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Chapter Fourteen The church seemed to fill itself with tired and anxious people who, already in the early morning daze, seemed covered in sweat and dust. Ailyth sat with Eoif, towards the middle of the church, watching as the serfs trekked to the seats that were so familiar to them during mass. A nervous tension hummed in the air, as folk around her asked themselves what could be so important to drag them so unwillingly from the harvest. Eoif’s baby seemed to feed on the atmosphere and his screwed up, red face kept the woman occupied with trying to feed him, although milk was the last thing on his mind. With each of his desperate, lusty cries Ailyth felt a jolt of red hot ice sear through her, and even RiffRaff found it impossible to sit still as yet more and more people flooded in around them.
“Is Canute here?” he asked, his voice becoming a high pitched squeak. “Has he found us?”
“I doubt it.” Ailyth’s voice was hollow in her reply as Granfer limped in through the door and sat, in a guard-like position, watching and waiting for any stranger to appear. “We wouldn’t have been brought to such a public place if that were the case.” She knew that much was true. Why, then, did she feel as though a pair of eyes was burning a path through the back of her head.
Turning to peer through the mass of people behind her, Ailyth saw a woman staring at her curiously. She smiled at her awkwardly and, uncomfortable with such scrutiny, let her eyes flicker away but, when she glanced back the woman was still looking at her.
“Who’s that?” RiffRaff asked, peeping through Ailyth’s hair. “Why’s she looking at you like that?”
“Maybe I know her from somewhere,” Ailyth suggested. “Or maybe she’s wondering why I’ve got a black rat on my shoulder. Keep hidden, for goodness sake Riff’, we’re in a church!”
Sulkily, RiffRaff pressed himself close to her neck, taking great care to ‘accidentally’ pull Ailyth’s hair as he did so. The girl ignored him, and smiled self-assuredly at the woman, saying to her clearly in the gesture ‘I know you’re looking at me, and I’m not bothered.’ It worked, and the woman turned to start talking to her neighbour.
Ailyth studied the woman for a short while longer, puzzling over whether she knew her or not. There was something familiar about the high cheekbones and smoky eyes, and there was a cut running along her cheek, fresh and badly concealed by her untameable hair. As she turned away, the answer came to her: Morgan, one of the refugees in the wood. She was sure of it; the haughty, disapproving face filled her mind in a flash. But what was she doing here?
As the thick air in the church began to grow warmer and more stifling, a voice cut across the chatter and brought an immediate silence from the crowd. A man was standing by the altar, barely assisted by the stick he used to prop himself up, and his fine clothes told her that this was the aged lord of the manor.
“It is with regret that I have had to call you in from your work,” he began and, unlike her father, Ailyth felt that this mad was genuinely remorseful in his apology. All eyes watched him as he leaned heavily on his support, warming to him in a way that Lord Unwin would never have known, despite the respect that he provoked. This man was loved; not just by his family, but by his people, and his kindly eyes seemed to light on all of them in turn.
He struggled for a second to speak, but they waited in revered silence to hear what reasons he had to give them. As a cough splintered his body they had patience with him, and not one heckler thought to interrupt him.
“A few months back,” he eventually continued, his voice hoarse, “you were called to a meeting. A meeting where we spoke of a terrible pestilence that was ravishing the far lands of Europe.”
He glanced up at them for a response, but no-one could bring themselves to make a sound, and many were staring at the hands cupped in their laps. They remembered. The could recall the letter that had been sent from the archbishop, asking them to pray for the sick. Of course they had done that, but not with any sense of urgency. It was a shame, poor people, that such a terrible illness could exist, but Europe was far away, across the sea, and the problems there had little to do with the daily life of the people of Crediton. Few people in the church could anticipate what was coming next; only Ailyth and her companions, the priest and the lord, and one or two people whose minds worked a little faster than the others, and whose faces were slowly draining of colour.
“It’s here,” the lord said simply, and he had to be helped to his seat as his body seemed to sag beneath him.
Immediately the raised voices of panic filled the church, as several people rose to their feet to argue against that. It couldn’t be here. The plague was something from far away. Their arguments were weak and unjustified, but born with the passion of wanting to believe that it couldn’t be true.
