The Gallows Curse (79 page)

    Mary
stands reluctantly, watching her mother walking up the neighbour's path. The
child doesn't want to go inside yet, but she dare not disobey. Her mother keeps
a switch behind the door. Mary is about to do as she has been told, when in the
last rays of the sun, something catches her eye. It is floating towards her
down the river. It looks like a little boat. She quickly casts around her,
trying to find some way of snaring it before the river carries it away again.
She finds a stick, and by lying full stretch on the bank, she just manages to
hook the tip of the stick over the edge of the curved bark. The boat is light.
It comes towards her easily, eagerly, you might say.

    Fearing
her mother's return, Mary scurries inside her cottage and sets the dripping
boat down on the beaten earth floor. With a grin of delight that almost splits
her little face in two she lifts out a tiny, wizened figure.

    'A
doll!' she exclaims, dancing round the room. 'I can play babies with it.'

    It's
an ugly little thing. But she doesn't care. To her it is the best toy she's
ever had, a little doll all of her own. She already imagines dressing it in
scraps of cloth, making it a cradle and feeding it on stolen milk.

    A
sudden squeal makes her look down. A little boy crawls towards the boat. Mary
kneels on the floor and shows her new treasure to him.

    'Look,
look, it's a dolly.'

    Although
Mary sometimes becomes impatient, as all little girls do, when she is forced to
mind him, she is fond of the child, even though he's not her real brother.
Gytha, the cunning woman, brought him for her mother to nurse. There were other
nurslings before this one, and Mary supposes there will be others after him.
Some day someone will come for him and take him away, as they took away other
nurslings when they were old enough to walk and talk. But they won't come yet.
He's too little.

    The
baby grins as she dances the doll in front of him. He reaches out a fat sticky
paw, but she pulls the doll back. 'No it's not for you. It's mine!'

    The
infant crumples up his face as if he is about to cry. Her mother mustn't find
him crying or she will tell Mary to give him the doll to quieten him. She will
tell Mary that she is too old to play games now and should be minding the bairn
if she wants something to nurse. Her mother won't understand how much Mary
already loves the doll.

    Mary
drags the little boat out in front of the infant. He is enthralled at once and
forgets to cry. He paddles across to it on his chubby little knees and tiny
hands. He dabs at the boat with his dimpled fingers, then he sees the bread. He
cannot yet say the word, but he knows what it is. And it is just the right size
for a tiny mouth. He grabs the piece of bread in his fat little fist and pushes
the end of it into his mouth. He sucks frantically, contentedly, gurgling
happily like the river which runs on and on outside in the darkness.

    One
day soon, that little boy will begin to have strange dreams, dreams that will
terrify and thrill him. Dreams of blood in far off lands that he cannot begin
to understand, but he will know the terror of them. And he will learn to use
the power running through his fingers and feel it surging in his veins: the
power to hurt, the desire to wound and the passion to murder.

    For
Gytha the cunning woman did speak the truth about one thing — you cannot rid
yourself of a mandrake by casting it away. When Elena finds her son again, I,
Yadua, will be waiting for her. The worth of a mandrake is measured in blood
and Elena must pay that price, if not with her own life, then with her little
son's. There are still thorns left in the little wizened apple and Gytha will
use them well. She can wait, she is used to biding her time; she was born into
the waiting.

    For
as Madron so wisely said, Yadua will not let you rest in this world or the
next, until the price has been paid in full.'

    The
Interdict which was imposed on England on 2 3 March 1208 was formally lifted
six years later on 29 June 1214 after King John, in order to avert a
papal-backed French invasion, finally agreed to the demands of Pope Innocent
III. These were that John should finally accept Stephen Langton as Archbishop
of Canterbury and that he should recall all the exiled bishops, priests and
laity. John also offered the English Church 100,000 marks in compensation for
his confiscation of their property. The Pope agreed to this sum, but the
English bishops grumbled it was not nearly enough to compensate them for what
he had seized or destroyed, or for their lost revenue whilst the churches were
closed.

    Both
contemporary chroniclers and modern historians differ widely on just what
effect the Interdict had on the people. Some eyewitnesses claimed it devastated
life in England, others that it had little impact on the ordinary man in the
street. Naturally it was in the interests of those on John's side to claim that
the Interdict was having no effect. However, the Church and John's critics
claimed that the population were on the brink of despair, so distraught were
they by the churches being locked against them and being denied the comforts of
their faith.

    Even
in these modern days of instant communication, we hear wildly different reports
about the effect of industrial action, depending on whether you're speaking to
striking unions or to the management. And allies in war can make contradictory
claims about incidents, which in turn bear no relation at all to those reports
given by their enemies. In terms of the Interdict, the impact probably varied
considerably depending on where you lived, how strictly the clergy in that
diocese carried out their instructions and whether or not John had a personal
quarrel with your local bishop.

    Equally,
we shall probably never know the truth about why Richard Coeur-de-Lion
massacred the Saracen prisoners at Acre. Deserted only a few days before by his
former ally, Philip II of France, Richard was left to supply and finance all
the remaining troops. He was anxious to march on Jerusalem and he did not have
the resources to feed and guard several thousand prisoners indefinitely. He may
have thought that Saladin was deliberately trying to delay the prisoner
exchange to buy time in order to reinforce his own army before Richard could
reach Jerusalem.

