All that evening and far into the night Raymond worked with the Brothers
under Father Paul, bringing in the sick, burying the dead, and tending
all those for whom anything could be done to mitigate their sufferings,
or bring peace either of body or mind.
By nightfall the ghastly assemblage about the Monastery doors had
disappeared. The living were lying in rows in the narrow beds, or upon
the straw pallets of the Brothers, filling dormitories and Refectory
alike; the dead had been laid side by side in a deep trench which had
been hastily dug by order of Father Paul; and after he had read over
them the burial service, earth and lime had been heaped upon the bodies,
and one end of the long trench filled in. Before morning there were a
score more corpses to carry forth, and out of the thirty and odd
stricken souls who lay within the walls, probably scarce ten would
recover from the malady.
But no more of the sick appeared round and about the Monastery gates as
they had been doing for the past three days; and when Raymond asked why
this was so, Father Paul looked into his face with a keen, searching
glance as he replied:
"Verily, my son, it is because there be no more to come -- no more who
have strength to drag themselves out hither. Tomorrow I go forth to
visit the villages where the sick be dying like beasts in the shambles.
I go to shrive and confess the sick, to administer the last rites to the
dying, to read the prayers of the Church over those who are being
carried to the great common grave. God alone knows whether even now the
living may suffice to bury the dead. But where the need is sorest, there
must His faithful servants be found."
Raymond looked back with a face full of resolute purpose.
"Father, take me with thee," he said.
Father Paul looked earnestly into that fair young face, that was growing
so intensely spiritual in its expression, and asked one question.
"My son, and if it should be going to thy death?"
"I will go with thee, Father Paul, be it for life or for death."
"God bless and protect thee, my son!" said the Father. "I verily believe
that thou art one over whom the Blessed Saints and the Holy Angels keep
watch and ward, and that thou wilt pass unscathed even through this time
of desolation and death."
Raymond had bent his knee to receive the Father's blessing, and when he
rose he saw that Roger was close behind him, likewise kneeling; and
reading the thought in his mind, he said to the Father:
"Wilt thou not give him thy blessing also? for I know that he too will
go with us and face the peril, be it for life or death."
Father Paul laid his hand upon the head of the second lad.
"May God's blessing rest also upon thee, my son," he said. "In days past
thou hast been used as an instrument of evil, and hast been forced to do
the devil's own work. Now God, in His mercy, has given thee work to do
for Him, whereby thou mayest in some sort make atonement for the past,
and show by thy faith and piety that thou art no longer a bondservant
unto sin."
Then turning to both the youths as they stood before him, the Father
added, in a different and less solemn tone:
"And since your purpose is to go forth with me tomorrow, you must now
take some of that rest without which youthful frames cannot long
dispense. Since early dawn you have been travelling and working at tasks
of a nature to which you are little used. Come with me, therefore, and
pass the remaining hours of the night in sleep. I will arouse you for
our office of early mass, and then we will forth together. Till then
sleep fearlessly and well. Sleep will best fit you for what you will see
and hear tomorrow."
So saying, the Father led them into a narrow cell where a couple of
pallet beds had been placed, and where some slices of brown bread and a
pitcher of spring water were likewise standing.
"Our fare is plain, but it is wholesome. Eat and drink, my sons, and
sleep in peace. Wake not nor rise until I come to you again."
The lads were indeed tired enough, though they had scarcely known it in
the strange excitement of the journey, and amid the terrible scenes of
death and sickness which they had witnessed around and about the
Monastery doors since their arrival there. Now, however, that they had
received the command to rest and sleep (and to gainsay the Father's
commands was a thing that would never have entered their minds), they
were willing enough to obey, and had hardly laid themselves down before
they fell into a deep slumber, from which neither awoke until the light
of day had long been shining upon the world, and the Father stood beside
them bidding them rise and follow him.
In a few minutes their simple toilet and ablutions had been performed,
and they made their way along the familiar passage to the chapel, from
whence a low sound of chanting began to arise. There were not many of
the Brothers present at the early service, most of them being engaged in
tending the plague-stricken guests beneath their roof. But the Father
was performing the office of the mass, and when he had himself partaken
of the Sacrament, he signed to the two boys, who were about to go forth
with him into scenes of greater peril than any they had witnessed
heretofore, to come and receive it likewise.
