Epic Historial Collection (301 page)

“Just calm down,” Caris said. She led Joan into the porch of the church, and they sat on a stone bench. “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

“Philemon came up to me after Terce and said he needed ten shillings to buy candles for the shrine of St. Adolphus. I said I would have to ask you.”

“Quite right.”

“He became very angry and shouted that it was the monks' money, and I had no right to refuse him. He demanded my keys, and I think he would have tried to snatch them from me, but I pointed out that they would be no use to him, as he didn't know where the treasury was.”

“What a good idea it was to keep that secret,” Caris said.

Thomas was standing beside them, listening. He said: “I notice he picked a time when I was off the premises—the coward.”

Caris said: “Joan, you did absolutely right to refuse him, and I'm sorry he tried to bully you. Thomas, go and find him and bring him to me at the palace.”

She left them and walked through the graveyard, deep in thought. Clearly, Philemon was set on making trouble. But he was not the kind of blustering bully whom she could have overpowered with ease. He was a wily opponent, and she must watch her step.

When she opened the door of the prior's house, Philemon was there in the hall, sitting at the head of the long table.

She stopped in the doorway. “You shouldn't be here,” she said. “I specifically told you—”

“I was looking for you,” he said.

She realized she would have to lock the building. Otherwise he would always find a pretext for flouting her orders. She controlled her anger. “You looked for me in the wrong place,” she said.

“I've found you now, though, haven't I?”

She studied him. He had shaved and cut his hair since his arrival, and he wore a new robe. He was every inch the priory official, calm and authoritative. She said: “I've been speaking to Sister Joan. She's very upset.”

“So am I.”

She realized he was sitting in the big chair, and she was standing in front of him, as if he were in charge and she a supplicant. How clever he was at manipulating these things. She said: “If you need money, you must ask me.”

“I'm the subprior!”

“And I'm the acting prior, which makes me your superior.” She raised her voice. “So the first thing you must do is stand up when you're speaking to me!”

He started, shocked by her tone; then he controlled himself. With insulting slowness he pulled himself out of the chair.

Caris sat down in his place and let him stand.

He seemed unabashed. “I understand you're using monastery money to pay for the new tower.”

“By order of the bishop, yes.”

A flash of annoyance crossed his face. He had hoped to ingratiate himself and make the bishop his ally against Caris. Even as a child he had toadied unendingly to people in authority. That was how he had gained admission to the monastery.

He said: “I must have access to the monastery's money. It's my right. The monks' assets should be in my charge.”

“The last time you were in charge of the monks' assets, you stole them.”

He went pale: that arrow had struck the bull's-eye. “Ridiculous,” he blustered, trying to cover his embarrassment. “Prior Godwyn took them for safekeeping.”

“Well, nobody is going to take them for ‘safekeeping' while I'm acting prior.”

“You should at least give me the ornaments. They are sacred jewels, to be handled by priests, not women.”

“Thomas has been dealing with them quite adequately, taking them out for services and restoring them to our treasury afterward.”

“It's not satisfactory—”

Caris remembered something, and interrupted him. “Besides, you haven't yet returned all that you took.”

“The money—”

“The ornaments. There's a gold candlestick missing, a gift from the chandlers' guild. What happened to that?”

His reaction surprised her. She was expecting another blustering denial. But he looked embarrassed and said: “That was always kept in the prior's room.”

She frowned. “And…?”

“I kept it separate from the other ornaments.”

She was astonished. “Are you telling me that
you
have had the candlestick all this time?”

“Godwyn asked me to look after it.”

“And so you took it with you on your travels to Monmouth and elsewhere?”

“That was his wish.”

This was a wildly implausible tale, and Philemon knew it. The fact was that he had stolen the candlestick. “Do you still have it?”

He nodded uncomfortably.

At that moment, Thomas came in. “There you are!” he said to Philemon.

Caris said: “Thomas, go upstairs and search Philemon's room.”

“What am I looking for?”

“The lost gold candlestick.”

Philemon said: “No need to search. You'll see it on the prie-dieu.”

Thomas went upstairs and came down again carrying the candlestick. He handed it to Caris. It was heavy. She looked at it curiously. The base was engraved with the names of the twelve members of the chandlers' guild in tiny letters. Why had Philemon wanted it? Not to sell or melt down, obviously: he had had plenty of time to get rid of it but he had not done so. It seemed he had just wanted to have his own gold candlestick. Did he gaze at it and touch it when he was alone in his room?

She looked at him and saw tears in his eyes.

He said: “Are you going to take it from me?”

It was a stupid question. “Of course,” she replied. “It belongs in the cathedral, not in your bedroom. The chandlers gave it for the glory of God and the beautification of church services, not the private pleasure of one monk.”

He did not argue. He looked bereft, but not penitent. He did not understand that he had done wrong. His grief was not remorse for wrongdoing, but regret for what had been taken from him. He had no sense of shame, she realized.

“I think that ends our discussion about your access to the priory's valuables,” she said to Philemon. “Now you may go.” He went out.

She handed the candlestick back to Thomas. “Take it to Sister Joan and tell her to put it away,” she said. “We'll inform the chandlers that it has been found, and use it next Sunday.”

Thomas went off.

Caris stayed where she was, thinking. Philemon hated her. She wasted no time wondering why: he made enemies faster than a tinker made friends. But he was an implacable foe and completely without scruples. Clearly he was determined to make trouble for her at every opportunity. Things would never get better. Each time she overcame him in one of these little skirmishes, his malice would burn hotter. But if she let him win he would only be encouraged in his insubordination.

