World Without End

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 afterwards. 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 si

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 afterwards.

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 nu

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 ci

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.

She worked until Matins on Sunday morning, then went to sleep for a couple of hours. When she got up, she went to see Merthin.

He was now living in the grandest of the houses he had built on Leper Island. It was on the south shore, and stood in a broad garden newly planted with apple and pear trees. He had hired a middle-aged couple to take care of Lolla and maintain the place. Their names were Arnaud and Emily, but they called one another Arn and Em. Caris found Em in the kitchen, and was directed to the garden.

Merthin was showing Lolla how her name was written, using a pointed stick to form the letters in a patch of bare earth, and he made her laugh by drawing a face in the ‘o’. She was four years old, a pretty girl with olive skin and brown eyes.

Watching them, Caris suffered a pang of regret. She had been sleeping with Merthin for almost half a year. She did not want to have a baby, for it would mean the end of all her ambitions; yet a part of her was sorry that she had not become pregnant. She was torn, which was probably why she had taken the risk. But it had not happened. She wondered whether she had lost the ability to conceive. Perhaps the potion Mattie Wise had given her to abort her pregnancy a decade ago had harmed her womb in some way. As always, she wished she knew more about the body and its ills.

Merthin kissed her and they walked around the grounds, with Lolla ru

“Good idea,” Merthin said. “The whole performance is just another money-maker for Murdo.”

“And Philemon. He was holding the bowl. Will you talk to the parish guild?”

“Of course.”

As acting prior, Caris was in the position of lord of the manor, and she could theoretically have ba