The Morning Gift

by The Morning Gift (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  Although she was now fit to travel she delayed by a week her departure for Hatfelde where Sigward wanted his son to be born. When the week was up she delayed again.

  Dungesey intrigued her. She wanted to exploit this one piece of land she truly owned. She wanted to impose her will on these shiftless independent English.

  That was what she told Berte, her household and even herself. There was another truth. At Hatfelde waited the birth stool with its seat in the shape of a horseshoe on which contraption Sigward’s female ancestors had delivered his predecessors. Above it were the straps to pull on and the leather to bite on in the pains.

  At Hatfelde they would burn squashed bedbugs and goat’s hair under her nose and tie spikenard and artemisia around her thighs so that, the mouth and nose being connected to the digestive tract which was connected to the womb, the baby would be attracted away from the foul smells to the sweet. At Hatfelde they would make her sniff pepper and milkwort so that her sneezes assisted the downward force of her contractions. A priest would be waiting outside the chamber door to give the last rites if she or her baby should die, and waiting with him would be Sigward’s relatives and nobles listening for the child’s first cry and attesting that Sigward’s heir had been properly born within his walls. She dreaded Hatfelde.

  Berte denounced and fumed that they didn’t leave at once and the rest of the household was now bored with Dungesey, but Matilda said: “There’s time enough,” and began her exploration.

  To the south was an oak wood where the island’s pigs were taken daily by Tulsi, the swineherd.

  Between that and her manor, screened off by a grove of pear trees called Perecourt, was an odd little settlement called Wealyham.

  “The Wealas,” said Steward Peter, “are a separate people. Celts. Your ladyship’s bondsmen and women. Unfree. Quarrelsome when drunk, lazy when sober, immoral women and shiftless men – but usually the men leave when old enough, or kill each other.”

  Matilda saw from the state of their settlement how worthless the Wealas were. The lanes between the houses were filthy, roofs and walls had lumps falling off them, though they were complex with patterning. The only sign of life came from a hut where a tenor voice sang to a harp. “Minne-singing,” said Jodi, entranced.

  “Why are they tolerated?”

  “Lady, they are expert wildfowlers and trappers and provide most of your table and they are fine animal doctors, especially with horses. Also they make good willow honey. But,” Steward Peter sounded reluctant, “they are kept mainly because they know the secret of St. Gregory’s cordial. A wonderful specific which can cure or alleviate the symptoms of the mal air of the Fens.” It took away pain, inducing sleep and strange dreams. A Wealy woman had seduced the seeds and the secret of the poppy from which it was made out of a returned Crusader. But when he saw Matilda’s interest – a magic potion which took away pain was above rubies – Steward Peter warned: “It must not be used too often or you want more until you cannot live without it. Luckily there is a limited supply.”

  They left Jodi behind them when they went, squatting outside the hut in the filth and following the notes of the harp on his lute. And for the rest of their time on Dungesey there he stayed.

  Matilda held her first manor court on a day when rain lashed the hall and turned the interior so dark that the English, gathered down one end, were still just shapes to her.

  “Come closer.” Her men-at-arms whacked a few behinds and the English shuffled forward. “That’s enough.” She could smell fish.

  “Let the court of Dungesey commence and let every soul tell the truth as it stands in the fear of God. Debts first.”

  It was not a rent day and only outstanding debts had to be paid. Steward Peter ran his fingers down the notches of his debt tally. “Shudda owes a shilling sedgesilver.” He added nervously to Matilda: “She is a widow and cut her hand so she could not mow and we postponed her rent.” But an old woman came forward to the table and slammed a shilling on it.

  “Shudda is quit,” said Steward Peter with relief. The other outstanding debts were paid as promptly. “They’ve been borrowing from each other for it.”

  “Appeals,” commanded Matilda. She enjoyed this part most; appeals enabled a lord to show power and wisdom over squabbles between tenants. But she was not to play Solomon today. A silence descended so they could hear the rain rattling on the shutters and the shuffle of the people’s eelskin boots in the rushes. Sparrows whirred from beam to beam.

  “Be quick.” But nobody had offended anybody since last court, nobody’s animals had broken a hedge or trampled his neighbour’s crops. Nobody had taken anything without permission, nobody had cut peat out of season nor assaulted anyone. The English had closed ranks.