It was going to be a bloody battle, and she could not see how it would end.

 

The flagellants came back on a Saturday evening in June.

Caris was in the scriptorium, writing her book. She had decided to begin with the plague and how to deal with it, then go on to lesser ailments. She was describing the linen face masks she had introduced in the Kingsbridge hospital. It was hard to explain that the masks were effective but did not offer total immunity. The only certain safeguard was to leave town before the plague arrived and stay away until it had gone, but that was never going to be an option for the majority of people. Partial protection was a difficult concept for people who believed in miracle cures. The truth was that some masked nuns still caught the plague, but not as many as would otherwise have been expected. She decided to compare the masks to shields. A shield did not guarantee that a man would survive attack, but it certainly gave him valuable protection, and no knight would go into battle without one. She was writing this down, on a pristine sheet of blank parchment, when she heard the flagellants, and groaned in dismay.

The drums sounded like drunken footsteps, the bagpipes like a wild creature in pain, and the bells like a parody of a funeral. She went outside just as the procession entered the precincts. There were more of them this time, seventy or eighty, and they seemed wilder than before: their hair long and matted, their clothing a few shreds, their shrieks more lunatic. They had already been around the town and gathered a long tail of followers, some looking on in amusement, others joining in, tearing their clothes and lashing themselves.

She had not expected to see them again. The pope, Clement VI, had condemned flagellants. But he was a long way away, at Avignon, and it was up to others to enforce his rulings.

Friar Murdo led them, as before. When he approached the west front of the cathedral, Caris saw to her astonishment that the great doors were open wide. She had not authorized that. Thomas would not have done it without asking her. Philemon must be responsible. She recalled that Philemon on his travels had met up with Murdo. She guessed that Murdo had forewarned Philemon of this visit, and they had conspired together to get the flagellants into the church. No doubt Philemon would argue that he was the only ordained priest in the priory, therefore he had the right to decide what kind of services were conducted.

But what was Philemon's motive? Why did he care about Murdo and the flagellants?

Murdo led the procession through the tall central doorway and into the nave. The townspeople crowded in afterward. Caris hesitated to join in such a display, but she felt the need to know what was going on, so she reluctantly followed the crowd inside.

Philemon was at the altar. Friar Murdo joined him. Philemon raised his hands for quiet, then said: “We come here today to confess our wickedness, repent our sins, and do penance in propitiation.”

Philemon was no preacher, and his words drew a muted reaction; but the charismatic Murdo immediately took over. “We confess that our thoughts are lascivious and our deeds are filthy!” he cried, and they shouted their approval.

The proceedings took the same form as before. Worked into a frenzy by Murdo's preaching, people came to the front, cried out that they were sinners, and flogged themselves. The townspeople looked on, mesmerized by the violence and nudity. It was a performance, but the lashes were real, and Caris shuddered to see the weals and cuts on the backs of the penitents. Some of them had done this many times before and were scarred. Others had recent wounds that were reopened by the fresh whipping.

Townspeople soon joined in. As they came forward, Philemon held out a collection bowl, and Caris realized that his motivation was money. Nobody got to confess and kiss Murdo's feet until they put a coin in Philemon's bowl. Murdo was keeping an eye on the takings, and Caris assumed the two men would share out the coins afterward.

There was a crescendo of drumming and piping as more and more townspeople came forward. Philemon's bowl filled up rapidly. Those who had been “forgiven” danced ecstatically to the mad music.

Eventually all the penitents were dancing and no more were coming forward. The music built to a climax and stopped suddenly, whereupon Caris noticed that Murdo and Philemon had disappeared. She assumed they had slipped out through the south transept to count their takings in the monks' cloisters.

The spectacle was over. The dancers lay down, exhausted. The spectators began to disperse, drifting out through the open doors into the clean air of the summer evening. Soon Murdo's followers found the strength to leave the church, and Caris did the same. She saw that most of the flagellants were heading for the Holly Bush.

She returned with relief to the cool hush of the nunnery. As dusk gathered in the cloisters, the nuns attended Evensong and ate their supper. Before going to bed, Caris went to check on the hospital. The place was still full: the plague raged unabated.

She found little to criticize. Sister Oonagh followed Caris's principles: face masks, no bloodletting, fanatical cleanliness. Caris was about to go to bed when one of the flagellants was brought in.

It was a man who had fainted in the Holly Bush and cracked his head on a bench. His back was still bleeding, and Caris guessed that loss of blood was as much responsible as the blow to his head for the loss of consciousness.

Oonagh bathed his wounds with salt water while he was unconscious. To bring him round, she set fire to the antler of a deer and wafted the pungent smoke under his nose. Then she made him drink two pints of water mixed with cinnamon and sugar, to replace the fluid his body had lost.

But he was only the first. Several more men and women were brought in suffering from some combination of loss of blood, excess of strong drink, and injuries received in accidents or fights. The orgy of flagellation increased the number of Saturday-night patients tenfold. There was also a man who had flogged himself so many times that his back was putrid. Finally, after midnight, a woman was brought in after having been tied up, flogged, and raped.

Fury stoked up in Caris as she worked with the other nuns to tend these patients. All their injuries arose from the perverted notions of religion put about by men such as Murdo. They said the plague was God's punishment for sin, but people could avoid the plague by punishing themselves another way. It was as if God were a vengeful monster playing a game with insane rules. Caris believed that God's sense of justice must be more sophisticated than that of the twelve-year-old leader of a boys' gang.