The Nameless Day by Sara Douglass

When a new pope was enthroned, either the first among archangels, St. Michael, or the current Select revealed to him the secret of the Cleft, but neither St. Michael nor Wynkyn approached Clement. How could they allow the fearful secrets of the angels to fall into the hands of the French monarchy? Sweet Jesu, Wynkyn had thought as he spent sleepless nights wondering what to do, a French king could seize control of the world had he this knowledge in hand! He could command an army so vile that even the angels of God would quail before it.

So both Wynkyn and the angels kept the secret against the day that the popes rediscovered God and moved themselves and the papacy back to Rome. After all, surely it could not be long? Could it?

But the seductiveness of evil was stronger than Wynkyn and the angels had anticipated. When Clement V died, the pope who succeeded him also preferred the French monarch’s bribes and the sweet air of Avignon to the word of God and the best interests of His Church on earth. And so also the pope after that one …

Every year Wynkyn traveled north to the Cleft in time for the summer and winter solstices, and then traveled back to Rome to await his next journey; he could not bear to live his entire life at the Cleft, although he knew some of his predecessors, stronger men than he, had done so.

He received income enough from what Boniface had left at his disposal to continue his work, and the prior and brothers of his friary, St. Angelo’s, were too in awe of him to inquire closely into his movements and activities.

Brother Wynkyn de Worde also had the angels to assist his work. As they should, for their lusts had necessitated the Cleft.

But now here Wynkyn was, an ancient man in his midseventies, and it seemed that the popes would never return to Rome. God’s wrath had boiled over, showering Europe with a pestilence such as it had never previously endured. Wynkyn had always traveled north with a heavy heart—his mission could engender no less in any man—but this night, as he carefully led his mule through the dead and dying littering the streets of Rome, he felt his soul shudder under the weight of his despair.

He was deeply afraid, not only for what he knew he would find awaiting him at the Cleft, but because he did fear he might die … and then who would follow him? Who would there be to tend the Cleft?

“I should have told,” he muttered. But who was there to tell? Who to confide in?

The popes were dissolute and corrupt, and there was no one else. No one.

Who else was there?

God and the angels had relied on the papacy, and now the popes had betrayed God Himself for a chest full of gold coin from the French king.

Damn the angels! If it wasn’t for their sins in the first instance…

IT TOOK Wynkyn almost seven weeks to reach Nuremberg; that he even reached the city at all he thanked God’s benevolence.

Every town, every hamlet, every cottage he’d passed had been in the grip of the black pestilence. Hands reached out from windows, doorways and gutters, begging the passing friar for succor, for prayers, or, at the least, for the last rites, but Wynkyn had ignored them.

They were all sinners, for why else had God’s wrath struck them, and Wynkyn was consumed by his need to get north as fast as he could.

Far worse than the outstretched hands of the dying were the grasping hands of the bandits and outlaws who thronged the roadways and passes. But Wynkyn was sly—God’s good gift—and whenever the bandits saw that Wynkyn clasped a cloth to his mouth, and heard the desperate racking of his cough, they backed away, making the sign of the cross.

Yet even Wynkyn could not remain immune to the grasping fingers of the pestilence forever. Not at his age.

On Ember Saturday Wynkyn de Worde had approached a small village two days from Nuremberg. By the roadside lay a huddle of men and women, dying from the plague. One of them, a woman—God’s curse to earth!—had risen to her feet and stumbled toward the friar riding by, but as she leaned on his mule’s shoulder, begging for aid, Wynkyn kicked her roughly away.

It was too late. Unbeknownst to the friar, as he extended his hand to ward her off the deadly kiss of the pestilence sprang from her mouth to his hand during the virulence of her pleas. He planted his foot in the hateful woman’s chest, and when he raised his hand to his face to make the sign of the cross the pestilence leaped unseen from his hand to his mouth.

The deed was done, and there was nothing the angels could do but moan.

THE PEAL of mourning bells covered Nuremberg in a melancholy pall; even this great northern trading city had not escaped the ravages of the pestilence. The only reason Wynkyn managed access through the gates was that the town desperately needed men licensed by God to administer the last rites to the mass of dying. But Wynkyn did not pause to administer the last rites to anyone. He made his way to the Dominican friary in the eastern quarter of the city, his mule stumbling with weakness from his journey, and demanded audience with the prior.

The friary had been struck as badly by the pestilence as had Nuremberg itself, and the brother who met Wynkyn at the friary gate informed him that the prior had died

these three nights past, “Brother Guillaume now speaks with the prior’s voice,” the brother said.

Wynkyn showed no emotion—death no longer surprised nor distressed him—and requested that the friar take him to Brother Guillaume. “And help me carry this casket, brother, for I am passing weary.”

The brother nodded. He knew Wynkyn well.

Brother Guillaume greeted Wynkyn with ill-disguised distaste and impatience. He had never liked this autocratic friar from Rome, and neither he nor any other friar in his disease-ridden community could spare the time to attend Wynkyn’s demands.

“A meal only,” Wynkyn said, noting Guillaume’s reaction, “and a request.”

“And that is?”

Wynkyn nodded toward the casket, “I leave in the morning for the forest north of the city. If I should not return within a week, I request that you send that casket—unopened—to my home friary.”

Guillaume raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Your home friary? But, Brother Wynkyn, that would surely be impossible!”

“Easily enough accomplished!” Wynkyn snapped, and Guillaume flinched at the brother’s sudden anger. “There are sufficient merchant bands traveling through Nuremberg who could take the casket on for a suitable price.”

Wynkyn reached inside his habit and pulled out a small purse he had bound about his waist. “Take these gold pieces. It will be enough and more to pay for the casket’s journey.”

“But… but this pestilence has stopped all traffic, and—”

“For the love of God, Guillaume, do as I say!”

Guillaume stared, shaken by Wynkyn’s distress.

“Surely the pestilence will pass eventually, and when it does, the merchants will resume their trade, as they always do. Please, do as I ask.”

“Very well then.” Guillaume indicated a stool, and Wynkyn sat down. “But surely you will return. You have always done so before.”

Wynkyn sighed, and rubbed his face with a trembling hand. “Perhaps.”

Anil perhaps not, Guillaume thought, as he recognized the feverish glint in the old brother’s eyes, and the unhealthy glow in his cheeks.

Guillaume backed away a few steps. “I will send a brother with food and ale,” he said, and scurried for the door.

“Thank you,” Wynkyn said to the empty air.

THAT NIGHT Wynkyn sat in a cold cell by the open casket, his hand on the closed book on his lap. Because there was no one else, Wynkyn carefully explained to the book the disaster that had befallen mankind generally, and the Keeper of the Cleft specifically. The popes had abandoned the directions of God and the angels for the directions of the French king. They did not know the secrets and mysteries of the Cleft or of the book itself, for neither angels nor Wynkyn dared reveal it to them.

Through his ignorance, the current pope—Clement VI—had not selected the man to

follow Wynkyn.

In the past few hours, as he sat in his icy cell shaking with fever, Wynkyn had refused to come to terms with the fact that he was dying. There was no one to follow him; thus how could he die?

How could he die, when that would mean the demons would run free?

In his decades of service to God and the angels, Wynkyn had never come this close to despair: not when he had first heard of his mission; not even when he had seen what awaited him at the Cleft.