World Without End (117 page)

The singing was still ragged. The monks were far too excited to adopt the proper attitude. All the same, they were back in their places and following their routine. Godwyn had prevailed.

As it was in the beginning
Is now
And ever shall be
World without end
Amen.

'Amen,' Godwyn repeated.

One of the monks sneezed.

65

Soon after Godwyn fled, Elfric died of the plague.

Caris was sorry for Alice, his widow; but aside from that she could hardly help rejoicing that he was gone. He had bullied the weak and toadied to the strong, and the lies he had told at her trial almost got her hanged. The world was a better place without him. Even his building business would be better off run by his son-in-law, Harold Mason.

The parish guild elected Merthin as alderman in Elfric's place. Merthin said it was like being made captain of a sinking ship.

As the deaths went on and on, and people buried their relatives. neighbors, friends, customers, and employees, the constant horror seemed to brutalize many of them, until no violence or cruelty seemed shocking. People who thought they were about to die lost all restraint and followed their impulses regardless of the consequences.

Together, Merthin and Caris struggled to preserve something like normal life in Kingsbridge. The orphanage was the most successful part of Caris's program. The children were grateful for the security of the nunnery, after the ordeal of losing their parents to the plague. Taking care of them, and teaching them to read and sing hymns, brought out long-suppressed maternal instincts in some of the nuns. There was plenty of food, with fewer people competing for the winter stores. And Kingsbridge Priory was full of the sound of children.

In the town things were more difficult. There continued to be violent quarrels over the property of the dead. People just walked into empty houses and picked up whatever took their fancy. Children who had inherited money, or a warehouse full of cloth or corn, were sometimes adopted by unscrupulous neighbors greedy to get their hands on the legacy. The prospect of something for nothing brought out the worst in people, Caris thought despairingly.

Caris and Merthin were only partly successful against the decline in public behavior. Caris was disappointed with the results of John Constable's crackdown on drunkenness. The large numbers of new widows and widowers seemed frantic to find partners, and it was not unusual to see middle-aged people in a passionate embrace in a tavern or even a doorway. Caris had no great objection to this sort of thing in itself, but she found that the combination of drunkenness and public licentiousness often led to fighting. However, Merthin and the parish guild were unable to stop it.

Just at the moment when the townspeople needed their spines stiffened, the flight of the monks had the opposite effect. It demoralized everyone. God's representatives had left: the Almighty had abandoned the town. Some said that the relics of the saint had always brought good fortune, and now that the bones had gone their luck had run out. The lack of precious crucifixes and candlesticks at the Sunday services was a weekly reminder that Kingsbridge was considered doomed. So why not get drunk and fornicate in the street?

Out of a population of about seven thousand, Kingsbridge had lost at least a thousand by mid-January. Other towns were similar. Despite the masks Caris had invented, the death toll was higher among the nuns, no doubt because they were continually in contact with plague victims. There had been thirty-five nuns, and now there were twenty. But they heard of places where almost every monk or nun had died, leaving a handful, or sometimes just one, to carry on the work; so they counted themselves fortunate. Meanwhile, Caris had shortened the period of novitiate and intensified the training so that she would have more help in the hospital.

Merthin hired the barman from the Holly Bush and put him in charge of the Bell. He also took on a sensible seventeen-year-old girl called Martina to nursemaid Lolla.

Then the plague seemed to die down. Having buried a hundred people a week in the run up to Christmas, Caris found that the number dropped to fifty in January, then twenty in February. She allowed herself to hope that the nightmare might be coming to an end.

One of the unlucky people to fall ill during this period was a dark-haired man in his thirties who might once have been good-looking. He was a visitor to the town. 'I thought I had a cold yesterday,' he said when he came through the door. 'But now I've got this nosebleed that won't stop.' He was holding a bloody rag to his nostrils.

'I'll find you somewhere to lie down,' she said through her linen mask.

'It's the plague, isn't it?' he said, and she was surprised to hear calm resignation in his voice in place of the usual panic. 'Can you do anything to cure it?'

'We can make you comfortable, and we can pray for you.'

