Читать книгу The Nameless Day - Sara Douglass - Страница 11

Wednesday in Passion Week

In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III

(7th April 1378)

The hours Thomas spent prone before the altar in chapel were the most blessed he could imagine. The cold of the stone flooring did not perturb him: he did not even notice it. During the set hours of prayer the passing feet of his fellow brothers, as the passing of their eyes, did not bother him: he deserved such humiliation, and he revelled in it. He lay, face pressed against stone, arms extended, and prayed for sweet mercy, for greater humbleness, and for the strength which he would need to be of service to the holy St Michael, messenger of God Himself.

The hours that Thomas spent in the filthy streets of Rome washing the feet of the even filthier whores, were hours spent in hell wiping the stained skin of the Devil’s handmaidens.

He dreaded the tolling of the bells for Nones, and the inevitable hand of Prior Bertrand on his shoulder, silently asking him to rise. He would hobble after the prior, wracked with cramps after so many chill hours prone on the chapel floor, praying for God’s mercy in order to survive the afternoon.

Today would be his last day of penance: Thomas had wept when he felt the prior’s hand on his shoulder, for he would no longer be allowed to spend so long in silent penitential prayer, but his face had gone as chill and stony as the floor he had recently lain on when he thought of the afternoon’s activities before him.

Thomas loathed whores with a vehemence he knew he should probably do penance for. To have to bow before them every afternoon and take their outstretched feet between his hands…

“This will be your last day,” Bertrand said unnecessarily as Thomas rose from the refectory table. “Tomorrow the cardinals will meet in conclave…and the streets will not be safe. Once the election is concluded then I will send for you. You know of what we must speak.”

Thomas nodded, and took his leave. He could not think beyond this afternoon, and he wondered if he would be able to bear it.

In the courtyard he lifted a wooden pail and several cloths from a small alcove, then half filled the pail from a large barrel of rainwater standing to one side. He walked to the gate, hesitated, then opened it and walked into the streets of Rome.

If there was one commodity Rome did not lack, it was whores. They catered for pilgrims, traders and the odd diplomat as well as the large number of young men who had yet to take wives. Of course, many husbands numbered among their clientele as well. Some said there were more whores in Rome than wives and, after his previous days in the streets, Thomas did not doubt it.

And, it seemed to him, they all knew he was coming.

The word had quickly spread that a humble friar had been set to do penance washing their feet, and within moments of Thomas leaving the friary there was a crowd of women about him.

Pressing about him.

They rubbed their bodies against Thomas, their hands seeking entrance under his robe. He pushed them roughly away, but they only laughed…and bared their breasts to him, squeezing them invitingly, and asking if he’d like a taste.

Thomas ignored them.

He walked as far away from the friary as he could, turning two corners, before the crowd became unmanageable, and he stopped.

He lifted his head and looked about him.

It was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.

“As penance for my sins,” he said softly, “I am to wash the feet of whores until the hour of Vespers. Will one of you step forward, and offer her feet to be washed?”

The women fell silent, as they always did at this point. They were hardened and bitter creatures, used to the abuse and degradation of their profession, and yet this humble friar always rendered them silent with this simple statement.

Not that they had any greater respect for friars than they had for any other men. Too many friars had pushed them up against walls and used them quickly, roughly, for them to think well of any among them.

But this one…this one…

It was his face, they thought. Not the fact that it was so well made, or so strong, or his eyes so compelling, for they had seen and been used by many handsome clerics in the past.

It was because the set of his muscles and the hardness of his eyes told them he was one of them, in the sense that he was as hard and as bitter as they were.

And this always made them falter.

For a moment.

One stepped forward, young, her face still holding traces of appeal.

“Wash my feet!” she said, and lifted her skirts.

Thomas stepped up and squatted down before her; she giggled nervously as he wrung out a cloth in the water.

Then he held out a hand, his face bowed down, and she lifted a foot and let him take it.

