Ken Follett - World Without End

Buonaventura said: “And they have a child, a little baby girl called Lolla.”

That was too much. All the grief Caris had felt seven years ago – the pain she thought had gone for ever – came back in a rush. She had not truly lost him back then in 1339, she realized. He had remained loyal to her memory for years. But she had lost him now, finally, eternally.

She was shaken as if by a fit, and she knew she could not hold out much longer. Trembling, she said: “It’s such a pleasure to see you, and catch up with the news, but I must get back to my work.”

His face showed concern. “I hope I haven’t upset you too much. I thought you would prefer to know.”

“Don’t be kind to me – I can’t stand it.” She turned from him and hurried away.

She bent her head to hide her face as she walked from the hospital into the cloisters. Searching for somewhere to be alone, she ran up the stairs to the dormitory. There was no one there in the daytime. She began to sob as she walked the length of the bare room. At the far end was Mother Cecilia’s bedroom. No one was allowed in there without an invitation, but Caris went in anyway, slamming the door behind her. She fell on Cecilia’s bed, not caring that her nun’s cap had fallen off. She buried her face in the straw mattress, and wept.

After a while she felt a hand on her head, stroking her short-cropped hair. She had not heard the person enter the room. She did not care who it was. All the same she was slowly, gradually soothed. Her sobs became less wrenching, her tears dried, and the storm of her emotions began to die down. She rolled over and looked up at her comforter. It was Mair.

Caris said: “Merthin is married – he has a baby girl.” She began to cry again.

Mair lay down on the bed and cradled Caris’s head in her arms. Caris pressed her face into Mair’s soft breasts, letting the woollen robe soak up the tears. “There, there,” said Mair.

After a while, Caris calmed down. She was too drained to feel any more sorrow. She thought of Merthin holding a dark-haired little Italian baby, and saw how happy he would be. She was glad that he was happy, and she drifted into an exhausted sleep.

The illness that had started with Maldwyn Cook spread like a summer fire through the crowds at the Fleece Fair. On Monday it leaped from the hospital to the taverns, then on Tuesday from the visitors to the townspeople. Caris noted its characteristics in her book: it began with stomach pains, led quickly to vomiting and diarrhoea, and lasted between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. It left adults not much the worse, but killed old people and small babies.

On Wednesday, it struck the nuns and the children in the girls’ school. Both Mair and Tilly were affected. Caris sought out Buonaventura, at the Bell, and worriedly asked him whether Italian doctors had any treatment for such diseases. “There’s no cure,” he said. “None that works, anyway, though doctors nearly always prescribe something just to get more money out of people. But some Arab physicians believe you can retard the spread of such illnesses.”

“Oh, really?” Caris was interested. Traders said that Muslim doctors were superior to their Christian counterparts, although the priest-physicians denied this hotly. “How?”

“They believe the disease is acquired when a sick person looks at you. Sight functions by beams that issue from the eyes and touch the things we see – rather like extending a finger to feel whether something is warm, or dry, or hard. But the beams may also project sickness. Therefore you can avoid the disease by never being in the same room as a sufferer.”

Caris did not think illness could be transmitted by looks. If that were true then, after an important service in the cathedral, everyone in the congregation would acquire any illness the bishop had. Whenever the king was ill, he would infect all the hundreds of people who saw him. And surely someone would have noticed that.

However, the notion that you should not share a room with someone who was ill did seem convincing. Here in the hospital, Maldwyn’s illness seemed to spread from a sufferer to those nearby: the sick man’s wife and family were the first to catch it, followed by people in neighbouring beds.

She had also observed that certain kinds of illness – stomach upsets, coughs and colds, and poxes of all sorts – seemed to flare up during fairs and markets; so it seemed obvious that they were passed from one person to another by some means.

On Wednesday night at supper, half the guests in the hospital were suffering from the illness; then by Thursday morning every one of them had it. Several priory servants also succumbed, so Caris was short of people to clean up.

Surveying the chaos at breakfast time, Mother Cecilia suggested closing the hospital.

Caris was ready to consider anything. She felt dismayed at her own powerlessness to combat the disease, and devastated by the filth of her hospital. “But where would the people sleep?” she said.

“Send them to the taverns.”

“The taverns have the same problem. We could put them in the cathedral.”

Cecilia shook her head. “Godwyn won’t have peasants puking in the nave while services go on in the choir.”

“Wherever they sleep, we ought to separate the sick from the well. That’s the way to retard the spread of the illness, according to Buonaventura.”

“It makes sense.”

Caris was struck by a new idea, something that suddenly seemed very obvious, though she had not thought of it before. “Perhaps we shouldn’t just improve the hospital,” she said. “Maybe we should build a new one, just for sick people, and keep the old one for pilgrims and other healthy visitors.”

Cecilia looked thoughtful. “It would be costly.”

“We’ve got a hundred and fifty pounds.” Caris’s imagination began to work. “It could incorporate a new pharmacy. We could have private rooms for people who are chronically ill.”

“Find out what it would cost. You could ask Elfric.”

Caris hated Elfric. She had disliked him even before he had given evidence against her. She did not want him to build her new hospital. “Elfric is busy building Godwyn’s new palace,” she said. “I’d rather consult Jeremiah.”

“By all means.”

Caris felt a rush of affection for Cecilia. Although she was a martinet, tough on discipline, she gave her deputies room to make their own decisions. She had always understood the conflicting passions that drove Caris. Instead of trying to suppress those passions, Cecilia had found ways to make use of them. She had given Caris work that engaged her, and provided outlets for her rebellious energy. Here I am, Caris thought, plainly incapable of dealing with the crisis in front of me, and my superior is calmly telling me to forge ahead with a new long-term Project. “Thank you, Mother Cecilia,” she said.

Later that day she walked around the priory grounds with Jeremiah and explained her aspirations. He was as superstitious as ever, seeing the work of saints and devils in the most trivial of everyday incidents. Nevertheless, he was an imaginative builder, open to new ideas: he had learned from Merthin. They quickly settled on the best location for the new hospital, immediately to the south of the existing kitchen block. It would be apart from the rest of the buildings, so that sick people would have less contact with the healthy, but food would not have to be carried far, and the new building could still be accessed conveniently from the nuns’ cloisters. With the pharmacy, the new latrines and an upper floor with private rooms, Jeremiah thought it would cost about a hundred pounds – most of the legacy.

Caris discussed the site with Mother Cecilia. It was land that belonged neither to the monks nor the nuns, so they went to see Godwyn about it.