The Nameless Day

“Come,” he said, and clicked his fingers. “Come.”

There was a momentary stillness, then from the forest lining the path walked forth children, perhaps some thirty or thirty-five, all between the ages of two and six.

Not one of them was human and all were horribly deformed; the twistings of their bodies reflecting the twistings of their souls.

Wynkyn bared his teeth. They were abominable! Devilish! And to the Devil they must be sent.

He lifted his hand, trying to control its shaking, and began to speak the incantation that would force them down into—

A convulsion racked his body, and his voice wavered and stilled.

Another convulsion swept over him, and Wynkyn de Worde collapsed to the ground.

One of the children, a boy of about six, stepped forth to within a few paces of the friar.

Wynkyn rolled over slightly, his face contorted, and began to whisper again.

The boy smiled.

Wynkyn’s voice bubbled to a close. He lifted a hand trying desperately to conjure words out of air, but nothing came of it, and his hand fell back to the ground, failing him as badly as his voice.

“You’re dying,” said the boy, his voice a mixture of relief and joy.

He turned and looked at the crowd of his fellows. “The Keeper dies!” he said.

Behind him Wynkyn writhed and twisted, fighting uselessly against his illness. He tried to breathe, but could not…he could not…the fluids in his lungs had bubbled to his very throat and…

The boy turned back to Wynkyn as the friar made an horrific gurgling. The old man was trembling, and odorous fluids were running from his mouth and nose.

His eyes were wide and staring…and very, very afraid.

“If I had the strength,” the boy said in a voice surprisingly mature for his age, “I would throw you into the Cleft myself.”

But he could not, and so the boy stood there, his fellows now ranged behind him in a curious and joyful semicircle, and watched as Wynkyn de Worde struggled into death.

They waited for some time after his last breath. Making sure.

They waited until the Cleft closed of its own accord, tired of waiting for the incantation that would have fed it.

They waited until the boy at their head leaned down and retrieved the key that hung from the dead friar’s belt.

They waited until the curse of the Nameless Day was past.

“Hail our freedom!” he cried, and then burst into laughter. “We are freed of the angels’ curse. Freed into life!”

And he thrust the key nightward in an obscene gesture towards Heaven.

It was a cold night.

Worse, it was the most feared time of year, for all knew that during the winter solstice the worlds of mankind and demon touched and a passage between them became possible. In ancient times the people had called this day and night period the Nameless Day, for to name it would only have been to give it power. Even though the people now had the word of God to comfort them, they remembered the beliefs of their ancestors, and each year feared that this Nameless Day might witness the escape of Satan’s imps into their world.

The villagers of Asterladen—those the pestilence had spared—huddled about a roaring fire inside the church. It was the only stone building in the village, and the only building with stout doors which the villagers could lock securely.

It was the safest place they could find, and the only sound which could comfort them was the murmured prayers of their parish priest.

Rainard, his wife Aude, and their infant daughter were particularly unlucky. That afternoon they had remained behind in the fields when the other villagers left, trying to discover the brooch that Aude had dropped in the mud.

It was her only piece of finery, a simple brooch made of worn bronze which had been passed down through her family for generations, and Aude was singularly proud of it. Normally she would not have worn it out to the fields, but there was to be a field dance that afternoon, and the lord had promised ale, and Aude wanted to look her best. Despite her age and her many years spent childbearing, Aude was a vain creature and proud of her looks. But between the dancing and the ale, the brooch had somehow slipped from her breast to be trodden down into the earth. She and Rainard—he berating her the entire time for her foolishness in wearing her only piece of jewellery into the field even for a Yuletide dance—had searched for hours, but the brooch was nowhere to be found.

Too late they realised the onset of dusk, and the absence of every other soul.

They hurried back to the village, breathless and fearful, and had beaten on the doors of the church until their fists were bruised and bloody.

But the priest had called them demons, and the villagers safe inside the church had screamed and refused to believe that the voices of their well-known friends were human at all.

So Rainard and Aude and their infant daughter, whom Aude had left swaddled and safe in their cottage while they were out in the fields, had to survive the night on their own.

Rainard built up a good fire in the central hearth of their cottage, and he and his wife huddled as close to it as they could, listening all the while to the moans and cries in the wind outside.

