Ken Follett - World Without End

This type of request was not unusual, and Caris carried a leather case of medical supplies with her wherever she went. “Of course I’ll come, lad,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Giles Spicers, mother, and I’m to wait and bring you.”

“All right.” Caris turned to the bishop. “Go ahead with your dinner, please. I’ll join you as soon as I can.” She picked up her case and followed the boy out.

Shiring owed its existence to the sheriff’s castle on the hill, just as Kingsbridge did to the priory. Near the market square were the grand houses of the leading citizens, the wool merchants and sheriff’s deputies and royal officials such as the coroner. A little farther out were the homes of moderately prosperous traders and craftsmen, goldsmiths and tailors and apothecaries. Giles’s father was a dealer in spices, as his name indicated, and Giles led Caris to a street in this neighbourhood. Like most houses of this class, it had a stone-built ground floor that served as warehouse and shop, and flimsier timber living quarters above. Today the shop was closed and locked. Giles led Caris up the outside staircase.

She smelled the familiar odour of sickness as soon as she walked in. Then she hesitated. There was something special about the smell, something that struck a chord in her memory that for some reason made her feel very frightened.

Rather than ponder it, she walked through the living room into the bedroom, and there she found the dreadful answer.

Three people lay on mattresses around the room: a woman of her own age, a slightly older man and an adolescent boy. The man was farthest gone in sickness. He lay moaning and sweating in a fever. The open neck of his shirt showed that he had a rash of purple-black spots on his chest and throat. There was blood on his lips and nostrils.

He had the plague.

“It’s come back,” said Caris. “God help me.”

For a moment fear paralysed her. She stood motionless, staring at the scene, feeling powerless. She had always known, in theory, that the plague might return – that was half the reason she had written her book – but even so she was not prepared for the shock of once again seeing that rash, that fever, that nosebleed.

The woman lifted herself on one elbow. She was not so far gone: she had the rash and the fever, but did not appear to be bleeding. “Give me something to drink, for the love of God,” she said.

Giles picked up a jug of wine, and at last Caris’s mind started to work and her body unfroze. “Don’t give her wine – it will make her thirstier,” she said. “I saw a barrel of ale in the other room – draw her a cup of that.”

The woman focused on Caris. “You’re the prioress, aren’t you?” she said. Caris did not correct her. “People say you’re a saint. Can you make my family well?”

“I’ll try, but I’m not a saint, just a woman who has observed people in sickness and health.” Caris took from her bag a strip of linen and tied it over her mouth and nose. She had not seen a case of the plague for ten years, but she had got into the habit of taking this precaution whenever she dealt with patients whose illness might be catching. She moistened a clean rag with rose water and bathed the woman’s face. As always, the action soothed the patient.

Giles came back with a cup of ale, and the woman drank. Caris said to him: “Let them have as much to drink as they want, but give them ale or watered wine.”

She moved to the father, who did not have long to live. He was not speaking coherently and his eyes failed to focus on Caris. She bathed his face, cleaning the dried blood from around his nose and mouth. Finally she attended to Giles’s elder brother. He had only recently succumbed, and was still sneezing, but he was old enough to realize how seriously ill he was, and he looked terrified.

When she had finished she said to Giles: “Try to keep them comfortable and give them drinks. There’s nothing else you can do. Do you have any relations? Uncles or cousins?”

“They’re all in Wales.”

She made a mental note to warn Bishop Henri that he might need to make arrangements for an orphan boy.

“Mother said to pay you,” the boy said.

“I haven’t done much for you,” Caris said. “You can pay me sixpence.”

There was a leather purse beside his mother’s bed. He took out six silver pennies.

The woman raised herself again. Speaking more calmly now, she said: “What’s wrong with us?”

“I’m sorry,” said Caris. “It’s the plague.”

The woman nodded fatalistically. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Don’t you recognize the symptoms from last time?”

“We were living in a small town in Wales – we escaped it. Are we all going to die?”

Caris did not believe in deceiving people about such important questions. “A few people survive it,” she said. “Not many, though.”

“May God have mercy on us, then,” said the woman.

Caris said: “Amen.”

All the way back to Kingsbridge, Caris brooded on the plague. It would spread, of course, just as fast as last time. It would kill thousands. The prospect filled her with rage. It was like the senseless carnage of war, except that war was caused by men, and the plague was not. What was she going to do? She could not sit back and watch as the events of thirteen years ago were cruelly repeated.

There was no cure for the plague, but she had discovered ways to slow its murderous progress. As her horse jogged the well-worn road through the forest, she thought over what she knew about the illness and how to combat it. Merthin was quiet, recognizing her mood, probably guessing accurately what she was thinking about.

When they got home, she explained to him what she wanted to do. “There will be opposition,” he warned. “Your plan is drastic. Those who did not lose family and friends last time may imagine they are invulnerable, and say you’re overreacting.”

“That’s where you can help me,” she said.

“In that case, I recommend we divide up the potential objectors and deal with them separately.”

“All right.”

“You have three groups to win over: the guild, the monks and the nuns. Let’s start with the guild. I’ll call a meeting – and I won’t invite Philemon.”

Nowadays the guild met in the Cloth Exchange, a large new stone building on the main street. It enabled traders to do business even in bad weather. It had been paid for by profits from Kingsbridge Scarlet.

But before the guild convened, Caris and Merthin met individually with the leading members, to win their support in advance, a technique Merthin had developed long ago. His motto was: “Never call a meeting until the result is a foregone conclusion.”

Caris herself went to see Madge Webber.

Madge had married again. Much to everyone’s amusement, she had enchanted a villager as handsome as her first husband and fifteen years her junior. His name was Anselm, and he seemed to adore her, though she was as plump as ever and covered her grey hair with a selection of exotic caps. Even more surprising, in her forties she had conceived again and given birth to a healthy baby girl, Selma, now eight years old and attending the nuns’ school. Motherhood had never kept Madge from doing business, and she continued to dominate the market in Kingsbridge Scarlet, with Anselm as her lieutenant.

Her home was still the large house on the main street that she and Mark had moved into when she first began to profit from weaving and dyeing. Caris found her and Anselm taking delivery of a consignment of red cloth, trying to find room for it in the overcrowded storeroom on the ground floor. “I’m stocking up for the Fleece Fair,” Madge explained.