Sylvia (67 page)

‘God's house, Father,' I replied. Then looking directly at him I asked, ‘Will you take my confession, please, Father?'

A look of shock was followed by one of real fear. ‘Nay, get out, devil's child!' he admonished. Then visibly trembling he pointed a finger at me, then quickly withdrew it and made the sign of the cross. ‘A peasant maid that speaks Latin! Get thee away from me, Satan!'

‘I will pray for your bishop and for you, Father. “
Suffer little
children to come unto me,
” saith the Lord.' With this I walked out of the church knowing I must contain my anger and that I had already said too much for my own good.

I began to say a penitential psalm to each of the dying children in the vicinity of the church, where many had come, too weak to continue but wanting to be as close to God as they might get. The church was always where most of the dying children would be found and it was here where we would invariably sing. If this sounds insensible, I can only say that we tried to make these dying children feel that their own kind was with them to the last and that the songs of praise the children sang would comfort their final hours on earth. Before we left we would leave food from our baskets for those of the dying we hoped might still take sustenance, and water to quench their parched lips. There was nothing more we could do and I had long since spent my allotment of tears on this earth.

I was kneeling beside a dying child trying to hear his murmurs when I felt a pair of strong arms clasped around me, pinning my arms to my side, and then a grunt as I was jerked backwards to my feet. I lashed out backwards with my feet and felt my heel land against a shin and then a cry of pain and a curse and then another huge black-bearded brute grabbed me around the legs. I sank my teeth down hard into the coarse hair that covered the arm of the male who held me but he continued to hold me in a vice-like grip, cursing the while. Then a cleric appeared and grabbed me by the hair and pulled viciously so that I was forced to release my grip on the arm of the man who held me, and a taste of blood entered my mouth. The cleric, still gripping me by the hair, brought his face right up to mine and began shouting in the local language so that I felt his warm spittle landing on my face.

The two brutes now held me parallel to the cobblestones, the back of my head and shoulders against the chest of one and my legs held under the locked arms of the other. The cleric, himself a big man, stood on my left gripping a fistful of my hair and pulled backwards so that I was restrained from biting my assailant. They carried me thus out of the sunshine that flooded the square into the dark interior of the church and down the centre aisle and into a room near the sacristy.

The priest who had earlier chased me from the church stood beside a very large wooden chair with a high back carved with two angels hovering on either side of a cross. The seat was large enough to accept a giant but, instead, seated in it was a tiny man in bishop's robes, his boots dangling so far above the flagstone floor that it seemed he must have been lifted into the chair. His tiny fingers were not large enough to curl around the edges of the chair's arms, and the chair back still allowed a full display of the hovering angels beyond the top of his head. His hair, a mixture of grey and the colour of red clay, was shaved close to his skull. His beard of the same colour grew no more than the width of a pinkie nail around his chin and seemed so fine that an orange light showed through it to give it a closer resemblance to fur than the coarsened hair on a grown man's cheeks and chin. His eyebrows were denser than his beard and of the same soft fur, and appeared to almost completely surround two bright little obsidian eyes that darted, monkey-like, everywhere at once. He looked to all intents and purposes like a small ape dressed in a bishop's robes.

‘Put her down! Put her down!' he yelled in a high-pitched and plainly irritated voice that came from a tiny mouth displaying small, sharp, yellow teeth, each of which was separated slightly from the next.

The brute gripping my legs released them, allowing me to place them on the floor, while the one behind me pushed me upright before releasing me. ‘Shoo! Be off with you!' the monkey bishop screeched with an irritated backward flick of his hand. The two men dropped briefly to their knees, then rose and left; the cleric who had pulled my hair remained behind. ‘You too!' he screeched, pointing to the entrance and flicking his forefinger. Or rather, that is what I supposed he said, or something like it, his dismissive gestures making his meaning clear enough.

I dropped to my knees in front of the chair and moved my head forward so that I might kiss the ring that seemed a gold band too broad and a jewel much too large for so tiny a hand. But he quickly withdrew his hand from his lap. ‘Nay! No blessing! No blessing at all!' he said in Latin. Then added, ‘We have been watching you, you hear? Every movement! Why do you commit sacrilege?'