“There’ll be no harm,” Aude muttered, convincing neither her husband nor herself. She threw a concerned glance to her daughter, lying asleep in her cradle.

“We would be safe if not for your cursed trinket,” Rainard said.

Aude bared her yellowing teeth, but said nothing. She grieved deeply for her lost brooch, and wondered if somehow Rainard had been involved in its loss.

What if he had seized it in order to sell it next market day in Nuremberg? Like as not he would squander her money on a new couplet of pigs, or some such! Yes, perhaps he had it even now, tucked away in some—

There was a sudden noise on the wind, the sound of a distant door being forced open, and then of feet scuffling past the back wall of their cottage.

Some of the feet clicked, as if they were clawed.

“Rainard!” Aude squeaked, and leapt into her husband’s arms.

He shoved her to one side, and seized an axe he had to the ready.

More feet scampered past, bolder now, and the couple thought they heard the sound of three or four more doors in neighbouring cottages being forced open.

“Rainard!” Aude screamed, grabbing at his arm.

And then the door of their hovel squeaked and fell open.

Rainard and Aude stared, not believing their eyes.

A child, a boy, stood there. He was weeping, and covered with dirt and abrasions.

Nonetheless, he was the most beautiful child the peasants had ever seen.

“Who are you?” Rainard said, wondering how the child had escaped the prowling demons.

The boy gulped, and began to cry. “I’m lost,” he eventually said.

Rainard and Aude looked at each other. They’d heard tales of these waifs, orphaned by the pestilence, turned out of their homes by neighbours who thought the children harboured pestilence themselves.

But although this boy was cold and dirty, he was also obviously healthy. His eyes shone clear and bright, and his skin, if dirty, was not feverish.

“What is your name?” Aude said.

“I have no name,” the boy said.

“Then where are your parents?” Rainard said.

“My mam is dead, and my father deserted us years ago,” the boy said. “Before I was born. I know not where he is. Please, I am hungry. Will you feed me?”

There was a shuffling behind him, and two girls, perhaps three and four respectively, silently joined the boy.

“How many of you are there?” Rainard asked.

“Us, and two more, both girls,” said the boy. “Please, we have all lost our parents, and are hungry. Will you feed us?”

Rainard and Aude shared a look. They were poor and had barely enough to feed themselves, but they also had souls, and cared deeply for children. God knew there were few enough left in this time of pestilence.

“We’ll take you,” Rainard said, pointing to the boy, “and one of the girls. The others can find homes soon enough with some of the other families.”

The boy smiled, his face almost angelic. “I do thank you,” he said.

He moved over to the cradle, and both Rainard and Aude stiffened.

But the boy did nothing more than reach in and gently touch the sleeping girl’s forehead. “She will lead a charmed life,” he said.

Over that night and the next two days twelve villages in the region north of Nuremberg found themselves sheltering hungry orphans. No one was particularly puzzled by the appearance of the children: communication between villages was poor, and there was no one to learn of the somewhat surprising number of hungry, soulful-looking children who appeared at doors asking for shelter in the time of the Nativity in the year of the black pestilence.

This was a time of unheard-of disease and death, and there must surely be orphaned children wandering about all over the land.

All the children were taken in and nourished, and loved, and raised. None of these children bit the hands that fed them; to these work-worn hands they gave back love and gratefulness and good works.

All of these children eventually left their adopted homes to lead particularly bounteous lives.

ROME

“Margrett, my sweetest Margrett! I must goe!

most dere to mee that neuer may be soo;

as Fortune willes, I cannott itt deny.”

“then know thy loue, thy Margrett, shee must dye.”

A Jigge (for Margrett)

Medieval English ballad

I

The Friday after Plough Monday

In the forty-ninth year of the reign of Edward III

(16th January 1377)

A dribble of red wine ran down Gerardo’s stubbled chin, and he reluctantly—and somewhat unsteadily—rose from his sheltered spot behind the brazier.

It was time to close the gates.

Gerardo had been the gatekeeper at the northern gate of Rome, the Porta del Popolo, for nine years, and in all of his nine years he’d never had a day like this one. In his time he’d closed the gates against raiders, Jewish and Saracen merchants, tardy pilgrims and starving mobs come to the Holy City to beg for morsels and to rob the wealthy. He’d opened the gates to dawns, Holy Roman armies, traders and yet more pilgrims.

