Holy Fools (5 page)

It is a pleasant
little town on the Moselle, in Lorraine. It was the first time we had come that way, concentrating as we did mostly on the coastal regions, and we arrived in a small village called Bruyère a few miles outside the town. A quiet place; half a dozen farms, a church, orchards of apple and pear trees half-eaten by mistletoe. If I felt anything unusual I cannot recall it now; maybe a sharp glance from a woman by the roadside, a sly forking of the fingers from a child at the crossroads. I read the cards, as I did at any new spot; but I drew only a harmless Fool, a Six of Staves, and a Deuce of Cups. If there was a warning there, I did not see it.

It was August; parched summer dragging into a premature autumn turning dank and sweet with rot. Hailstorms a month earlier had crushed the ripe barley, and the fields lay spoiling in an alehouse stench. The sudden heat in the wake of the storms was overwhelming, and the people seemed dazed by the sun, blinking foolishly at our caravans as they passed. Nevertheless, we managed to negotiate a field for our camp, and that night we performed a short burlesque around our campfire, to the accompaniment of crickets and frogs.

Our audience was sparse, however. Even the dwarves barely brought a smile to the mirthless faces made bloody in the firelight, and few seemed inclined to stay afterward. The only regular entertainments in that region were hangings and burnings, according to alehouse gossip: a sow had been hanged a few days earlier for eating her young, a pair of nuns in a nearby convent had set themselves on fire in imitation of Saint Christina Mirabilis, and there was always at least one person in the pillory, so the villagers of Bruyère, inured to strong entertainments, were unlikely to be much moved by the arrival of a troupe of players.

At this LeMerle shrugged philosophically. There were good days and bad, he said, and these small villages were unused to culture. Épinal would be better.

We arrived there on the morning of the Festival of the Virgin to find the town in carnival mood. We had expected as much; after the procession and the mass the populace would retire to the alehouses and the streets, where already the celebrations were under way. This was no time for one of LeMerle’s satires-Épinal had a reputation for piety-but there might be good takings for a rope-dancer and a troupe of jongleurs. I could already see a tabor player and a flautist beneath the portals of the church, plus a masked Fool with his wand and bells and, strangely out of place, the Plague Doctor, black long-nosed mask over whitened face, his dark cloak flapping. Other than that slight note of discord, things seemed much as normal. Perhaps there was another troupe in town, I told myself, with which we might have to share the takings. I know I thought no more about them. And yet I should have recognized the signs. The black Doctor in his crow’s garb. The sounds of excitement-almost of fear-as we passed. The look in a woman’s eye as I smiled at her from my caravan, the sly fork of the hand repeated over and over…

LeMerle scented trouble from the first. I should have known-there was a reckless gleam in his eyes as he scanned the crowd, a broadness to his smile that should have checked me. It was our custom at times like this to send out the dwarves among the revelers, giving out sweetmeats and invitations to the performance, but this day he signaled for the dwarves to keep close, Le Borgne occasionally spitting fire from the tail of my caravan like a comet, Cateau calling out in his piping voice: “Players! See the players today! See the Winged Woman!”

Today, however, I could see that the crowd’s attention lay elsewhere. The procession of the Holy Mother was about to begin, and there was already a great glut of people outside the church. People lined the street on either side, some carrying images and flowers, votives or flags. The bridge too was thronged with people of the river, awaiting the ceremony. There were vendors too: sellers of pasties and cooked meats and ale and fruit. The air was thick with the smells of candle smoke and sweat, roasting meat, dust and incense, leather and onions and refuse and horses. The noise was almost unendurable. Cripples and children stood near the front, but already there were too many people, and the crowd pressed against the sides of our caravans, some looking up curiously at the painted signs and bright pennants, others shouting at us for being in their way.

I was already beginning to feel dazed; the cries of the vendors, the heat of the sun, the many stenches were too much for me, and I tried to turn back into some quieter street, but it was too late. Urged forward by the mass of worshipers, our caravans had reached the steps of the church almost at the same time the Virgin’s Day procession was due to leave. Unable to retreat or go forward I watched, curious, as the great platform carrying the Holy Mother emerged from the main door of the church and into the light.

