How pure the air was, far above the stench of the city streets. With only the grey stones for company, and the open sky, he lay there comfortably, feeling safer than he had done for a week, and fell asleep.
He stayed in the tower all the next day. It was strange how much of the life of the city he could see from up there. He noticed that in the city, the dead were being brought out and carried away soon after dawn; three corpses were brought out of houses in the close that morning. He watched a dispute between the carriers and a junior clergyman about how much they should be paid. He could not hear their words, but it was clear what was being said. The carriers offered to leave the canon’s body where it was. Then they were paid. He could see everyone who came in and out of the close; he saw the carts rolling on their dismal journey to the city gates. Several times he watched Adam in his broad belt, walking jauntily back and forth into the town, and laughed aloud with pleasure at the sight. That night, once again, he slept comfortably under the stars.
But the next morning he received an unpleasant shock. He had decided to pay another visit to the sheep house, and so that he could get safely clear of the city before the contagious corpses were brought out, he had started to descend from the tower a little before dawn.
He fumbled his way down the endless spiral tunnel of the stairs, locking the door carefully behind him. As he emerged into the cathedral however, he saw a faint light flickering in the shadows, and out of curiosity, he went towards it. He soon wished he had not.
The little family must have sneaked into the cathedral during the night. They were standing now, five of them, with long candles in their hands by the tomb of Bishop Osmund. Obviously they had carried their father in with them; for now they had laid him, stripped entirely naked, on the tomb.
There had been many claims of miraculous cures from people touching or standing near the revered bishop’s tomb. The priests, still hoping that one day the pope would be persuaded to canonise Osmund, did nothing to discourage these claims. Now silently, hopefully, a middle-aged woman and her two sons and two daughters gazed at the wretched figure before them.
It was an eerie and terrible sight. He was in the last stages of the disease. The buboes had spread all over his chest, and the poor fellow, hardly knowing what was happening, was shaking uncontrollably on the cool, hard slab.
Nicholas turned quickly and hurried away. He continued to shiver until he was well out of the city.
At the sheep house, the family appeared calm. He offered to bring them more food, but they refused.
“We have enough grain,” Agnes told him. “That and water – it’s all we need.”
But the strain of their isolation was obviously taking its toll.
John seemed sullen, though after his description of what was taking place below, he showed no inclination to move from their sanctuary. The children were silent and withdrawn. Agnes too looked tired.
After standing for several minutes and giving them what words of encouragement he could from outside the circle of stones, he left them.
He was installed in the tower again early that evening with a fresh supply of food when the extraordinary movements in the cathedral’s structure began.
At first he thought he must have been mistaken – the whole thing just a trick of the eye.
There was a light, refreshing breeze that was sending small white clouds drifting across the evening sky. It was just as he lay back and watched them pass overhead, that it suddenly seemed to him that the top of the spire had moved.
It must have been the motion of the clouds. He waited until the sky was clear again and looked up once more. There was the cross, high above.
And again it moved.
Not very much, to be sure. He sat up. But as he did so, he felt the building below him shift, so that he fell back against the edge of the parapet. Then he sat very still. A feeling of sickness and panic came over him. Was the cathedral settling on its foundations yet again? Could it be that, after all, the bending pillars below were at last going to break and the whole mighty structure come tumbling down in a colossal ruin? He stared up at the spire again, in dread.
He started to get to his feet. And now he could feel the whole structure shifting – so much that he had to steady himself. A bead of perspiration broke out on his brow, which suddenly felt very hot. Glancing up he saw with horror that the spire was swaying wildly; the stone floor under his feet was tilting. Dear God, the cathedral was coming down! The floor tilted violently as he fell face down upon it.
Several minutes later, he came to. Strangely, the spire, the parapet, the masonry were all in place. In the west, the sky was glowing a deep magenta red and in the sky above, the first stars were starting to appear.
He put his hand to his forehead. It was burning. A momentary giddiness and nausea enveloped him.
Now he realised. The cathedral had not moved at all.
He was shaken by several spasms of trembling that night. In the bright starlight, he found that his eyes were swimming. Several times not only the spire but the constellations: Orion, Cassiopeia, the Bear, joined in a wild dance around the sky after which, each time, he was sick.
In the morning, he felt the boils in his armpits.
At dawn he prayed:
“Mother of God, save your servant.”
He had served the cathedral all his life. They said that people could survive the buboes. Surely the Blessed Virgin would protect him.
He did not try to move from where he was; even if he had wanted to, he did not think he could have made it down the deep spiral stairs. He tried to drink only a little ale at a time, realising that he might need to conserve his supply of liquid.
By the afternoon the agonising pains had spread to his groin as well. He wanted to weep, but his body refused him even that relief.
He spent another night alone, while the plague continued remorselessly to take over his body.
By the following dawn, he knew he would not survive. He remembered the wretched man he had seen in his last extremities, stretched on the tomb below, and the grotesque, rotting corpses he had seen carried through the streets. He had no wish to be reduced to that final, loathsome state.
Painfully he dragged himself to the edge of the parapet. The city was gradually stirring below.
He gazed out, over the sweeping ridges to the north, and as he did so, he was vaguely aware of a tiny stone face, in a niche in the masonry a few feet to his right, gazing in the same direction.