Today, he had opened the gate at dawn to discover a pope waiting.

Gerardo had just stood, bleary eyes blinking, mouth hanging open, one hand absently scratching at the reddened and itching lice tracks under his coarse woollen robe. He hadn’t instantly recognised the man or his vestments, nor the banners carried by the considerable entourage stretching out behind the pope. And why should he? No pope had made Rome his home for the past seventy years, and only one had made a cursory visit—and that years before Gerardo had taken on responsibility for the Porta del Popolo.

So he had stood there and stared, blinking like an addle-headed child, until one of the soldiers of the entourage shouted out to make way for His Holiness Pope Gregory XI. Still sleep-befuddled, Gerardo had obligingly shuffled out of the way, and then stood and watched as the pope, fifteen or sixteen cardinals, some sundry officials of the papal curia, soldiers, mercenaries, priests, monks, friars, general hangers-on, eight horse-drawn wagons and several score of laden mules entered Rome to the accompaniment of murmured prayers, chants, heavy incense and the flash of weighty folds of crimson and purple silks in the dawn light.

None among this, the most richest of cavalcades, thought to offer the gatekeeper a coin, and Gerardo was so fuddled he never thought to ask for one.

Instead, he stood, one hand still on the gate, and watched the pageant disappear down the street.

Within the hour Rome was in uproar.

The pope was home! Back from the terrible Babylonian Captivity in Avignon where the traitor French kings had kept successive popes for seventy years. The pope was home!

Mobs roared onto streets and swept over the Ponte St Angelo into the Leonine City and up the street leading to St Peter’s Basilica. There Pope Gregory, a little travel weary but strong of voice, addressed the mob in true papal style, admonishing them for their sins and pleading for their true repentance…as also for the taxes and tithes they had managed to avoid these past seventy years.

The mob was having none of it. They wanted assurance the pope wasn’t going to sally back out the gate the instant they all went back to home and work. They roared the louder, and leaned forward ominously, fists waving in the air, threats of violence rising above their upturned faces. This pope was going to remain in Rome where he belonged.

The pope acquiesced (his train of cardinals had long since fled into the bolted safety of St Peter’s). He promised to remain, and vowed that the papacy had returned to Rome.

The mob quietened, lowered their fists and cheered. Within the hour they’d trickled back to their residences and workshops, not to begin their daily labour, but to indulge in a day of celebration.

Now Gerardo sighed, and shuffled closer to the gate. He had drunk too much of that damn rough Corsican red this day—as had most of the Roman mob, some of whom were still roaming the streets or standing outside the walls of the Leonine City (the gates to that had been shut many hours since)—and he couldn’t wait to close these cursed gates and head back to his warm bed and comfortable wife.

He grabbed hold of the edge of one of the gates, and pulled it slowly across the opening until he could throw home its bolts into the bed of the roadway. He was about to turn for the other gate when a movement in the dusk caught his eye. Gerardo stared, then slowly cursed.

Some fifty or sixty paces down the road was a man riding a mule. Gerardo would have slammed the gates in the man’s face but for the fact that the man wore the distinctive black hooded cloak over the white robe of a Dominican friar, and if there was one group of clergy Gerardo was more than reluctant to annoy it was the Dominicans.

Too many of the damn Dominicans were Father Inquisitors (and those that were not had ambitions to be), and Gerardo didn’t fancy a slow death roasting over coals for irritating one of the bastards.

Worse, Gerardo couldn’t charge the friar the usual coin for passage through the gate. Clergy thought themselves above such trivialities as paying gatekeepers for their labours.

So he stood there, hopping from foot to foot in the deepening dusk and chill air, running foul curses through his mind, and waited for the friar to pass.

The poor bastard looked cold, Gerardo had to give him that. Dominicans affected simple dress, and while the cloak over the robe might keep the man’s body warm enough, his feet were clad in sandals that left them open to the winter’s rigour. As the friar drew closer, Gerardo could see that his hands were white and shaking as they gripped the rope of the mule’s halter, and his face was pinched and blue under the hood of his black cloak.

Gerardo bowed his head respectfully.

“Welcome, brother,” he murmured as the friar drew level with him. I bet the sanctimonious bastard won’t be slow in downing the wine this night, he thought.