‘Sacrilege, my Lord?'

‘Extreme unction! Last anointings! You have sinned grievously! Sinned! Sinned! Sinned, you hear!'

‘Nay, my Lord, it is not a sin to recite a penitential psalm,' I said, in little more than a whisper.

‘What? What did you say? No sin! How dare you contradict me!' The bishop, grasping the arms of the large chair, pushed his torso forward and glared at me, his eyes momentarily ceasing from darting about.

Please guide my tongue, Brother Dominic
, I thought desperately. ‘There is scriptural instruction pertaining to the last anointing, my Lord. St James, chapter five, verses fourteen and fifteen. But this does not forbid the saying of a penitential psalm. In the absence of a priest, a lay person may be permitted to give comfort to the dying by reciting such a psalm as a help and comfort to the dying.'

‘Canon law! Canon law! You may not! You hear? Nay, nay, nay!'

‘With the greatest respect, my Lord, the epistle from Pope Gregory to the First Crusade permitted any lay member of the Church, in the absence of a priest, to recite one of the seven psalms for the dying to repeat or, if unable, simply to hear.'

The bishop looked momentarily confused, then his monkey eyes lit up. ‘Ha! That was a crusade! Thousands dying! Not enough priests! Infidels everywhere! Special circumstances, you hear?' he screeched.

‘This be also a crusade, my Lord Bishop. The Children's Crusade. Alas, already thousands of children have perished and your priests, upon your instructions, refuse to give them extreme unction.' A sudden anger rose up in me that I seemed unable to control. I could feel the flush that burned on the surface of my face and neck. ‘I have no choice, I have prayed and asked God's guidance. These are His little children and they have a right to the comfort of God's word as they leave this earthly hell and rise up to heaven. “
Suffer little children to come unto me
,” saith the Lord.'

The bishop's tiny simian face turned a deep scarlet and I thought his head must surely split open like an over-ripe melon. His sharp little eyes ceased their darting and fixed on me with a mixture of astonishment, anger and even, deep within, I sensed, a tincture of fear. He pointed a trembling finger at my feet. ‘Take off your boots!' he demanded shrilly.

I removed my broken boots, knowing my feet to be sweaty from the heat and dirty from the black road dust entering where the leather had split from the soles. The monkey bishop wriggled his torso so that he sat on the edge of the chair where he peered down at my blackened feet.

‘Ha! See how clever the devil!' he announced triumphantly.

The priest who was standing behind the chair had not uttered a word since I had been brought before the bishop. He now looked down and seeing only a pair of dirty feet, asked, ‘What is it, my Lord Bishop?'

‘Use your eyes! Can't you see, man! Satan has changed them back. Clever, eh?'

The priest grunted, obviously bemused, unable to understand. ‘What see you, my Lord?

The bishop jabbed his ring finger at my toes, the red jewel catching the light. ‘He thinks we are fooled! Ha! We have his measure! Every bit of it!' he yelled, his little yellow teeth clicking. Then a cackle escaped from his throat, followed by an abrupt hiccup.

‘My Lord?' the priest asked, now completely confused.

‘Hooves! Hooves, man! The devil thinks he can trick us. He's changed her cloven hooves back into feet!' The bishop stabbed repeatedly at my dirt-blackened feet with his bejewelled finger. ‘See? They are still black!' He wriggled back into the enormous chair and his eyes now resumed their darting about. ‘The devil's skin is black, black as pitch and can't be changed,' he declared gleefully. ‘We have all the proof we need!' Then as suddenly he stopped and brought his hands together, his fingers touching as if he was about to enunciate a prayer. But instead he started to giggle in little bursts, as if he was trying to contain his mirth but with small spurts of inner merriment escaping. ‘The flames . . . put her to the flames?' He shook his head, as if talking to himself. ‘Pope's permission needed.' He thought again. ‘Toenails . . . pull them out? Show them to be false, hiding cloven hooves.'

