The Clerkenwell Tales Peter Ackroyd (nice books to read TXT) 📖

The convent was in uproar. The prioress prostrated herself before the high altar, and remained in silent prayer for several hours; those in her charge crept into the chapter-house where in low voices they debated whether the sins of the community had brought down this visitation. The words whispered were fantasy, fancy, fantastic, phantasma – but others suggested that Sister Clarice was indeed divinely inspired and that her words were true prophecies.

Two evenings after the event in the choir stalls the prioress consulted the nun’s priest, a young Benedictine by the name of John Duckling. He was acquainted with the art of surgery; by his own account, he was acquainted with the art of everything. “We may cut a vein in her forehead against frenzy,” he was explaining to Dame Agnes.

“Not the temples?”

“They are good for the migraine only. The foremost ventricle of the brain, you see, is situate here.” He tapped his own forehead, which was as smooth as any nun’s. “It is the proper home of the imagination which receives things that contain fantasy. Did you know that the brain is white, like the canvas of a painter? Its colour allows it to be stained by reason and understanding.”

“Is it not true that all veins have their beginning in the liver?”

“Of course yes.” He seemed puzzled for a moment. “But we may not cut there. There is too much flesh, ma dame. Too much flesh.”

Dame Agnes smiled. “But we will not find much matter in her brain, John.”

“No indeed. Give the poor sister some toasted bread and wine before the letting. Then cut the vein with a golden instrument. That is the rule. After the blood has been taken wrap her in some blue cloth, and take care that all about her bed is blue also. Make sure that she sleeps on her right side, and that her nightcap has a hole in it through which the vapour may go out.” Instead of remaining with his head bowed, and with his hands hidden in his sleeves, he was pacing up and down the prioress’s chamber.

Agnes was determined to ignore his discourtesy, however, since this was a pressing matter. “And,” she asked him, “if her humours rebel against it?”

“Sage is good for convulsions. Hence the sentence, why should a man die when sage grows in the garden? Give her sage, mixed with the excrements of a sparrow, of a child, and of a dog that eats only bones.”

“I thought of hellebore to cleanse her.”

“Oh no. Hellebore is a bitter and violent herb, so hot and dry that it should only be used warily. Why, I have seen men so heavy after hellebore that they might have been dead.”

Dame Agnes asked these questions because she feared that Sister Clarice would refuse to be letted, and that she would need to be restrained. Any violence would cause clamour and excitement among the younger nuns. But, in fact, Clarice made not the slightest objection. She seemed entirely complaisant about the matter, as if she welcomed the chance of being the object of medical attention. No one in holy orders was permitted to spill blood and so the local leech, Hubert Jonkyns, was called to the convent. He was skilled in all the arts of blood and sat Clarice upon a moveable privy, her legs straddling it, before gently cutting the vein. She did not speak or move, but only smiled when he put the phial up to her forehead; he pressed gently against the vein, and she gazed at him tenderly while letting out a fart whose odour filled the chamber. He patted her on the head when his work was done.

“You may lose some of your remembrance with your blood,” he told her. “Comb your hair each morning with an ivory comb, since nothing recreates the memory more. Walnuts are hurtful to the memory. And so are onions. Avoid them. Do not stay in the house of a red-haired or red-faced person.”

“There is always Sister Idonea,” she said.

The leech did not understand what she meant, and turned to the nun’s priest who was standing in the corner. “Her white neck is the sign of lecherousness,” he whispered. “Did you smell that fart?”

Despite all of Hubert Jonkyns’ precautions, however, Clarice did not sleep well that night. She rose from her bed at the time of lauds and, in the sight of all those who had gathered in the choir, she began to sweep the nave of the church while prophesying the ravishment and ruin of the convent itself. She cried out, also, that all the churches of England would be wrecked and wiped clean.

Rumours of her prophecies soon spread beyond the walls of the convent and into the city where, in the turbulent time of a weak and wretched king, her admonitions were given credence. Some called her the mad nun of Clerkenwell, but many others revered her as the blessed maid of Clerkenwell. The bishop’s exorcist conducted several interviews with her, but he found her distracted and contradictory. “The sweetness of Christ’s Mother has pierced my heart,” she told him on one occasion. “To me she came and bade me to sing, O Alma Redemptoris mater.”

“But Dame Agnes tells me that you dream only of the damned. Or so you said to her.”

“I can no more expound in this matter. I learn my song, but I have small grammar.”

Then she called out for the Redeemer.

At another meeting she had foreseen fire and the sword, but then in the next moment had howled at the prospect of bliss. The exorcist could not fathom her words; his only remedy was to confine her to the convent and on no account allow her to walk abroad.

Three weeks after the sweeping of the church, another extraordinary event was being reported from street to street. The chantress had been heard to scream loudly and repeatedly. When others ran to the chapter-house,