‘No,’ I lied.
‘Stolen a sheep, or livestock of similar value … such as two geese, three ducks or four chickens?’
‘No.’
‘Lied on a Sunday?’
‘Not that either.’ I deceived him again.
He looked at me with some dejection, as if I had exhausted all his trust in me.
‘If you prefer,’ he said, after some pause, ‘I could sell you an indulgence instead.’
‘An indulgence?’
‘It is forgiveness for a sin you have yet to commit. It is better suited to those who prefer to sin sparely, at leisure, in moderation, and who care to plan ahead.’
‘A pardon in advance?’
‘Exactly so.’
I considered this. But it tasted dry on my palate.
‘Doesn’t that defeat the point?’ I asked. ‘There could be no guilty pleasure in it. For if I was already forgiven, I would not even feel I was committing a sin. And I would be left with nothing to regret …’
‘I fear,’ he said tartly, turning his back upon me, stuffing his pardons back into their leather sack, ‘we are wasting each other’s time …’
At dusk on the second day, we reached Franken Champney, and camped out around a large fire in the pasture behind the grave-yard.
The church was home of the Anchoress Agnes. Twenty-seven years before, at her request, the bishop had arranged the building of a small cell for her in the wall of the church, about four paces by three, and, after saying the Rites for the Dead, they had sealed the door to brick her in, and so bury her, that she might pass from the hurly-burly, hoopla and hullabaloo of this life into an after-life of calm seclusion, to pray for the world.
But, although she was buried alive, she was never cut off, for she had two small, slit windows. The one on the outside was just wide and deep enough to pass her food and drink in a bowl, and to receive a chamber-pot and anything else she wished to pass out. The smaller window on the inside wall of the church – the squint – allowed her to watch and hear the services within the church and praise the Lord with the congregation.
And in the roof of her cell there was a small gap in the tiles, covered in sacking, which allowed sunlight, in mild moderation, to filter through.
Most times Agnes kept to herself and held her own counsel, or addressed herself directly to God. But sometimes she held brief muttered conversations with passers-by, through the slit window, and would enquire what month it was, and who had died, and what news there was from neighbouring villages. And occasionally she could be heard singing strange interminable songs, of her own devising, with odd, plaintive harmonies, peppered with new words of her own construction.
And just sometimes – when the Spirit moved her – she would scream odd warnings and strange instructions that those in earshot could not heed, for none could fathom them.
Anchoress Agnes was greatly honoured by the villagers. They fashioned small models of her for pilgrims to buy, made from clay, or carved from wood, with wild, straggly, white lamb’s wool for hair, as lucky charms or protection against a range of ills – including warts, boils, headaches, infertility, itching, udder-fever in cows, imaginings and worry in people, swine-fever, distemper, and canker in dogs. In some of these statuettes Agnes was thin and tall, in others fat and bent, sweet-featured or scary. None could be judged as a faithful or false likeness. For Anchoress Agnes had not been seen clearly by man or dog for twenty-seven years. Only sometimes people thought they caught a glimpse, through the slit in the wall, of her eyes, reflecting back the light, like glistening brown buttons.
After we ate that night, I fell into a long conversation with Daniel, a scrivener, and we debated the pox and wondered on the Lord’s intentions in visiting it on the world, and taking the lives of so many – the wicked and the innocent, rich and poor, man and woman, babes and crones.
Daniel told me how he had seen the Flagellants at Michaelmas at Saint Paul’s in London. He told me how six hundred of these abject souls had come from Zealand in Flanders to do their penance to appease the Lord.
They wore caps with a red cross and would file, two by two, in a long column, singing hymns with their eyes cast down, then formed a circle and stripped to the waist, with their clothes piled up in the centre. And then they would commence to flog themselves and each other, wailing and howling terribly, loud enough to wake the dead. Each of them with a three-stranded whip with metal claw-tips. Tearing open their flesh, spraying blood all around them, spilling themselves on the unwary bystander, squirting themselves all over the ground.
And to join this Fraternity of the Cross you had to first pay for the privilege – four pennies a day for your food and lodgings.
And you made the promise to flog yourself three times each day for thirty-three days in succession – one day for each year of Jesus’ life.
And for all this time you could not change your clothes, receive medicine or treatment, sleep in a bed, talk to the other sex, or wash your body. But first you must confess every sin you committed since the age of seven.
This way you could show the Lord you truly repented your full life-time of sin and so escape from a burning Hell.
But Daniel the scrivener had been unimpressed by the spectacle, and said how the passer-by would have to stop to clean the blood off from his discoloured shoes, and sometimes your hose or jacket got spattered too, said how the noise of it was horrible, how it made the children cry and scared the horses too. He remarked that if Flanders folk thought to flog themselves close to death, they should better stay home and do it in Flanders.
The Lord would not approve either, he said, for they were miserable sinners trying to cheat their deserved fate.
I thought back to my time as a scribe in the monastery, and how we would erase old writing from vellum by washing and scratching, so that it would come clean to be used again.
