‘Lammas Day in the Nineteenth Year of the Reign of King Edward’ by Jess Worsdale

Tenth day of July

Four of us remain to make the coffin and none of us a carpenter. Will – Brother William, though he and I are long past those formalities – is the closest we have, his father being of farming stock and bequeathing his son some knowledge of an axe. At Terce, the heat shimmering over the fishponds, Brother Simon bade Will and I to make haste. The Prior’s body, blood-bruised and goitred, was fast becoming an unholy thing in this holy place. Flies squatted on his shroud in mocking clusters of throbbing black. We hear news of terrible happenings in Norwych, of limbs and pustuled brows tumbled into pits. We could not countenance sinking a Brother bare into the ground.

We searched for wood, but we had burned it long ago, stacked in pyres to smoke the pestilence away. Wasted. But still we walked. The cloisters a dark smudge behind us, Will stopped and seized the sleeve of my cowl. I say my – I believe it belonged to a shorter Brother long since departed, for the hem of it dangles at my knees. These clothes are our version of kin, a deadwood tree of fraternal lineage. I fear I will die in this shrunken brown sheath. To have cold ankles at the gates of Heaven. The glory of Resurrection would be somewhat tainted.

But I digress. Will’s hand was warm through the coarse wool. His cheeks were flushed, as when – ah, but it is no Sin to think of it, for we claw what beauty we can from these fervent, cursed years. The Priory pastures rolled east, morning stubble scratching at a vast blue sky. Beyond, a tapestry of parishes, stitched lanes and thatch. The squeak of dead-carts. Blotched shins stiff between the slats. I shivered.

‘Thomas,’ Will said. His voice cracked and I thought of the kitchens, the poultice of chamomile and honey I would steep for him. ‘Thomas. We cannot stay here. It will come for us.’

I smiled. This, you understand, was not the first time Will had spoken thus. He is but one and twenty (and I three summers older); doubts are natural. I sought to reassure him. The Priory is safe. There is nothing to fear. We pray to St Austin, and He will protect us.

Will said something I will not scribe here, even in English, a language accustomed to blasphemous utterance.

I told him, again, that nowhere is safe. Where would he go? We cannot outrun the Great Mortality. Moral corruption is everywhere, seeping across England, sneaking through night-time windows left ajar. Fornication is rife, and there is no escaping punishment.

He was silent, then. Stepped closer.

Will’s lashes are pale reeds fluttering around a millpond. In the sunlight, they look silver.

The bell chimes now for Compline. I must away.

*

Eleventh day of July

It is astonishing what can be crafted from latrine doors. We scrubbed them clean, and Brother John blessed them, and we banged in iron nails and lo, we made a box. It cannot truly be termed a coffin. It would look seemly in the vegetable gardens – a composter, perhaps. We lacked sufficient wood for a lid. As we lowered the open casket, the Prior’s bloated face glared up at us. We had misjudged the depth of the hole and the dropped impact on the earth caused his head to shake, as it often had in life. His swollen lips sprang open, his eyes slid wide, accusing.

Will bleated a small sound ...

... but forgive me. Brother John now feels a chill, and I am wanted to stoke the grate. With a dearth of firewood, we begin to burn the furniture.

*

No sign of fever. Yet. Where was I? Ah ... the grave, Will, his small sound. I longed to comfort him, hold him. We each bound rags across our mouths to thwart the miasma. They did not thwart the smell of the Prior, a rancid stench, maggot-meat. Above the rough weft, Brother John’s cheeks were a greasy sheen, like the stews Brother Simon pig-slops into dinner bowls. We tossed soil over the Prior, handfuls of dirt scuttering his sightless eyes. I stood, stretching my lower back which ached from chopping, hammering, digging, the queasy keeping of my fingers from slipping into the Prior’s butter-soft skin. I did not need to count the bald mounds of graves around me, for my blistered hands have dug each one. At the turn of this year, we had numbered thirty. Now the chapel echoes silence; the dormitory beds are cold.

Will came to me again tonight. He raves of far-off lands, far away from Norwych and anyone we know. Impossible. Impossible. I covered my ears. It is everywhere – how can he not see that? It is everywhere, and there is nowhere left to hide.

*

Thirteenth day of July

After Sext, I worked in the scriptorium. Since the armarius and other scribes departed this World, I find new freedoms. I lose myself in the tanned-hide scent of vellum; I pluck a choice quill from the storeroom whose key, now, is looped on my girdle. In the pink-tinged dwindle of a summer evening, I press the feather shaft between index finger and thumb and write what I choose. Psalms, Gospels, tales from my mother’s knee, of wild birds and beasts of the sky. I ink jade serpents and crunched green apples, blue Virgin robes and the gold of the Sun. And, of course, this Chronicle, anonymous among myriad scrolls and codices. I find I have less and somehow more time than I did before the Pestilence. In the dust-mote stillness, my mind arches and yawns, catlike.

Later. Will came to find me. As I have taught, he creaked the door open, froze as I steadied the final flick of vowel. The first time, he had bundled over the threshold; I had startled, gouged a scrawled line across the page. I was not the only one. I felt the dry rustle of the scribes around me, the frustrated scrunch of parchment tossed toward the fire. Hours of work ruined by one heedless boy. He was fifteen then, a novice vowed late, limbs spider-like and clumsy. I felt his breath hot and stinking behind me as he peered over my shoulder. My ears glowed. I was still learning, and I feared my errors exposed.

