His task wasn’t easy. Winter had set in weeks ago, and the water about his feet was near to freezing. He couldn’t feel his toes, and although there was no ice, every step he took fell upon the leaves that lay rotting thickly on the stream’s floor, making him slip and curse through gritted teeth, using words which he had heard often enough among the peasants, but which he knew he shouldn’t use himself.
The basket of stones was an unbearable weight, but he had set himself the task of enclosing the chapel in a wall, and he would go to the devil rather than fail. The only thing that made sense of his life in this foul backwater was the effort he spent each day, collecting rocks and bringing them up the incline to the chapel, tipping the basket on top of the heap. When he had a big enough pile, he would grade the stones, using the largest for the bottom of the wall, graduating them with smaller and smaller rocks until he reached the topmost layer. The tiniest would be used to fit the interstices, gravel and chips blocking the cracks so that no wind could pass through.
He toiled on. Sweat was prickling at his forehead now and along his spine, forming a chilly barrier between his flesh and the coarse linen shirt. Over that he wore a habit of strait, a thick mix of short wool, lamb’s wool and flocks, the usual stuff that the moors produced from their weak, suffering sheep. Nothing like the soft cloth produced in the warmer, drier land about Axminster, where Mark’s family lived. The material from his home would never itch and scratch like this. He fancied he could feel every hair, each one tickling or stabbing him through his shirt. It was all but intolerable.
As was the pain in his thighs, the strain in his groin, the tautness in his shoulders and neck. It felt as though his muscles had solidified, as though they had been forged and hammered and were now as inflexible as iron. It was hard to imagine that they could ever relax again, and Mark’s breath came in shallow gasps as he struggled with his burden.
The path here was well-trodden, for he had been working on this project for two months now, ever since he had realised that he must fight the mind-destroying tedium of his existence or go mad.
When the Bishop had sent him here, it had not been intended as a punishment, Mark knew. Bishop Walter had always appeared pleased with Mark’s progress. Whenever they met, he was polite – a bit distant, maybe, but that was not surprising, since he was one of the most powerful men in the whole country. How else was a great magnate to respond to a lowly priest?
Mark had been with Exeter Cathedral for some years, and he had learned his lessons well. He had anticipated travelling, perhaps visiting the college at Oxford which Bishop Walter was so fond of, and then going on to Paris, or even Rome itself, but then one priest had died, another had run off with a woman, a third had been accused of murder… and suddenly Mark had been asked to serve the small community here, at the small chapel near Gidleigh. It was only until a replacement was found, he was told, but that was in 1320, a year ago last August, and no one had yet been found. Mark was beginning to think he’d be stuck here for ever.
Certainly Bishop Walter had no idea of Mark’s secret motive in wanting to come here: it stemmed from his desire to see his real father at long last.
He finally reached the mound of stones, and slowly bent his knees, then allowed his body to tilt backwards until the basket sat on the ground behind him. Letting the thick leather straps fall from his shoulders, he was suddenly struck with the feeling that he had become weightless, as though he could float upwards by simply raising his arms. It was a curious sensation, one which he had noticed before, and he wondered what caused it. There seemed no logical reason. Perhaps the stones weighed down his soul, because the reason he was carrying them was to protect himself, keeping his mind and thoughts pure.
No one else would have volunteered to come here, he thought as he eyed the view sombrely, rubbing at his shoulders where the straps had chafed. A sudden noise made him spin round and stare up the valley’s side. There was a roadway up there, a narrow track that led from the moors down to Gidleigh itself. It must have been someone on that path, he told himself. This place was terrible. He spent much of his time jumping at the slightest sound. It was so desolate, so lonely.
This land was fierce: it fought all who lived on it, in his opinion. It sucked the vivacity from them, leaving deadened husks – whey-faced youths or chestnut-brown men who looked as though they were forty years old when they were only twenty. And the women were worse. Either they were worn out from too many birthings, or they were ruddy-faced and as incontinent as bitches in heat. They terrified the chaste young scholar, but there was another part of his soul, a very human part, which jealously watched the young bucks flirting with them. On more than one occasion, he had stumbled across naked buttocks hammering between parted thighs, and had rushed away, horrified; yet he also knew that the pounding in his chest wasn’t only from disgust.
There were times when, if he had been offered the solace of feminine company, he would have taken it, and that knowledge scared him. It was against his training and vocation to lie with a woman. Other priests might have sunk to that sin, but he had thought himself immune to such lust, that he had more willpower. It was to distract himself from his dreams of voluptuous female flesh that he had immersed himself in this building.
It was hateful, this place. Stories abounded of the devil, how he had tempted men and women into sin, how he and his hounds hunted for lost souls across the moors. When he still lived with his mother, Mark had known men who had laboured all their lives, but somehow they seemed less ancient than the shrivelled folk of Dartmoor. The people here had no sense of humour. Their existence was harsh, unleavened with laughter or pleasure. One survived, and that was all, in their world.
Mark gazed before him, thrusting his chilly hands beneath his armpits for warmth; he could feel the fingers like individual twigs of ice.
From here the land sloped down to the river. There, at the bottom, was the narrow track that led from Gidleigh to Throwleigh, a dangerous place in summer, when outlaws lurked, but safer now in the depths of winter when even the fiercest felon must be settled in his hovel. From here, at the door of his chapel, the priest could see the hills rising to the south. Bleak, they were, as though they had been blasted by God’s fury.
Glancing up, he saw that the clouds were heavy with threatening storms, lowering over the moors. They suited his mood, and he grabbed his basket and made his way through the ankle-deep black mud to his door. His legs were quickly caked up to his knees, and his habit was sodden and bespattered with it before he reached the small lean-to cob and thatch room that was his home.
It was tiny, but sufficient for his needs. There was a palliasse to sleep on, a few strands of hay – all he could afford – spread over the floor to keep in the warmth, and a good-sized hearth in the middle of the floor. At the wall which the room shared with the chapel stood his chest, a simple, plain box which contained his spare shirt, vestments and some parchment. It was little enough, and he found it a depressing sight. The fire was all but out, and the chamber was dingy and damp.
At least he could throw a faggot of sticks on his fire and enjoy the quick rush of heat. It might just bring the feeling back into his blue fingers and toes. The thought of flames was at once delicious and terrible: he knew that his chilblains would complain and the pain would be worse as the feeling returned to numbed toes and fingers. It was only at night, when he went to bed, lying beneath his rough blanket, that he knew peace. There, with the thick sheepskin pelts keeping him warm, he felt a kind of contentment. With his eyes closed, the room could have been anywhere. The dying fire at his side could have been the embers on the hearth of a great lord’s hall, the palliasse beneath his back a herb-filled mattress in a king’s solar and the thick skins and blanket the richly decorated bedclothes from an abbot’s private chamber. In his imagination, Brother Mark slept in magnificent halls.