THE PESTILENCE (AT BYFIELD)
The time had passed away slowly at the lazar-house at Byfield. Life was
tedious there to most people, least of all to the good Chaplain, Father
Ambrose; for he loved his poor lepers with a love which could only come
direct from Him Who loved us all. He did not feel time lag. Each day had
its appointed duties: in holy offices of prayer and praise, or in his
labour of love, the days sped on. He felt the strain, it is true, but he
bore it. He looked for no holiday here; it could never come. He was
cloistered and confined by that general belief in the contagion of
leprosy, which was so strong in the world that many would have slain a
leper had they met him outside the defined boundaries, or set their
mastiffs to tear him in pieces.
One day Father Ambrose was seated in his cell after Terce, when one of
the attendants came to him with a serious and anxious face.
"I should be glad for you to come and see Gaspard; he has been very ill
all night, and there are some strange symptoms about him."
The Chaplain rose, and followed the "keeper" into the chamber above,
where in a small "cubicle," separated by a screen from the other
couches, the sick man tossed.
"He is delirious; how long has he been so?"
"Nearly all the night."
"And in a raging fever?--but this blackness; I never saw one so dark
before."
It was, alas, too true. The body was fast assuming a strange dark, yet
livid, hue, as if the blood were ink instead of red blood.
"Lift up the left arm," said the Chaplain.
Near the armpits were two or three swellings about the size of a
pigeon's egg. The Chaplain saw them and grew serious.
"It is the black fever--the plague!" almost screamed the horrified
attendant.
"Keep cool, brother John; nothing is gained by excitement, and all is
lost by fear; put your trust in God."
"But I have _touched_ him--drawn in his infected breath--I am a dead
man."
The Chaplain heeded him not.
"Brother, canst thou speak?" he said to the sick man.
A moan was the only reply.
"Brother, dost thou know that thou art dying?"
A moan again.
"And that the best of us have not lived as we should?"
Another sigh, so dolorous.
"And dost thou believe that God's dear Son died for thee?"
A faint gesture of assent.
"Say thou, brother, 'I put the pitiful Passion of Thy dear Son between
me and my sins.'"[26]
"I do, oh God. Sweet Jesus, save me."
And then he relapsed into an unconscious state, in which he continued
till he died.
"We must bury him directly, brother John."
The attendant shuddered.
"Yes, we two; we have been in danger, no one else need come. You go and
tell the grave-digger to have the grave ready directly, and the moment
it is ready we two will bury him."
"Oh God! I am a dead man," said poor brother John.
"Nay, we cannot die till our time come, and if so, the way HE chooses
is best. We all owe HIM a death, you know. Fear is the worst thing you
can entertain now; it brings on the very thing you dread. Overcome
_that_, at all events, if you can."
And the poor frightened fellow went out to do as he was bidden.
Then the brave and good man composed the corpse; placed a crucifix on
its breast; drew the bed-clothes round it to serve as a winding-sheet,
for they must be buried or burned; said the commendatory prayers; and
walked for a time in the fresh air.
He knew his own danger, but he heeded it not. All things, he was
persuaded, worked together for good to them that loved God; besides,
what had he to live for?--his poor sheep--the lepers? Yes; but God could
raise up a better man than he, so in his humility he thought; and if he
were--called home----
Did not the thought of that Purgatory, which was in the Creed of his
time, come between him and the notion of rest?
Not at all; he was content to leave all that; if his Father thought he
needed such correction, he was willing to pass through it; and like a
dear son to kiss the rod, as he had done on earth, safe in the hands of
his Father.
Neither did his thoughts turn much to the Saints. Of course he believed,
as every one did then, that it was right to invoke them--and he had done
so that day in the prescribed commendatory prayers for the dying; but,
as stars fade away in the presence of the sun, so did all these things
fade away before his love for the central sun of his soul--his crucified
Lord.
The hours passed away in rapt emotion; he never felt so happy as that
afternoon.
Then came the grave-digger.
"The grave is ready."
"Tell brother John to come and help."
"I do not think he is able; he seems unwell himself."
"Then you and I must do it."
"Willingly--where you lead I follow."
"Come up the stairs."
They went to the dormitory; took the sad burden, wrapped in the
bed-clothing as it was, and bore it to the grave; the priest said the
burial office; the grave-digger filled up the grave; and all was over
with poor Gaspard.
But before that sun set the Chaplain was called to brother John, and
that same night the poor fellow died of the fever--fear, doubtless,
having been a predisposing cause.
