Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Author:Geraldine Brooks [Brooks, Geraldine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781439507728
Publisher: Paw Prints
Published: 2008-06-26T07:00:00+00:00

Among Those That Go Down to the Pit

As WE APPROACHED the rectory, we saw Michael Mompellion in the churchyard, his coat off, the wide sleeves of his white shirt rolled up past his forearms, his hair damp from his own sweat. He was digging graves. Three long holes lay open around him, and he was at work on the fourth.

Elinor hurried to him, reaching up to wipe his brow. He stepped back from her and waved away her hand. His face was gray with exhaustion and he leaned upon the spud, heavily. She begged him to stop and rest, but he shook his head. “I cannot stop. We need six graves this day, one of them for poor Jon Millstone.” Our aged sexton had died that morning. The rector had found him, sprawled half in, half out of the grave he had been digging. “His heart gave out. He was too old for the labor that of late has been laid upon him.”

Looking at Mr. Mompellion, I worried that he, too, might drop. He looked worn to a nub. It seemed he had not slept the previous night but gone from one deathbed to the next. His pledge that none should die alone had become a heavy burden upon him. It was clear that he could not survive if now he attempted the sexton’s work as well. I hurried to the kitchen, warmed a mug of purl for him, and carried it back out to where he stood, waist deep in the dirt.

“Sir, this is not seemly work for you,” I said. “Let me fetch one of the men from the Miner’s Tavern to do it.”

“And who will come, Anna?” He placed a hand to his back and winced as he straightened. “The miners are ill set trying to pull ore enough from their claims to keep their mines from being nicked. The farmers are become too few to gather in the grain or milk their kine. How can I lay this melancholy work upon them? Those who are still in health to do it should not be asked to risk such proximity with the dead.”

And so he worked on, until the light failed. And then he sent word to the various houses that they might bring their dead for the burials. It was a sorry procession. No one was troubling with coffins now; there were no more planed timbers to be had nor time to fashion them. Families simply carried their loved ones to their graves, or, if they were not strong enough, dragged them thither with a blanket slung beneath the armpits of the corpse. Mr. Mompellion prayed over each one by candlelight and then helped in piling the soil back into the graves. While he toiled in the churchyard, pleas came from two more families that he attend them in their extremity. I would have kept the messages from him until morning, but Elinor said it would not be right to do so. When he came in,

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