The service over, and some simple refreshment partaken of, the youths
prepared for their day's toil, scarce knowing what they would be like to
see, but resolved to follow Father Paul wherever he went, anxious only
to accomplish successfully such work as he should find for them to do.
Each had a certain burden to carry with him -- some of the cordials that
had been found to give most relief in cases of utter collapse and
exhaustion, a few simple medicaments and outward applications thought to
be of some use in allaying the pain of those terrible black swellings
from which the sickness took its significant name, and some
simply-prepared food for the sufferers, who were often like to perish
from inanition even before the plague had done its worst. For stricken
persons, or those supposed to be stricken, were often turned out of
their homes even by their nearest relatives, and forced to wander about
homeless and starving, none taking pity upon their misery, until the
poison in their blood did its fatal work, and they dropped down to die.
That loosening of the bands of nature and affection in times of deadly
sickness has always been one of the most terrible features of the
outbreaks of the plague when it has visited either this or other lands.
There are some forms of peril that bind men closer and closer together,
and that bring into bond of friendship even those who have been before
estranged; and terrible though these perils may be, there is always a
deep sense of underlying consolation in the closer drawing of the bond
of brotherhood. But when the scourge of deadly sickness has passed over
the land, the effect has almost always been to slacken this tie; the
inherent love of life, natural to human beings, turning to an almost
incredible selfishness, and inducing men to abandon their nearest and
dearest in the hour of peril, leaving them, if stricken, to die alone,
or turning them, sick to death though they might be, away from their
doors, to perish untended and without shelter. True, there were many
bright exceptions to such a code of barbarity, and devoted men and women
arose by the score to strive to ameliorate the condition of the
sufferers; but for all that, one of the most terrible features of the
period of death and desolation was that of the fearful panic it
everywhere produced, and the inhuman neglect and cruelty with which the
early sufferers were treated by the very persons who, perhaps only a few
days or even hours later, had themselves caught the contagion, and were
lying dead or dying in the homes from which they had ejected their own
kith and kin before.
Of the fearful havoc wrought in England by this scourge of the Black
Death many readers of history are scarcely aware. Whole districts were
actually and entirely depopulated, not a living creature of any kind
being left sometimes within a radius of many miles; and at the lowest
computation made by historians, it is believed that not less than
one-half of the entire population perished during the outbreak.
But of anything like the magnitude of such a calamity no person at this
time had any conception, and little indeed was Raymond prepared for the
sights that he was this day to look upon.
The Father and his two assistants went forth after they had partaken of
food, and turned their faces westward.
"There is a small village two miles hence that we will visit first,"
said the Father, "for the poor people have no pastor or any other person
to care for their bodies or souls, and I trow we shall find work to do
there. If time permits when we have done what we may there, we will pass
on to the little town round the church of St. Michael, whose spire you
see yonder on the hillside. Many of the stricken folks within our walls
came from thence. The sickness is raging there, and there may be few
helpers left by now."
The same sultry haze the travellers had noticed in the infected regions
was still hanging over the woods today as they sallied forth; and though
the sun was shining in the sky, its beams were thick and blood-red
instead of being clear and bright, and there was an oppression in the
air which caused the birds to cease their song, and lay on the spirit
like a dead weight.
"The curse of God upon the land -- the curse of God!" said the Father,
in a low, solemn tone, as he led the way, bearing in his hands the Holy
Sacrament with which to console the dying. "Men have long been
forgetting Him. But He will not alway be forgotten. He will arise in
judgment and show men the error of their ways. If in their prosperity
they will not remember Him, He will call Himself to their remembrance by
a terrible day of adversity. And who may stand before the Lord? Who may
abide the day of His visitation?"