There must have been fifty people underneath and another fifty along the sides, shoulders straining against the long poles that supported it. It was heavy and swayed as it came through the doorway; and at every slow step there came a sigh from the hooded bearers, as if the burden were almost too much to carry. The Holy Mother stood at the top of the structure on a mound of blue and white flowers, her embroidered robe gleaming in the sunlight, her hands smeared with oil and honey. A priest with a censer walked before her; a dozen monks with candlesticks came behind, singing the Ave to the wailing of an hautbois.

I had little time to follow the music, however. As soon as the procession appeared, there was a moan from the people, and we were jostled suddenly, violently, as the worshipers surged forward.
“Miséricorde!”
came the cry from a thousand throats, and the stench of oil and flesh and grime was overwhelming, mingling with the smoke from the silver censer, a scent of clove and holy dust. “Pity! Pity for our sins!”

I stood upon the axle of my caravan and peered across the heads of the crowd. I was beginning to feel uneasy, for although I had seen religious frenzy before, this seemed unusually ferocious, the shrill note of zeal sharpened on something shriller, closer to the bone. Not for the first time, and with an almost unconscious cupping of the new roundness at my belly, I wondered whether it was not time to leave the life we were leading before it soured completely. I was in my twenty-third year. I was no longer young.

The black Doctor flapped his cloak, keeping a blister of space between himself and the crowd, a walking emptiness, and I noticed that the cries came louder at his passage and that some fell to their knees in his wake.

“
Miséricorde!
Pity for our sins!” We were too close to the procession to hope for a retreat, and I steered my horse with care, keeping him dancing gingerly on the spot against the push of people, which threatened to overturn us. The Holy Mother passed slowly, lurching like a laden barge through the crowd. I saw that many of the people carrying the platform went barefoot, like penitents, although this was not usual on the Virgin’s Day. The monks were hooded like the bearers, but I noticed that one had pushed back his hood a little, and his face was red and flushed with drunkenness or exhaustion.

We stood our ground. The platform swayed as it passed us, and for a moment, standing on my axle, I was eye to eye with the Virgin, close enough for me to see the dust of years gleaming in the intricacies of her golden crown, the flaking of paint across her pink cheek. There was a spider in the hollow of one blue eye, and as I watched, it began to move slowly down her face. No one else saw it. Then she passed by.

In her wake, the frenzy was mounting, with people falling to their knees even in the press of the multitude, dragging others with them. Others took their places, the ranks closing over their heads, their cries unheard. “
Miséricorde!
Pity for our sins!”

A woman to my left arched backward into the crowd, eyes rolled up to the whites. For a moment she was held up like an effigy, floating effortlessly upon the outstretched hands, then she slid under and the people moved on.

“Hey!” I said. “There’s someone under there!”

Faces mooned at me without comprehension from the swell below. No one seemed to have heard me. I cracked my whip over their heads and my horse strained and pranced to stay level, eyes rolling. “There’s a woman under there! Stand back, for pity’s sake! Stand
back
!”

But we had been carried too far. The injured woman was already behind us, and people were thronging forward to stare at the foolish patch of space I had cleared. There came a sudden lull in sound, reducing the cries to a drone above which the Ave was briefly audible, and I thought I read in the upturned faces a kind of hope, a new relief. Then came the catastrophe.

If it had been any other than a member of the procession no one would have noticed him fall. I learned afterward that four people had been crushed underfoot during the celebrations, their heads smashed into the cobbles by the eager feet of pilgrims and revelers alike. But the procession was sacred, moving ponderously through a multitude held at bay by incense and adoration. I did not see him fall. But I heard the cry, a single note at first, then the chorus, rising in swift reaction far beyond that which we had previously witnessed. Leaping back onto the axle, I saw what had happened, although even then I did not understand its significance.

The staggering monk at the tail of the procession had collapsed. The heat, I thought vaguely, or the fumes from the censer. A group of people had gathered around the fallen man; I saw the white blur of his exposed skin as they pulled open his habit. There was a gasp and a moan, then they were moving like ripples, as fast as they could back through the ranks.

