Ken Follett - World Without End

Merthin shrugged. “People just believe what they want to believe.”

“Ordinary people, perhaps. But the bishop and the prior should know better – they are educated.”

“I’ve got something to tell you,” Merthin said.

Caris perked up. Perhaps she was about to learn the reason for his bad mood. She had been looking at him sidelong, but now she turned and saw that he had a huge bruise on the left side of his face. “What happened to you?”

The crowd roared with laughter at some interjection of Nell’s, and Archdeacon Lloyd had to call repeatedly for quiet. When Merthin could be heard again he said: “Not here. Can we go somewhere quiet?”

She almost turned to leave with him, but something stopped her. All week long he had bewildered and wounded her by his coldness. Now, at last, he had decided he was ready to say what was on his mind – and she was expected to jump at his command. Why should he set the timetable? He had made her wait five days – why should she not make him wait an hour or so? “No,” she said. “Not now.”

He looked surprised. “Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t suit my convenience,” she said. “Now let me listen.” As she turned from him, she saw a hurt look cross his face, and straight away she wished she had not been so cold; but it was too late, and she was not going to apologize.

The witnesses had finished. Bishop Richard said: “Woman, do you say that the devil rules the earth?”

Caris was outraged. Heretics worshipped Satan because they believed he had jurisdiction over the earth, and God only ruled heaven. Crazy Nell could not even understand such a sophisticated credo. It was disgraceful that Richard was going along with Friar Murdo’s ridiculous accusation.

Nell shouted back: “You can shove your prick up your arse.”

The crowd laughed, delighted by this coarse insult to the bishop.

Richard said: “If that’s her defence…”

Archdeacon Lloyd intervened. “Someone should speak on her behalf,” he said. He spoke respectfully, but he seemed comfortable correcting his superior. No doubt the lazy Richard relied on Lloyd to remind him of the rules.

Richard looked around the transept. “Who will speak for Nell?” he called out.

Caris waited, but no one volunteered. She could not allow this to happen. Someone must point out how irrational this whole procedure was. When no one else spoke, Caris stood up. “Nell is mad,” she said.

Everyone looked around, wondering who was foolish enough to side with Nell. There was a murmur of recognition – most people knew Caris – but no great sense of surprise, for she had a reputation for doing the unexpected.

Prior Anthony leaned over and said something in the bishop’s ear. Richard said: “Caris, the daughter of Edmund Wooler, tells us that the accused woman is mad. We had reached that conclusion without her assistance.”

Caris was goaded by his cool sarcasm. “Nell has no idea what she is saying! She calls upon the devil, the saints, the moon and the stars. It has no more meaning than the barking of a dog. You might as well hang a horse for neighing at the king.” She could not keep the note of scorn from her voice, though she knew it was unwise to let your contempt show when addressing the nobility.

Some of the crowd murmured agreement. They liked a spirited argument.

Richard said: “But you have heard people testify to the damage done by her curses.”

“I lost a penny yesterday,” Caris rejoined. “I boiled an egg, and it was bad. My father lay awake all night coughing. But no one cursed us. Bad things just happen.”

There was much head-shaking at this. Most people believed there was some malign influence behind every misfortune, great or small. Caris had lost the support of the crowd.

Prior Anthony, her uncle, knew her views, and had argued with her before. Now he leaned forward and said: “Surely you don’t believe that God is responsible for illness and misfortune and loss?”

“No-”

“Who, then?”

Caris imitated Anthony’s prissy tone. “Surely you don’t believe that every misfortune in life is the responsibility of either God or Crazy Nell?”

Archdeacon Lloyd said sharply: “Speak respectfully to the prior.” He did not realize Anthony was Caris’s uncle. The townspeople laughed: they knew the prim prior and his independent-minded niece.

Caris finished: “I believe Nell is harmless. Mad, yes, but harmless.”

Suddenly Friar Murdo was on his feet. “My lord bishop, men of Kingsbridge, friends,” he said in his sonorous voice. “The evil one is everywhere among us, tempting us to sin – to lying, greed of food, drunkenness with wine, puffed-up pride and fleshly lust.” The crowd liked this: Murdo’s descriptions of sin called to the imagination delightful scenes of indulgence that were sanctified by his brimstone disapproval. “But he cannot go unobserved,” Murdo went on, his voice rising with excitement. “As the horse presses his hoofprints into the mud, as the kitchen mouse makes dainty tracks across the butter, as the lecher deposits his vile seed to grow in the womb of the deceived maid, so the devil must leave – his mark!”

They shouted their approval. They knew what he meant, and so did Caris.

“The servants of the evil one may be known by the mark he leaves upon them. For he sucks their hot blood as a child sucks the sweet milk from its mother’s swollen breasts. And, like the child, he needs a teat from which to suck – a third nipple!”

He had the audience rapt, Caris observed. He began each sentence in a low, quiet voice, then built it up, piling one emotive phrase on another to his climax; and the crowd responded eagerly, listening in silence while he spoke, then shouting their approval at the end.

“This mark is dark in colour, ridged like a nipple, and rises from the clear skin around it. It may be on any part of the body. Sometimes it lies in the soft valley between a woman’s breasts, the unnatural manifestation cruelly mimicking the natural. But the devil best likes it to be in the secret places of the body: in the groin, on the private parts, especially-”

Bishop Richard said loudly: “Thank you, Friar Murdo, you need go no farther. You are demanding that the woman’s body be examined for the Devil’s Mark.”

“Yes, my lord bishop, for-”

“All right, no need for further argument, your point is well made.” He looked around. “Is Mother Cecilia close by?”

The prioress was sitting on a bench on one side of the court, with Sister Juliana and some of the senior nuns. Crazy Nell’s naked body could not be examined by men, so women would have to do it in private and report back. The nuns were the obvious choice.

Caris did not envy them their task. Most townspeople washed their hands and faces every day, and the smellier parts of their bodies once a week. All-over bathing was at best a twice-a-year ritual, necessary though dangerous to the health. However, Crazy Nell never seemed to wash at all. Her face was grimy, her hands were filthy, and she smelled like a dunghill.

Cecilia stood up. Richard said: “Please take this woman to a private room, remove her clothing, examine her body carefully, and come back to report faithfully what you find.”

The nuns got up immediately and approached Nell. Cecilia spoke soothingly to the mad woman, and took her gently by the arm. But Nell was not fooled. She twisted away, throwing her arms into the air.

At that point, Friar Murdo shouted: “I see it! I see it!”

Four of the nuns managed to hold Nell still.

The friar said: “No need to take off her clothes. Just look under her right arm.” As Nell started to wriggle again, he strode over to her and lifted her arm himself, holding it high above her head. “There!” he said, pointing into her armpit.