Company of Liars (23 page)

‘That part of the swan-prince is true. I left because I couldn't bear to see the guilt in her eyes, because I was the cause. And I left because I didn't want to be cared for, like a crippled bird.’

‘We leave as much to get away from where we are, as to find something we seek.’

‘You too?’ He glanced up at my empty eye socket.

‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘I know what it is to be looked at with pity. I had my reasons to leave. I know why you left, but I'm curious about what you seek.’

‘My other wing, of course. Do you think I want to go through life with one arm and one wing?’

‘Maybe not, but why not an arm in place of the wing? If you had two arms you would be wholly a man.’

‘You think two arms make you a man?’

‘Do two wings make you a bird?’

He smiled sadly. ‘With two wings you can fly.’

All Souls' Night is a time when all good Christian folk are either safely abed with the covers pulled tightly over their heads or piously in church sheltering under the saints and their prayers. For they say that it is the night when, between sunset and sunrise, the gates of purgatory are flung open, the dead creep forth as toads or cats, owls or bats to torment those who have forgotten or neglected them.

On All Souls' Night, when I was a child, people used to leave garlands, food and ale on the graves of their relatives to convince them that they were not neglected. But the dead were not fooled by one day's show of remembrance; they came anyway, creeping into houses, scratching at walls, rattling at shutters. We children curled up together in our beds, pretending to one another that we feared nothing, but quaking under our covers as we listened to every creak and groan, every screech and howl of that long night, thankful for the comfort of the warm and living bodies of our siblings pressed tightly beside us. But adults must face their ghosts and we, like the rest of the travellers in the monastery guest hall, braved the cold night to join the monks in their prayers for their dead and ours, and for the dead who belonged to no one.

‘Convertere, anima mea, in requiem tuam
… Turn, O my soul, into thy rest…’

Beside me, Rodrigo sighed and crossed himself, mouthing the words with the monks, settling into the old familiar service as a dog settles down by a warm fire. Cygnus, his
long sharp nose prominently silhouetted in the candlelight, stared fixedly at the floor, as if he feared to meet the eyes of either the living or the dead. Adela, her arm around Narigorm's shoulder, gazed down at her then up at Osmond, as if they were already a family. Would they take Narigorm in, when they finally found a place to settle, I wondered. They both seemed fond of the child, and already treated her as a niece if not a daughter, but would that change when their own baby was born? I suspected Narigorm would not take kindly to being displaced in their affections.

In front of us, Zophiel, his back rigid, stared straight ahead. It was hard to know if he prayed or not. And if he prayed for the dead, whom did he name? A wife? A child? I had never asked if he had such in his life. It was hard to imagine him being civil to any woman long enough to ask her to wed him, but perhaps in his youth he had been a different man, a kind and gentle man, with romance in his soul. And maybe it was a faithless wife who had soured him against her kind. Or maybe not. I don't think any man could change that much. Thinking of women, I realized that Pleasance was nowhere to be seen in the church. I was surprised by her absence; I would have taken her to be a devout woman. Jofre's absence, on the other hand, was no surprise.

The church was unusually dark that night, to remind those present of the darkness of the grave that awaits us all. An open empty coffin had been set upon the bier and placed before the rood screen, a candle at each corner, ready and waiting for the next corpse. And there would be one, if not today, then tomorrow. Death is the only certainty in life, it reminded us.

Every inch of the church walls and pillars had been painted with scenes from the Bible and the lives of the
saints. By day the reds and blues, greens and gold of the paintings glowed more vibrant than a newly stitched tapestry. But the candles for this service had been carefully placed to illuminate, not the gold of the saints' haloes or the full round breasts of the Virgin, but the red flames which leaped between the teeth of the mouth of hell, where sinners held up their arms, beseeching in vain for mercy, while the two-faced demons prodded them down. Prayers were too late for those condemned to hell, but not for those in purgatory. As the walls taught us, they might yet be released.

Beneath the painting there were offerings left by the faithful – jewelled necklaces, pins, brooches and rings, silver crucifixes and jars containing costly spices – bargains struck between the faithful and the Church, goods to barter for the prayers of St Odilo who had insisted that all the Cluny monks should devote one day a year to pray for the dead in purgatory in addition to their regular prayers for the departed.

The monks in procession halted before the painting. In the gloom of the church, they were faceless under their deep hoods.

‘Quia eripuit animam meam de morte
… For he has delivered my soul from death…’

Would God deliver the monks? Would he spare the monasteries? If the rumours were true, he had not spared the priests. But if pestilence also crept into the monasteries, who would be left to pray for the dead? And what of those who lay unshriven and unnamed in mass graves – would they ever be released from purgatory, if there was no one left to name them?

The monks filed out of the church, two by two, fat candles in their hands shielded by caps of horn against the wind which burst into the church as soon as the great
door was opened. We followed in a solemn procession, like mourners after a coffin. The service was not yet over; there were the corpses of the monks buried in the orchard graveyard to be blessed and sprinkled with holy water.

Outside it was cold and dark. The rain had eased, but the wind had strengthened to make up for it. It tore at our clothes and bent the branches of the yews until they moaned like those souls in purgatory. We stood in a huddle under the bare branches of the fruit trees, trying to shelter behind one another from the biting wet wind, as the monks processed from grave to grave, stopping to flick water from the hyssop on each one. But little of the holy water reached the mounds for it was snatched away by the wind as soon as it was flung.

