Hurdy Gurdy

by Christopher Wilson

  XV. If Your Eye Offend You, Pluck it Out

  I had found a new vocation. I had been called to it by the Almighty. I was become a plague doctor.

  To call himself full physician, a doctor must have attended some university – Oxford, Salerno, Montpellier, Paris, Bologna perhaps, or Padua – following his studies there for seven full years, and become ordained as a priest in the meantime.

  So my place in God’s scheme fell short of this. Still, I was trained as surgeon and apothecary. I could dose and bleed, cut with a knife, sew and saw upon patients, which the physicians disdained as the manual job of a labourer – the work of mere barbers and butchers.

  Fulco had taught me hard and taught me long. I knew the liturgy of medicine. To begin, the doctor must ask any patient if they have committed some grievous recent sin, for which this malady is God’s retribution and just punishment.

  If the sufferer admits so, there may be no need for earthly medicines. Confession, suffering, prayer, abasement, penitence may suffice. Provided the Lord, in his kindness, relents. It’s understood that leprosy is God’s way of marking out those unrepentant in heresy or lust. The Lord depicts their sin, marking their hands and faces to show the ugliness of their souls. But often the sufferer may honestly answer, ‘No.’ He has not sinned his way into sickness. The illness may not be any Divine punishment for sin, but come of some turbulence in the natural order. A malign conjunction of the planets. A dismal mismatch of numbers. An imbalance in the humours.

  The numerology of the patient’s name may give indication of their likely fate. You must convert the letters to their corresponding numbers and calculate their totality. Then add those together. And so on. Until you reach just one single number between one and nine. And blessed is the sufferer whose final number is three, seven or nine.

  A prayer may help, addressed to the patron saint of the organ in question, or any holy figure associated with the disease. So invite the help of Saint Lazarus for leprosy, Saint Agatha for breasts, Saint Jude for desperate remedies, Saint Anthony for skin disease, Saint John the Apostle for burns, Saint Anne for the barren.

  Then check the celestial aspects, looking to the alignments of those stars relevant to the body parts and illness. For, with the moon in Scorpio, a surgeon would be foolish to operate upon the organs of generation. Likewise, in Leo, no treatment should be given to the chest.

  After which, it is wise to consult the calendar to see if it is a dismal, perilous day, with the waxing or waning of the moon when that treatment is sure to fail.

  I attended Constance closely for two full days but, despite my enduring presence, best surgeries, bleedings and purgings, and the best wisdoms of medicine, garnered over centuries, collected from three continents, I could not halt her suffering. Death had her.

  Nor could I save any of the others who stayed on at the inn – the inn-keeper, Gervase, his wife, Gregory the smith, Davy the cooper, Patience, Alice. All who caught the pestilence suffered the same initial symptoms – shivers, fever, headaches, vomiting, loose bowels, terrible weakness, and reeking of a putrid stench. Then there were two ways the disease progressed. Some coughed up blood, sneezed it from their nose, and drowned from their own fluids in their lungs, and were dead within two days.

  Others grew swellings in their neck, under-arms and groin. The buboes grew from acorn size to swell big as apples, and darkened from red to purpley-black. Then black patches might appear on their skin. Their nethers – fingers, toes, nose – would turn black with rot. This was the slower route to death and could take up to five days. Though some could fall ill and die in the very same day.

  The first form I called the plague pulmonaris. The latter I termed the plague bubonic. Together they were the twins we called the Black Death. If the two forms were not the exact same malady, but attacking the body in two different routes, then they were brothers, carried the same taint and arrived together, with the same first signs. But one took itself to the lungs, and the other laid siege to the lacteal nodes.

  Then I thought to the direction and speed it travelled.

  The pox followed me close, but always behind. It took some slower path. So I kept ahead of it until I paused some place. Then it always caught me up in two or three days.

  And the plague had a determined direction. It preferred to travel north. For it arrived first in Sicily, then passed up to Florence and Marseilles, then onwards and upwards, through France to Normandy, then to the Channel, then to the south coast, then upwards through England.

  It was said that the cause of the miasma was celestial, from the strange, rare conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. Warm and humid Jupiter had drawn up evil vapours from the earth. Mars – hot and dry – had ignited the vapours, releasing the plague. And, as we all know, Saturn adds evil wherever it goes.

  I thought too of the signs left by the lesser beasts. Fleas and lice fled the human afflicted, in search of safer terrain. Dead mice and rats appeared in the wake of the pestilence, lumped and speckled black, as if they were poxed too.

  Then I thought what further cures I could try.

  If it was a miasma, it was carried by the wind from the south. From this came the clear logic to keep all southward-facing doors and windows closed, blocking ventilation save from the north.

  If the miasma entered through the lungs, it would be safer for us to limit our exertions, so reducing the volume of airs we drew into our lungs.

  I found myself alone at the inn. Those that had not fled were dead.

  Travellers had moved on. The villagers were hidden in their dwellings, having bolted themselves in. They would not open their shutters or doors. When I passed nearby they howled threats, and shouted I should be gone.

