Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper Read online

  Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper

  Edited by Nancy Kilpatrick

  Copyright © 2012

  All individual contributions copyright by their respective authors.

  E-Book Edition

  Published by

  EDGE Science Fiction and

  Fantasy Publishing

  An Imprint of

  HADES PUBLICATIONS, INC.

  CALGARY

  Notice

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author(s).

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  This book is also available in print

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  Acknowledgements

  Thanks... To the usual suspects, for keeping me relatively sane. To those who kindly sent me Danse Macabre images, some of which were new to me — much appreciated. To Christopher Foster of Factotum Graphics who did an extraordinary job of updating the lovely Holbein-inspired drop cap images. To Sasha Sergejewski for help with proofreading. To John Kaiine for his stunning artwork which graces the cover. To Brian Hades (yes, his real name) of EDGE Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing for leaping yet again with faith in my direction; it’s wonderfully refreshing to work with a publisher who throws caution to the wind and takes on a project solely because he trusts the editor. And finally, to the amazingly creative wordsmiths whose unique stories are included herein — you astonish me with your brilliance!

  Introduction

  By Nancy Kilpatrick

  We, the living, have always exhibited a fascination with Death. We can’t help ourselves. Death is, after all, one of our two most personal experiences, the other being Birth.

  Back in the 14th century, when the world was in the grip of the Black Death, people were immersed in demise. From then until the 19th century, the plague was an on-again, off-again reality that, when most virulent, affected communities on a daily basis. The Black Plague decimated the population of Europe by approximately fifty per cent.

  Whenever catastrophe strikes humanity, the arts always prove themselves invaluable. Through the metaphor of art, people come to terms with the inconceivable. Events that traumatize us individually and/or collectively evoke a need to make sense of what happened and the arts allow deeper connections to be made, aiding our ability to cope.

  The Dance of Death (English); Danse Macabre (French); Totentanz (German); Danza Macabra (Italian); La Danza de la Muerte (Spanish); Dansa de la Mort (Catalan); Dans Macabru (Romanian); Dodendans (Dutch); Dança da Morta (Portuguese); these are but some of the names for what has been called ‘plague art’, visual artwork, sometimes accompanied by text, that grew out of the Medieval collective experience. Most commonly known as Danse Macabre, the visual aspect of this art depicts one or more skeletons — the formerly living — leading the dying from this earthly plane to another realm. These skeletons achieve this by inviting people to dance their way to the end of life, a rather charming approach to a date with mortality, if you think about it.

  The initial Danse Macabre paintings appeared on the interior walls of Le Cimetière des Innocents in Paris in 1424 (artist unknown), accompanied by poetry. This was not a cemetery as we know them today but a fenced-in bone yard, where remains were tossed onto an ever-expanding pile. During the Black Plague, so many succumbed — the cause of the plague unknown at that time — that everyone knew someone who had capitulated to this disease: family, friends and neighbors, bakers, priests, Queens.

  Danse Macabre took hold of the collective consciousness because in the midst of all this expiration, one truism emerged: Death comes to us all. No one is spared, from the beggar to the King, the merchant to the Pope. Death is the one great equalizer. And the bereaved can find some solace in that fact.

  Early Danse Macabre art showed mostly males leaving this mortal coil, but soon artists were pencilling females into tableaux, for instance, milk maids, nuns, prostitutes, dowagers, mothers and their daughters. A wide spectrum of mortals were caught in a personal interaction with the Angel of Death, who was encouraging them to ‘dance’. Meanwhile, the mortal was: stalling for time; attempting a bribe; pleading their case; hoping to trick the reaper grim, etc. And despite Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ warning that we should not go gently into death and his encouragement to rage against the dying of our light, the occasional person was shown dancing willingly.

  Mortals in Danse Macabre artwork are, naturally, portrayed with emotion. Death, on the other hand, is usually seen as an impersonal skeleton, merely doing a job, neither just nor unjust. This artwork was taken as a memento mori: “Remember, you will die”. The motif is a reminder that by being aware that Death waits in the wings until the music starts, Life should be viewed as precious, experienced vividly; each moment counts.

  Knowledge of human anatomy was sketchy but became more sophisticated over the centuries. Earlier skeletons are barely recognizable as such. They appeared as hairy, fleshy, wrongly shaped, with crucial parts missing, and creatures that live in the earth added to their bones as special effects — it’s a wonder some could stand, let alone play an instrument, which they sometimes did as accompaniment to the dance they were trying to entice mortals to! Many looked more like the skeletons of monkeys, rather than humans. But despite the primitive quality of the earliest artwork, it’s surprising how often their bony skulls managed to hint at cuteness or cunning, cruelty or caginess, cynicism or chivalry. They could be laughing at us or weeping for us but the underlying sense is that Death has seen it all before, and will again.