The friar pulled his mule to a halt, and Gerardo looked up.

“Can you give me directions to the Saint Angelo friary?” the friar asked in exquisite Latin.

The friar’s accent was strange, and Gerardo frowned, trying to place it. Not Roman, nor the thick German of so many merchants and bankers who passed through his gate. And certainly not the high piping tones of those French pricks. He peered at the man’s face more closely. The friar was about twenty-eight or nine, and his face was that of the soldier rather than the priest: hard and angled planes to cheek and forehead, short black hair curling out from beneath the rim of the hood, a hooked nose, and penetrating light brown eyes over a traveller’s stubble of dark beard.

Sweet St Catherine, perhaps he was a Father Inquisitor!

“Follow the westerly bend of the Tiber,” said Gerardo in much rougher Latin, “until you come to the bridge that crosses over to the Castel Saint Angelo—but do not cross. The Saint Angelo friary lies tucked to one side of the bridge this side of the river. You cannot mistake it.” He bowed deeply.

The friar nodded. “I thank you, good man.” One hand rummaged in the pouch at his waist, and the next moment he tossed a coin at Gerardo. “For your aid,” he said, and kicked his mule forward.

Gerardo grabbed the coin and gasped, revising his opinion of the man as he stared at him disappearing into the twilight.

The friar hunched under his cloak as his exhausted mule stumbled deeper into Rome. For years he had hungered to visit this most holy of cities, yet now he couldn’t even summon a flicker of interest in the buildings rising above him, in the laughter and voices spilling out from open doorways, in the distant rush and tumble of the Tiber, or in the twinkling lights of the Leonine City rising to his right.

He didn’t even scan the horizon for the silhouette of St Peter’s Basilica.

Instead, all he could think of was the pain in his hands and feet. The cold had eaten its terrible way so deep into his flesh and joints that he thought he would limp for the rest of his life.

But of what use were feet to a man who wanted only to spend his life in contemplation of God? And, of course, in penitence for his foul sin—a sin so loathsome that he did not think he’d ever be able to atone for it enough to achieve salvation.

Alice! Alice! How could he ever have condemned her to the death he had?

He should welcome the pain, because it would focus his mind on God, as on his sinful soul. The flesh was nothing; it meant nothing, just as this world meant nothing. On the other hand, his soul was everything, as was contemplation of God and of eternity. Flesh was corrupt, spirit was pure.

The friar sighed and forced himself to throw his cloak away from hands and feet. Comfort was sin, and he should not indulge in it.

He sighed again, ragged and deep, and envied the life of the gatekeeper. Rough, honest work spent in the city of the Holy Father. Service to God.

What man could possibly desire anything else?

Prior Bertrand was half sunk to his arthritic knees before the cross in his cell, when there came a soft tap at the door.

Bertrand closed his eyes in annoyance, then painfully raised himself, grabbing a bench for support as he did so. “Come.”

A young boy of some twelve or thirteen years entered, dressed in the robes of a novice.

He bowed his head and crossed his hands before him. “Brother Thomas Neville has arrived,” he said.

Bertrand raised his eyebrows. The man had made good time! And to arrive the same day as Pope Gregory…well, a day of many surprises then.

“Does he need rest and food before I speak with him, Daniel?” Bertrand asked.

“No,” said another voice, and the newcomer stepped out from the shadows of the ill-lit passageway. He was limping badly. “I would prefer to speak with you now.”

Bertrand bit down an unbrotherly retort at the man’s presumptuous tone, then gestured Brother Thomas inside.

“Thank you, Daniel,” Bertrand said to the novice. “Perhaps you could bring some bread and cheese from the kitchens for Brother Thomas.”

Bertrand glanced at the state of the friar’s hands and feet. “And ask Brother Arno to prepare a poultice.”

“I don’t need—” Brother Thomas began.

“Yes,” Bertrand said, “you do need attention to your hands and feet…your feet especially. If you were not a cripple before you entered service, then God does not demand that you become one now.” He looked back at the novice. “Go.”

The novice bowed again, and closed the door behind him.

“You have surprised me, brother,” Bertrand said, turning to face his visitor, who had hobbled into the centre of the sparsely furnished cell. “I did not expect you for some weeks yet.”