For an hour he remained there. Three times he was forced by the pain to cry out.
Then he saw the figure of Adam in his broad belt walking jauntily through the close. He watched him until he had gone out, past the belfry and on through the gate into the town beyond.
Only when he could see the strange fellow no longer did he drag himself to the parapet and launch himself, with a huge effort, as far out into the air as he could go.
Gilbert de Godefroi forgot entirely about the Mason family and the sheep house. Half of Avonsford had died.
He himself sat, day after day, in the hall of the old manor. Often he would pick up the poem of Sir Orfeo and read it to himself while his eyes filled with tears as he thought of his own vanished wife.
Each day he waited, too, for news of his son.
For two weeks, none came.
Agnes Mason and the family remained on the high ground for a total of six weeks.
For Agnes, the week after Nicholas’s last visit was the worst.
On the second day when he did not appear, all the family knew what it must mean. John said nothing, but she knew what he was thinking – she had been thinking the same thought herself. For each time he appeared, still healthy, after she first turned him away she had known with greater certainty: he was not contagious when I refused to let him in – if he catches the plague now, it will be my fault. Now, day after day, she prayed that he would come again, and each day, John’s sullen silence was worse than a hundred accusations.
There was another problem too. She had chosen the deserted spot so well that no one ever came there, and as the weeks passed it was impossible to know whether it was safe to leave or not.
A month passed. Their food ran low; worse, the weather was so dry that the dew pond became almost empty, with only a small chalky puddle at the centre.
“One more day and we shall have to leave,” John stated, and she could not deny it.
But that night it rained, and the next morning the whole family walked over to the dew pond and found a fresh supply of clear, clean water.
They held out for two more weeks, living off grain and water. A kind of lethargy descended upon them. They walked slowly, like people in a dream. Each day the bare ground around the circle of stones was empty and there was nothing to do but watch the clouds.
It was a morning in mid-September when, at last, Agnes turned to John and stated:
“I can’t go on any more.”
It was her first and only sign of weakness. When she said it, she wanted to break down and cry. But she could not.
An hour later, taking an almost empty cart with them, the bedraggled little party slowly made their way across to the edge of the valley.
And when they came down into Avonsford, they discovered that in their absence, the world had changed.
1382
When Edward Wilson looked back, he could not deny that it was old Walter who had changed the family’s destiny.
How fortune’s wheel had turned: what a tale of triumph it was. And of vengeance.
What a pair they had been.
But it was Walter who had seen his family’s moment in history. Like a sailor sensing the turning of the tide, he had known exactly when and how to move; he had seized his opportunity and driven them forward.
For the Wilson family, the critical moment was the Black Death.
He was fifteen when the plague arrived. When young Peter suddenly fell sick he and his other brothers and sisters were ordered out of the house. They stayed in Grovely Wood, sleeping out, but returning periodically to the cottage to collect scraps of food. Then the rest of the family went down, one by one: his mother, his brothers and sisters – some with the disease in the lungs, others with the buboes, until only he and his father and his brother Elias – a half-wit but with the strength of an ox – were left. Elias stayed at the cottage then, while he remained in the wood. And finally, even Walter succumbed. He saw the swellings under his father’s arms; then he fled.
Three weeks he stayed in Grovely Wood, and lived well enough, for the Forest Laws were temporarily forgotten. He set snares for a variety of small animals; he even killed a young deer. And no one came by to trouble him. Several times, he wandered towards one of the nearby villages, watching cautiously from a vantage point; but as he saw the people there carrying out their dead for burial, he retreated back into the safety of the wood. Often he considered returning to Shockley farm but the terrible memory of his family dying there made him tremble and he avoided the place.
And then he saw his father.
It was early one morning. Walter was moving slowly, limping up the slope from the direction of Shockley, one foot dragging in the newly fallen leaves so that he made an uneven rustling sound as he moved that was strangely frightening. His face was distorted with pain and, even from fifty yards off, Edward could see that the buboes had spread to his neck. Obviously he must be dying, but what had made him go into the woods to do so the boy could not guess. He did not wait to find out, but fled. As he did so, he heard his father cursing behind him.
He did not go back to the spot but spent the day roaming around the edge of the high ground before returning to another part of the wood to sleep.
Darkness had fallen and he was just dozing when he felt the long thin hand close over his throat. He tried to scream, but the steely grip prevented him. He knew it was his father.
“Fool,” Walter’s voice hissed, close by his ear. He smelt his father’s breath. For some reason it smelt of fish.
He let his body relax. Perhaps if he could get his father off guard, he could suddenly slip out of his grip. But the steely hand only tightened.
“Want to slip away? Think I’m going to give you the plague?”
Of course he did. He heard Walter laugh softly.
“Still afraid of me?” Walter seemed pleased at the thought. All his family had been afraid of him.
Then Edward felt his other hand being taken and, though he fought with all his strength, it was pulled slowly but inexorably towards his father’s face. Now Walter was pressing it against something – a small, hard bump.
“That’s my neck,” he hissed. Edward groaned as his hand was shifted again, and jammed against something hairy this time where there was another hard bump. “Armpit,” Walter whispered. “I had the plague. Didn’t kill me though. Gone now; you won’t catch it.” He released Edward’s throat, but kept a hold on his arm. “You come with me,” he muttered. “Work to do.”