Ailyth gazed around her as the village protested. They looked angry now, almost as though they believed that by sharing the news he had been given, the lord himself had cursed them with the plague. He looked tired; too tired to compete with the wrath he faced, and his eyes glazed over with the look of a man defeated.
“Will you please, all of you, sit down!” a more frustrated voice called over the noise, an the priest took the stand. It took a few moments longer for order to be resettled as it had with the lord but reluctantly, and with the bubbling sound of alarm still in everyone’s’ mouths, the villagers did as they were told and waited to see how, if it was at all possible, the priest might somehow make it better.
“The plague, as you well know, has not reached Crediton,” he told them, but no sooner had he spoken the villagers were on their feet again, venting their fear on him. Fighting to rise over them, the priest continued “but it has reached Thorverton...”
This time there was no holding them back, as almost every person in the church battled over each other so that their morbid predictions could be heard.
“It may as well be bloody here then!”
“Give it two days, and we’ll all be dead!”
“My children! What’ll happen to my children?”
Ailyth leaned over towards Eoif, who was clutching baby Botolf with blank fear on her face, and was resting in the fragile comfort of Colm’s arms.
“Where’s Thorverton?” she asked.
“Jus’ a few hours away,” she replied, trembling slightly. “Jus’ a few hours.”
A woman, slowly, made her way next to the priest, mud-spattered by a frantic journey over fields and, as one by one the serfs recognised her, the noise changed to a more quiet hub.
“Anne!” a young man called out from the back of the church, and the woman looked towards him, but didn’t smile. “Anne, what’re you doin’ here?”
His question did what the priest couldn’t do, and silenced the villagers once more as they strained to hear her answer.
When it did come, her voice was quiet and broken, and she spoke the whole time with her eyes snapped firmly closed, too frightened to open them and see the reactions on the faces of those before her.
“I come from Thorverton,” she whispered, swaying slightly with fatigue. “I left as the moon rose, and have travelled over fields and rivers to get here.”
“Where’s Tomas?” an older woman, sitting next to the man who had first spoken to her. “Where’s my boy? And where’s my grandsons?”
Tears squeezed their way down Anne’s dirty face. “Dead,” she said. “They’re all dead.”
A wail issued from the woman as her family wrapped their arms around her to contain her grief, and when Anne continued to speak it was to the background of desperate sobbing.
“The plague came to us at the start of last week,” she muttered, half to herself. “Within days, three people were dead. It took a hold of us, and wouldn’t let us go, not for nothin’. First it took my little Willem, my little son, then my Tomas, then my baby. It took everything.”
Eoif held Botolf as close to her chest as she could at this, burying her face in his swaddling clothes. By the altar, the woman looked to the priest for guidance, and he put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Thank you, my dear,” he said, and led her to a seat.
There was no easy comfort for the serfs on hearing this news. Many had known Anne, and all had known Tomas, and the thought that the plague, which before had seemed so distant, could touch people who had actually been a part of your life stunned them into a sober mood.
“What must we do, father?” a timid voice called out after a few minutes silence had let the news sink in.
“We must pray,” he replied.
“Well...how can we stop it?”
The priest could not look up to respond to this simple, trusting question. “We can’t,” he said simply. “If it will come, then it will come.”
And it would come, Ailyth knew that much. As the dejected and silent serfs filed out of the church, with nothing more to say to one another, she knew the same story that she had seen already would repeat itself; the plague would come, and they would die.
“You must tell no-one you’ve been to Bristol,” a voice said behind her, and Morgan sidled across to Ailyth. “They won’t let Anne stay here. Anyone who’s been anywhere near the plague will be forced out.”
“It is you!” Ailyth hissed, drawing Morgan away to the side of the church. “What are you doing here?”
“This is my home,” Morgan smiled. “In times of trouble, don’t we all try to get home?”
Her question hung in the air, and Ailyth wondered exactly how much she knew about the reason she was so intent on returning to Topsham. She wouldn’t say any more to her though; a lesson had been well learned with Canute. Instead she asked where Anne would be sent.