‘What’s that then?’ A grimy finger jabbed and I swatted it clear of the shining page.

‘Ezekiel. Tertia tui pars peste morietur et fame consumetur in medio tui.’

‘Huh?’ His features were a shuffle of confusion.

‘You don’t speak Latin?’

‘Son of a pig farmer? Can’t read, neither.’ He bit his lip, teeth stark in madder flesh.

‘Oh.’ I had pictured his father, doubtless a stout peasant type, marking his name with a muddy thumbprint. ‘I could teach you?’

And that was our beginning, Will and I.

*

But enough rememberings. Back to today.

Will perched on the edge of the drawing table. ‘A messenger from the city. He rode to the boundary wall.’

‘News from your sister?’

‘She bids me come home,’ he said, ‘for she is afeared.’

‘She is always afeared.’ I have met Agnes only once, milksop Agnes and her mewling litter of children. ‘And the journey is arduous.’ Don’t go, Will, don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me here alone with the geese and the rats and the dead.

‘But she is my only kin.’

I inhaled the smell of him; hessian, soil, salt. Nobody could see us there. Nobody could overhear. ‘Can we not also choose our kin?’

His eyes caught mine. He looked away. He stood and scuffed one sandal over the stone. ‘Brother John complains of stomach pain and beseeches prithee mull a tonic.’

I raised an eyebrow. Brother John has been experimenting in the brewery, and we have all felt the effects.

*

Fifteenth day of July

Brother John is dead. At Lauds he vomited bilious fluids; by Vespers, it was blood. We rolled his stain-pocked body in tapestries and returned him to the dust. Brother Simon’s body was there, but his spirit was not. His tonsure is grown over, his sprigged hair wild, and when he speaks he addresses the air, as if his words are meant not for Will and me, but for another realm.

At Compline, Will did not chant but gazed out the horn-pane window. The murky sweep of forest, the fields, the boundary wall beyond.

*

Eighteenth day of July

We sleep now not in the dormitory, but secluded in our treasured places. Today I woke with my cheek pressed on parchment, drool warping the red-inked letters. There is much to do, and we tire easily. We have each stretched ourselves over the blank spaces our Brothers have left. Will minds the calf and the three remaining fowl: two stringy geese and a fractious drake. I hear him conversing with them, sometimes. I do not find this strange. I warn the bees before I smoke them; we all take comfort where we can. Brother Simon stalks the hallway muttering at vapours, his calfskin body distended over a frame of bones. The barley is gone to seed but we have ample grain in storage, when the rats don’t find it. The burned discs Brother Simon excretes from the oven could hardly be termed bread, and so there is little clamour for more.

But now comes twilight, here to hide my shadow. I must away ...

... I walked the boundary wall. My fingers brushed cold flint, snagged cobwebs dewed and heavy. I held my breath when passing through the gate, and was borne into the chaos of the World. A screech-owl tore the air asunder, and I almost dropped my burden, rough wood clattering, splintering my palms. A sunken lane leads to the village, flanked by whispering grasses. I walked as far as I dared and hammered it firm. Inked parchment nailed betwixt two chair legs to block the path. A painted skull, a blooded X.

PERICULUM. MORT.

There will be no more messengers to tempt my Will away.

*

Nineteenth day of July

Brother Simon did not appear for Matins. Only after breakfast (honey, turnip, gruel) did we think to look. We found him crumpled by the transept tower. We ought to have dragged him beyond consecrated ground, but Will and I were weak. I dug a grave where he had fallen. We shall, I think, call it falling.

*

Lammas Eve

We sleep, we wake, we pray, we work. Already I feel the wisps of autumn upon us. The great chestnut bristles with mace-heads, seedpods offensively vibrant, offensively alive. Through the mullioned window, the endless furls of moleskin fields. A charcoal scattering of crows.

My warning sign has worked. There have been no more intrusions: no Agnes, no messenger, no World beyond this bliss that cradles Will and I. Come evening we retire to the scriptorium. There is no one left, I know this, none but the slumbering Brothers under their worm-laced knolls, but still I turn the key. Click of iron lock in oak. Golden light strokes the walls, woollen blankets soft on stone.

Afterwards, I draw. Will, always Will, my quill tracing the sleep-swoop lines of him. The arc of his mouth. The comma of his elbow. His features slack and dreaming, dreaming now, even as I write, though ...

... though now Will shivers, moans, tugs the blankets tight. I take this Chronicle, take this quill and lie beside him, twine my limbs around his angles, stroke my hand across his hair. The fire roars. I will my heartbeat heat to bleed into his. I will his tainted breath between my lips. Outside these walls the World rages on but, I whisper, here, you are safe. Here, there is life. I feel it, I tell him. I feel your life burning into mine, and I say life, but I mean skin, and I say skin, but it is love, really: it is love.

From issue #16: autumn/winter 2023

About the Author
Jess Worsdale is from Hampshire and lives in Belfast. In 2023, she completed the MA in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia. She is working on a high-concept speculative novel set in near-future Dublin, which explores complex family dynamics, mental health and the human cost of corporatization.