charnel shop.’

  ‘It’s a sorry state of affairs,’ I agree.

  ‘So, I don’t save myself by being good. I don’t risk myself by being bad. Plague takes you or leaves you. Until it decides, you might as well take what pleasures you find.’

  Then he upturns his tankard to show me it is empty, and winks vigorously to convey he is willing to sup still more.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, ‘I could offer you a fill of ale?’

  I suppose my brief marriage had changed me. For I was less the boy and more a man – no longer a reclusive monk, but now a freeman of the world. I was a bud opening to the summer sun, poised to spread my petals and bloom. Although I had been only briefly married, I was still tied by an invisible bond, a fierce devotion to my dear, departed wife, so alive in my heart as she stood there, apart in eternity, in the interminable, sorry queue of Purgatory.

  Ah. How I missed her – her sweet, demanding companionship and the beauty of her form, so artfully devised Divine to please the senses. Seeing the women at the inn, in their bonnets, hurrying hither and thither, upstairs, downstairs, now hand in hand with a man, now without one, now so soon with another, I naturally thought to my loss.

  I asked my companion who these women were.

  He said, ‘Those in bright dresses are Hurdy Gurdy girls who dance with the lonely, for a fee. And those with the striped bonnets are ladies of the bed-chamber, who will take you to their naked bosom if you are lonelier still.’

  Then it struck me there might be some hapless compensation to be snatched, briefly, with one of these women, if only as a sacrament, in honour and remembrance of my poor, departed wife, Cecilia, and the times I spent between her spread thighs, pressed to her warm, silken, pliant belly.

  One noted my gaze, read my curiosity, returned a smile, nodded and approached me.

  ‘I am Constance,’ she said. ‘You can lie with me if you like.’

  I asked if that would make us married, for I did not want to commit again too soon, or contract to purchase uncertain goods. Not for life. For I had found myself caught in that man-trap once before.

  ‘Not if you pay me,’ she said, ‘for then I will be your Molly and you will be my John.’

  We agreed a contract, there and then, to go upstairs and lie together, to tie ourselves in a carnal tangle, so that I might enjoy her every surface, and she might benefit a whole half-penny, non-returnable and paid in advance, which she quickly stowed, God knows where. For it was promptly lost in a pink and white blur of flesh and cloth.

  I was able to broaden and further my acquaintance with Woman, although the enterprise was not long begun before it was done. For we went about things briskly and directly, without preamble, or any delay for anticipation or conversation. And she was up and away at the first, quick sneeze of my loins, and sprung off the bed, as quick as a terrier sighting a rat. As if all our business was done.

  I spoke to her naked rear as she dressed, and admired the fleshy fruit of her form. With her head bowed forward, her top half took the fruity shape of a pear. The tied-tail of her hair formed a stalk. Her back was milk-white, freckled with amber splodges. I saw the dark tufts of her calyx, the palace of pollination, between her splayed legs. I had learned something new. I realised that, of course, just like monks in the bath-house, all woman were strangely, determinedly different in the ways they were alike.

  You may come confident, laden with expectation of what you will find, but you are sure to meet some mood, opinion, desire, proportion, texture, touch, taste, blemish, beauty or scent for which you were never prepared, having never met before.

  I told Constance she seemed some ways different to the one other woman I had lain with, yet several ways similar too.

  She was more solidly constructed than my willowy wife, Cecilia, may she rest in peace, and had stouter, tree-trunk legs and heavier, pendulous breasts. Besides, she sprouted thicker fur, more widely, densely spread.

  ‘Yes?’ she enquired, wriggling into her smock. But she did not seem eager to hear the full yield of my anatomical observations.

  She simply remarked that, for my part, I was much like other men, if scrawnier, smaller, pocked, and quicker about my mattress work than many.

  Then she slapped her left buttock sharply and swivelled round to eye the reddened spot.

  ‘I hope you have not given me fleas,’ she said.

  ‘Would you say you are like most other women?’ I asked. ‘In the way you are designed and made flesh by the Architect Divine.’

  ‘I believe so,’ she said. ‘None say otherwise. And many men have been and gone. They climb aboard. They bounce around. They grunt and groan. They come, then go. Let them squirm and squirt and they won’t complain.’

  I explained that, for me, the body of a woman was still a new-found land. I thanked her for her revelations, time and industry. I said I had much enjoyed her. Every last region of her candid terrain.

  Before, behind, between, above, below.

  But curiosity still clutched me. I guessed there were things undone.

  So I asked if she knew any other sins a man could contract with a woman, besides the single one she had just shown me. And so very quickly.

  She squinted at me and cupped her chin in her palm.

  ‘Have you not tried gobbledegoo?’ she asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Or the deed of deepest darkness?’

  ‘No. I believe not.’

  ‘Flipsum-flopsum, or rump-scuttle?’

  ‘Not those, neither,’ I conceded.

  ‘Stiff quiff?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bardash or lick-spigot?’

