CHAPTER XXIII THE PESTILENCE (AT BYFIELD)
The time had passed away slowly at the lazar-house at Byfield. Life was tedious there to most people, least of all to the good Chaplain, Father Ambrose; for he loved his poor lepers with a love which could only come direct from Him Who loved us all. He did not feel time lag. Each day had its appointed duties: in holy offices of prayer and praise, or in his labour of love, the days sped on. He felt the strain, it is true, but he bore it. He looked for no holiday here; it could never come. He was cloistered and confined by that general belief in the contagion of leprosy, which was so strong in the world that many would have slain a leper had they met him outside the defined boundaries, or set their mastiffs to tear him in pieces.
One day Father Ambrose was seated in his cell after Terce, when one of the attendants came to him with a serious and anxious face.
"I should be glad for you to come and see Gaspard; he has been very ill all night, and there are some strange symptoms about him."
The Chaplain rose, and followed the "keeper" into the chamber above, where in a small "cubicle," separated by a screen from the other couches, the sick man tossed.
"He is delirious; how long has he been so?"
"Nearly all the night."
"And in a raging fever?—but this blackness; I never saw one so dark before."
It was, alas, too true. The body was fast assuming a strange dark, yet livid, hue, as if the blood were ink instead of red blood.
"Lift up the left arm," said the Chaplain.
Near the armpits were two or three swellings about the size of a pigeon's egg. The Chaplain saw them and grew serious.
"It is the black fever—the plague!" almost screamed the horrified attendant.
"Keep cool, brother John; nothing is gained by excitement, and all is lost by fear; put your trust in God."
"But I have touched him—drawn in his infected breath—I am a dead man."
The Chaplain heeded him not.
"Brother, canst thou speak?" he said to the sick man.
A moan was the only reply.
"Brother, dost thou know that thou art dying?"
A moan again.
"And that the best of us have not lived as we should?"
Another sigh, so dolorous.
"And dost thou believe that God's dear Son died for thee?"
A faint gesture of assent.
"Say thou, brother, 'I put the pitiful Passion of Thy dear Son between me and my sins.'"[26]
"I do, oh God. Sweet Jesus, save me."
And then he relapsed into an unconscious state, in which he continued till he died.
"We must bury him directly, brother John."
The attendant shuddered.
"Yes, we two; we have been in danger, no one else need come. You go and tell the grave-digger to have the grave ready directly, and the moment it is ready we two will bury him."
"Oh God! I am a dead man," said poor brother John.
"Nay, we cannot die till our time come, and if so, the way He chooses is best. We all owe Him a death, you know. Fear is the worst thing you can entertain now; it brings on the very thing you dread. Overcome that, at all events, if you can."
And the poor frightened fellow went out to do as he was bidden.
Then the brave and good man composed the corpse; placed a crucifix on its breast; drew the bed-clothes round it to serve as a winding-sheet, for they must be buried or burned; said the commendatory prayers; and walked for a time in the fresh air.
He knew his own danger, but he heeded it not. All things, he was persuaded, worked together for good to them that loved God; besides, what had he to live for?—his poor sheep—the lepers? Yes; but God could raise up a better man than he, so in his humility he thought; and if he were—called home——
Did not the thought of that Purgatory, which was in the Creed of his time, come between him and the notion of rest?
Not at all; he was content to leave all that; if his Father thought he needed such correction, he was willing to pass through it; and like a dear son to kiss the rod, as he had done on earth, safe in the hands of his Father.
Neither did his thoughts turn much to the Saints. Of course he believed, as every one did then, that it was right to invoke them—and he had done so that day in the prescribed commendatory prayers for the dying; but, as stars fade away in the presence of the sun, so did all these things fade away before his love for the central sun of his soul—his crucified Lord.
The hours passed away in rapt emotion; he never felt so happy as that afternoon.
Then came the grave-digger.
"The grave is ready."
"Tell brother John to come and help."
"I do not think he is able; he seems unwell himself."
"Then you and I must do it."
"Willingly—where you lead I follow."
"Come up the stairs."
They went to the dormitory; took the sad burden, wrapped in the bed-clothing as it was, and bore it to the grave; the priest said the burial office; the grave-digger filled up the grave; and all was over with poor Gaspard.
