Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [372]
Nicholas himself remained calm. He reasoned, fatalistically, that if he were a chosen victim, then there was little he could do about it. He was careful all the same. Like most people, he held a cloth over his mouth and nostrils when he walked the streets. He kept himself to himself, ate alone, and avoided any contact with those who were infected. Taking these precautions, he went into the city most days, working quietly in the cathedral and returning periodically to the sheep house on the high ground to give his reports.
The event that caused him to panic took place a week after Shockley’s death. He was carefully crossing the street in the city when, as he stepped over the water channel that ran down its centre, a corpse he had not seen tumbled sideways off a cart in front of him and fell heavily into the stream, splashing him from head to foot. The sudden soaking shocked him. It was as though he had been attacked, and afterwards he felt defiled. The next day, when the family in the cottage next to his at Avonsford came down with the plague, he decided to take further precautions.
“I shall be coming only every two days now,” he told Agnes and the family. “Because I shan’t be in Avonsford any more. I’m going to a safe place until the plague has passed.”
“Where?” John asked him.
And now Nicholas smiled.
“No folk or animals where I’m going,” he replied. “I’ll go to Salisbury tower.”
The cathedral was quiet as dusk fell, and there was nobody to see as he climbed the steps that led to the tower. No one had questioned him when, saying it was for maintenance work, he asked for the keys of the tower doors the day before. Probably it was already forgotten that he had them.
He was carrying a bucket containing bread, two flagons of ale, cheese, salted meat and a quantity of fruit: enough to last several days. Carefully he made sure that the stairs in all four corners of the tower were locked before he made his way up to the parapet. Now nobody could disturb him.
Soon it was dark. The great cathedral below him was silent. It was so warm that he decided to spend the night on the parapet under the stars. He looked up at the soaring spire above him. He knew that, nearly forty years before, his great-grandfather Osmund had climbed to the top the year before he died. Perhaps he would do so too, to celebrate, when the plague had passed.
How pure the air was, far above the stench of the city streets. With only the grey stones for company, and the open sky, he lay there comfortably, feeling safer than he had done for a week, and fell asleep.
He stayed in the tower all the next day. It was strange how much of the life of the city he could see from up there. He noticed that in the city, the dead were being brought out and carried away soon after dawn; three corpses were brought out of houses in the close that morning. He watched a dispute between the carriers and a junior clergyman about how much they should be paid. He could not hear their words, but it was clear what was being said. The carriers offered to leave the canon’s body where it was. Then they were paid. He could see everyone who came in and out of the close; he saw the carts rolling on their dismal journey to the city gates. Several times he watched Adam in his broad belt, walking jauntily back and forth into the town, and laughed aloud with pleasure at the sight. That night, once again, he slept comfortably under the stars.
But the next morning he received an unpleasant shock. He had decided to pay another visit to the sheep house, and so that he could get safely clear of the city before the contagious corpses were brought out, he had started to descend from the tower a little before dawn.
He fumbled his way down the endless spiral tunnel of the stairs, locking the door carefully behind him. As he emerged into