“For a coin I would let you hold a great deal more of my flesh,” she said softly, and Thomas whipped up his head and stared at her, his eyes blazing with anger, but at himself, rather than her.

There was a smell about this one, or perhaps it was something in her voice, or the tilt of her cheek, but memories Thomas had long thought forgotten raced out of his past.

Memories from his youth: the laughter and bawdry shared with his two best friends.

The women they had shared, all six sometimes squirming about on the same bed.

The practised moans and squeals from the whores.

Their writhing beneath his body.

Thomas trembled violently, now fighting the rising memory of lust as much as his current anger.

The girl whose foot he still held smiled, and wriggled her hips invitingly. She knew the look in this friar’s eyes and had lost any momentary awe she might have had for him.

She leaned forward, her weight on the foot in Thomas’ hand, and let the neck of her loose tunic fall away so he could see her firm, pointed breasts.

“I know what you want,” she said, watching the direction of his eyes, “and it is yours for the asking.”

Thomas raised his eyes to hers, and she felt the pressure on her foot increase slightly.

Her smiled widened. “I want to feel you inside me,” she whispered hoarsely, her hips wriggling suggestively. “Now!”

“Slut!”

Thomas’ fingers tightened about her foot until she squealed in pain, and then he threw it to one side, twisting her leg badly and causing her to fall heavily in a tangle of swirling skirts.

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the shouts of the women about him.

Damn all women to the pits of hell!

“Slut!” he spat at her again. “Don’t you know your sins will earn you a place in hell for all time? Don’t you know that the red-hot pokered Devil himself will take his pleasure with you, time after time through eternity, until you scream and beg for mercy, to no avail? Don’t you realise that you and your kind are the slime of Creation? Slime you are and slime you will be, time until end, unless you embrace Christ and beg His forgiveness now. Now! Do you hear me, harlot? Get on your knees and beg Christ’s forgiveness now!”

All the whores about him were now screaming and shouting, but the young woman on the ground motioned the other women back with a quick, vicious action, then got to her knees and then to her feet, stumbling a little on her twisted leg.

“I will beg forgiveness from none of your sort, dog!” She spat at him, and Thomas flinched, but made no move to whip the spittle away from his cheek. He was still enraged, and barely holding himself back from taking her neck between his hands and throttling her.

He knew that if he’d had a sword he would have killed her.

“Dog!” she said again, wrenching the top of her tunic closed. “I curse you, Friar Thomas. One day one of my sisters will seize your soul and condemn you to hell for eternity! I damn you with the curse of the whore, Thomas!”

She stepped forward, and struck him with a surprisingly light tap against his cheek.

He raised a hand to strike her back, but stopped, stunned by the lightness of her blow.

“One day,” she whispered, her eyes staring into his, “and soon, I pray to the Virgin Mary, a whore will steal your soul…Nay! You will offer it to her on a platter! You will offer her your eternal damnation in return for her love!”

Now it was Thomas’ turn to stand silent, as stunned by the whore as the group had previously been by him.

There had been something in her face and in her voice, in her very bearing, that had rung not only with truth, but with an extraordinary nobility.

The women, still mumbling, started to turn away, two helping their younger companion to hobble down the street.

Thomas watched them go, then shook himself.

Cursed woman!

He grabbed at his pail, lying on its side on the cobbles, and looked back down the street.

Several of the whores, still lingering nearby, turned their backs to him.

Thomas sighed, and rubbed his eyes. What had he been thinking of to let go his self-control so easily? Why had he let his past intrude into his present?

What had he done?

The curse could be disregarded—the simple prating of a wretched woman—but Thomas could not disregard his own actions and words.

He had been a fool. Worse, he had been an arrogant fool. That woman had never wronged him, and her words had only been those of God, testing him.

And Thomas had failed, as he had failed so many times.

Refusing to weep, or show any outward sign of his distress, Thomas collected his rags, hefted the pail, and spent the rest of the afternoon in the almshouse washing the inmates’ feet, and speaking to them the words of kindness he should have spoken to the prostitute.