  When people saw me coming on the paths, they hurled stones to halt me, or rushed off to the side, to give me a wide berth. And they cast foul words. They called me unclean because I had been with the sick. They were not weighed down by reason. They had no knowledge of medicines. They feared I somehow carried the pox.

  The village was lost. Those who did not leave would most likely die.

  I could tell I was not wanted. For folk hurled threats my way when I showed myself in a window or doorway of the abandoned inn, saying they would burn the inn down around me if I did not leave. And nailed a dead cat to the door with its throat cut, and its entrails hanging out like links of sausage. And I knew it was an ill-intentioned gesture, addressed directly to me.

  So I knew they never valued the medicine I brought to them, so it would be better for all if I moved on. So I left that night, by lifting the cellar hatch, in the deepest dark, wriggling on my belly till I had passed through the long grass into the swaying shadows of the wind-blown woods, to the welcoming hoots of an owl.

  On the first day travelling west (for I sought to feint, to confuse the pox), I met a group of folk travelling the path towards me.

  They meandered in a single, clumsy, halting column, a dozen of them, shabbily dressed in sacking and coarse, torn cloth, long unwashed. They were joined in a snaking line, each with his hands resting on the shoulders of the one in front, each with a bandage wrapping his eyes. A stout man in a crimson jerkin and leather cap took the lead, so he appeared as the gaudy head of a long, patchy, segmented insect.

  The leader sang the verse –

  The town we left was full of dead

  Fat flies fed on the corpses’ heads

  Doctors purged, dosed and bled

  And proved by sound deliberation

  It was the fault of some constellation

  Then dropped dead, past disputation.

  Then the followers found voice to sing a chorus, but in poor, discordant unison, as they swayed along, moving their feet in time to their rhyme –

  Black Death, you can’t have us.

  You can beckon and smile,

  but we’ll never see you.

  ‘Hail, Brother,’ I say to the head of the snaking beast, as we pause on the path to greet each other.

  ‘Wh
oa,’ he calls, as if addressing a horse, so those behind him should halt and fall silent.

  ‘Well met, stranger,’ I say. ‘I am Jack Fox, from the monastery at Whye.’

  ‘I am Lucas the One-Eyed,’ he says. ‘And this …’ He gestures down to the dusty path. ‘The road is my home.’

  ‘And your companions?’ I ask. Although I have guessed already from their bandaged heads.

  ‘These are a dozen none-eyed folk,’ he waves behind him, ‘who have no sight between them. So they are blind as a litter of new-born puppies.’

  ‘That is a large gathering,’ I remark, ‘of the blind. How is it you only have one eye between you all?’

  ‘They have rescinded their eyes to protect themselves from the plague.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ He grimaces and shakes his head at my stupidity. ‘Because they would rather live than see.’

  ‘How so?’ I ask.

  Lucas shakes his head in disbelief at my ignorance. He says it is well known that the plague is spread by sight. The spirit of the pox leaps out from the eye of the sick man, into the eye of the healthy. Thus those who cannot see the illness cannot become ill themselves.

  ‘And yet you, yourself, chose to keep one eye,’ I observe. ‘Does that not lay you open to the risk of contagion?’

  ‘Some are born to lead. Some to follow. My people need me. They need the foresight and wisdom of my one good eye. I am their king. I see the way forward for all of them. But if I am in danger of seeing something I should not, I cover my good eye with this patch.’ And so saying he draws a piece of leather, like the blinker for a horse, over the right side of his face.

  ‘That’s a handsome patch,’ I agree. ‘And suits you well.’

  ‘If you wish it …’ The one-eyed man gives me a kind, concerned smile. ‘I can save you too.’

  ‘Save me?’

  ‘I can save you from your eyes, as I did for the others. It’s quickly done. It is worth the pain to gain certain life …’

  ‘How do you do that?’ I have no wish for this surgery myself, but my doctor’s curiosity insists to know.

  ‘I would dig out your eyes with a knife. Then cauterise the wounds with a red-hot iron.’

  And, as he says this, he sways forward, clutching my tunic at the neck, and draws his sheep’s horn-handled knife close to my cheek, narrowing his eye, to assess where to strike, as he quotes me the scripture, his hot breath gusting onto my cheek.

  ‘Matthew, chapter five, verse twenty-nine,’ says he –

  ‘And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Hell.’

  So, fearing for my sight, I promptly raise my knee upwards, firmly between his legs, and he yelps at this assault upon his privities, and we fall down, then roll around, with me on him, then he on me, until I can reach out for a handful of earth to rub into his one good eye.

  ‘Stop,’ he calls to me, righteously aggrieved. ‘You’re blinding me.’

  He lets me loose, to reach for his face. I am free. I am up and away.

  ‘Stop him,’ he calls to his chain of companions.

  They are in a semi-circle around me. They can hear me close from my panting breath. They edge forwards towards me drunkenly, reaching out with their arms, stumbling on the uneven ground, but I am off and away, ducking under their groping arms, back the way I came, running hard.