But before that sun set the Chaplain was called to brother John, and that same night the poor fellow died of the fever—fear, doubtless, having been a predisposing cause.
The terror began; the facts could not long be concealed. At Evensong that night the Chaplain spoke to them in a short address, so full of vivid faith and Christian hope that those who heard it never forgot it.—"Why should they fear death? They had led a living death, a dying life, these many years. Their exile was over. The Father called them home. They had long done with this wretched world. The Christian's true fatherland was Heaven."
So he spoke rather like an Angel than a man. But they could not all rise to it—how could it be expected? life clings to life. When Newgate was on fire in the great riots, the most anxious to be saved were some condemned criminals left for execution on the morrow.
But for a select few, all fear was gone.
Such men were needed: they had their senses about them; they could help others to the last; they, and they alone, dared to attend the dying, to bury the dead.
Now came the great trial—the confinement. The lepers mutinied against being shut up with death, they longed for liberty, they panted for it; they would not be imprisoned with the plague.
Then began positive fighting. The poor patients had to be restrained by main force, until the Chaplain came, and by his great power over their minds, persuaded them to stay.
Every one was asking, "How came it amongst us?" and the mystery was explained when they were told of a bale of cloth for their tailor consigned to the house from the Levant, viâ Bristol, and which in all the long tedious voyage had retained the infection ever living in the East.
Day by day fresh victims were carried to the grave. The plague was probably simply a malignant form of typhus, nourished in some human hotbed to the highest perfection. The bacillus or germ is, we trust, extinct, but otherwise enough might be bred in a bottle to poison a county, as we have heard stated.
All at once the heaviest blow fell upon them.
Father Ambrose was walking in the grounds, taking rest of mind after intense mental and bodily exertion, when he felt a sudden throb of violent heat, followed by an intense chill and a sickening sensation accompanied by faintness. He took off his cassock—he saw the fatal swelling.
"My summons is come," he said. "Oh, my Father, I thank Thee for calling me home; but these poor sheep whom Thou hast committed to my care, what shall they do?"
Then he walked quietly to his cell and lay down on his bed. He had watched the disease in others; he entertained no hope of recovery. "In a few hours I shall see Him face to face Whom I have loved," said he.
They came and found him. Never was man more patient; but that mediæval idea of intense self-denial was with him to the last. He refused water: they thought him delirious.
"He would not drink," he said.
They saw his thoughts were on the Cross, and that he was treading the pathway opened by the Crucified One, and they said no more.
He had received the Holy Communion that morning—his last Communion; the usual rites could not be attempted now. Before he relapsed into the last stage, they heard the words in his native tongue—
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! ouvrez moi."
They were his last. The door was open and he had entered. Ah, who shall follow even in imagination, and trace his progress to the gates of day?
"Go wing thy flight from star to star,
From world to luminous world, as far
As the universe spreads its flaming hall:
Take all the pleasures of all the spheres,
And multiply each through endless years,
One moment of Heaven is worth them all."
But those left behind in the lazar-house—ah me! deprived of the only man who had gained an empire over their hearts, and could control them—what of them?
They lost all control, and broke through all discipline; they overpowered their keepers, who indeed scarcely tried their best to restrain them, sharing the common fear; they broke the gates open; they poured forth and dispersed all through the country, carrying the infection wherever they went.
Still this was not a very wide scope; the woods, the forests, were their chief refuge. And soon the story was told everywhere. It was heard at the lordly towers of Warwick; it was told at the stately pile of Kenilworth; it was proclaimed at Banbury. It startled even those violent men who played with death, to be told that a hundred lepers were loose, carrying the double curse of plague and leprosy wherever they went.
"It must be stamped out," said the stern men of the day: "we must hunt them down and slay them."
So they held a council at Banbury, where all the neighbouring barons—who were generally of one party in that neighbourhood—took counsel.
They decided that proclamation should be everywhere made; that if the lepers returned to the lazar-house at Byfield within three days, all should be forgiven; but otherwise, that the barons should collect their savage hounds, and hunt them down in the forest.
And this was the very forest where we left poor Evroult dying—the forest of the hermitage which these poor lepers were tolerably sure to find out, and to seek shelter.
And here we will leave our poor friends for a while, and return to Wallingford Castle.