Bertrand glanced over the man’s face and head; he’d travelled so fast he’d not had the time to scrape clean his chin or tonsure. That would be the next thing to be attended to, after his extremities.

“I made good time, Brother Prior,” Thomas said. “A group of obliging merchants let me share their vessel down the French and Tuscany coasts.”

A courageous man, thought Bertrand, to brave the uncertain waters of the Mediterranean. But that is as befits his background. “Will you sit?” he said, and indicated the cell’s only stool, which stood to one side of the bed.

Thomas sat down, not allowing any expression of relief to mark his face, and Bertrand lowered himself to the bed. “You have arrived on an auspicious day, Brother Thomas,” he said.

Thomas raised his eyebrows.

Bertrand stared briefly at the man’s striking face before he responded. There was an arrogance and pride there that deeply disturbed the prior. “Aye, an auspicious day indeed. At dawn Gregory disembarked himself, most of his cardinals, and the entire papal curia, from his barges on the Tiber and entered the city.”

“The pope has returned?”

Bertrand bowed his head in assent.

Brother Thomas muttered something under his breath that to Bertrand’s aged ears sounded very much like a curse.

“Brother Thomas!”

The man’s cheeks reddened slightly. “I beg forgiveness, Brother Prior. I only wish I had pushed my poor mule the faster so I might have been here for the event. Tell me, has he arrived to stay?”

“Well,” Bertrand slid his hands inside the voluminous sleeves of his robe. “I would hear about your journey first, Brother Thomas. And then, perhaps, I can relate our news to you.”

Best to put this autocratic brother in his place as soon as possible, Bertrand thought. I will not let him direct the conversation.

Thomas made as if to object, then bowed his head in acquiescence. “I left Dover on the Feast of Saint Benedict, and crossed to Harfleur on the French coast. From there…”

Bertrand listened with only a portion of his attention as Thomas continued his tale of his journey, nodding now and then with encouragement. But the tale interested him not. It was this man before him who commanded his thoughts.

Brother Thomas was a man of some interest, with an unusual background for a friar, although not for more worldly men. The Prior General of England, Richard Thorseby, had been extremely reluctant to admit Thomas Neville into the Order of Preachers—the Dominicans—and had examined Thomas at great length before finally, and most unwillingly, allowing him to take his vows.

Men like Thomas were usually trouble.

On the other hand, Thomas could be extremely useful to the advancement of the Dominicans—if he was handled correctly.

Bertrand smiled politely as Thomas told an amusing anecdote about ship life with the rowdy merchants, but let his train of thought continue.

Why had Thomas chosen the Dominicans? The mendicant orders, of which the Dominicans were the most powerful, were orders which took their vows of chastity, poverty and obedience very seriously. Indeed, “mendicant” was the ancient Latin word meaning “to beg”. Friars remained poor all their lives, were not allowed to own property or live luxurious lives…unlike many of the higher clergy within the Roman Church.

If Thomas had chosen to join the more regular orders of the Church, Bertrand thought, he could have been a bishop within two years, a cardinal in ten, and could have aspired to be pope within twenty. Yet he chose poverty and humbleness above power and riches. Why?

Piety?

From one of the Nevilles?

From what he knew of the Nevilles, Bertrand could not believe that one of their family would have chosen piety above power, but then one never knew the wondrous workings of the Lord.

“And so now you hope to continue your studies here,” Bertrand said as Thomas’ tale drew to a close.

“My colleagues at Oxford— ”

Bertrand nodded. Thomas had spent two of the past five years teaching as a Master at one of the Oxford colleges.

“—spoke of nothing else but the wonders of your library. Some say,” and Thomas spread his hands almost apologetically, as if he did not truly believe what some had said, “that Saint Angelo’s library is more extensive than that administered by the clergy of Saint Peter’s itself.”

“Nevertheless, you are here, Brother Thomas. You must have believed some of what you had heard.” Bertrand shifted slightly on the hard bed. His hips and shoulders ached in the chill air of his cell, and he berated himself for wishing this young man would leave so he could crawl beneath the blanket.

“But it is true,” Bertrand continued. “We do have a fine library. For many generations our friary has been well funded by successive popes—” Bertrand did not explain why, and Thomas did not ask, “—and much of this benevolent patronage has been put to building one of the finest libraries in Rome and, I dare say, within Christendom itself. You are welcome, Brother Thomas, to use our facilities as you wish.”