'That won't do any good. Even you don't believe in it, I can tell.'

She was shocked by how easily he had read her heart. 'You don't know what you're saying,' she protested weakly. 'I'm a nun, I must believe it.'

'You can tell me the truth. How soon will I die?'

She looked hard at him. He was smiling at her, a charming smile that she guessed had melted a few female hearts. 'Why aren't you frightened?' she said. 'Everyone else is.'

'I don't believe what I'm told by priests.' He looked at her shrewdly. 'And I have a suspicion that you don't either.'

She was not about to have this discussion with a stranger, no matter how charming. 'Almost everyone who falls ill with the plague dies within three to five days,' she said bluntly. 'A few survive, no one knows why.'

He took it well. 'As I thought.'

'You can lie down here.'

He gave her the bad-boy grin again. 'Will it do me any good?'

'If you don't lie down soon, you'll fall down.'

'All right.' He lay on the palliasse she indicated.

She gave him a blanket. 'What's your name?'

'Tam.'

She studied his face. Despite his charm, she sensed a streak of cruelty. He might seduce women, she thought, but if that failed he would rape them. His skin was weathered by outdoor living, and he had the red nose of a drinker. His clothes were costly but dirty. 'I know who you are,' she said. 'Aren't you afraid you'll be punished for your sins?'

'If I believed that, I wouldn't have committed them. Are
you
afraid you'll burn in Hell?'

It was a question she normally sidestepped, but she felt that this dying outlaw deserved a true answer. 'I believe that what I do becomes part of me,' she said. 'When I'm brave and strong, and care for children and the sick and the poor, I become a better person. And when I'm cruel, or cowardly, or tell lies, or get drunk, I turn into someone less worthy, and I can't respect myself. That's the divine retribution I believe in.'

He looked at her thoughtfully. 'I wish I'd met you twenty years ago.'

She made a deprecatory noise. 'I would have been twelve.'

He raised an eyebrow suggestively.

That was enough, she decided. He was beginning to flirt - and she was beginning to enjoy it. She turned away.

'You're a brave woman to do this work,' he said. 'It will probably kill you.'

'I know,' she said, turning to face him again. 'But this is my destiny. I can't run away from people who need me.'

'Your prior doesn't seem to think that way.'

'He's vanished.'

'People can't vanish.'

'I mean, no one knows where Prior Godwyn and the monks have gone.'

'I do,' said Tam.

The weather at the end of February was sunny and mild. Caris left Kingsbridge on a dun pony, heading for St.-John-in-the-Forest. Merthin went with her, riding a black cob. Normally, eyebrows would have been raised by a nun going on a journey accompanied only by a man, but these were strange times.

The danger from outlaws had receded. Many had fallen victim to the plague, Tam Hiding had told her himself before he died. Also, the sudden drop in population had brought about a countrywide surplus of food, wine, and clothing - all the things outlaws normally stole. Those outlaws who survived the plague could walk into ghost towns and abandoned villages and take whatever they wanted.

Caris had at first felt frustrated to learn that Godwyn was no farther than two days' journey from Kingsbridge. She had imagined him gone to a place so distant that he would never return. However, she was glad of the chance to retrieve the priory's money and valuables and, in particular, the nunnery's charters, so vital whenever there was a dispute about property or rights.

When and if she was able to confront Godwyn, she would demand the return of the priory's property, in the name of the bishop. She had a letter from Henri to back her up. If Godwyn still refused, that would prove beyond doubt that he was stealing it rather than keeping it safe. The bishop could then take legal action to get it back - or simply arrive at the cell with a force of men-at-arms.

Although disappointed that Godwyn was not permanently out of her life, Caris relished the prospect of confronting him with his cowardice and dishonesty.

As she rode away from the town she recalled that her last long journey had been to France, with Mair - a real adventure in every way. She felt bereft when she thought of Mair. Of all those who had died of the plague, she missed Mair the most: her beautiful face, her kind heart, her love.

But it was a joy to have Merthin to herself for two whole days. Following the road through the forest, side by side on their horses, they talked continuously, about anything that sprang to mind, just as they had when they were adolescents.