Moving along with these and like solemn words of warning and admonition,
to which his followers paid all reverent heed, the woodland path was
quickly traversed, and the clearing reached which showed the near
approach to the village. There was a break in the forest at this point,
and some excellent pasture land and arable fields had tempted two
farmers to establish themselves here, a small hamlet growing quickly up
around the farmsteads. This small community supplied the Brothers with
some of the necessaries of life, and every soul there was known to the
Father. Some dozen persons had come to the Monastery gates during the
past two days, stricken and destitute, and had been taken in there. But
all these had died and no others had followed, and Father Paul was
naturally anxious to know how it fared with those left behind.
Raymond and Roger both knew the villagers well. The two years spent
within the walls of the Brotherhood had made them fully acquainted with
the people round about. The little hamlet was a pretty spot: a number of
low thatched cottages nestled together beside the stream that watered
the meadows, whilst the larger farmsteads, which, however, were only
modest dwelling houses with their barns and sheds forming a background
to them, stood a little farther back upon a slightly-rising ground,
sheltered from the colder winds by a spur of the forest.
Generally one was aware, in approaching the place, of the pleasant
homely sounds of life connected with farming. Today, with the golden
grain all ready for the reaper's hand, one looked to hear the sound of
the sickle in the corn, and the voices of the labourers calling to each
other, or singing some rustic harvest song over their task. But instead
of that a deadly and death-like silence prevailed; and Raymond, who had
quickened his steps as he neared the familiar spot, now involuntarily
paused and hung back, as if half afraid of what he would be forced to
look upon when once the last turning was passed.
But Father Paul moved steadily on, turning neither to the right hand nor
to the left. There was no hesitation or faltering in his step, and the
two youths pressed after him, ashamed of their moment's backwardness.
The sun had managed to pierce through the haze, and was shining now with
some of its wonted brilliancy. As Raymond turned the corner and saw
before him the whole of the little hamlet, he almost wished the sun had
ceased to shine, the contrast between the beauty and brightness of
nature and the scene upon which it looked being almost too fearful for
endurance.
Lying beside the river bank, in every attitude and contortion of the
death agony, were some dozen prostrate forms of men, women, and
children, all dead and still. It seemed as though they must have crawled
forth from the houses when the terrible fever thirst was upon them, and
dragging themselves down to the water's edge, had perished there. And
yet if all were dead, as indeed there could be small doubt from their
perfect stillness and rigidity, why did none come forth to bury them?
Already the warm air was tainted and oppressive with that
plague-stricken odour so unspeakably deadly to the living. Why did not
the survivors come forth from their homes and bury the dead out of their
sight? Had all fled and left them to their fate?
Father Paul walked calmly onwards, his eyes taking in every detail of
the scene.
As he reached the dead around the margin of the stream, he paused and
looked upon the faces he had known so well in life, then turning to his
two followers, he said:
"I trow these be all dead corpses, but I will examine each if there be
any spark of life remaining. Go ye into the houses, and if there be any
sound persons within, bid them, in the name of humanity and their own
safety, come forth and help to bury their brethren. If they are suffered
to lie here longer, every soul in this place will perish!"
Glad enough to turn his eyes from the terrible sight without, Raymond
hurried past to the cluster of dwelling places beyond, and entering the
first of these himself, signed to Roger to go into the second. He had
some slight difficulty in pushing open the door, not because it was
fastened, but owing to some encumbrance behind. When, however, he
succeeded in forcing his way in, he found that the encumbrance was
nothing more or less than the body of a woman lying dead along the floor
of the tiny room. Upon a bed in the corner two children were lying,
smiling as if in sleep, but both stiff and cold, the livid tokens of the
terrible malady visible upon their little bodies, though the end seemed
to have been painless. No other person was in the house, and Raymond,
drawing a covering over the children as they lay, turned from the house
again with a shudder of compassionate sorrow. Outside he met Roger
coming forth with a look of awe upon his face.
"There be five souls within you door," he said -- "an old woman, her two
sons and two daughters. But they are all dead and cold. I misdoubt me if
we find one alive in the place."
"We must try farther and see," answered Raymond, his face full of the
wondering consternation of so terrible a discovery; and by mutual
consent they proceeded in their task together. There was something so
unspeakably awful in going about alone in a veritable city of the dead.