“Back where she came from,” Morgan told her. “Away from here, and away from any place that hasn’t seen the plague yet.” She put a finger to her nose, and nodded in Ailyth’s direction. “Remember what I said,” she whispered. “Tell no-one where you’ve been.”
Ailyth watch her glide away towards friends still silent over the terrible news, her eyes resting on a well tended graveyard that circled the church.
“It’s too small,” she whispered to RiffRaff.
“What is?”
“The graveyard. It’s not large enough.” Her eyes twitched from side to side. “There will be too many dead, not enough space to bury the bodies.” As her eyes lit upon a field at the outskirts of the village, she knew what would be done. Almost as soon as she saw it, it appeared to open up before her, revealing a cavernous black hole filled with twisted bones.
“The dead will be thrown into the fields,” she said, seeing it unfold before her. “Like the corpses of animals.”
“Don’t talk like that,” RiffRaff said as she looked at all the stunned villagers, milling around the church, wondering which of them would live, and which of them would be thrown into the pit once the plague took them.
“Do you want to go?” Granfer asked as he dragged his broken body towards her. “They’re talking about sealing the village up, blocking off the roads so that no-one can bring the plague in, or carry it further. Do you want to leave?”
Ailyth looked at her guardian, puffing and sweating even with slight effort, and she realised that even though she could leave he could not, and she wouldn’t leave him behind after all he had done for her.
“Old man,” she said kindly, “we’ll leave when you are fit and ready.”
“But if the plague comes here...?”
“It won’t take me a second time,” she said. “And you do realise, don’t you? There’s no escaping the plague. There isn’t anywhere we can go now to avoid it. Mayhaps it’s following us.” She shuddered at the thought, that it had a vice-like grip on her. Anne’s words haunted her: ‘It took a hold of us, and wouldn’t let us go.’ “It’s a black death,” she said grimly, turning away from the graveyard. “We’ll all end up in a box.”
“But your quest...you can end it. Soon, if you go now.”
Ailyth shook her head. “How would I find the plant in Albion, without you to show me?”
Granfer pointed into the distance; over the far end of the manor and across the fields. “See those trees?” he asked. “On the other side of those trees is Topsham. Your home. A day away. And in those trees is Albion!”
Staring at him levelly, Ailyth asked; “could you make it that far?” Granfer looked away, angry with himself as she told him firmly “we stay until you can.”
She returned straight away to Eoif’s house. The family had already gone back to their home and for a moment, when Colm first opened the door, Ailyth wondered whether she would be turned away. He looked tired, and kept glancing back towards his wife but, after wrestling with his conscience, he let her enter.
“Can’t turn away someone in need,” he said gruffly. “But make no mistake; first sign of any sickness, and you’re in the streets. I got a wife an’ child to be thinkin’ of.”
Ailyth understood his fear, but was grateful for his humanity as she sat down on the muddy floor, letting the couple sit on their rug.
“No, no,” Eoif said distractedly. “You’ll get yer nice white gown dirty.”
“It’s already dirty,” Ailyth pointed out, but she moved closer anyway.
For the rest of that day, they stayed sitting around the fire, doing little more than watching the embers glow and waiting for something to happen. From time to time Colm would open the door to let in some light, and to try and clear the smell of dung from the animals’ pen, but he was nervous when he did so, and would shut the hut up again as soon as he felt they could. There was no noise, except the occasional squawk from a chicken, but even the animals seemed to sense the dread in the air. Ailyth wondered if it was the same where Granfer and Ulfred were staying.
As night fell, still no noise had been heard from the outside. The harvest had been all but forgotten; everyone had decided that the best thing that they could do was lock themselves away and keep themselves out of the path of danger. The silence was unbearable, but the sound of Eoif sobbing at the thought of anything happening to her baby was worse still.
The next day brought little change. Holed up together in the tiny hut, with the stifling early autumn air making the smells of the animals and smoke even more pungent, they began to get more irritable or, as Ailyth thought ruefully, they were beginning to get more irritable with her. She felt like a stranger invading their time of fear, when all they wanted to do was stay with their loved ones and no-one else.
“I think I might...go for a walk in the churchyard,” she said on the afternoon of the second day, unable to take the feeling of being unwanted any longer.