  The first Danse Macabre artwork from the 14th century did not survive when the Parisian cemetery was demolished (once science discovered germs and realized the dead should be burned or buried and not left out in the open). Those images were, though, reproduced in a book, woodcuts designed by Hans Holbein the Younger. This type of art was then recreated throughout Europe over the next 500 years, each country putting its singular spin on the final dance. Suffering the ravages of time, most of this special visual artwork has been destroyed, but some have survived. Manuscripts with original images or reproductions of existing images fared better than the actual art. But there are still approximately 50 pieces that can be found, the earliest dating from the mid-15th century.

  Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper sprang from my long-term interest in and appreciation of this primitive but poignant art. I have traveled to many countries, and some hard-to-get-to spots, hunting for what remains, treasuring these very human imaginings of what happens when we die.

  The idea came to me to see if it was possible to translate the Danse Macabre concept from a visual art form to a literary art form. I wanted to edit an anthology that conveys two concepts through a series of stories presenting a range of interactions with the Grim Reaper. The first: that Death is the great equalizer. The second: what I believe is also imbedded in the artwork, but perhaps not so obviously — are human beings able to, as the artwork intimates, affect death? Physicists have discovered that certain sub-atomic particles are affected by the observer. Is it possible that Death, this evanescent reality of existence, regardless of the form taken and despite seeming dispassionate by nature, might in some way be influenced by us just as we are undoubtedly influenced by it?

  The writers in this
remarkable and unusual anthology ‘got it’. They cranked their imaginations up a notch or two and envisioned tales which reflect a wide spectrum of humanity. There are fascinating interactions with Thanatos, outcomes not necessarily expected. These talented writers have managed to create powerful and very human tales that certainly are not all grim. It’s a volume that tries to convey an existential dance with words, twirling readers through graceful twists and turns and clever and unexpected spins, with the hope of leaving you charmed by the pas de deux.

  Death has and likely always will remain a mystery. But one thing mortals can be certain about: the Danse Macabre is a very personal dance, one it might be possible to manage with grace, style and perhaps even a few jaunty pirouettes.

  Nancy Kilpatrick

  Montreal, 2012

  Danse Macabre

  By Ian Emberson

  Death came to me in a mini skirt

  As skittish as a kitten,

  And said: “I am come — for your final flirt,”

  But added: “You don’t seem smitten.”

  Says I: “Well — not in my wildest whim

  Did I picture you looking like this,

  I’d been told that you were a reaper grim

  And behold — a saucy miss.”

  “Ah — many a one is like yourself

  Surprised by my winning smile,

  I have jokes and jests like a playful elf

  And I know the way to beguile.”

  “But please — just pass me by with a nod

  I’ve poems and plays unwritten,

  There are footpaths I have never trod

  As you say — I’m not much smitten.”

  “Oh hush my darling — and don’t repine,”

  And she gave a gracious prance,

  Then she twined her fingers into mine

  And whispered: “Shall we dance?”

  * * * * *

  Ian Emberson, writer and artist, was born at Hove in England in 1936, and is proud to have been christened by the poet Andrew Young. Ian has earned his living in both horticulture and librarianship, spending much of his working life as music librarian at Huddersfield Public Library. He has had twelve books published, and several one man art exhibitions. In addition to writing and painting, he enjoys walking and swimming. The idea for “Danse Macabre” came when he showed his wife Catherine an illustration in a biography of Petrarch, and she remarked: “That’s death in a mini skirt.”

  The Secret Engravings

  By Lisa Morton

  Hans turned the corner and smelled death.

  The odor, sudden and undeniable, cascaded his memory back to four years ago, to 1519, when his brother Ambrosius had succumbed to plague. He’d gone against the advice of physicians and friends to attend to Ambrosius, and the scent in his brother’s final hours had been this same nauseating mix of rotten meat and metallic blood and sour fear sweat.

  Hans was yanked back to the present as he saw a body being taken from a house down the alley. Two men, common laborers with thick rags wrapped around their faces, lugged a shrouded corpse into a waiting cart. As they heaved it onto the creaking boards, a foot fell loose, and Hans saw:

  The toes were almost completely black.

  Plague. Again, here in Basel.

  One of the laborers glanced up and saw Hans staring. He stepped a few feet away from the dead man, glanced back once, and tugged down the improvised cloth mask. He was burly, with a long, unwashed beard and filthy peasant’s garb, but his face and voice were surprisingly kind. “Best not come this way,” he said.

  “How far…?” Hans couldn’t finish the question.

  The man understood. “Only this house. He was a merchant, been traveling, just came back last week. I doubt it’ll spread.”

  ‘Doubt’? Precious little to put my mind at ease. But Hans nodded and turned away.

  He clutched his satchel tighter — it held the drawings for the prayer book, his latest commission, and as such was precious — and walked down another lane, unseeing.

  The Great Mortality … here, again.

  He’d been on his way to visit Hermann, the engraver who would complete the woodcuts that would allow the drawings to be printed; but now he found himself walking aimlessly, stunned.

