Ken Follett - World Without End

Caris looked at the painting of Christ. “You’re doing all you can,” she said. She began to lose control. As a sob rose in her throat, she turned away to hide her feelings and walked quickly out of the cathedral.

She sat in the nuns’ cloisters for a few minutes, pulling herself together, then went to the hospital, as usual at this hour.

Mair was not there. She had probably been called to attend a sick person in the town. Caris took charge, overseeing the serving of breakfast to guests and patients, making sure the place was cleaned thoroughly, checking on those who were sick. The work eased her distress about Madge. She read a psalm to Old Julie. When all the chores were done, Mair still had not appeared, so Caris went in search of her.

She found her in the dormitory, lying face down on her bed. Caris’s heart quickened. “Mair! Are you all right?” she said.

Mair rolled over. She was pale and sweating. She coughed, but did not speak.

Caris knelt beside her and placed a hand on her forehead. “You’ve got a fever,” she said, suppressing the dread that rose in her belly like nausea. “When did it begin?”

“I was coughing yesterday,” Mair said. “But I slept all right, and got up this morning. Then, when I went in to breakfast, I suddenly felt I was going to throw up. I went to the latrine, then came here and lay down. I think I might have been sleeping… what time is it?”

“The bell is about to ring for Terce. But you’re excused.” It could just be an ordinary illness, Caris told herself. She touched Mair’s neck, then pulled the cowl of her robe down.

Mair smiled weakly. “Are you trying to look at my chest?”

“Yes.”

“You nuns are all the same.”

There was no rash, as far as Caris could see. Perhaps it was just a cold. “Any pains?”

“There’s a dreadfully tender place in my armpit.”

That did not tell Caris much. Painful swellings in the armpits or groin were a feature of other illnesses as well as the plague. “Let’s get you down to the hospital,” she said.

As Mair lifted her head, Caris saw bloodstains on the pillow.

She felt the shock like a blow. Mark Webber had coughed blood. And Mair had been the first person to attend Mark at the start of his illness – she had gone to the house the day before Caris did.

Caris hid her fear and helped Mair up. Tears came to her eyes, but she controlled herself. Mair put her arm around Caris’s waist and her head on her shoulder, as if she needed support walking. Caris put her arm around Mair’s shoulder. Together they walked down the stairs and through the nuns’ cloisters to the hospital.

Caris took Mair to a mattress near the altar. She fetched a cup of cold water from the fountain in the cloisters. Mair drank thirstily. Caris bathed her face and neck with rose water. After a while, Mair seemed to sleep.

The bell rang for Terce. Caris was normally excused this service, but today she felt the need for a few moments of quiet. She joined the file of nuns walking into the church. The old grey stones seemed cold and hard today. She chanted automatically, while in her heart a storm raged.

Mair had the plague. There was no rash, but she had the fever, she was thirsty and she had coughed blood. She would probably die.

Caris felt a terrible guilt. Mair loved her devotedly. Caris had never been able to return Mair’s love, not in the way Mair longed for. Now Mair was dying. Caris wished she could have been different. She ought to have been able to make Mair happy. She should be able to save her life. She cried as she sang the psalm, hoping that anyone who noticed her tears would assume she was moved by religious ecstasy.

At the end of the service, a novice nun was waiting anxiously for her outside the south transept door. “There’s someone asking for you urgently in the hospital,” the girl said.

Caris found Madge Webber there, her face white with fear.

Caris did not need to ask what Madge wanted. She picked up her medical bag and the two of them rushed out. They crossed the cathedral green in a biting November wind and went to the Webber house in the main street. Upstairs, Madge’s children were waiting in the living room. The two older children were sitting at the table, looking frightened; the young boys were both lying on the floor.

Caris examined them quickly. All four were feverish. The girl had a nose bleed. The three boys were coughing.

They all had a rash of purplish-black spots on their shoulders and necks.

Madge said: “It’s the same, isn’t it? This is what Mark died of. They’ve got the plague.”

Caris nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“I hope I die, too,” Madge said. “Then we can all be together in heaven.”

In the hospital, Caris instituted the precautions Merthin had told her about. She cut up strips of linen for the nuns to tie over their mouths and noses while they were dealing with people who had the plague. And she compelled everyone to wash their hands in vinegar and water every time they touched a patient. The nuns all got chapped hands.

Madge brought her four children in, then fell ill herself. Old Julie, whose bed had been next to Mark Webber’s while he was dying, also succumbed. There was little Caris could do for any of them. She bathed their faces to cool them, gave them cold clear water to drink from the fountain in the cloisters, cleaned up their bloody vomit, and waited for them to die.

She was too busy to think about her own death. She observed a kind of fearful admiration in the townspeople’s eyes when they saw her soothing the brows of infectious plague victims, but she did not feel like a selfless martyr. She saw herself as the kind of person who disliked brooding and preferred to act. Like everyone else, she was haunted by the question: Who’s next? But she firmly put it out of her mind.

Prior Godwyn came in to see the patients. He refused to wear the face mask, saying it was women’s nonsense. He made the same diagnosis as before, overheated blood, and prescribed bleeding and a diet of sour apples and ram’s tripes.

It did not matter much what the patients ate, as they threw everything up towards the end; but Caris felt sure that taking blood from them made the illness worse. They were already bleeding too much: they coughed blood, vomited blood and pissed blood. But the monks were the trained physicians, so she had to follow their instructions. She did not have time to be angry whenever she saw a monk or nun kneeling at the bedside of a patient, holding an arm out straight, cutting into a vein with a small sharp knife, and supporting the arm while a pint or more of precious blood dripped into a bowl on the floor.

Caris sat with Mair at the end, holding her hand, not caring if anyone disapproved. To ease her torment, she gave her a tiny amount of the euphoric drug Mattie had taught her to make from poppies. Mair still coughed, but it did not hurt her so much. After a coughing fit, her breathing would be easier for a short while, and she could talk. “Thank you for that night in Calais,” she whispered. “I know you didn’t really enjoy it, but I was in heaven.”

Caris tried not to cry. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted.”

“You loved me, though, in your own way. I know that.”

She coughed again. When the fit ended, Caris wiped the blood from her lips.

“I love you,” Mair said, and closed her eyes.

Caris let the tears come, then, not caring who saw or what they thought. She watched Mair, through a watery film, as she grew paler and breathed more shallowly, until at last her breathing stopped.

Caris remained where she was, on the floor beside the mattress, holding the hand of the corpse. Mair was still beautiful, even like this, white and forever still. It occurred to Caris that one other person loved her as Mair had, and that was Merthin. How strange that she had rejected his love, too. There was something wrong with her, she thought; some malformation of the soul that prevented her from being like other women, and embracing love gladly.