And such indeed might this place be called. Roger was fearfully right in
his prediction. Each house entered showed its number of victims to the
destroyer, but not one of these victims was living to receive comfort or
help from the ministrations of those who had come amongst them. And not
man alone had suffered; upon the dumb beasts too had the scourge fallen:
for when Roger suddenly bethought him that the creatures would want
tendance in the absence of their owners, and had gone to the sheds to
seek for them, nothing but death met his eye on all sides. Some in their
stalls, some in the open fields, some, like their masters, beside the
stream, lay the poor beasts all stone dead.
It seemed as if the scourge had fallen with peculiar virulence upon this
little hamlet, in the warm cup-like hollow where it lay, and had smitten
it root and branch. Possibly the waters of the stream had been poisoned
higher up, and the deadly malaria had reached it in that way; possibly
some condition of the atmosphere predisposed living things to take the
infection. But be the cause what it might, there was no gainsaying the
fact. Not a living or breathing thing remained in the hamlet; and little
as Raymond knew it, such wholesale destruction was only too common
throughout the length and breadth of England. But such a revelation
coming upon him suddenly, brought before his very eyes when he had come
with the desire to help and tend the living, filled him with an awe that
was almost terror, although the terror was not for himself. Personally
he had no fear; he had given himself to this work, and he would hold to
it be the result what it might. But the thought of the scourge sweeping
down upon a peaceful hamlet, and carrying off in a few short days every
breathing thing within its limits, was indeed both terrible and pitiful.
He could picture only too vividly the terror, the anguish, the agony of
the poor helpless people, and longed, not to escape from such scenes,
but rather to go forward to other places ere the work of destruction had
been accomplished, and be with the sick when the last call came. If he
had been but two days earlier in coming forward, might he not have been
in time to do a work of mercy and charity even here?
But it was useless musing thus. To act, and not to think, was now the
order of the day. He went slowly out from the yard they had last
visited, his face as pale as death, but full of courage and high purpose.
"There is nothing living here," he said, as he reached the Father, who
had not left the side of the dead. "We have been into all the houses, we
have looked everywhere, but there is nothing but dead corpses: man and
beast have perished alike. Nothing that breathes is left alive."
The Father looked round upon the scene of smiling desolation -- the
sunny harvest fields, the laughing brook, the broad meadows -- and the
ghastly rows of plague-stricken corpses at his feet, and a stern, sad
change passed across his face.
"It is the hand of the Lord," he said, "and perchance He smites in mercy
as well as in wrath, delivering men from the evil to come. Let us arise
and go hence. Our work is for the living and not the dead."
For those three to have attempted to bury all that hamlet would have
been an absolute impossibility. Dreadful as was the thought of turning
away and leaving the place as it was, it was hopeless to do otherwise,
and possibly in the town men might be found able and willing to come out
and inter the corpses in one common grave.
With hearts full of awe, the two lads followed their conductor. He had
been through similar scenes in other lands. To him there was nothing new
in sights such as this. Even the sense of personal peril, little as he
had ever regarded it, had long since passed away. But it was something
altogether new to Raymond and his companion; and though they had seen
death in many terrible forms upon the battlefield, it had never inspired
the same feelings of horror and awe. It was impossible to forget that
they might at any moment be breathing into their lungs the same deadly
poison which was carrying off multitudes on every side, and although
there was no conscious fear for themselves in the thought, it could not
but fill them with a quickened perception of the uncertainty of life and
the unreality of things terrestrial.
In perfect silence the walk towards the little town was accomplished;
and as they neared it terrible sights began to reveal themselves even
along the roadside. Plainly indeed to be seen were evidences of
attempted flight from the plague-stricken place; and no doubt many had
made good their escape, but others had fallen down by the wayside in a
dying state, and these dead or dying sufferers were the first tokens
observed by the travellers of the condition of the town.
Not all were dead, though most were plainly hopeless cases. Raymond and
Roger had both learned something during the hours of the previous night,
when they had helped the good Brothers over their tasks; and they
fearlessly knelt beside the poor creatures, moistening their parched
lips, answering their feeble, moaning plaints, and summoning to the side
of the dying the Father, who could hear the feeble confession of sin,
and pronounce the longed-for absolution to the departing soul.