  After Ambrosius, Hans had lived in dread of encountering the plague again. Ambrosius, his beloved older brother, the one their father had believed would be a great artist. Ambrosius, who had his own studio while Hans Holbein the Younger was yet an apprentice to another artist; even if Hans was now accorded greater recognition than Ambrosius had ever been given, he knew the hole that his brother’s gruesome death had left in his soul would never fill. He couldn’t forget watching the buboes form under his sibling’s arms, the black spots that spread up his face and limbs as he vomited blood. Four years later, not a day passed when he didn’t see Ambrosius’s dying face, or — earlier — that sought-after smile of approval. He spied his brother in statues, in paintings, in other men, in children.

  And he saw his own death by plague in everything else. The thought terrified him; he’d seen what his brother had endured, and he couldn’t imagine doing the same. The fevers, the bursting skin, the blood…

  Hans finally looked up, realizing he’d wandered far away now from the engraver’s neighborhood, and was near the house of his friend Erasmus. Hans had recently painted the great man, and they’d become friends as a result. Erasmus had read parts of his essay The Praise of Folly to Hans during the sittings, and Hans had come to admire the man for his wit and insight. He could use a precious dose of that today.

  A few minutes later, the scholar was welcoming Hans into his study. Once seated before a warming hearth with a brandy (“good for all Four Humours,” Erasmus assured him), surrounded by books and scrolls and writing desks and quills, only then did Hans finally begin to relax.

  “Your fame is growing, young Hans,” Erasmus told him, as he stood before the fire, his rugged face creased in pleasure. “I had reason to visit the Great Council Chamber in town hall today, and a traveler from Germany saw your mural and asked if it was the work of the Italian, Da Vinci. I was delighted to tell him that Basel has its own Da Vinci in the young Hans Holbein. He told me he would mark that name well.”

  Hans tried to smile, but wasn’t entirely successful. Erasmus saw the attempt. “I fear you’re not here for mere praise alone.”

  “No. I saw … plague. Plague has returned to Basel.”

  If Hans had expected some measure of panic or at least discomfort from his friend, he was surprised to see only a mild shrug. “Plague is always with us in some form or other. It’s a constant companion. You of all people should know that, Hans — who was it but the artists who captured the Dance of Death when the Great Mortality first struck a century ago?”

  Erasmus rummaged briefly through a shelf, then pulled down a large tooled and leather-bound copy of Liber Chronicarum, placed it in Hans’s lap, and flipped through the parchment leaves until he came to an engraving that showed four skeletons, tufts of hair flying from their sere skulls, capering in a graveyard. Hans examined it briefly, then muttered, “It is the work of Michael Wolgemut. I could do better.”

  His friend laughed and clapped his shoulder. “Indeed you could, young genius.”

  Hans spent another hour with Erasmus, discussing art and civic politics and the gossip surrounding a local aristocrat, and by the time he left the sun was setting and his spirits had lifted. As he lingered in Erasmus’s doorway, pulling his fur-trimmed cloak tighter against the cooling air, Erasmus told him, “Paint, Hans. It’s what God meant you for, and it will ease your mind.”

  Hans nodded and left.

  He’d still been contemplative when he’d returned home. He ate dinner with his wife Elsbeth and their sons Franz and Philipp, then excused himself to the studio.

  At first he wonde
red if he’d made a mistake; the studio had once belonged to his brother, whose spirit now seemed to infest every scrap of paper and brush and easel and ink bottle. Hans stoked the fire, shrugged out of his heavy outer garment, and tried to focus on his latest commission — an altarpiece design for the local church — but neither mind nor hand would bend to the task. Finally, he lowered his head to the worktable and closed his eyes, seeking simple oblivion.

  Someone was with him, in the studio.

  He didn’t know how much time had passed, and he hadn’t yet opened his eyes to confirm what his other senses screamed at him; a quickening terror clutched his heart. His eyes popped open, involuntarily.

  A tall shadow stood on the far side of the room, draped in a black robe and cowl. “Good evening, Hans,” it said, in a deep, somehow hollow voice.

  Hans lifted his head, but he possessed no more strength. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t form words.

  “All will be made clear, my friend. Know for now that I mean you no harm.” The visitor’s basso tones sent shivers up his back.

  “How…” Hans managed to look back at the studio’s door, and saw that it was as he’d left it, bolted from within.

  His guest stepped forward, and Hans saw the gleam of something white from within the folds of the cowl.

  Is that—

  “Yes, bone. What else would Death be made of?” Two skeleton-hands emerged from the sleeves, pushed back the cowl, and let Hans see his visitor’s face … or rather, see the skull where a face should have been. There was nothing but ancient, polished bone, no shred of skin or hair or muscle or vein. Hans pushed away from his bench, and barely noticed when he fell to the floor.

  His guest — Death — made a placating gesture. “You’ve nothing to fear from me, Hans Holbein the Younger.”

  “You’re not here with … the plague?”

  The skull moved back and forth. “Far from it. In fact, I’m here to offer you a way to save yourself from plague. I come to claim your services, not your life.”