Today, however, I could see that the crowd’s attention lay elsewhere. The procession of the Holy Mother was about to begin, and there was already a great glut of people outside the church. People lined the street on either side, some carrying images and flowers, votives or flags. The bridge too was thronged with people of the river, awaiting the ceremony. There were vendors too: sellers of pasties and cooked meats and ale and fruit. The air was thick with the smells of candle smoke and sweat, roasting meat, dust and incense, leather and onions and refuse and horses. The noise was almost unendurable. Cripples and children stood near the front, but already there were too many people, and the crowd pressed against the sides of our caravans, some looking up curiously at the painted signs and bright pennants, others shouting at us for being in their way.
I was already beginning to feel dazed; the cries of the vendors, the heat of the sun, the many stenches were too much for me, and I tried to turn back into some quieter street, but it was too late. Urged forward by the mass of worshipers, our caravans had reached the steps of the church almost at the same time the Virgin’s Day procession was due to leave. Unable to retreat or go forward I watched, curious, as the great platform carrying the Holy Mother emerged from the main door of the church and into the light.
There must have been fifty people underneath and another fifty along the sides, shoulders straining against the long poles that supported it. It was heavy and swayed as it came through the doorway; and at every slow step there came a sigh from the hooded bearers, as if the burden were almost too much to carry. The Holy Mother stood at the top of the structure on a mound of blue and white flowers, her embroidered robe gleaming in the sunlight, her hands smeared with oil and honey. A priest with a censer walked before her; a dozen monks with candlesticks came behind, singing the Ave to the wailing of an hautbois.
I had little time to follow the music, however. As soon as the procession appeared, there was a moan from the people, and we were jostled suddenly, violently, as the worshipers surged forward. “Miséricorde!” came the cry from a thousand throats, and the stench of oil and flesh and grime was overwhelming, mingling with the smoke from the silver censer, a scent of clove and holy dust. “Pity! Pity for our sins!”
I stood upon the axle of my caravan and peered across the heads of the crowd. I was beginning to feel uneasy, for although I had seen religious frenzy before, this seemed unusually ferocious, the shrill note of zeal sharpened on something shriller, closer to the bone. Not for the first time, and with an almost unconscious cupping of the new roundness at my belly, I wondered whether it was not time to leave the life we were leading before it soured completely. I was in my twenty-third year. I was no longer young.
The black Doctor flapped his cloak, keeping a blister of space between himself and the crowd, a walking emptiness, and I noticed that the cries came louder at his passage and that some fell to their knees in his wake.
“Miséricorde! Pity for our sins!” We were too close to the procession to hope for a retreat, and I steered my horse with care, keeping him dancing gingerly on the spot against the push of people, which threatened to overturn us. The Holy Mother passed slowly, lurching like a laden barge through the crowd. I saw that many of the people carrying the platform went barefoot, like penitents, although this was not usual on the Virgin’s Day. The monks were hooded like the bearers, but I noticed that one had pushed back his hood a little, and his face was red and flushed with drunkenness or exhaustion.
We stood our ground. The platform swayed as it passed us, and for a moment, standing on my axle, I was eye to eye with the Virgin, close enough for me to see the dust of years gleaming in the intricacies of her golden crown, the flaking of paint across her pink cheek. There was a spider in the hollow of one blue eye, and as I watched, it began to move slowly down her face. No one else saw it. Then she passed by.
In her wake, the frenzy was mounting, with people falling to their knees even in the press of the multitude, dragging others with them. Others took their places, the ranks closing over their heads, their cries unheard. “Miséricorde! Pity for our sins!”
A woman to my left arched backward into the crowd, eyes rolled up to the whites. For a moment she was held up like an effigy, floating effortlessly upon the outstretched hands, then she slid under and the people moved on.
“Hey!” I said. “There’s someone under there!”
Faces mooned at me without comprehension from the swell below. No one seemed to have heard me. I cracked my whip over their heads and my horse strained and pranced to stay level, eyes rolling. “There’s a woman under there! Stand back, for pity’s sake! Stand back!”
But we had been carried too far. The injured woman was already behind us, and people were thronging forward to stare at the foolish patch of space I had cleared. There came a sudden lull in sound, reducing the cries to a drone above which the Ave was briefly audible, and I thought I read in the upturned faces a kind of hope, a new relief. Then came the catastrophe.
If it had been any other than a member of the procession no one would have noticed him fall. I learned afterward that four people had been crushed underfoot during the celebrations, their heads smashed into the cobbles by the eager feet of pilgrims and revelers alike. But the procession was sacred, moving ponderously through a multitude held at bay by incense and adoration. I did not see him fall. But I heard the cry, a single note at first, then the chorus, rising in swift reaction far beyond that which we had previously witnessed. Leaping back onto the axle, I saw what had happened, although even then I did not understand its significance.
The staggering monk at the tail of the procession had collapsed. The heat, I thought vaguely, or the fumes from the censer. A group of people had gathered around the fallen man; I saw the white blur of his exposed skin as they pulled open his habit. There was a gasp and a moan, then they were moving like ripples, as fast as they could back through the ranks.
In seconds, the ripples had become a powerful undertow, reversing the flow of people so that instead of pushing toward the procession they were pushing away with all their energies, the caravans rocking in the renewed counterstruggle, some even trying to climb up out of the crowd onto the caravans in their eagerness to be gone. The procession was no longer sacred; as I watched, the line trembled and broke in several places, the Holy Mother lurching to one side, uncrowned in the burst of panic as some of her bearers deserted.
Then I heard the cry; a high-pitched ululation of grief or terror, a single voice rising above them like a clarion: “La peste! La peste!”
I struggled to hear, to distinguish words in the unfamiliar dialect. Whatever it was, it ran through the crowd like summer fire. Fights broke out as people tried to escape; others climbed the walls of the buildings lining the street-some even jumped from the sides of the bridge in their eagerness to flee. I stood up to see what was happening, but I had become separated from the other caravans. Some distance ahead I could see LeMerle lashing at his mare’s flanks, driving her onward. But the crowd had him from both sides, rocking against the caravan’s panels, lifting the wheels from the ground. Faces lurched at me out of the multitude; one caught my eye, and I was astonished at the hatred there. It was a young girl, her round red face distorted with terror and loathing. “Witch!” she shrieked at me. “Poisoner!”
Whatever it was, it was catching. I heard the cry bounce ahead of me like a stone across a lake, gathering momentum as it went, looking for somewhere to strike. The outpouring of hatred had become a tide; now it swelled against me, threatening to lift the caravan from the ground.