Thomas bowed his head again, and smiled. “You are weary, Brother Prior, and I have taken up too much of your time. Perhaps we can talk again in the morning?”

Bertrand nodded. “We break our fast after Prime prayers, Brother Thomas. You may speak with me then. Do you wish Daniel to show you your cell now?”

“I thank you,” Thomas said, “but Daniel has already pointed out its location to me, and there is something else I wish to do before I retire.”

“Yes?”

Thomas took a deep breath, and from the expression on his face Bertrand suddenly realised that it was piety that had impelled Thomas to take holy orders.

“I would pray before the altar of Saint Peter’s, Brother Prior. To prostrate myself to God’s will before the bones of the great Apostle has always been one of my dearest desires.”

“Then for the Virgin’s sake, brother, let Arno see to your feet before you go. I’ll not have the pope say that it was one of my brothers who left blood smeared all over the sacred floor of Saint Peter’s!”

After the celebrations of the day, Rome had darkened and quieted, and the streets were deserted. Thomas walked from the friary over the bridge crossing the Tiber—more comfortably now that Arno had daubed herbs on his ice-bitten feet, and wrapped them in thick, soft bandages inside his sandals—then halted on the far side, staring at the huge rounded shape of the Castel St Angelo from which the friary took its name. Thomas had heard that it was once the tomb of one of the great pagan Roman emperors, but the archangel Michael had appeared one day on its roof and from then on the monument had been converted to a more holy and Christian purpose: a fort, guarding the entrance to the domain of the popes in Rome, the Leonine City.

Thomas turned his head and stared west towards St Peter’s Basilica built into the hill of the Leonine City, and surrounded by lesser buildings and palaces housing, once again, the papal curia and the person of the Holy Father himself. Lights glinted in many of the windows in the papal palace, but even the excitement of a once-again resident pope could not diminish Thomas’ wonder at seeing the great structure of St Peter’s Basilica rising into the night.

Thomas’ eyes flickered once more to the Castel St Angelo. Legend had it that a long-dead pope had caused a tunnel to be built from the papal palace next to St Peter’s into the basements of the fort; an escape route into a well-fortified hidey-hole, should the Roman mobs ever get too unruly. Given the widespread reputation of the Romans for spontaneous and catastrophic violence, Thomas wondered if the first chore Gregory had undertaken once ensconced in his apartments was to personally dust away the spider webs and rats’ nests from the tunnel entrance.

Thomas grinned at the thought, then automatically—and silently—castigated himself for such irreverence. He looked at the gate in the wall of the Leonine City. It was closed, but several guards were on duty, and Thomas hoped they’d let him through.

They did. A single Dominican could harm no one, and Thomas’ obvious piety and insistence that he be allowed to pray before St Peter’s shrine impressed them as much as it had Bertrand.

The pressing of a coin into each of their hands dispelled any lingering doubts.

Beyond the gate Thomas walked slowly up the street leading to St Peter’s.

The Basilica was massive. Since the Emperor Constantine had first erected the Basilica in the fourth century, it had been added to, renovated, restored and enlarged, but it was still one of the most sacred sites for any Christian: the monument erected over the tomb of St Peter, first among Christ’s Apostles. Here pilgrims flocked in their tens of thousands every year. Here the penitent begged for their salvation. Here kings and emperors crawled on hands and knees begging forgiveness for their sins.

Here was the heart of functional Christendom now that Jerusalem was lost to the infidels.

Thomas faltered to a halt some hundred paces from the atrium leading to the Basilica, and his eyes filled with tears. For so long he had wanted to worship at St Peter’s shrine. Initially as a child, having watched his beloved parents die from the corruption of a return of the great pestilence; through all the years of his youth—years wasted in blasphemy and anger—and finally, to this man grown into the realisation that his life must be dedicated to God and furthering God’s mission here on earth.

It had been a long, difficult, fraught journey, but here he was at last.

At last.

Thomas resumed his slow walk towards the Basilica. At the end of the street thirty-five wide steps rose towards a marble platform before an irregular huddle of buildings: several huge archways, a tower, and tall brick apartments with colonnaded balconies. These buildings formed a wall to either side of the entrance archways into the vast court that served as the atrium of St Peter’s.