He seemed to quite like this idea until the priest cleared his throat. ‘The people, my Lord. They would wish to see the Church punish this German pestilence inflicted upon us by the devil. This she-devil must be made an example for all to see. The people are very angry with these supplicating children and wish to see someone punished for their never-ending presence.'

‘What, no toenails? What then, speak out, man!' the bishop chirped.

‘A flogging, a public flogging with you as chief witness,' the priest suggested.

The bishop began to clap. ‘
Excellento!
The Church, the Holy Roman Church, is seen to flog the devil in public!' He hugged himself. ‘Oh, the archbishop will like this! Like this very much!' he said gleefully. But then as suddenly his expression changed and he looked stern. ‘What about the toenails? The devil's toenails?'

The priest seemed to consider this, then said carefully, ‘Maybe not, my Lord.'

‘Why not?' the bishop demanded.

‘The people may read into it wrongly, my Lord. The Scriptures tell us that Christ's feet bled when he carried the cross to Calvary and then later with the driving of the great iron spike into his crossed feet.'

‘Good point!' the bishop replied. ‘A good flogging then, eh? Plenty of blood!'

The priest nodded. It was quite clear that the monkey bishop was mad, but that none would say so, least of all the priest who, like Master Nicodemus, found himself the power behind the throne. I now realised that the priest was not in charge of the local church but was the bishop's assistant, the man who did his master's thinking for him. With perhaps the exception of the allusion to the cloven hooves and our scampering over the Alps like goats, the missive he had earlier read out to me had most likely been composed by him and not by the mad little monkey seated in front of me.

‘I beg your mercy, my Lord. I am God's child!' I cried out.

‘Ha! Of course you'd say that!' He turned to the priest. ‘She'd say that, wouldn't she? Of course she would!' he said, nodding his head in agreement with himself.

The priest called out and the two brutes and the cleric, who must have been waiting for his call, returned. Both of the men now carried a length of rope and the cleric a strip of cloth. There was no escape and I had no defence, my precious stave lay outside, left beside the dying child. I backed into a corner and with my back against the wall I kicked and clawed at the two brutes. I could see the congealed blood where my teeth had bitten into the arm of one of them. I screamed and struggled and managed to bite one through the ear, the salty taste of blood again on my lips. They soon had me in their grasp, though not before the cleric holding the cloth to gag me came too close and with all my force I managed to kick him in the scrotum. He gave a loud groan and sank to the floor clutching his cassock between his legs. The two brutes turned me onto my stomach and tied my arms behind my back and my ankles. Blood dropped from the ear of one of them onto the back of my neck. Then the other one held my head while ‘bleeding ear' bound the cloth tightly over my mouth to silence my angry screams. My last sight of the bishop was of him with his knees pulled against his chest and all of him squeezed back into the farthermost corner of the chair, a look of terror on his monkey face.

I was carried down into the crypt and thrown into a small cell with the blood from the brute with the torn ear dripping down and soaking the front of my gown. The two, having dropped me unceremoniously to the floor, paused momentarily, one cupping his ear in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. Then they leaned over me and spat into my face, cursing me in their own language before departing. I felt a small satisfaction that both men would forever wear a permanent scar by which to remember the German she-devil. Nor would I ever confess this as wilful behaviour nor confess the kick to the priest's unneeded manhood. I knew that if I'd had the opportunity I would have gouged an eye out or even worse. I was too angry to weep and managed somehow to pull myself up into the corner of the cell so that I could sit up in the dark.

Two hours or more passed, some of which I spent in prayer and some, I confess, silently cursing my tormentors in language I had heard as a peasant in the marketplace. I finally wept, though not for my parlous state but over the loss of my precious stave and Father John satchel. I felt sure the stave must be stolen and also the satchel, though of the two the stave was the most important to me. The stave was my talisman, sprinkled with holy water and blessed with the promise to guide me across the rocky paths of life. Father John had led me to believe, or perhaps I had simply come to believe on my own, that with it at my side, I would always be safe. Now it was gone and soon the flesh of my back would be flayed and I would be lucky to remain alive. Alas, my luck had deserted me.