So I suggested to Daniel that perhaps this world was God’s palimpsest. And that he was using the pox as his eraser, so he might clear large swathes of that clumsy, awkward, crossed, dotty, loopy, part-joined-up writing we call humankind. For the Lord had written for folk to be author of their own fate, with the choice to be good or bad, and we had, too often, chosen wrong.
So the Almighty had decided to rub us out and start over again.
Daniel said that this may be God’s plan, for man had defaulted on his contract with God, by disobeying his commandments too often, and building a Church in his name that was itself foul and corrupt.
I was surprised by this turn of the conversation. So I asked, ‘Yes? How is the Church corrupt?’
And he must have considered all of this sometime before because he replied promptly, and with vehemence, without any pause for thought –
‘Because it claims earthly powers it does not have, following the evil example of the Church of Rome.
‘Because it ordains priests without basis in scripture or precedent.
‘Because its leaders preach celibacy but are sodomites, defilers and lechers themselves.
‘Because it is pure idolatry to claim that the communion wafer is the body of Christ.
‘Because their rites and rituals are no more than acts of witchcraft.
‘Because they extract bribes in return for prayers for the dead.
‘Because they are uncharitable to the poor by denying them the same respect as the rich.
‘Because they hawk pardons like cuts of cheese.
‘Because they presume to forgive sins when only God has that power.
‘Because they make false idols and graven images against the express command of God Almighty.
‘Because they venture out on blasphemous crusades, bent on murdering our human brothers and sisters, when God says we should forgive our enemies and befriend the stranger.’
‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘because of that …’ as if I had known all along. Then we sat in silence. And said no more about it. In truth, I had not heard anyone speak out against the Church before.
For, until Daniel the scrivener sewed this seed of doubt, I had trusted the Church as God’s Own voice on Earth.
XVII. Wise Agnes in the Dark
I never presumed I’d get to visit the Anchoress Agnes myself, but as my fellow pilgrims fell to sleep, groaning, muttering and snoring, restless noisy as a pen of pigs, I found myself fretful, wide awake. So I stood up and paced about. Then it occurred to me I could wander up to see the famous cell of Agnes. I felt myself strangely drawn.
I trudged up the incline of pasture, over to the church, and along the path towards her stone mausoleum, built out of the side wall. I was curious to see this bricked-up prison. Perhaps I should say a prayer too.
The wind-twitched branches of a yew played shadows on the stones. An owl hooted at my approach. Something brisk and furry rustled the fallen leaves, scuttling between my splayed feet.
‘You …’ a voice sounded off. It was a shrill mix of words and a toothy, breathy whistle, punctuated by a wheeze. It came from the wall of the cell. The physician in me heard it as the raspy voice of a frail old woman with a weak, phlegmy chest, racking cough, and wide gaps in her teeth.
‘Me?’
‘You, darkly … in the bushes. Who … are you?’
‘Jack Fox,’ I said. ‘I am a pilgrim. I come to pray, and to pay my respects.’
‘Are you a living soul … or a dead soul?’ she asked. She was not drunk, but she was slurred. She sounded all her s’s as shhh’s.
‘Living?’
‘Are you not a faerie, sprite or goblin?’
‘I am not.’
‘Do you have a solid body … of flesh?’
‘I do.’
‘Do you have wings too?’
‘I do not.’
‘Horns? Scales?’
‘No.’
‘Claws or a tail?’
‘None of those.’
‘Do you renounce the Evil One and all his works?’
‘I do.’
‘We must take care,’ she said, hushing her voice to a whisper, to exclude other ears. ‘By night, in this grave-yard all manner of damaged beings pass through. Fallen angels, demons, sprites, lost souls, ghosts, ghouls. Some are bodied, some are not. Some pretend to be things they are not. Some do not even know what they are. Some do not even know they are dead. Some come for help. Some to tempt me to sin or taunt me. Some have just lost their way …’
‘They say you have visions,’ I remarked.
‘It is a gift. The Holy Family show themselves to me.’
‘They do?’
‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, many times. And his Mother Mary too.’
‘That is a great blessing,’ I said. ‘And a rare privilege. What is it like?’
‘There is dazzling, golden light, like the flare of a thousand candles, with wondrous smells, and music of great, great beauty. It is from the choirs of angels. My body shakes and I tumble to the ground. I tremble to the Lord. I am racked by deep spasms of joy. I howl with pleasure. I shudder with delight.’
‘And then?’
‘Our Lord Jesus speaks to me …’
‘What does He say?’
‘One time He asks, “Why do you abandon me, Agnes, when I have never abandoned you?”’
‘Yes?’
‘Another time He shows me a hazelnut in His palm and says, “Look, God loves you as much as this, for He loves everything the same. For all are equal in His Creation. The Pope, the leper, the louse and the hazelnut.”’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Then Jesus gave me the gifts of melancholy and tears, so I should have my own work, and might lament for mankind, and weep for the world, long and hard as my earthly work.’
‘So, do you weep often?’
‘Most hours of the day, these last twenty years.’
‘Oh …’ I said. I nodded my sympathy. ‘That’s a lot of sorrow, and many tears.’
