Sylvia (68 page)

It must have been towards noon when the cleric entered carrying a candle. With him came a lay sister who bore a clay pot and what looked like a crude brush, a stick with rags tied to its end, these no longer than the top joint of my finger. He placed the candle down close to my feet and, rising, placed his right leg over my body to straddle me with his broad backside facing me. He then lowered his fat arse down onto my thighs, wincing as he sat down. I could only hope that my kick would cause him to remember me for several weeks. Leaning forward he took hold of my legs just below my knees, pressing my shins hard against the flagstones so that I was unable to move them. Whereupon the lay sister proceeded to brush my feet with a wet substance, presumably from the jar, which I could feel but not see, brushing the contents onto the skin. Why, I wondered, would they wish to paint my feet? The lay sister soon completed this task and, taking the candle, rose, whereupon the cleric stood up and they hurried out of the cell so that the darkness returned and I was unable to see what she had done.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Field of Forever Dreaming

LESS THAN AN HOUR passed from the time my feet had been mysteriously painted by the lay sister to when the bishop's assistant arrived carrying a lantern and accompanied by two strapping young monks, one of them a blackamoor. I had never seen a black man in a cassock and had always supposed that the black moors were infidels. I was also to learn the name of the bishop's assistant was Father Pietro, the same name as the priest who had baptised me. At least there seemed to be some symmetry – a Pietrus at the beginning and Pietro at the end of my life. Even more curiously, both Peters had pronounced me possessed by the devil.

If I appear reconciled to the almost certain prospect of death at the hands of the little monkey, this was not because I was without fear. I was mortally afraid, but not for my body, poor feeble corrupting flesh, but for my immortal soul. I had seen too much death and almost all of it among children. Emotionally I had become an old crone who, having witnessed the horror of life on earth, craves blackness, stillness, an absence of little children dying in the name of Jesus.

My despair was for what I had personally allowed to happen. I knew that my own blinding stupidity could not be expunged, wiped away with a confession and a penance even of the most arduous nature. I could not see how even the most generous and forgiving God could forgive me for what I had done. I had reached a point where the only thing I craved was eternal damnation. As a child, when my father took me to the pigsty I believed that his wanton actions had condemned me to hell and that I had no possibility of remission through no fault of my own. Now it was my own actions that condemned me. If I feared for my mortal soul it was because I knew I could expect no redemption for my sins.

I believed in the Miracle in St Martin's square with all my heart and soul. I had heard and been a part of the naked women's assiduous cries, ‘Our children in Jerusalem!' These words had formed on my own lips and the subsequent confirmation given to Nicholas by an angel sent by Jesus to instruct him was all it took to seal my faith. I truly felt that I had been the recipient of a personal message from my Redeemer. I accepted that God, grown weary of the bloodshed and the slaughter committed in the name of the true cross, intended to show that the purity of a child's heart was the true requirement for a pilgrim if Christianity was to regain the Holy Sepulchre.

I had counted myself as one of the chosen by God to create this pilgrim's path to Jerusalem. I now knew, at the cost of countless tiny lives, that it was my own vanity and misbegotten faith that had brought about this terrible catastrophe known as the Children's Crusade. I prayed that the flogging ordered by the mad little monkey bishop would bring me the blessed release of death and allow me to suffer the eternal flames of hell I so completely deserved.

Father Pietro instructed the white monk to remove the gag. Interspersed with my cussing had been a rebuke that they hadn't even bothered to use a clean strip of cloth to gag me and this one had reeked of rotten fish. ‘Will you walk or must we carry you?' Father Pietro asked sternly.

‘Walk,' I replied through bruised lips. To be carried to the punishment for which I hungered was an insult to God. They had not carried Christ Jesus to the cross. He had not resisted the Roman soldiers but had only asked the heavenly Father why He had been forsaken. I had no reason to ask why I was being abandoned and led to my death. I already knew.

