I started reading this book in the glorious pre-pandemic days of one week ago when COVID was some Chinese problem. It begins as a medieval quest, with an ill-assorted group of characters heading off to France.How jolly! There’s a pig herder and a kinky sex scene with King Edward’s mother.
You hear a couple of things about the ‘qualm’ in France, but it is mostly dismissed as an invention of priests looking to get rich. Then villages start to be empty, pits start to be found, and the first of the merry band die, and you realize that in fact this novel is not a story of a fun roadtrip but in fact an evocation of what is was like to see the Black Death take down England. In almost exactly parallel time in real life COVID came to Italy and the UK went into lockdown.
I considered stopping reading but decided to keep going to see what lessons could be learnt. What I mostly learnt was THANK GOD FOR THE GERM THEORY OF DISEASE. These poor people are just busy fooling around with bunches of flowers and amulets.
In a ballsy move this author decided to write his medieavel novel in medieval language. Incredibly, it works. And more than works, it is almost half the appeal. The characters are from varied backgrounds and all speak different kinds of language. Here’s a wealthy lady about her servant:
“It’s Cotswold,” she tells Pogge. “It’s Outen Green. As if no French never touched their tongues. I ne know myself sometimes what they mean. They say steven in place of voice, and shrift and housel for confession and absolution, and bead for prayer.”
These little snippets give a sense
Ness’s deaf eldmother, Gert, who when she was young had seen the king ride by at a hunt like a giant, on a white horse, with gold stars on the harness, sat and span by the backdoor.
And
He told me truelove things, and made me laugh, and I would kiss him; but to kiss him were wrong. And it was like to when I was a little girl. Mum made an apricot pie, and left me with it, and forbade me eat even one deal of it. But I ate one deal, because it needed me a sweet thing, and after I’d eaten one deal, I was already damned, and might as well eat the whole pie.
The characters are very varied. One is a priest, who is busy shrifting and houseling like there is no tomorrow as people die. They don’t know too much about hygiene but they are very big on confession.
I said that in the circumstances I would confine myself to mortal sins. He need only confess to sacrilege, homicide, adultery, fornication, false testimony, rapine, theft, pride, envy and avarice.
There was silence. Hornstrake inquired if I had finished, as he had expected there to be at least one sin he had not committed.
I gestured to the furnace. . . I did not opt, I said, to compel a confession by reminding him of the alternative, but eternity was of a very long duration.
People often praise historical novels for being topical. I can’t fault this one for that: it was super topical. Topic being, pandemic. However I think it was the non-pandemic, apricot pie parts I liked the best