The terror began; the facts could not long be concealed. At Evensong
that night the Chaplain spoke to them in a short address, so full of
vivid faith and Christian hope that those who heard it never forgot
it.--"Why should they fear death? They had led a living death, a dying
life, these many years. Their exile was over. The Father called them
home. They had long done with this wretched world. The Christian's true
fatherland was Heaven."
So he spoke rather like an Angel than a man. But they could not all rise
to it--how could it be expected? life clings to life. When Newgate was
on fire in the great riots, the most anxious to be saved were some
condemned criminals left for execution on the morrow.
But for a select few, all fear was gone.
Such men were needed: they had their senses about them; they could help
others to the last; they, and they alone, dared to attend the dying, to
bury the dead.
Now came the great trial--the confinement. The lepers mutinied against
being shut up with death, they longed for liberty, they panted for it;
they would not be imprisoned with the plague.
Then began positive fighting. The poor patients had to be restrained by
main force, until the Chaplain came, and by his great power over their
minds, persuaded them to stay.
Every one was asking, "How came it amongst us?" and the mystery was
explained when they were told of a bale of cloth for their tailor
consigned to the house from the _Levant, viâ_ Bristol, and which in all
the long tedious voyage had retained the infection ever living in the
East.
Day by day fresh victims were carried to the grave. The plague was
probably simply a malignant form of typhus, nourished in some human
hotbed to the highest perfection. The _bacillus_ or germ is, we trust,
extinct, but otherwise enough might be bred in a bottle to poison a
county, as we have heard stated.
All at once the heaviest blow fell upon them.
Father Ambrose was walking in the grounds, taking rest of mind after
intense mental and bodily exertion, when he felt a sudden throb of
violent heat, followed by an intense chill and a sickening sensation
accompanied by faintness. He took off his cassock--he saw the fatal
swelling.
"My summons is come," he said. "Oh, my Father, I thank Thee for calling
me home; but these poor sheep whom Thou hast committed to my care, what
shall they do?"
Then he walked quietly to his cell and lay down on his bed. He had
watched the disease in others; he entertained no hope of recovery. "In a
few hours I shall see Him face to face Whom I have loved," said he.
They came and found him. Never was man more patient; but that mediæval
idea of intense self-denial was with him to the last. He refused water:
they thought him delirious.
"HE would not drink," he said.
They saw his thoughts were on the Cross, and that he was treading the
pathway opened by the Crucified One, and they said no more.
He had received the Holy Communion that morning--his last Communion; the
usual rites could not be attempted now. Before he relapsed into the last
stage, they heard the words in his native tongue--
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! ouvrez moi."
They were his last. The door was open and he had entered. Ah, who shall
follow even in imagination, and trace his progress to the gates of day?
"Go wing thy flight from star to star,
From world to luminous world, as far
As the universe spreads its flaming hall:
Take all the pleasures of all the spheres,
And multiply each through endless years,
One moment of Heaven is worth them all."
But those left behind in the lazar-house--ah me! deprived of the only
man who had gained an empire over their hearts, and could control
them--what of them?
They lost _all_ control, and broke through all discipline; they
overpowered their keepers, who indeed scarcely tried their best to
restrain them, sharing the common fear; they broke the gates open; they
poured forth and dispersed all through the country, carrying the
infection wherever they went.
Still this was not a very wide scope; the woods, the forests, were their
chief refuge. And soon the story was told everywhere. It was heard at
the lordly towers of Warwick; it was told at the stately pile of
Kenilworth; it was proclaimed at Banbury. It startled even those violent
men who played with death, to be told that a hundred lepers were loose,
carrying the double curse of plague and leprosy wherever they went.
"It must be stamped out," said the stern men of the day: "we must hunt
them down and slay them."
So they held a council at Banbury, where all the neighbouring
barons--who were generally of one party in that neighbourhood--took
counsel.
They decided that proclamation should be everywhere made; that if the
lepers returned to the lazar-house at Byfield within three days, all
should be forgiven; but otherwise, that the barons should collect their
savage hounds, and hunt them down in the forest.
And this was the very forest where we left poor Evroult dying--the
forest of the hermitage which these poor lepers were tolerably sure to
find out, and to seek shelter.
And here we will leave our poor friends for a while, and return to
Wallingford Castle.
FOOTNOTE:
[26] This is an extant form of those ages for the reconciliation of a
penitent at the last gasp.