    Alternatively,
Richard might have believed the rumour that Saladin had already killed the
Christian prisoners and had no intention of handing over the ransom Richard was
demanding for the Muslim hostages. After all, the terms of the surrender of
Acre had been negotiated with the leaders of the city, not Saladin himself,
who'd been angered by the surrender. Whatever the reason, when Acre was later
retaken by the Muslims, all Christians in the city were then slaughtered,
possibly in retaliation for Richard's act.

    I've
heard people say we should view these events within the context of a very
brutal time. Yet what Richard did clearly shocked and outraged Saladin and many
contemporary chroniclers, so they must have considered the act unusual even for
those times. And whilst, as a novelist, I firmly believe we must try to see
medieval events through the prism of medieval morality and belief, I can't help
worrying that future generations might look back on the twentieth century and
try to excuse the massacres of the Holocaust or of Rwanda and Bosnia and many
others, because they were committed in 'the context of a brutal century'.
Perhaps the sad truth is that human behaviour really hasn't improved since the
Middle Ages.

    In
the early Christian Church, some devout monks and hermits practised
self-castration as a pious act in order to purge their flesh of lust, but by
the Middle Ages the Catholic Church had forbidden the castration of monks
because of the Old Testament instruction in Deuteronomy 23:1 prohibiting those
'wounded in the stones' from serving in the temple.

    Eunuchs
and castrati were greatly despised among the general populace, even though
castration was used as a 'cure' for hernias. Castration was largely reserved
for the punishment of so-called sexual 'crimes', especially of those accused of
homosexuality. Noble-born husbands might take revenge on men who had affairs
with their wives or daughters by castrating them, as we find in the medieval
tale
Parzival,
written around 1200, which was the origin of the opera
Parsifal.

    For
centuries, castration was used to humiliate prisoners conquered in battle. In
1282 at Palermo, 2000 French prisoners were castrated then killed after the
battle of the Sicilian Vespers. This practice continued for centuries, and even
at the battle of Culloden in 1746 it was reported that the English cut off the
genitals of the fallen Scottish Highlanders.

    But
there was a hidden side to all this. From the very beginning of church music,
castrati were employed in the Byzantine church choirs. Since these choirs did
not use musical instruments and women were forbidden to sing, they needed a
tremendous vocal range and resonance to achieve the effect the composers
desired. To this end, boys between the ages of eight and twelve had their
testicles removed to preserve their voices and create the angelic vocal range
demanded by the music. This left them as adults able to achieve full sexual
function, but they were, of course, sterile. Prepubescent castration caused a
distinctive physical growth pattern including unusually long limbs, together
with a marked gain in body fat in later life.

    By
the 1100s this practice of using castrati in choirs had been incorporated by
both the Armenian and Georgian Churches. In Italy and Sicily the presence of
castrati voices in church choirs is documented as far back as the third
century, and Bishop Ambrose of Milan (340—97) is credited with the introduction
of the Eastern model of singing in his churches. Choir schools to train boys
and castrati were set up in the fourth and fifth centuries and one of the most
famous, the
schola cantorum,
still operates today to train boy choristers.

    Several
centres for castration were later established in Italy, and even the monastery
at Monte Cassino eventually had its own castration facilities to create
castrati for the choir. By the fifteenth century, castrati were well established
in all the best Catholic Church choirs in Europe, including the Vatican, but
because of the prohibition in Deuteronomy the singers were officially referred
to as
sopranos, falsettos
or even
Spagnoletti —
Spanish voices.

    By
the eighteenth century, castrati were also employed in the opera companies, and
many famous operatic arias which are today sung by women were originally
written for castrati. Renowned castrati appeared in all the great opera houses
of Europe including London, and were feted as international superstars are
today.

    Alessandro
Moreschi was the last castrato at the Vatican. He is believed to have been
castrated around 865/66. His voice was captured on gramophone recordings made
between 1902 and 1904, and he died in 1922.

    Gastmere
is a fictional village based on those villages in the medieval marshlands
between Norwich and Yarmouth.
Gast
in old English means
spirit
and in Middle English
ghost. Mere
of course meant marshland.

    The
beautiful medieval city of Norwich is, of course, real, and you can still visit
the streets in Mancroft where Elena walked, as well as have a drink in the Adam
and Eve pub, which is one of the oldest inns in England, with a fascinating
history of smuggling in centuries past, though now it is entirely law- abiding
and respectable.

    The
town of Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast was founded on a sandbank in the
mouth of an estuary. In medieval times it was an island, originally inhabited
by fishermen who came from the Cinque Ports to fish for the shoals of herring,
a staple food of the Middle Ages. The fish were found in great numbers off the
coast in autumn. By the 1200s Great Yarmouth was an important international
trading post, holding a Free Herring Fair which lasted for forty days from Michaelmas
to Martinmas, and the herrings from Yarmouth were sold all over Europe as far
as the Middle East.

    But
unlike many other medieval towns, because it emerged from the 'beach' or
coastline, it was owned by the king himself and not by a local lord. Therefore
none of the citizens were freemen and were obliged to pay heavy taxes to marry
and inherit land. Trade was being crippled by the huge tolls Yarmouth merchants
had to pay to do business in neighbouring towns. So knowing that King John was
desperate for money to fight against France, in 1209 the men of Yarmouth
persuaded John to grant them a charter making them a free port, for which they
would pay him 5 5 pounds a year, a good deal more than he was getting from them
in taxes. This charter allowed the citizens of Yarmouth to trade without tax
anywhere in England, except London, whilst at the same time they could collect
tolls from any outside or foreign merchants who wanted to trade in Yarmouth.