“No!” they both cried at one, pulling at her hands to sit back down. “Don’t go out. Go out, and you’re a dead woman.”
“Go out,” Colm warned her, “and you won’t be coming back in.”
There were only so many times you could count the chickens, and once or twice Ailyth had even found herself unravelling the threads on their precious rug; so bored and nervous she was, waiting for the Black Death to stake its claim on the manor. She hadn’t even been able to talk to RiffRaff, as she was sure they would think her mad if she was seen talking to herself, and madness brought consequences of its own. So all they could do was sit, and wait, and grow more bored and restless with each passing minute.
On the third day there had still been no bad news and, opening the door a little, Colm could see villagers taking tentative steps out of their homes.
“What are you doing?” he called out to a man who was passing. “Aren’t you worried about the danger?”
The man shrugged and smiled almost gleefully. “What danger?” he asked. “It’s been three days, and no sign of sickness yet. I reckon it was a false alarm.”
Colm and Ailyth weren’t so sure, but Eoif embraced the news like an eager child.
“Thank God almighty, for sparing us in these terrible times!” she cried, thrusting the baby into her husband’s arms and flinging herself into the open air. “It’s a joy to be alive!”
“Now hold on a moment, love...” Colm started, but Eoif wasn’t having any of it.
“No, you hold on a moment!” she shrieked, joyful as the warm air hit her body. “I am not staying in there for a moment longer, with those stinking animals and all that smoke. You heard what the man said, it’s been a false alarm. No plague, no need to lock ourselves away from the world. I’m going to visit me mother.”
A few passers-by tittered to see a wife scold her husband so publicly, and he stormed back into the house murmuring something about putting a bridle on her tongue, but he didn’t drag her back indoors. Instead, he just sat by the hearth and brooded.
The manor was calm, to all appearances. As more and more people ventured from their homes to feel the fresh air on their faces, a feeling of euphoria replaced the apprehension that death could strike at any time, and for a short time a feeling of normality returned.
But it was not to last. Ailyth knew that, even as she watched people greet each other for the first time in days, thrilled to see that a loved one was still alive. With RiffRaff dozing on her shoulder, she watched Eoif walk into another house, singing, and knew in her soul that it was the lull before the storm. It couldn’t be over as simply as all that, without her having done anything. The plague couldn’t possibly be dying out. Could it? It was, after all, such a bright and sunny day.
A scream brought reality home to her; one single, piercing shriek that made everyone out in the daylight stop in their tracks and gape at each other uneasily. Before Eoif, the screamer herself, had come rushing back out of the house a small crowd had formed, already forgetting their earlier care and now consumed by grim inquisitiveness.
They waited for her to speak, already knowing what would be said but needing to hear it declared, with their own ears, ‘the plague has come to Crediton.’
“Fetch the priest,” she said, pulling the cap off from her head and falling onto the floor.
Nobody moved. Nobody could move. Each and every one of the people standing uncertainly around Eoif knew that they had, in that brief moment alone, been handed a death sentence. And not just them, but everyone they loved too.
“Is it the plague?” a man said, stepping forward. “Is it the Black Death?”
Eoif glared at him, a wild fire in her eyes. “Of course it’s the plague, you idiot!” she screamed. “My mother has the plague!” One of her mother’s neighbours gave a sob at this, and held her young daughter closer to her. “Now please, someone, fetch the priest.”
It was Ailyth who went in the end, as once more the serfs fled back to their homes and their loved ones, leaving Eoif sobbing and coughing in the dust. When she told him what had happen, he merely gave a curt bow of his head and hurried with her to the sick woman’s house.
“Do something for her!” Eoif cried as she saw the priest approaching. “Please father, just help her.”
“Don’t tell her I’m only here to read the last rites,” the priest whispered to Ailyth conspiratorially. He sighed. “That will be my only task now, saying prayers for and burying the dead.” He shook himself, to prepare for the start of a task he had no way of dealing with, and walked into the building.
It took much coaxing to persuade the grief-stricken Eoif to get up out of the dirt and return home. She was reluctant to leave her mother, as though she could somehow help by being there but, as Ailyth said gently, there was nothing that she could do that wouldn’t put her own life at risk and, besides, wasn’t there little Botolf to think of?
