The Bells of St. Clemens
By: Curtis MedinaWhenever the church bell rang it meant somebody important had died, and the people in the village of St. Clemens were supposed to pay their respects. The bell would ring three times, and while it rung the people were to remain motionless and inaudible.
They knew that soon enough a brigade of soldiers would be marching down the sacred hill of the church with the corpse of another fallen monarch on their shoulders. The people were then expected to stop whatever it was they were doing, meet the soldiers at the outer fence and take the casket to bury the man in hallowed ground.
Afterwards, the people were herded into the church and would be lectured not about God (which is the one they were really there to hear about) but about the very man they had just buried.
The dead men were not people like they. Never had there been a shopkeeper buried in the sacred cemetery, nor a woman or child. The men who were included in St. Clemens Cemetery had not earned an ounce of respect from the people themselves. Most of the men had never set foot inside the town prior to their burial.
Dead Mr. Raimes was the last surviving member of his family and had inherited all of their money. He had bought a house almost a mile outside of the village limits, had never attended church, and was considered by the priests themselves to be a a devil worshiper. He had lived in his house only two months when, while pruning, decided to take a permanent dip in his flower garden. He was invited to spend eternity under the churches rich soil because the day before he died he had signed his entire estate over to the church. The priests lectured about forgiveness for hours before the people finally conceded. Nobody was surprised when the next week they found themselves worshipping under a newly repaired roof.
After a while, the priests stop making excuses. When a commoner would ask why this man deserved to be buried in God’s cemetery and not himself the priests would simply respond: “It is God’s will.” The people were becoming outraged.
“It is useless to be faithful,” a person yelled, “if we are all to be scattered in the same pile of ashes. Sinner next to saint? The filthy next to the clean? What does it matter what kind of people we are?”
The newly made tombstones, thinly crafted, started to crumble atop the hill from bad workmanship. The undertaker started burying the corpses, without coffins, in mass graves that went down only a couple of feet. A rainstorm washed the unearthed bodies across the village, and people ignored them at out of disgust for the entire process. Eventually, the people refused to take up the bodies at all. One by one they began to stack at the gate of the church whereat the soldiers left them, making a growing wall of rotted flesh. The blockade caused the undecided to stop attending church. This went on for week upon endless week. The priests were too proud to move them, the people were too disenchanted to care. Eventually the bodies were removed under the cover of a thick fog, conspicuously buried to the priests exact orders.
The event was fine with the people as they knew that they had no part in the ceremony. However, the problem with their obstinacy was that among the unburied bodies of the evil were also the bodies of their fallen comrades and friends. The entire act of dying had lost all respect with the village. Even those who were favored by the people were paid no respect. It became clear that the people needed a system. Something to tell them all that somebody deemed important by the commoner had died. The bigger dilemma seemed to be of who would be righteous enough to decide if a man was worth his own flesh. The priests rang the bells of St. Clemens endlessly to deaf ears. Every day at noon the priests stood in the bell tower and scowled blasphemous looks at the town below. The people, feeling abandoned by their temple, could do nothing but ignore the holy men’s snide sneers.
Without a moral compass and without an order neither side profited from the situation at all.
---
Unknown to the village, the solution to their problem, was in the form of a little orphan boy fighting for his life. Influenza had gripped the poor child. His caretakers, a group of missionary women, continually told him to pray harder to get well again. The boy tried to pray harder but it is hard to pray with any passion when your body is so very weak. His chest jerked up and down from compression of his lungs. His spindly limbs tossed about in violent fits when he coughed, making him appear as a living cloth doll.
When the boy first found out he was coming down with an illness his first reaction was joy. He was not a remarkably good looking child even in health, and now the sickness only gave him purpose for his imperfections. The physician looked at him with compassion now, instead of an abominable glare. His needs were finally met. When he asked for another bowl of soup he got a smile, not a whip across the face. Life was that of a series of disappointments for young William, and an anonymous turn of ill will was easier to accept than the specific ill will he got from his caretakers.
One night, as death began to suffocate him into an early grave, the boy prayed harder than any boy ought. He did not pray to get well again. He did not pray to come back as somebody who was healthy. No, he prayed for him to be given the chance to lead a worthwhile life. He promised that if he got better he would run away from this place and find the existence that could best use him and he would live out his days, whatever they might be, happy and useful.
Somewhere, either from God or from the devil, William slowly began to make a turnaround. His cough subsided. His fever dropped. His body stopped aching. It was a miracle if ever there was such a thing. William kept his promise.