‘Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam
… Direct, O Lord, my God, my way in your sight…’

A high-pitched giggle suddenly erupted from the far side of the graveyard. The monks faltered in their chanting and turned in the direction of the sound. We all strained our ears to listen, but could hear nothing except for the groaning trees and the howling wind. The monks resumed their chanting, but then another shriek rang out. There was no ignoring this.

The prior stepped forward, raising his candle, and called out in a voice that was none too steady, ‘Who's there? Come out and show yourselves, whoever you are.’

But the candle flame did not penetrate more than a few feet into the darkness.

‘Come out, I say. I command you in the name of…’

But he got no further for three dark figures rose up out of the ground and lurched forward.

Several people in the crowd screamed and tried to scramble over the wall of the graveyard. Even the monks
backed away, crossing themselves, but the prior was made of sterner stuff. He stood his ground and, thrusting his crucifix out before him, gabbled,
‘Libera nos a malo.
Deliver us from evil,’ over and over again as the figures stumbled towards him.

Then, as the candlelight caught them, we saw what the creatures were; they were human and very much alive. Two of them I did not recognize, but I could tell from their garb that one was a young novice, the other a slightly older lay brother. There was no mistaking the third; it was Jofre. And he, like his two companions, was as drunk as a lord. He let go of his new friends and, stumbling to the nearest grave, raised his flagon. He made an exaggerated bow.

‘Here, Broth… Brother Bones, you don't want water, do you? Had… had quite enough of that already. Have some wine, my good man.’ He dribbled some wine on to the grave. ‘That'll put hairs on your chest, no, wait… you don't have a chest,’ he giggled. ‘And here's some for all your little w… worms and maggots.’

He tipped the remains of his flagon on to the grave. Then he swayed sideways, tripped over the mound and fell straight into the arms of the prior, on whose portly chest he vomited, copiously.

12. Retribution

We were fortunate that they did not put us out of their gates that night, though it was not mercy which spared us a night on the road, but the determination of the prior and novice master to keep Jofre within their walls long enough to discover every detail of the outrage. It was plain that they would get no sense out of any of the three lads until they had sobered up and only a night's sleep would bring about that transformation.

The monks dragged the lay brother and novice off to spend a less than comfortable night on the hard, cold boards of the penitents' cells where they would be locked up until their real punishment was determined. But they allowed us to carry Jofre to the stables to spend the night on the floor in the straw where he could do least damage if he vomited again. Rodrigo, almost white with fury, shouted and railed at him all the way. Cygnus, the only person at that moment who seemed to feel any sympathy for the boy, tried to persuade Rodrigo to take himself off to bed, telling him that he would keep an eye on Jofre and see that he didn't choke in the night.

Zophiel turned on him furiously. ‘Let him choke; it would do us all a favour. Don't you realize that he's wrecked any
chance of us passing through here unnoticed? Anyone who comes looking for you now is bound to find you; they'll remember us for years thanks to him. That lout is a liability to us all. This is the second time he has lost us our lodgings, for the monastery certainly won't be extending their hospitality to us after tomorrow.’

Rodrigo looked stricken, as though he had only just realized what the night's events might mean for Cygnus.

‘Cygnus, I do not know how to apologize to you… to all of you.’ He grabbed the comatose Jofre by the shoulders and shook him.
‘I denti di Dio!
Why do you do this? You swore to me after –’

‘You're wasting your breath,’ Zophiel said impatiently. ‘Cygnus is right for once; let him sleep it off and deal with him tomorrow when he's sober. But when you do, Rodrigo, make sure you deliver a lesson he won't forget. He has gone too far this time and you can't go on ignoring it. As his master, you're responsible for him. If he continues to behave like this, he'll find himself stretching a rope before long and if he does end up on the gallows, you will be to blame.’

The following morning Jofre was roused none too gently from his stable stall at first light. He looked pale and complained of a headache and feeling queasy, but he was not suffering nearly as much as Zophiel would have liked, nor as much as his two puffy-eyed drinking companions who, unlike Jofre, were not used to an excess of wine. They were dragged out of their cells holding their heads and wincing at the slightest sound.

The story, when it was finally wrung out of the three of them, did not exonerate any as the innocent party. It seemed that Jofre had got into conversation with the young lay brother and a couple of novices. Which of them proposed the game of dice was never determined, they all blamed one
another, but dice was played. Since the novices had nothing to bet against Jofre's money, they'd appropriated some wine from the stores in lieu of a stake. Only a small quantity at first, nothing that would be missed, and certainly not enough to get them drunk. But what they did drink was enough to loosen their inhibitions and it wasn't long before the gambling stakes increased and more wine was stolen and consumed. On hearing the monastery bell rung for the All Souls' service, one of the two novices, who had drunk rather less than his companions, wisely withdrew from the game, and taking advantage of the darkened church, slipped into the service by a side door to join the back of the procession, hoping his earlier absence would go unnoticed. But the others continued drinking and playing, too inebriated by this time to heed the warning of the bell.

After they had questioned the mutinous Jofre, the prior and novice master withdrew to seek out the second of the two novices who had not yet been apprehended and was doubtless on his knees somewhere praying more earnestly than he had ever done in his life that his identity would not be revealed. We for our part set about packing up to leave.

In all probability the lay brother would be locked up in the penitents? cell and made to suffer for a week or so before being kicked out of the monastery. He would undoubtedly bear the hardest punishment in the long run, for work and shelter were hard to find. As for the novices, they would be likely to face a month or more of severe penances and would consider themselves fortunate if they were permitted to eat anything but hard bread for weeks; certainly they'd tasted their last drop of wine for a good while.