I said that the world warranted tears now, with the pestilence abroad, killing almost everyone it touched, destroying families, villages and towns, spreading the stench of decay, turning people against each other, making us live in permanent fear.
I spoke of the lumps, the headaches, the fever, the coughing of blood, the blackened fingers and toes, the purple spots, the foul smell, the contortions of the sufferer’s face … How it killed in hours or days. How no cure had been found.
She asked what treatments people had tried.
‘Nigh well everything,’ I said.
She asked how it carried from person to person.
I shrugged. ‘On the wind, by sight, by smell, by touch …’
‘Are there no bats, keeping company with this disease?’
‘Not that I have seen.’
‘Cats?’
‘No.’
‘Dogs?’
‘No.’
‘Donkeys?’
‘Not that I’ve seen.’
‘There must be rats, then?’
‘Sometimes rats are near the disease. Sometimes the pestilence kills them.’
‘Are there fleas?’
‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘of course. Where there are folk, there are always fleas.’
‘What is the temper of the fleas? How do they act?’
‘They are fierce. They are restless. They are jumpy. They flee the sick to leap on the healthy.’
We considered this as a sudden gust of wind whistled through the yew.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you should address the fleas. It seems the fleas know more than you.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. But that’s the trouble with mystics. Half the time they talk in riddles.
‘Things will get worse, by and by,’ she advised.
‘They will?’
‘Before they get better.’
‘Oh …’ I said.
‘So you must learn to tell them apart …’ she advised.
‘Tell what apart?’
‘The demon from the pig, and the pig from the man.’
‘Yes?’
‘But when all is lost, you will find salvation.’
‘Good. Thank you for your good counsel,’ I said.
‘I wish you a good life,’ she said, ‘but you have held me from my melancholy … Now, I must go weep for the world afresh.’
I made the sign of the cross. I wished her well. I turned my back. I trudged away. I heard a quiet wailing commence behind me, but building in loudness as I walked away. Till shortly it became a full-blown howl.
I feared the worst. Then it came about.
The pestilence had come amongst us again. And it was Daniel the scrivener, and Jude the relic-seller, who first showed the signs of the curse – blackened tongues, frothy, discoloured pee, a fierce fever, foul bodily smell, purpled swellings.
News spread quickly amongst our band of pilgrims, with shrieks and screams and howls, and folk fled in all directions, with eyes cast down, to prevent them seeing the evil, holding cloth to mouth, to prevent themselves breathing in the pox, holding their nostrils, so as not to smell the foul miasma.
So I promptly found myself alone by our dead fire with Daniel and Jude, tending them as best I could but with little hope of saving them.
Shortly, three burly, red-faced men came on horse-back.
‘I am the lord’s bailiff,’ said one, scowling down at me. ‘Who are you?’
I told them my name and occupation as scribe.
‘And who are they?’ he barked, gesturing to my sick, sprawled companions.
I gave their names too. I said they were a scrivener and a dealer in religious relics. I said they were good, decent people, on pilgrimage, but that they both shared the misfortune of being struck down by the pox.
They wheeled their horses away and trotted around us in a widening radius.
‘And you?’ said the bailiff. ‘Do you not have the pox?’
‘Not me,’ I reassured them, ‘it seems not to touch me. But it does always follow me, close behind, wherever I go …’
XVIII. The Pig’s Tale
It’s a barbed, twisty tale, tangled as bramble.
It is how I came to be arrested, accused of plotting, poisoning and heresy, and came to share the mean conditions of my confinement with another, who was a young spotted pig, with coarse bristles to his back, and black patches to his hams and wattles.
I shared a cell with this pig, with straw for bedding, slops for food, and two long days of tedium, awaiting my trial.
I take as I find. The pig was an amiable, good-natured companion. Though his manners were robust and his hygiene casual.
To follow the curlicues of the narrative, you’ll have to first consider the ways of the pox – how it travelled invisibly, arriving without warning, striking with ferocity, killing almost all it touched.
I strained to understand my captors’ view of it. With no knowledge of the plague’s source, or where it would strike next, or why, there arose a fear of human subterfuge, that people were poisoning the water, or spoiling the food, or fouling the air. Then suspicions fell on strangers, travellers and outsiders – those beyond the social pack, in particular –
i. Vagrants, musicians, dancers and foreigners.
ii. Demons, the un-alive and un-dead.
iii. Lepers, whores and tricksters.
iv. Gypsies and tumblers.
v. Dark-skinned people.
vi. Jews in disguise.
vii. Heretics.
So in Fenny Barton, with the pox breaking to the east in Little Stratford, and to the west in Great Hampney, and to the south in Rawstone, the villagers felt surrounded and became fearful for their own safety. So the lord of the manor, seeking to combat any human mischief in the spread of the pestilence, had instructed his bailiff, the steward and the almoner to locate any strangers or miscreants, and to treat them with suspicion, allow them no entry to the town, award them no kindness, and imprison them if they thought it best.
There are four stone-walled, iron-barred cells in the town’s gaol. Two either side of a central pathway. You can see those opposite but they are too far away to reach an extended arm through the bars.
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