“Apparently the taverns are still open. Do you fine lords want to earn some more drinking money?” Mason proposes.
“What do you have in mind?” slurs the ringleader. One of them trips and falls into the mud, smashing his cheek against the ground. He doesn’t get up. No one helps him.
“Up at the priory, there’s some digging to be done,” Mason tells them.
“Bodies, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve done that kind of work. Not worth it.”
“And you’re not sick?” I say. “Must mean you’re some of the lucky ones. You’ll be able to enjoy your pay.”
“And you know those nuns are rich.” Mason has to say that, even though neither of us has any idea where the priory stores money, nor whether the Pri will give it to us. This stops them and makes them consider it, though.
“I’ll come,” says a thin fellow in a yellow shirt.
“Sure, me too,” says a grizzled man with what looks like dried vomit on his sleeve. Finally the ringleader coaxes all six into coming, and they stumble up the hill to the priory with us.
Men like this would normally never see the inside of a priory. I convince them at least to splash their faces in the cloister fountain. They don’t notice the scenery, in any case.
“Is it true?” says the yellow-shirted man. “About the healing waters? Fella came through from the East Riding talking of the young girl who’s not afraid, like the Savior Himself, to touch poor lepers.”
Mason gazes at me, eyebrows raised, and I laugh it away. “What,” I say, “the girl with rabbit-skin glue under her fingernails and a bucket of water by the infirmary door?” It’s funny, but strange, to think you exist to people outside of your own four walls.
* * *
—
While the men extend the trench in the churchyard, I go into the infirmary to talk to the Pri about getting them paid. At first I don’t see her; another group of pilgrims have trickled in, seeking a cure, and it’s busy. Maybe she’s hearing confession or giving the Sacrament. Finally I find her, but not ministering.
She’s in a bed all the way in back, drenched in sweat, no veil, wearing only her shift. She can’t bear anything to touch her, not even a blanket. When she sees me, she waves me in.
“Mother,” I say, “let me get you the water.”
“No,” she says. “It’s not for me. This is not the pestilence; you know that.”
“But who says it’s only good for the pestilence?”
“No, Edyth. Let this unfold as it should. I’ve made provisions. Remember what I said—fear kills, but it won’t win.” She lays her head down again and falls asleep.
The prioress must see the frustration on my face. Why won’t she drink the water? Doesn’t she know that if she dies, Agnes will take over the priory?
* * *
—
After the men dig the trench, I get them paid and fed, and we show them to the gatehouse, with barely enough daylight left for them to find their way back to town. But as we step onto the main path, we hear a grisly sound.
It’s all chaos and orange sparks and billows—a jumble of shouts and chants and howling. We had locked the gates when we returned from town, but the dull red pounding of bodies thrusting against them makes the lock give way, and the doors fling wide on a wild procession.
There is a boy of about twelve right at the front, carrying a cross made of hazel poles. Behind him, three other boys bear torches at full flame. Following them are hundreds of men, walking two by two. They are stripped half naked, their white robes rolled down around their waists and trailing down to the ground like upside-down lilies. They’re yowling a pitiful song of penance—
Dilexisti malitiam super benignitatem
Iniquitatem magis quam loqui aequitatem.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity
And in sin did my mother conceive me.
—and in their hands they hold leather whips.
Thwop. Thwop.
They are beating their own backs bloody.
My head swims, and I shut my eyes against the nausea and shock. I’ve heard of monks doing things like this in secret, but everyone knows it’s shameful.
A lot of fat men trying to make themselves feel better about their gluttony, Da would say.
The Lord already shed His own blood, Mam would say. Why try to add to it?
The men come in, tearing at their flesh with the whips—and then, as though they’re given a signal, the whole line of them hits the ground prostrate and spreads their arms out wide on the ground like living crosses, still singing. From the rear of the line, the last two men stand, pick up their flails and begin stepping over each man in front of them, a whip to each back, and they become first in line.
The procession completely blocks the bridge, the only way out of the priory without going upriver. There’s nothing to do but stand aside and try to slip past them once they all come in.
“Who are they?” Mason asks the diggers’ ringleader. “Were they the ones in Saint Mary’s the other night?”
“They took over that church all week.”
“Why did they come to the priory?” I ask.
“Guess those bloodsuckers ran out of donations,” says the man. “They pick up desperate stragglers in every town. I think there’s double the number that came into Thornchester. Murdered the priest.”
The priest—he didn’t make it out after all.
The sight of two hundred men beating themselves to a pulp is shocking enough. But all along the edges are women, shrieking like fanatics. They reach out their hands to the grisly men, get a palmful of blood and call out while smearing it across their own faces—
O holy man of God, pray for me!
Just a touch of the hem of your garment will heal me!
Say the word, O anointed, and I will be healed!
—starving for someone to tell them how they might escape wrath. We lean against the high wall flanking the gatehouse, but there’s no escaping the notice of the agitated crowd. Suddenly the men at the front of the throng turn their attention toward the gravediggers. The new leader points his flail at them.
“Sons of the devil,” he says, “with drink on their breath in this holy place, at the very time they should be killing their flesh!”