The black monk untied the rope about my ankles and the two of them helped me to my feet, though my hands remained bound behind my back. I was unable to stand by myself and the black man, who I now saw was a truly huge man, went down on his haunches and massaged my feet and ankles, my entire foot disappearing into his enormous hands. I soon felt the blood return and with the two monks again at my side I was able to hobble. Both were large men, but the black monk especially so – the top of my head reached no higher than his armpit. No doubt aware of the damage I had inflicted on the previous two brutes, Father Pietro was not prepared to take any chances with me and so had chosen the two biggest monks he could find in case there was need to subdue me. Now to my surprise, with Father Pietro out of earshot, the white monk said to me politely in German, ‘Please do not try to run away, we have orders to beat you if you do, fräulein.'

‘You are German?'

‘My mother was German, I was raised in Genoa.'

‘What will you do to me?' I asked, but received no answer except the single quiet admonishment, ‘
Stumm!
'

They led me up from the almost dark crypt into the main body of the church where my eyes slowly grew accustomed to the light, and it was here that I saw my feet. They had been painted jet black using an emulsion of soot, probably boot blacking, that had dried to a matt finish. Father Pietro was leaving nothing to chance and the people would have their evidence of the devil's cunning trick to hide the cloven hooves of a she-devil. The front of my peasant's shift was splattered with dried blood and I could feel the stiffness where it had dripped from the brute's ear onto the back of my neck and no doubt also my shift. My eyes, I felt sure, were red and swollen from weeping. I must have looked a frightful mess and every bit the demonic creature I was meant to be.

Gathered further up the centre aisle a group of priests, clerics and monks, perhaps thirty in all, waited. They stood in line, two by two, each carrying a wooden cross. Father Pietro walked ahead of us and came to stand at the head of the procession, signalling that we should fall in behind him. He started to move towards the open church doors, the priests behind us intoning a Gregorian chant, no doubt to give an appropriate church-sanctioned solemnity to the deliverance of Satan's child to the whipping post and waiting mob.

As we walked out of the semi-darkness into the blinding Italian sunlight I was forced to close my eyes, the sharp sting being too bright to endure. But from the sudden roar I knew that a large crowd had gathered. Then they began to chant, ‘She Devil! She Devil! She Devil!', obviously previously primed for my arrival.

I kept catching flashes of the large crowd after each attempt to open my eyes until they eventually adjusted to the harsh light. I stood between the two monks on the topmost step of the church, looking down into the crowded square below. To my left sat the little monkey bishop, still in the giant's chair that had been moved onto the church steps for the occasion. He now wore his bishop's mitre and vestments, the mitre sufficiently high to conceal the carving of the angels and the cross behind him. Further to his left the priests, monks and clerics lined up in two rows and continued to chant. Father Pietro stood in his accustomed place beside the bishop's chair.

To my right a whipping frame that was used to punish thieves had been erected. We had seen these in the market squares of most of the towns we'd passed through. As though a silent warning to any miscreant, the timber was stained dark with crusted blood and always buzzing with swarms of flies. The frame, in the shape of an ‘A', was fitted with a leather strap at each base of the ‘A' and these were used for fastening the prisoner's spreadeagled legs at the ankles. The crossbar at the centre could be adjusted up or down to fit any body size and contained a rounded dent halfway along where the victim's chin rested. The apex held a second set of straps to bind the wrists, so that the felon's arms were tied high above the head exposing the naked back to the flailing whip.

For all my brave resolve to face my death calmly I began to tremble and turned to Father Pietro. ‘Will you grant me extreme unction, Father?' I asked loudly in Latin, as the chanting made speech difficult to hear. He did not reply but simply shook his head to deny me.

The tiny bishop reached out and tugged on the sleeve of Father Pietro's cassock and said something. Father Pietro cupped his ear, not hearing him because of the chanting. ‘What, my Lord?' he shouted.

The bishop turned around to face the priests. ‘Shut up!' he screeched furiously. ‘Shut the hell up!' With the startled entourage silenced he turned back to his assistant. ‘What does she want?' he demanded again.

‘She wants a final anointing, my Lord!'

‘Final anointing? The devil wants a final anointing? What new satanic trick is this? Tell her nay, nay, nay! I will not have it!'

