Sylvia (14 page)

I ignored this churlish observation and grinned at his cleverness in putting both the Jew and the Syrian together to emphasise a peasant's preoccupation with money. ‘I will guard the purse we will from now on set aside for the poor and you shall keep the one that lets us eat.'

He looked at me first puzzled, then greatly alarmed. ‘Purse for the poor? Is it not just this once we give alms to them?'

‘You said yourself, we will be a goodly combination and make a pretty sum. From now on we will share our good fortune, half of all we earn we shall give to the less fortunate.'

If you think this showed some good in my character, then that was not how I saw it at the time. While I cared somewhat for the poor, for I was to be counted among them myself, in my mind I had formed a plan and was about to put a proposition to Almighty God. Later, when I had the time to pray in earnest, I would phrase it more carefully, but what it was, was this: if God had created me a peasant and a woman with an immutable character and therefore by divine design unable to learn to read and write Latin, then only He, in His infinite mercy, could change the preordained circumstances of my birth. If I gave alms to God's poor, then in return, I would be in a better position to ask Him to reconsider my destiny and to grant me the gift of learning.

In later years I would blush to think that I possessed such effrontery and dared to think that I might make a bargain with the Almighty. But the young do not see these things as cut and dried and all things become possible when we have faith and hope and act in ignorance of the impossible. I did, as I recall, allow God the right to refuse me. I decided it would be a test. If, despite my efforts, I proved unable to grasp the task of formal learning, then it would be God's indication that He had not changed His mind and that I was predestined to be ignorant. I told myself I would forever after accept His will and the lot in life chosen for me.

‘Then you will teach me the meaning of the Latin words in the mass?'

Reinhardt nodded reluctantly. I then asked shyly and with my eyes lowered, for I had asserted myself overmuch to this point and it was time to assume a maidenly modesty so he might think himself back as the commanding male, ‘If I learn these well, can we purchase a slate and stylus and then, if God permits, will you teach me more of Latin?'

‘All I know myself,' he promised, his lovely brown eyes the picture of sincerity. But then he added a cautionary note that indicated the slippery, sly nature beneath his acquiescence. ‘Rome was not built in a day. It will take time, much, much time, as learning is a difficult and tedious process and perhaps for you impossible, but it has always a slow beginning.'

‘Thank you, you will find me patient and tireless,' I promised.

He laughed. ‘It will go best if I be patient and you tireless, little sister.' Suddenly, all business over, he rubbed his hands together. ‘Good! Now we must work out a way to best gull . . . er, set before the worthy citizens of Cologne a merry dish of entertainment so that we may profit from it.'

In the next two days as I sang the words to each of the hymns he would translate the meaning. I do not wish to sound immodest, but from childhood I had practised memorising the sermons of Father Pietrus and the abbot, the pronouncements of the mayor and village officials, the conversations of the village fräuleins and others at the markets, so that my memory for words was most finely tuned. I think Reinhardt the Ratcatcher found himself truly flabbergasted when in less than two days I could recite the meaning of every line in every hymn. He then promised to teach me the Latin alphabet in sounds, and when we should reach Cologne we would purchase a slate and stylus and I would learn to write.

So far I had not put God's will to the test, since repeating the recitation of others, as I was well accustomed to doing, did not count in my mind for true learning. But now I was about to learn the actual letters contained in the Bible and then to join them so that they formed silent words upon the slate. Words produced by my own mind and scratched with my own hand. If God permitted me to learn, then I knew this would be a true miracle and that I would give praise to Him ever after.

As we drew closer to Cologne the villages grew more frequent and the ox-drawn carts more numerous. Many contained winter produce for the great city – mostly cabbages, turnips and pumpkins ripened at the end of summer and stored for winter sale. Bark cages on the back of carts carried rabbits or pigs, ducks, geese and chickens. Often flocks of shorn sheep led by a shepherd boy blocked the road, withers all, destined for the butcher's block. Soon the wooded slopes ceased and no natural land existed. Fields stretching to the farthermost horizon now lay fallow, the summer wheat and barley crop they'd carried long since harvested. A few willows beside a crooked stream dotted the landscape, stripped as bare as witches' brooms. We heard no birds calling other than an occasional raven cawing mournfully against the lowering sky. But if the land lay empty and silent, not so the road. Here a great conglomeration of farmyard birds and beasts mixed their discordant cries with the creak of wagon wheels working through the muddy ruts to the urging curses of the peasant farmers.

And through this city-bound cacophony we rehearsed our act, a bit of everything for everyone, folksongs funny and sad, randified and of a sweet maiden plucking flowers in a field. Hymns for the pious, and always Reinhardt the Ratcatcher's flighty-flirty flute to cause the young to jump from their skin and the old and the infirm to do a merry jig and so remember days of yore when they too were young and bold-eyed lads and lasses.

At last, in the early morning light, we saw in the distance the ancient Roman city built in a crescent shape and enclosed by a huge rampart with walls and numerous gates. I was happy to see that to the eastern side of the city beyond the walls were wooded hills. ‘There is a river that runs through the centre where I once piped rats to drown,' Reinhardt said a little boastfully.

‘Did that not befoul the stream?' I asked.

He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Your world of silver streams that tumble crystal clear o'er rocks and moss are over, Sylvia. This is a river most foul. It is called the
Blaubach
, but it has long since lost its colour blue. It is mainly used to carry the shit and piss from the open drains that run through the streets and the waste from the tanners' and dyers' vats, abattoirs, fishwife stalls, dog skinners and other foul and noxious wastemakers and to deposit the effluent into the Rhine. My rats caused to drown in it would not have made a scintilla of difference. If you should perchance swallow a thimbleful taken from its banks you would most surely perish.'