  ‘I think not,’ I confessed. ‘These are new-sounding pastimes that mean nothing to me.’

  They struck no chords, rang no bells, and they had passed entirely unremarked in the conversations of my brothers in Christ, or in the writings of Saint Odo.

  ‘So you have never danced Barnaby, greased the goose or supped at the mossy well?’

  ‘No,’ I conceded. ‘For, if I had, I would surely remember.’

  She looked at me with a sorry sympathy. She rolled her eyes upwards. She clucked. She shook her sad head.

  ‘I cannot teach you every last thing,’ she said, ‘but I suppose we could make a start at least …’

  ‘You’d find me grateful …’

  ‘But nothing is for nothing …’ she warned.

  ‘Another half-penny?’

  ‘Three whole pennies,’ she said decisively, ‘and I will trouble your innocence all the way till dusk.’
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br />   So, I paid. And she was better than her word.

  And, by the time dark fell, I was weary, contented, even beyond my desires, and a wiser man too. For there is a craft to everything and possibilities you never dreamed of, if only you take the time to find them, or open yourself up to learn.

  XIV. The Sin-Eater

  In satisfying one hunger, I had released another. And a thirst. So I took those appetites downstairs and bought a bowl of barley pottage, a platter of buttered cabbage tops, and a jug of ale.

  The table quivers and creaks as a man sits himself down on the other side. I sense a gaze fall upon me.

  I raise my eyes to meet his. One of his eyes is the palest blue, the other the deepest brown. He has a bushy head of ginger hair.

  A shiver rides my spine. The back of my neck prickles. There’s a loud crackle in my ears.

  He is the man of the woods, who calls himself Simon Mostly. I feel a wild clamour of anger and fear.

  I think of my aching head, empty sack, stolen belongings, and the burnt Book of Life.

  But he greets my glare with a wide, open smile, leaning forward, shaking his head in delighted surprise.

  ‘Praise be to God,’ he says, ‘you’re alive still. I feared they’d killed you.’

  ‘They?’ I say. ‘Who?’

  ‘The villains who attacked us,’ he says, ‘who crept up behind us and fell upon us with clubs.’

  ‘They attacked you too?’

  ‘They used me horribly.’ He wipes his cheek with his one good hand, smearing some sudden tears in dirty smudge. ‘They took me to their camp. They hung me by my foot from a tree and beat me with staves.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They thought I had money hidden. They wanted to know where.’

  ‘Why would they think you had money?’

  ‘I am well known hereabouts, for my special trade.’

  ‘What trade?’

  He winks by closing his blue eye. Then he twitches his left cheek and feels where his missing ear should be. Then he winks by closing his brown eye.

  ‘I lift sin from the wicked,’ he says. ‘I clean souls.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘It is a lonely dismal trade. But it pays me solid pennies.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘You remember confiding, in the woods, that you were a squalid sinner?’

  I confess that I do. That I am. And that the count of my sins is rapidly rising.

  He nods. ‘It shows in your troubled eyes, and along the creases of your forehead, and in the tappety-tap of your worried fingers.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘As clear as sporting sack-cloth and ashes. But have no care,’ he says, ‘for I have a cure. I can lift your sins from you. Then you will be rid of them, for all eternity.’

  ‘How can you do that?’

  ‘I will eat them for you,’ he confides. ‘For by trade I’m a Sin-Eater.’ He makes a quick chewing sound, then gulps, with a sustained pretence of swallowing something awkward, reluctant to descend his gullet.

  ‘Eat them?’

  ‘All of them … Quick as you like … For a price …’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Spread them on a crust of bread … or a whole loaf, if it’s needed. It depends how many sins you have to your name.’

  ‘You misunderstand me, friend,’ I say, ‘for my sins are not solid, edible things. But are stubborn smudges and sticky stains to my soul that cannot be erased, except by the reparation of suffering, or by the forgiveness of Jesus who, if he wills it, can wash them clean away.’

  ‘Jesus is all very well,’ Simon Mostly concedes, ‘in His own particular way. But I have a different cure. As soon as I have eaten your sins, and taken them out from you, into myself, you will feel their leaden weight lift from your spirits. You will feel free. You will feel clean. For you will no longer be accountable for those heavy, ugly, shameful sins draped over your conscience. For I will have taken them from you.’

  ‘Have you eaten many sins?’ I ask. ‘In your time?’

  ‘I have eaten sackfuls and barrow-loads …’ He holds his hand flat to his gullet, to show me how full of sin he is. ‘I have eaten sins large and small, of every sort. Men’s sins and women’s sins, baby sins and senile sins, lords’ sins and peasant sins, venial sins and mortal sins, sins of the flesh, sins of the mind, and sins of the heart. Wet sins, moist sins, and dry-as-dust sins. Light sins and heavy sins. Sins too paltry to mention and sins too vile to understand.’

  ‘How do they taste?’ I ask.

