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Authors: Lucy Taylor
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He loved her more then than he ever had loved anyone. A sense of lightness and freedom washed over him, a lifting of bonds. He thrust into her and she moaned his name. “Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas.”
But for the briefest, most ecstatic of instants, he had forgotten who that was.
PLAGUE LOVERS
Lucy Taylor
W ORD SPREAD QUICKLY in the tiny, plague-ravaged town – the Flagellants were coming!
Gabrielle, sequestered in the house with her father and her dying mother, heard the news shouted out in the street beneath her window. She felt her blood quicken at the thought of witnessing such a spectacle – a band of penitents whose submission to the Lord was made manifest in deprivation and self-wounding. Despite her fear of mingling with the plague-infested crowds, she felt compelled to see them.
Snatching up her shawl and wrapping it around her thin shoulders, she crept down the wooden stairs, hoping that her father, exhausted by his day and night vigil at her mother’s deathbed, would be dozing. She didn’t want to have to speak to him, or witness the reproach and anguish in his eyes as she hurried past without so much as gazing at her mother.
Her father’s back was turned to her, his head lowered into his big hands. Gabrielle took a breath and tiptoed toward the door.
All I want
, she thought,
is to get out of here. Get away from the death and dying
.
The plague, or the Great Pestilence as some were calling it, had arrived in early summer. Word of a terrible illness sweeping the port cities of Pisa and Genoa had reached the town a year earlier, but here in this secluded Tuscan valley the villagers had felt secure and safe in their relative isolation. With spring, however, the plague had reached Orvieto, where a spiritual revival that added fifty new religious dates to the municipal calendar had failed to spare the city from devastation. Now death was everywhere – evidenced in the rattling of the carts that carried bodies for burial outside the village, the cloying, rotten-flowers scent of sickness that permeated the air, the moaning of the sick, the wailing of the bereaved.
Gabrielle had heard that, according to the priests, who divined such things by studying the book of Revelations, a third of the world had died.
And the plague had not yet run its course.
An idea, borne of terror and desperation, had been nudging its way into the back of her mind. Many people had already fled the town to take refuge in the countryside. No one really knew what caused the sickness, but escaping the “pestilential atmosphere” of more populated areas was thought to help. It was said the air was cleaner in the country, the food less apt to be contaminated.
When she was almost at the door, her father looked up.
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t you hear the drumming? The Flagellants are on their way to the cathedral.”
“Hah,” her father snorted. “The Brethren of the Cross they call themselves. I call them the brethren of lunacy. Why expose yourself to the crowds to see a troop of madmen beat each other bloody?”
Her mother moaned and went into a coughing fit. Blood foamed around her mouth. Gabrielle’s father dampened a cloth in a bowl of water and wiped her face. “There, there, my love,” he whispered. “I’m here with you. I’m here.”
The tiny woman, little more than bone and gristle, reached up and stroked her husband’s face, a gesture rich with the tenderness and caring of devoted lovers after a long and passionate night. Gabrielle felt that she witnessing something private and precious between her parents, something she could never hope to exprience herself.
“She hasn’t long,” her father said. “Can’t you just sit with her?”
She shook her head. “I have to go.”
“What kind of daughter are you? You feel no love for your own mother?”
But how could she? thought Gabrielle. Until the plague struck, until her midwife mother fell ill,
.
He loved her more then than he ever had loved anyone. A sense of lightness and freedom washed over him, a lifting of bonds. He thrust into her and she moaned his name. “Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas.”
But for the briefest, most ecstatic of instants, he had forgotten who that was.
PLAGUE LOVERS
Lucy Taylor
W ORD SPREAD QUICKLY in the tiny, plague-ravaged town – the Flagellants were coming!
Gabrielle, sequestered in the house with her father and her dying mother, heard the news shouted out in the street beneath her window. She felt her blood quicken at the thought of witnessing such a spectacle – a band of penitents whose submission to the Lord was made manifest in deprivation and self-wounding. Despite her fear of mingling with the plague-infested crowds, she felt compelled to see them.
Snatching up her shawl and wrapping it around her thin shoulders, she crept down the wooden stairs, hoping that her father, exhausted by his day and night vigil at her mother’s deathbed, would be dozing. She didn’t want to have to speak to him, or witness the reproach and anguish in his eyes as she hurried past without so much as gazing at her mother.
Her father’s back was turned to her, his head lowered into his big hands. Gabrielle took a breath and tiptoed toward the door.
All I want
, she thought,
is to get out of here. Get away from the death and dying
.
The plague, or the Great Pestilence as some were calling it, had arrived in early summer. Word of a terrible illness sweeping the port cities of Pisa and Genoa had reached the town a year earlier, but here in this secluded Tuscan valley the villagers had felt secure and safe in their relative isolation. With spring, however, the plague had reached Orvieto, where a spiritual revival that added fifty new religious dates to the municipal calendar had failed to spare the city from devastation. Now death was everywhere – evidenced in the rattling of the carts that carried bodies for burial outside the village, the cloying, rotten-flowers scent of sickness that permeated the air, the moaning of the sick, the wailing of the bereaved.
Gabrielle had heard that, according to the priests, who divined such things by studying the book of Revelations, a third of the world had died.
And the plague had not yet run its course.
An idea, borne of terror and desperation, had been nudging its way into the back of her mind. Many people had already fled the town to take refuge in the countryside. No one really knew what caused the sickness, but escaping the “pestilential atmosphere” of more populated areas was thought to help. It was said the air was cleaner in the country, the food less apt to be contaminated.
When she was almost at the door, her father looked up.
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t you hear the drumming? The Flagellants are on their way to the cathedral.”
“Hah,” her father snorted. “The Brethren of the Cross they call themselves. I call them the brethren of lunacy. Why expose yourself to the crowds to see a troop of madmen beat each other bloody?”
Her mother moaned and went into a coughing fit. Blood foamed around her mouth. Gabrielle’s father dampened a cloth in a bowl of water and wiped her face. “There, there, my love,” he whispered. “I’m here with you. I’m here.”
The tiny woman, little more than bone and gristle, reached up and stroked her husband’s face, a gesture rich with the tenderness and caring of devoted lovers after a long and passionate night. Gabrielle felt that she witnessing something private and precious between her parents, something she could never hope to exprience herself.
“She hasn’t long,” her father said. “Can’t you just sit with her?”
She shook her head. “I have to go.”
“What kind of daughter are you? You feel no love for your own mother?”
But how could she? thought Gabrielle. Until the plague struck, until her midwife mother fell ill,
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