Merthin was as full of bright ideas as ever. Despite the plague, he was building shops and taverns on Leper Island, and he told her he planned to demolish the tavern he had inherited from Bessie Bell and rebuild it twice as big.

Caris guessed that he and Bessie had been lovers - why else would she have left her property to him? But Caris had only herself to blame. She was the one Merthin really wanted, and Bessie had been second best. Both women had known that. All the same, Caris felt jealous and angry when she thought of Merthin in bed with that plump barmaid.

They stopped at noon and rested by a stream. They ate bread, cheese, and apples, the food that all but the wealthiest travelers carried. They gave the horses some grain: grazing was not enough for a mount that had to carry a man or woman all day. When they had eaten, they lay in the sun for a few minutes, but the ground was too cold and damp for sleep, and they soon roused themselves and moved on.

They quickly slipped back into the affectionate intimacy of their youth. Merthin had always been able to make her laugh, and she needed cheering up, with people dying every day in the hospital. She soon forgot to be angry about Bessie.

They were taking a route that had been followed by Kingsbridge monks for hundreds of years, and they stopped for the night at the usual halfway point, the Red Cow Tavern in the small town of Lordsborough. They had roast beef and strong ale for supper.

By this time, Caris was aching for him. The last ten years seemed to have vanished from memory, and she longed to take him in her arms and make love to him the way they used to. But it was not to be. The Red Cow had two bedrooms, one for men and one for women - which was no doubt why it had always been the choice of the monks. Caris and Merthin parted company on the landing, and Caris lay awake, listening to the snores of a knight's wife and the wheezing of a spice-seller, touching herself and wishing the hand between her thighs was Merthin's.

She woke up tired and dispirited, and ate her breakfast porridge mechanically. But Merthin was so happy to be with her that her mood soon lifted. By the time they rode away from Lordsborough, they were talking and laughing as merrily as yesterday.

The second day's journey was through dense woodland, and they saw no other travelers all morning. Their conversation became more personal. She learned more about his time in Florence: how he had met Silvia, and what kind of person she was. Caris wanted to ask: What was it like to make love to her? Was she different from me? How? But she held back, feeling that such questions would trespass on Silvia's privacy, even though Silvia was dead. Anyway, she could guess a lot from Merthin's tone of voice. He had been happy in bed with Silvia, she sensed, even if the relationship had not been as intensely passionate as his with Caris.

The unaccustomed hours on horseback were making her sore, so she was relieved to stop for dinner and get off the pony. When they had eaten, they sat on the ground with their backs to a broad tree trunk, to rest and let their food go down before resuming the journey.

Caris was thinking about Godwyn, and wondering what she would find at St.-John-in-the-Forest, when suddenly she realized that she and Merthin were about to make love. She could not have explained how she knew - they were not even touching - but she had no doubt. She turned to look at him and saw that he sensed it, too. He smiled at her ruefully, and in his eyes she saw ten years of hope and regrets, pain and tears.

He took her hand and kissed her palm, then he put his lips to the soft inside of her wrist, and closed his eyes. 'I can feel your pulse,' he said quietly.

'You can't tell much from the pulse,' she breathed. 'You'll have to give me a thorough examination.'

He kissed her forehead, and her eyelids, and her nose. 'I hope you won't be embarrassed by my seeing your naked body.'

'Don't fret - I'm not taking my clothes off in this weather.'

They both giggled.

He said: 'Perhaps you would be kind enough to lift the skirt of your robe, so that I may proceed with the checkup.'

She reached down and took hold of the hem of her dress. She was wearing hose that came up to her knees. She lifted her dress slowly, revealing her ankles, her shins, her knees, and then the white skin of her thighs. She was feeling playful, but in the back of her mind she wondered if he could detect the changes wrought in her body by the last ten years. She had got thinner, yet at the same time her bottom had spread. Her skin was a little less supple and smooth than it had been. Her breasts were not as firm and upright. What would he think? She suppressed the worry and played the game. 'Is that sufficient, for medical purposes?'