  ‘All are different. Every sin has its special savour, its unique scent, and its own rare texture. But, you can rely on it, most are tough on the teeth. They take a deal of chewing. And then they take a lot of swallowing. So, I usually have to wash them down with ale … or mead to cancel the bitterness. I would say that murder and heresy are the worst sins – to chew over and to swallow at least …’

  ‘What will happen to you?’ I ask. ‘Now you have taken so many different sins inside you?’

  ‘Eternal damnation, I suppose … But at least I’ve helped my fellow man.’ He shrugs. He narrows his watery, dull eyes. ‘There’s nothing I can do. For I have forgotten now which sins I ate, and when, and in what order. So even if I emptied my soul of all those I knew, the most part would still remain.’

  ‘I will pray for you, then,’ I offer.

  ‘You will not …’ Anger flushes his face. He presses his nose to mine and glowers gimlet-sharp, deep into my eyes.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ he growls, then bangs his fist on the table. ‘For I am the only man allowed to sell cures for sin in this place. It is a bargain I made with the inn-keeper.’

  I hurry to apologise. ‘Of course, there would be no cost to you.’

  ‘Yes?’ He howls his indignation. ‘Then how do I make my living? If you start doing my work for free?’

  I kept my distance from him, but stayed on at the inn.

  I felt sickly still. My body seemed ferociously hot. A small lump grew in my left arm-pit, then changed its mind and shrank away. So I was able to rest my weary body, add a little bulk to my starved form, and sleep safe, beneath a thatch, out of the winds and rains.

  I got to eat more and different meats I had never tasted before. Like bacon, which may be the finest food in Christendom, bar none.

  It comes fried in thin slices from the flesh of oak-smoked ribs of a pig, hung from a rafter to mature with age.

  And there was mutton which is hewn from dead, stewed sheep, and beef which is carved from the carcasses of dead cows. And kid from goats. Potted duck from throttled ducks. And roasted chicken, whose name explains it all.

  And when I was not wasting my pennies, trying new meats, basted in steaming gravies, or baked in hot pies, or served on bread platters, all delicious, I was able to make further conversation with Constance. And also speak with Patience. And then, by chance, with Alice too. At a price.

  On the third day, I visit Constance in her chamber, and find her out of sorts and strangely lethargic. She is burning hot. She complains of fierce prickles, like arrows through her belly. She says she cannot rise from her bed. Her breath smells of sulphur. She tries to vomit but nothing will come. She says a blacksmith’s hammer is clanging away in her head.

  Nestling in the hairs of her under-arm lies a small bluish lump like a pigeon’s egg.

  Yes, a bubo. For the plague has caught her.

  It has crept up on us again, slithering silent, behind our backs, without warning.

  At prayer in my monastery, it finds me.

  Hiding deep in the woods, it finds me.

  At rest in the tavern, it finds me.

  It hounds me remorselessly, like a hunter, sniffing my scent, dogging my tracks. Never more than three days behind. And I can’t think how to out-run it.

  In the inn the cry goes up, ‘The pox is here …’

  And the inn empties. The drunks, fornicators, gamblers, ladies of the bed-chamber, swindlers, thieves, musici
ans all spill out and away, gone as quick as the ale gushes from a toppled tankard.

  Gervase the inn-keeper and Luke the stable-boy carry Constance down from her bed, their hands wrapped in rags to prevent contamination. They cover her in sacking, so the sight of her cannot infect them, and lay her on straw in a corner of the stable. They quickly discuss whether the horses and goats are safe, or if the beasts can contract the pox too. Then they are gone, without a backward look.

  I stand there alone with Constance groaning, splayed limp at my feet.

  ‘Be strong,’ I say, ‘I will doctor you well. I will do my best to save you …’

  I kneel to feel the furnace of her forehead and smell the rotten eggs of her breath.

  I wonder what Brother Fulco would do, and think back to the basic rules of medicine. Then I know what to do.

  i. If it is hot, it must be made cool.

  ii. If it is dry, it must be made wet.

  iii. The four humours must be re-balanced.

  iv. The stomach and bowels must be emptied of their sick yield.

  v. Much lettuce should be eaten, for it is cleansing and curative.

  vi. The bloods must be let to the point of causing faintness.

  vii. The incision should be made at the point of greatest pain.

  viii. Any boils and buboes must be lanced to drain away their poison.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, ‘I’m here to bring you comfort and cure. First we must take off your clothes to let your roasting body cool … and douse you with cold water to keep it temperate … Then we must make you vomit … and empty your bowels. Before we bleed you …’

  Her eyes flutter fast. Her lips twitch, but no words come out.

  I slide the purging pellet between her lips, past her resisting teeth, and hold her mouth closed till she swallows. And, sure enough, she is soon twisted sideways, vomiting. But her sick is black and bloodied, which is a poor signification.

  I take out my pocket knife, wipe it clean, then sharpen it on a stone.

  ‘Tell me,’ I ask, stroking her burning forehead to soothe her, ‘I must make a cut. So tell me where it hurts the worst?’