‘I have already done so, my Lord.'

‘But not from me! You didn't tell her from me! The devil may trick a priest any day of the week including Sunday, but he can't trick a bishop. No, he can't, it's well-known he can't! Not even in a
month
of Sundays!' Then he glanced down at my feet. ‘My goodness, would you look at that!' He clapped his hands gleefully. ‘See, I told you, didn't I? The devil can't fool me! Not for a moment!' A tiny ringed finger pointed at my feet. ‘Black as the hole into hell! Ha-ha! We have her now! Oh yes, yes!' He rubbed his palms together. ‘No extreme unction! Lots of blood! Tell her! Tell her!' he screeched.

Father Pietro turned to me. ‘No final anointing!' he growled.

‘Now show the people her feet! Her black devil's feet!' the bishop cried excitedly. ‘No, don't, I will do it myself.' With surprising alacrity he slipped over the edge of the giant chair, landed lightly on his feet and came to stand beside me. ‘Lift your foot!' he commanded, pointing to my left foot.

‘I will fall, my Lord,' I protested.

To my surprise he bent down and grasped my left ankle with both hands and yanked. I felt myself starting to lose my balance. While I cannot say I did so on purpose – but then, nor can I deny it – my foot shot out with some force so that the tiny bishop went flying backwards to lose his footing and tumble down twenty steps where he lay motionless. Halfway down his mitre left his head and slid past him to land on the stone apron just four steps from the square.

The monk on my left attempted to stop me falling and grabbed at the neck and top of the sleeve of my shift. I felt it tear down the centre tothe waist as I fell tomy right and onto my bottom where I sat unable to rise, my hands still bound behind my back. My left breast was exposed where the top half of my shift had been torn away.

The black monk was the first to react to the bishop's tumble. ‘Oh, my God!' I heard him cry, and then he leapt down the steps three at a time, the first to get to the tiny form of the inert bishop. An anguished shout rose up from the crowd and they surged forward. The monk, thinking they might crush the motionless bishop, scooped him up into his arms as if he was a small child and, turning quickly, ran back up the steps.

I cannot say if the bishop was dazed or unconscious when the blackamoor lifted him into his arms but now as he opened his eyes and looked directly into the huge black face he started to scream. ‘Help! Help! The devil has come for me! Help17!' he cried in a terrified voice, and then he started to sob and beat at the black monk's chest, his tiny feet kicking out as he struggled wildly to be released, screaming. This was a very much alive and kicking ecclesiastical monkey with a cut eye and bleeding nose tightly held in Satan's arms. The monk, frightened by the bishop's desperate struggle to be free, showed the whites of his bulging eyes, which gave him even more the likeness of some imagined demon.

‘Christ Jesus! Take him inside!' I heard Father Pietro shout. ‘Quickly! Quickly!'

The black monk carried the kicking, scratching, screaming, sobbing bishop through the doors of the church with Father Pietro closely following, shouting at the hysterical bishop to be calm, though plainly close to hysteria himself. Then all the priests and monks and clerics, falling over each other in their haste, rushed after him into the church. That is, all except one, the white monk who spoke German and who had ripped my shift in an attempt to prevent me from falling. He was now on his knees beside me beseeching me to forgive him, the torn piece of my dress still clutched in his hand. ‘Angel of mercy who carries the sign of our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive me for chastising thee!' he pleaded in German.

‘You are forgiven!' I yelled impatiently. ‘Get me to my feet!' Around me all hell seemed to have broken loose. In the square the crowd was running in every direction, beating at their legs, terrified screams of women and children coming from every corner of the square. Then I saw the ratcatcher emerge from the panicked crowd to appear at the foot of the church steps. He passed the bishop's fallen mitre and a moment later it was being trampled by dozens of rats. In fact, hundreds, nay thousands of rats were scurrying towards us from every possible direction. They bumped into the legs of the fleeing townsfolk, moving frantically, climbing and leaping over fallen bodies, biting at ankles, and all of them heading in a furious frenzy towards the church steps. It was the scene in the village all over again, although a hundred times worse, even worse than the bishop's palace.