Sniffling, Eoif agreed, but began crying even more hysterically as people slammed their door shut as she passed, feeling that even looking at her would somehow encourage the plague to spread to them. Confused and frightened at being shunned like this, Eoif looked to Ailyth for reassurance that somehow it would all be all right again, like it had been a few days before. Ailyth didn’t think that telling her she wouldn’t be shunned for much longer, because soon every household would have someone dying in it, was much comfort.
As they reached her house, they were a little unnerved to find that the door wouldn’t open.
“Colm?” Eoif gulped through the wood. “Colm, it’s me. Let me in.”
There was the sound of a muffled scraping before the door was opened a fraction enough to see one of Colm’s eyes. They could see him staring at them for a few seconds before he replied with a heavy voice “No,” and closed the door.
Ailyth and Eoif looked at each other briefly before frantically pounding the door. “Colm, it’s your wife!” she yelled. “Let us in!”
“No,” Colm’s stifled voice repeated. “I’m sorry Eoif, but you’ve been in a plague house. I knows you have. I got to think of me boy now.”
Eoif’s cry of anguish was animal as she threw herself against the splintered wood, pounding her fists until spots of blood began to appear. “No!” she howled. “No Colm, you can’t keep me away from my baby. Don’t take my child away from me, Colm, don’t.”
But this time there was no reply except for the soft whimpering of a baby who could hear his mother, but couldn’t get to her. Eoif’s heart was being torn out.
They stayed by the door until it grew dark, both of them begging with Colm, cajoling him into letting Eoif in, but not once did he respond to them. It would have made no difference to their despair if they had known that the only reason Colm couldn’t reply was because he didn’t want to betray the fact that he too was crying, heartbroken at rejecting his lovely wife, but what else could he do? He knew that people who had been in plague houses died too, and passed it on to their nearest and dearest, and he couldn’t bear to see his precious, innocent son die in that way.
Eoif wouldn’t leave the doorway, not even as the night grew cold and she began to shiver, but Ailyth needed to sleep. When Eoif refused to budge after the hundredth request, and carried on pleading with a husband who wouldn’t answer her, Ailyth went to the priest for help.
The priest was not in the church, even at that late hour, so she and RiffRaff curled up on one of the benches. Sleep did not come easy; every time Ailyth felt like she might drop off, a scream of anguish would punctuate the darkness, and they knew that the plague was sneaking in to several houses in the village. Ailyth bit her lip, and tried to block out the sound of suffering.
The noise of the priest moving about woke her in the morning, although in truth she hadn’t even realised that she’d been asleep.
“Sorry,” he muttered, filling a bowl with water and washing his face. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Ailyth yawned and sat up. “Have you been out all night?” she asked. He nodded. “You do know that it’s dangerous to be with them when they’re so sick, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” he replied wearily. “But someone must hear their dying confessions, and read them the last rites. I have to ensure they die with clean souls.” He looked at them sadly. “They’re my flock,” he said. “I can’t desert them out of fear for myself.”
Ailyth was touched by his loyalty to his people, but concerned for him nonetheless.
“I just hope it reminds you that not all members of the church are insane,” Ulfred told her later that morning, looking equally as tired as his mentor. Ailyth guessed that he had been doing exactly the same.
“You’re right,” she told him, catching his hand and making him blush. “You’re good people.”
She felt brave enough to visit Granfer, and was worried to see that he was still slowly recovering from his injuries, and neither could talk of the plague, but they both knew that Ailyth was praying now for a swift return to health. The journey needed to be continued. The plague was getting stronger.
As the week dragged on, the manor was quiet at first. Occasionally a sob would wrack through the air, and the whole manor would know that another victim had been discovered, but on the whole it was almost peaceful. The serfs had once more retreated to their homes, finding safety and comfort in avoiding the sick, but soon it became apparent that many had fled Crediton, just as they had been fleeing all over the country.
On the sixth day since Eoif’s mother had taken ill, her death was announced by the church bells. Ailyth stopped what she was doing when she heard them, and fled back to the church to find Ulfred tolling the ghastly knells by himself, as the priest was in the middle of a furious argument with another man.