In seconds, the ripples had become a powerful undertow, reversing the flow of people so that instead of pushing
toward
the procession they were pushing
away
with all their energies, the caravans rocking in the renewed counterstruggle, some even trying to climb up out of the crowd onto the caravans in their eagerness to be gone. The procession was no longer sacred; as I watched, the line trembled and broke in several places, the Holy Mother lurching to one side, uncrowned in the burst of panic as some of her bearers deserted.

Then I heard the cry; a high-pitched ululation of grief or terror, a single voice rising above them like a clarion:
“La peste! La peste!”

I struggled to hear, to distinguish words in the unfamiliar dialect. Whatever it was, it ran through the crowd like summer fire. Fights broke out as people tried to escape; others climbed the walls of the buildings lining the street-some even jumped from the sides of the bridge in their eagerness to flee. I stood up to see what was happening, but I had become separated from the other caravans. Some distance ahead I could see LeMerle lashing at his mare’s flanks, driving her onward. But the crowd had him from both sides, rocking against the caravan’s panels, lifting the wheels from the ground. Faces lurched at me out of the multitude; one caught my eye, and I was astonished at the hatred there. It was a young girl, her round red face distorted with terror and loathing. “Witch!” she shrieked at me. “Poisoner!”

Whatever it was, it was catching. I heard the cry bounce ahead of me like a stone across a lake, gathering momentum as it went, looking for somewhere to strike. The outpouring of hatred had become a tide; now it swelled against me, threatening to lift the caravan from the ground.

I was struggling with my horse; it was a quiet beast as a rule, but the girl struck it hard in the flank, and it half reared, dancing out with its heavy-shod hooves. The girl screamed; I pulled back on the horse’s harness to prevent it from trampling the people in front of me. It took all my attention and my strength-even so, the animal was panicked, and I had to whisper a cantrip into his ear to calm him-and by the time I had done with that, the girl had vanished into the crowd, and the terrible wave of hatred had moved on.

Ahead of me, though, LeMerle was in trouble. I could see him shouting something, his voice lost in the roar of the multitude, but I was too far away to understand what it was. His horse, a nervy mare, was terror-stricken; I could hear the cries of
Witch!
and
Poisoner!
above her screaming. LeMerle tried to control her, but it was beyond his skill; he was alone, cut off from the rest of us, now lashing out over the heads of the crowd with his whip, trying to force them aside. The strain proved too much for the caravan’s axle. It collapsed, toppling the vehicle; and now many hands tugged at the caravan’s fastenings, ignoring the blows from LeMerle’s whip. They had him now; there was nowhere for him to go. Someone threw a clod of earth-it hit him in the face, and he lost his balance; hands reached to drag him from his perch. Someone else tried to intervene-an official, perhaps-I thought I could make out faint cries of
Order! Order!
as the two factions clashed.

Throughout all this I had been shouting at the top of my voice, trying to divert attention away from LeMerle; now I urged my horse forward, heedless of the people in front of me. He saw me coming and grinned; but before I could reach him the crowd had closed in; LeMerle was lost from sight; blows fell onto him as he was dragged away.

I would have followed on foot, although he was already too far away, except that Le Borgne, who had been hiding inside the caravan as I drove through the crowd, held on to my arm. “Don’t be stupid, Juliette,” he rasped in my ear. “Don’t you know what’s going on here? Haven’t you been listening?”

I looked at him wildly. “LeMerle-”

“LeMerle can take care of himself.” His hand tightened on my arm; in spite of his size, the dwarf’s grip was painfully strong. “Listen.”

I listened. I could still hear that cry, now grown rhythmic, swelled with the stamping of many feet, like a crowd calling for a favorite actress.
“La peste! La peste!”

It was only then that I understood. The outburst of terror; the fallen monk; the accusations of witchcraft. Le Borgne saw my expression and nodded. We looked at each other, and for a moment neither of us said anything. Outside, the cries redoubled.