William, with the help of no other child he snuck away and into the world. It was a night that would become infamous at the home for the rest of its years. The missionaries would call him a devil child, ungrateful, and foolish. The other children would be whipped for information that nobody knew. Secretly, each child would be proud of William’s escape and would wish the same for themselves.
--
Upon first light, William made his way to what was the main village square of St. Clemens. It was the hour of efficiency, and thus all of the shops were buzzing with the excitement of another business day. The boy was entranced by the allure of the mysterious and beautiful items the shops sold, but without any money they might as well have been conjured in his imagination. He managed to walk past all of the intangible items that he could not have until he came across a very peculiar man in a turban. The man played a flute and from it he emitted the most beautiful melody to the crowds ear. From the basket a snake slowly rose up and moved to the music. It was the most amazing thing he had ever seen in his short life. Suddenly, upon his amazement other people began to stop and watch the spectacle. The charmer smiled at the boy and then began to play it up to the crowd.
The people dropped coins in a basket placed at their feet and oooooed and awwwwed at every movement of the serpent. Finally the show was over and the crowd dispersed. The charmer went over to William and shook his hand.
“You have done me a great service today, boy.” The charmer said, towering over him, the snake wrapped around his neck. “You have brought me the value of a child’s awe. These people walk by me everyday and never pay me neither a coin, nor their respect. Today, because of you, I at least got my worth in respect. Not too bad in coins either. What can I do for you?”
“I don’t have a home. I’m hungry.” The boy was prepared.
The charmer brought him into his clothed tent. Inside hung rows and rows of colored glass that shot rays of golden sunlight and transformed them into colorful spectacles of red, green and blue. Hand carved wooden furniture lined the walls and beautiful rugs were at the boys feet, much too beautiful to step on.
“I have collected a lifetime,” the charmer said, “in my early years, so that I may enjoy the life of an old man without the pain of age.”
“Where did you collect all of these things, charmer?”
“All over, boy. I’ve had many adventures. I’ve collected these things often from the salvaging of other people’s failures. I am a bottom feeder, and I know it too.”
The boy sat upon a dark wood chair, five times his size.
“That chair”, the charmer explained, “was built for a great king of a far away land by a neighboring people. When the king refused the people’s gift as his chair, unable to give it back, he instead used it down in his dungeon. Down there the king’s men would torture their enemies upon it, spattering blood all over the finally cut wood.”
The boy looked down at a very red stain upon the wood and cringed.
“That red is from the veins of the tortured souls. Some were the very men who built the chair for the king in the first place and fell out of his good graces. So you see, we all serve ourselves in our ultimate destruction. If we could help one another without repercussions what a glorious world it would be.”
The charmer sat the snake down in a basket by the chair. Slowly, the snakes curiosity made him rise his head out of basket and stare at the boy.
“Is it safe to touch the snake?”
“No”, the charmer said quickly. “But is it safe to move at all? The question of life it is. If you don’t move the bad thing might not get you, but you’ll die of hunger waiting. If you take a chance it might snap you up and the whole thing would have been lost. The snake is having the same perplexity. You see, it hasn’t eaten all day and if it waits for you to decide to move or not it will starve for sure. Lucky for you, it doesn’t like the taste of little boys. Too bad for the mouse there next to your head, it loves the taste of mice.”
The snake spiraled forward, fangs first, at the mouse and the boy ducked away just missing it by a few inches. The mouse screamed in agony as it was repeatedly bitten and dragged into the snakes basket. The boy looked at the charmer, who smiled and laughed, a little weary of his new friends way of making intellectual points.
The boy recovered: “I should have known the snake meant me no harm.”
The charmer raved, “Should of? Should of is what we say when we are unhappy with our past. You ‘should’ have done exactly what you did at the time with the knowledge you possessed. How many should of moments have you had boy?”
“Many”, the boy admitted. “But no more.”
The boy forgot about his meal and stood up to leave.
“Sit”, the charmer ordered, “I am sorry, lad. I don’t often speak to people and the result of my stagnate thoughts is a drowning of my new found friends. If you like you can work for me as my assistant. I can’t pay you, but I will feed you and shelter you for a while. You will find out that times are bad in St. Clemens. You may regret leaving wherever it is you’ve come from.”
The boy smiled. That wasn’t very likely.
---
The boy worked for the charmer for a great many weeks and was busy for the first time in his life. Eventually the charmer even gave him part of the takings from his show, as the boy became a part of the act. Pretending to be an onlooker he would entice the others to come and see what he saw. He would be first to clap and first to drop a coin in the basket. The partnership was good.