“It’s the carpenter,” Granfer said from the shadows, and Ailyth looked over to see her friend propped up against the walls. “He says he’ll make the coffins, but he’s only got enough wood for twenty, and he won’t pick the bodies up himself.”
“But,” RiffRaff said, “if he doesn’t pick up the bodies, who will?”
Granfer shook his head. “I don’t know. They’re talking about leaving the empty coffins outside the infected houses, and letting the sick bury the dead.”
“But that’s barbaric,” Ailyth cried.
“Yet understandable,” Ulfred joined in, still pulling the ropes. “The living want to stay that way. It’s human nature.”
“You’re not afraid,” Ailyth said.
Ulfred smiled sadly. “Yes, I am afraid,” he said, and fell silent.
That night, Ailyth heard a commotion in the streets, and looked out to see two men, with a coffin hoisted up on their shoulders, running towards the graveyard. As they slowed, Ailyth could see that a grave had already been dug, and they dropped the coffin into it as though it were on fire, before speeding off into the night again. The priest read a few words and then, with Ulfred’s help, began to cover the coffin with earth themselves. Eoif wasn’t there, and Ailyth grew worried, especially when she found the next day that nobody had seen her for a while.
Over the next few days, it felt to Ailyth like the bells never stopped ringing as more and more deaths were announced each day. One time, when looking for Eoif, a mother ran out of a house, clutching the misshapen soul that was once her child, contorted in agony.
“My little lambie,” she cried, reminding Ailyth of what Heloise used to call her. “Look what it’s done to my little lambie.”
Ailyth was human. She had seen the plague now rage over several manors and villages, yet still the sight of a small child in the final stages of her life made her stomach heave and her eyes water for pity of it all. A little child, that hadn’t had a life at all.
The atmosphere soon began to change. There were still those who would not come out of their homes, but a strange type of hedonism was being born. Someone had scrawled on the sides of the tavern ‘Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die,” and that seem to be the most popular attitude. Each evening the sounds of crashing, vomiting and laughter filled the manor; a strange noise at such a time and, although Ailyth was appalled, she couldn’t blame people for trying to enjoy what could be the last moments of their lives. If she hadn’t had such a task to do, she would have done the same.
By Michaelmas, a feast celebrated in earnest by the revellers and painfully ignored by the grieving, the graveyard was full, the wood had run out and there was nowhere left to put the dead. A strange madness and disorder was running the manor, as people started putting only themselves and those they loved first.
Late one evening, Ailyth and RiffRaff were walking down the main road which divided Crediton and began to gag. A putrid smell was overpowering them and rubbing its stench in their pores.
“What’s died?” RiffRaff asked, without thinking.
“Crediton,” Ailyth replied, watching the revellers walk past with their noses buried in bunches of strong-smelling flowers. “The dead are being left in the houses to rot. No one will pick them up anymore. This place is festering in the heat.”
There had been ten deaths that day; the most in any one morning, and the bodies still lay where they’d fallen; two of them in the streets.
They walked towards a house which had once house a family of eight, and saw two men nailing the doors and the windows shut.
“What’s going on?” she asked cautiously.
“Boarding up the houses,” one man replied, a bunch of flowers tied to his face. “Plague’s been here. We’re on orders to board up every place that’s housed the sick, stop it spreading.”
“What about the survivors?”
The other man laughed. “There ain’t many of them,” he said. “Once the plague’s in, yer carried out feet first.”
Ailyth and RiffRaff began walking away, unnerved by what they were seeing. They were nailing the dead up in these buildings, she knew that. The houses were becoming tombs.
Suddenly, a third man appeared carrying a lighted torch, and he threw it at the thatch. In seconds, the building was aflame, and Ailyth ran forward aghast.
“You can’t burn the bodies!” she said. “That’s a terrible sin.”
“Well, we can’t bury them, can we?” he replied, and they stood back to watch their work.
Ailyth shuddered, but what she heard next made all of her thoughts for the dead pale into insignificance. There was a cough, and it came from inside the house.
“There are people in there!” she cried.
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