  ‘Stop, stop,’ I hear the fallen man call, ‘I can save you … Give them up. Give me your eyes … Or they’ll be the death of you …’

  And as I flee, I am struck by a pity for all those stumbling behind me, who have chosen to be blind. For I think they are wrong, that if they cannot see the plague, it cannot see them.

  XVI. We Happy Band of Pilgrims

  The next day I came upon the tail of a column of pilgrims, twelve altogether, gathered for safety and strength in numbers, making their way to the shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham.

  I enquired if I might join their number. And after gathering some moments in a muttering huddle, they allowed that I could. I guess my mildness, youth and healthy appearance led them to trust me, and suppose I might be more use to them than burden.

  We trudged, heads down, most often in silence, hugging our sadness, for some had lost their loved ones, many had fled their homes, and all feared the sudden, fatal touch of the plague.

  Matthew the mason declared that the world was ending and this was the Final Reckoning, when all our souls would be weighed in His balance. It was said every soul would be tested against the holy feather, whose weight it should not exceed. Or else there was Hell to pay.

  On the first night, after our supper – a harvest of hedgerow plants, a badger, freshly deceased, which we roasted in clay, and oat porridge – we all sat talking around our fire. Jude, the dealer in relics, sought me out and showed me his wares.

  He laid a square of pristine white cloth on the ground, then opened a series of small brown leather pouches, withdrawing each object with great delicacy, beside a show of reverence, making the sign of the cross and gazing heavenwards with his eyes closed.

  He said that I must forgive him the poverty of his wares, for he had left his most precious items at home, for safe-keeping – these being a piece of the clay left over after God had made Man, and the skin of the snake from the Garden of Eden.

  Nonetheless, he said, he still had relics of great rarity and power.

  He promised that the purchase of any such would protect me against the plague, defend me against evil-doers, and spare me ill-fortune.

  The first object was a narrow glass vial, holding a dark brown dust, sealed with a cap of beeswax.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Can you guess?’ he asked. ‘You’ll be surprised, for it is very precious.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘It is milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary. Over the centuries, it has dried to this holy powder.’

  ‘Indeed?’ I said. Then we both pondered it awhile in silence.

  ‘And this …’ He pointed to something that looked like the end-piece of a sage-speckled pork sausage.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is the foreskin of Saint Peter, the fisherman.’

  ‘Truly?’ I said. ‘You surprise me.’

  Then he showed me a dark brown disc of bone.

  ‘Can you tell what that is?’ he demanded.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It is a knee-cap. From Saint Francis of Assisi himself.’

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘And this,’ he told me, in hushed tones of reverence, ‘is the nipple of Mary Magdalene.’

  Yet, in all honesty, it did not look so – being hard, black, shrivelled and wrinkled, it looked more like a dried grape or olive-stone.

  Then there was a withered finger, that without doubt had come from a human hand – which he said had been that of Osburh, mother of Good King Alfred of Wessex.

  The final item he had to show me – an ochre lump – was dried dragon’s blood, he said, of great value as a medicament. He told me the blood had been spilled when the dragon Ossula died on the tusks of his great enemy, Odun the Giant Elephant of Africa.

  I observed that it was prescient of whoever first garnered these precious relics to think it important to collect the Virgin’s milk, or the child Peter’s foreskin, before their import to history could even be guessed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘exactly so. It is these rare, fortunate, chance occurrences that make these relics so rare, so valuable, and so expensive to procure.’

  When I told the dealer that I was no stranger to relics myself, and had once had in my possession both skulls of Saint Odo, he was not visibly impressed. But he asked me if I still had them, as he would be curious to see them for himself.

  ‘Alas, no,’ I said, ‘for my wife threw them into a pond.’

  He clucked his understanding
. He remarked that I should not lament the loss too much. For, he said, Saint Odo was a minor, rarely collected, inexpensive saint, of the second or third rank, and that, when it came to bones in general, and the skull-trade in particular, there were many fakes, falsities and pretenders.

  He warned me of passing-off, saying that some rascals raided grave-yards and butchers’ bins to effect false relics, which they boiled in acid, cooked in ovens, or buried in lime, to achieve the impression of age and veracity.

  He warned that I should only purchase from dealers of repute, like himself, of which there were only a handful in Christendom.

  He went through his relics, saying how much a very rich man would have to pay for each. But he said that, as his friend, I might buy them cheaper.

  Then I realised that he was not showing me his collection from pride, or a pleasure in possession, but to try to sell them. To me.

  So I told him frankly I could not afford his prices.

  He winced and gurned, pondered solemnly a moment, then smiled anew.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you’d care to procure a pardon instead. Pardons offer salvation too. But often they come cheaper.’

  ‘Pardons?’ I said.

  So he drew out of his pouch some small squares of vellum, rustling them, which he said were pardons, signed by divers Popes, or cardinals of the first rank, both living and dead, granting pardon and forgiveness for a range of sins.

  ‘Let me see what I can offer you …’ He sorted through the sheets. ‘Here is a pardon,’ he said, ‘if you have had improper relations with your neighbour’s wife …’

  ‘Not me,’ I said, ‘I have never yet been offered that temptation.’

  ‘Have you killed a member of the clergy but without intent?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Cursed your master?’