It was not long after the ringing of the Angelus bells on the third day after we'd agreed to stay together that we arrived at one of the city gates. We'd sojourned at a village inn an hour from the city the night before, where we'd slept together on a straw pallet, this being the cheapest accommodation. Reinhardt, true to his word, did not lay a finger upon me but lay with his back turned to me all night. I lay snug, wrapped in a fine sheepskin coat the ratcatcher had won for me at dice from a merchant who dealt in scissors and knives who was tarrying in the tavern where we had agreed to entertain in return for our supper and ale.

Mist hung over the great river Rhine as we crossed an ancient bridge Reinhardt said had been built by the Romans. We had left the village while it was yet dark to make an early start. It was market day and all the carts we'd passed the day before now stretched endlessly along the road to Cologne. ‘They will be nose to back all the way to the city gates to await the ringing of the Angelus,' Reinhardt had explained. ‘They must pay tax to the city before entering. Most pay in kind, a rabbit or a pair of chickens or a duck or half a sack of vegetables. It is a bargaining process and peasants, as you well know, do not part lightly with their property. Having waited all night they consider time well spent when arguing the price of entry. Those waiting behind them often grow angry and quarrel among themselves, afraid they'll miss the markets, but when their turn comes they bargain just as hard and long. Those on the very end will not gain the gates until noon and so must sell their produce cheaply before the markets close mid-afternoon. If, for want of time, they cannot sell their produce or their wares, then they must stay the night in the city to sell what they have left to poor widows and the infirmaries.' He laughed. ‘This keeps the inns and taverns busy, which is good for us.' He then explained. ‘The curfew is at nine of the clock when the church bells ring and the town crier comes to urge the city folk indoors. Only the homeless poor are left on the streets and they too must creep into dark alleys and corners safe from thieves. So, you see, there is sometimes work for entertainers in the taverns and inns where the merchants and peasants sojourn.'

I did not reply, but wondered how I might stay awake, much less sing, at such a late hour. As we approached the gates the ratcatcher stopped and pulled me aside and asked, ‘Where keep you the alms purse?'

‘Why do you want to know?' I replied, suspicious.

He sighed. ‘Sylvia, we must learn to trust each other or we shall not survive.' He pointed to the leather bag Father John had made for me, which sat snug to my back. ‘We are about to enter Cologne. If it is in there then you will be relieved of it ere we've walked two minutes into the markets – it is a place most wicked and thieves abound. There is a legend that goes thus: a man, entering an abbey, found many devils in the cloister but in the marketplace found only one alone on a high pillar. This filled him with wonder. But it was told him that in the cloister all is arranged to help souls to God, so many devils are required there to induce monks to be led astray, but in the marketplace, since each man is a devil to himself, only one other demon suffices.'

‘Then should we venture there?' I asked.

‘All do and are safe enough in person if one is not quarrelsome or foolishly inclined, but terrible close care must be taken with possessions for there be pickpockets not yet eight years old who will steal the wax from your ears. They will in a trice be gone with your alms purse,' he warned again.

‘And you deem it safe in your possession?'

He shrugged. ‘If I'd wished I could have taken it while you slept and claimed some thief must have stolen it in the night.'

I indicated the satchel with a backwards jerk of my head. ‘That's why I use it as my pillow!'

‘And sit bolt upright in your sleep three or four times each night and cry out,' he grinned. I knew this to be true for I had sometimes wakened sitting upright after dreaming that my father, returning from the tavern, had dragged me from the bed to the pigsty as he had often enough done. ‘I could as easily have taken it then,' he added.

I removed the leather bag from my back and, opening it, handed him the alms money. ‘I know the exact amount!' I warned.

‘Aye, ever the peasant,' he replied, placing the money into the money satchel strung to the centre of his waist.

‘And what is to stop some thief cutting the leather strap about your waist that holds your wallet and making off with it? Did not that merchant last night boast that his scissor blades from Ratingen would cut the stoutest leather as if it were butter?'

‘Well said, Sylvia! You grow quickly accustomed to the ways of the city. The strap is leather plaited with wire so that a knife or shears cannot separate it.'

While I had yet to learn to fully trust the ratcatcher, it was comforting to know that I wasn't entering the city with some clodhopper or country bumpkin but instead someone who well knew the nefarious ways of city folk. I wondered how I could ever have considered coming here on my own and how I might have fared if I had so done.

We entered the gates of Cologne and I was much excited but also somewhat afraid by the prospect of so big a place. There was a great milling at the entrance of the gate and the street beyond was filled with carts and wagons, men on horseback, dogs, donkeys, mule carts, cattle, goats, pigs, herds of sheep and, of course, people. People everywhere bumped and pushed and acted most contrary and with the rudest mien. The noise was as if I'd found myself transported into hell itself. But my first impression was not just of the maddening throng, but of the smell! Never had my nose been so affronted by the noxious ordure to be found in the churned and muddy streets. At first I thought it must have rained the previous night and what I smelled was pig and sheep and cattle dung – these were smells familiar to me – but I soon realised this was not the stuff of barnyards. I then saw that on either side of the thoroughfare there ran the ditches of which the ratcatcher had spoken and where folk deposited their nightsoil.

I observed that the premises that opened to the street were mostly places of trade, shops, workshops and the like, while the city folk lived above them. The houses were so built that the top portion overhung and the house each side of the street was seen to nearly touch the other and so all but enclose the sky. Then I realised what caused the wetness: women simply emptied their night buckets of piss and shit into the road below, ostensibly aiming it to land within the ditch, but because of the overhang it mostly landed in the street itself. The mud that squelched between my toes was not the good clean earth of nature – nor was it mud at all!

‘We must purchase boots – the earth is foul and my feet are soiled,' I said, when at last the crowd had thinned and the noise abated sufficiently to be heard.