Passing still onwards -- for they could not linger long, and little
enough could be done for these dying sufferers, all past hope -- they
reached the streets of the town itself; and the first sight which
greeted their eyes was the figure of a man stripped naked to the waist,
his back bleeding from the blows he kept on inflicting upon himself with
the thick, knotted cord he held in his hands, a heavy and rough piece of
iron being affixed to the end to make the blows more severe. From the
waist downwards he was clothed with sackcloth, and as he rushed about
the streets shrieking and castigating himself, he called aloud on the
people to repent of their sins, and to flee from the wrath of God that
was falling upon the whole nation.
Yet, though many dead and dying were lying in the streets about him, and
though cries and groans from many houses told that the destroyer was at
work there, this Flagellant (as these maniacs, of which at that time
there were only too many abroad, were called) never attempted to touch
one of them, though he ran almost over their prostrate bodies, and had
apparently no fear of the contagion. There were very few people abroad
in the streets, and such as were sound kept their faces covered with
cloths steeped in vinegar or some other pungent mixture, and walked
gingerly in the middle of the road, as if afraid to approach either the
houses on each side or the other persons walking in the streets.
A cart was going about, with two evil-looking men in it, who lifted in
such of the dead as they found lying by the roadside, and coolly
divested them of anything of any value which they chanced to have upon
them before conveying them to the great pit just outside which had been
dug to receive the victims of the plague.
A wild panic had seized upon the place. Most of the influential
inhabitants had fled. There was no rule or order or oversight observed,
and the priest of the church, who until this day had kept a certain
watch over his flock, and had gone about encouraging and cheering the
people, had himself been stricken down with the fell malady, and no one
knew whether he were now living or dead.
As the Father passed by, people rushed out from many doors to implore
him to come to this house or the other, to administer the last rites to
some one dying within. There were other houses marked with a red cross
on the doors, which had been for many days closed by the town
authorities, until these had themselves fled, being assured that no
person could live in that polluted air. What had become of the wretched
beings thus shut up, when the watchers who were told off to guard them
had fled in terror, it was hard to imagine; and whilst the Father
responded to the calls of those who required spiritual assistance at the
last dread hour, Raymond beckoned to Roger to follow him in his
visitation to those places where the distemper had first showed itself,
and where people had hoped to confine it by closing the houses and
letting none go forth.
The terribly deadly nature of the malady was well exemplified by the
condition of these houses. Scarce ten living souls were found in them,
and of these almost all were reduced to the last extremity either by
disease or hunger; for none had been nigh them, and they had no strength
to try to make their wants known.
Raymond had the satisfaction of seeing some amongst these wretched
beings revive somewhat under his ministrations. It was not in every case
the real distemper from which they suffered; in not a few the patients
had sunk only from fright and the misery of feeling themselves shut away
from their fellows. Whenever any persons ailed anything in those days,
it was at once supposed that the Black Death was upon them, and they
were shunned and abhorred by all their friends and kindred. To these
poor creatures it seemed indeed as though an angel from heaven had come
down when Raymond bent over them and put food and drink to their lips.
Many an office of loving mercy to the sick and dying did he and Roger
perform ere daylight faded from the sky; and before night actually fell,
the Father had by precept and example got together a band of helpers
ready and willing to tend the sick and bury the dead, and the people
felt that the terrible panic which had fallen upon them, and caused
every one to flee away, had given place to something better and more humane.
Men who had fled their stricken homes and had spent their time carousing
in the taverns, trying to drown their fears and their griefs, now
returned home to see how it fared with those who had been left behind.
Women who had been almost distracted by grief, and had been rushing into
the church sobbing and crying, and neglecting the sick, that they might
pour out their hearts at the shrine of their favourite saint, were
admonished by the Holy Father, so well known to them, to return to their
homes and their duties. As the pall of night fell over the stricken
city, and the three who had entered it a few hours before still toiled
on without cessation, people breathed blessings on them wherever they
appeared, and Raymond felt that his work for the Lord in the midst of
His stricken people had indeed begun.