One day, business was at a halt. The priests had stopped importing goods into the village until the people agreed to meet with them atop of the sacred hill. The conflict between the church and its disciples had reached its climax and every person in the village of St. Clemens was ready for civil war. The boy watched as the people kidnapped the king, which had lost his power shortly before the priests, and watched them hang him from a rope in the middle of the village square. The charmer told him that the people had become discontent with him and had finally had enough. He said, that if this violence continued they would leave St. Clemens forever and seek out another more peaceful place.
“I am alive to live. I will not die for some silly politics that I have no control over, neither in peaceful times nor in war. When they let the people live that is when I’ll fight for my rights.” The charmer made sense.
The morning of the historic meeting was upon them. Everyone in the town stood below the sacred hill and waited for the priests to come out. This was the first time that the priests had ever considered listening to what the people had to say. The people’s minds were ready to list their demands, and their hands were ready to rip the whole town apart.
William sat on the charmers shoulders to see.
Something had changed in the charmer in the last few days before the meeting. He had suddenly started to look at William in a different way, almost in an adoring way. The way a father might look at a son. When William asked what was the matter with him the charmer would talk about some dream that he kept having involving William. He would not elaborate.
The charmer shrugged at the boy’s weight upon his shoulders but refused to let him down. Every so many moments the charmer would ask what William could see. Indeed, William had the best view of anyone in the crowd. He was the only one that floated above them, with the help of the charmer.
“William, what do you see? Do you see them? Distinguished men in beautiful black garments?”
“I see them.”
Indeed they were descending the steps of the church and now standing at the foot of the crowd. The boy’s jaw dropped at the beauty and expense of the silk garments they wore, so long and loose that they nearly tripped over them on every step. Finally the three of them reached the bottom and one stepped forward and addressed the crowd.
“We are here to make a deal,” the priest said, “for the return of the people to his holiness, the Lord God, and by the same way for the people to reject the sinful plots of man and give up their feeble plight into damnation.”
A man screamed from the crowd, “We don’t need your temple!”
The crowd cheered. The second priest spoke out of turn, “You do need your God! Look at yourself. You’ve committed murder! You’ve killed your king! You’ve sullied yourself. You need to save your soul before its too late.”
Another man screamed: “We want to be saved. But by God! Not by you! You are not God.”
“We are his servants.” The third priest screamed.
“So are we”, a woman said.
“Alright, enough.” The lead priest spoke, you could tell he was the lead by the way he held himself. “What will it take to end this?”
The people were silent. Their anger had all but covered their reason and this was a question they really did not know.
Finally, the charmer spoke and as his words broke the silence every person digested his thought. “Make this orphan boy king.”
William gulped as every person in the crowd now turned and looked at him. Suddenly a cheer broke out from a pocket in the crowd.
“A boy will decide. An innocent will ring the bells of St. Clemens and tell us what to do.”
The priests spat, “A boy is not ready for this responsibility. How can you trust a foolish child?”
The crowd became wild and yelled one after another swelling into one giant voice.
“The boy is not corrupted. He can learn what is needed of his people. We can mold him into our own king. And the priests will have to listen to him. A child will rule this land. God’s children will inherit the Earth.”
“How can you decide this so brazenly?” The second priest asked, “How can you have a boy decide who is worthy of your tears, worthy of your respect, worth God’s cemetery?”
The charmer brought the boy up upon the hill and placed him down on the ground.
“People,” the charmer said “He will not be perfect, as none of us are; but in our care he could lead us.”
The crowd cheered and would not stop cheering. The priests raised their arms into the air and spoke the final creed, “You will return to church tomorrow. We relinquish our rights to the king. And this boy, this boy shall be king.”
The priest looked down at William and whispered “fool”, leaving in protest.
The charmer knelt down beside William.
“Charmer, why?”
“Because, God told me to last night, in my dream. He said that you were sent by him and you could be the only one to solve this conflict. I believe in God now, William, because I believe in you.”
And he would be king. The village of St. Clemens would coddle him, and treat him better than any child ought to be treated. The boy would grow up strong from the work, wise from the continued teachings of the charmer, and content from the feeling of need from his people. William in turn would hear the people and understand their plights, for he knew the idea of plight well. Eventually the priests would revolt against their own creed and with the people behind him King William would throw them out of the village forever, replacing them with men who understood that any church or any man who tries to alone decide fate will become the servant to their ultimate destruction. The charmer taught William that. And William would never forget what he or the village meant to him and to man’s relationship with God.
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