  Matilda’s foot tapped. “Steward, do you appeal nobody?”

  Steward Peter produced some minor infringements which Matilda fined heavily since she suspected him of concealing greater wickednesses.

  “Boons.” There was more silence, more rain, more tapping from Matilda’s foot.

  “Kakkr,” Steward Peter was getting desperate, “didn’t you want permission for your daughter to marry Teoful?”

  “I reckon she can wait,” came a voice from the hall. They would ask nothing of this new lord until they knew her better.

  “The lady,” announced Steward, “is to inspect her demesne and will need boat service. Stand forward Sulse, Toki and Pampi who owe her such customary rent.”

  Three men shuffled forward. They all looked alike to Matilda, though there was one whose shape was familiar. “Is that the one with the heron?”

  “Pampi.”

  “I pick him.” That would teach him. He’d suffer hardship through having to neglect work on his own land.

  “The next command of our lady is this,” said Steward Peter, “that in future any soul who asks a boon of her will do so in the French tongue, that being the proper language for her court.” He added hastily: “You can come to me beforehand to learn the words.”

  Both he and Matilda had expected some cultural reaction, an outcry. The English surprised them by being mightily amused. The tension of the hall relaxed into tittering and nudging elbows. They bowed and curtsied to each other in what they imagined to be courtly salutes.

  “You going to poyley-voy then, Up?”

  “Up don’t wholly speak English.”

  Matilda could have coped with an outburst: now she was at a loss. Angrily she dismissed the court.

  “Funny ideas, that little ol’ gal,” said Kakkr to Shudda as they left, “but I reckon as us’ll lick her into shape.”

  * * *

  Matilda did some socialising and attended other courts, the shire’s, the hundred’s and that held by the intercommoning communities which shared grazing with Dungesey. She was surprised by the general efficiency.

  But where the courts failed was in the most vital area of all; they could not enforce the drainage and embanking laws. The Nene was the main river of this part and the Nene was the Abbey of Ramsey’s river, entering the Fens near Ramsey, and remaining so for most of its winding, northeasterly course. Ramsey barges used it. Nevertheless its banks were in shocking repair. There was a Saxon tradition that a man who allowed a bank to fall into disrepair should be walled up in it, but as the chief offender was the Abbot of Ramsey nobody, however bad the embanking, felt equal to buttressing it up with so influential and rich a body as his.

  As this became apparent Matilda became unhappy. Water seeping into her Washes through Ramsey’s rotten banks was costing her a winter crop. “I’ll go to the abbot myself.”

  Father Alors was horrified: “In your condition?” and he was not worrying about Matilda’s health but about polluting the abbot’s sensibilities with a pregnant woman.

  “Then you go.” But Father Alors, though he was a well-born Norman and represented the combined might of Sigward and Matilda, had no more luck than anyone else in reaching the new abbot. A Brother Daniel, now pri
or, blocked the way. Everybody complained of him.

  So did Father Alors: “Put off,” he shouted on his return, “repulsed, snubbed, and by a jumped-up, low-born glass-blower.”

  “A what?”

  “This Daniel is not only English but a glassblower before he took his vows. The cellarer told me all about him. He doesn’t like him either. He’s gained ascendancy over the new abbot. And makes a pretty penny out of it. Even built his own residence in the Fens, so they say.”

  “What about Monks’ Bank?”

  Father Alors’ skull-shaped face adopted a mincing expression and enunciated with clarity: “His father-in-God the abbot must not be bothered with such matters. He was elected for his saintliness, not for his knowledge of draining.”

  “Damn his saintliness. And damn Brother Daniel.”

  It was Matilda who found the abbot.

  She had been to ask the hermit who kept the bridge at Beale for a prophecy concerning her child. All hermits could tell the future. This one lived on an island in the middle of the Nene upriver towards Ramsey where a bridge spanned each stream to make a crossing point. The hermit kept the bridge and took the tolls.

  He turned out to be a smelly old man with a hostile and smellier dog living in a hovel in mud. Matilda didn’t bother to disembark. Percy of Alleyn hailed the man and proffered a silver piece. “Matilda de Risle, lady of Dungesey, asks for your blessing and begs a prophecy.”

  The hermit stopped scratching his armpit, spat on the silver piece and waved a dirty hand in the shape of a cross. “It’s going to rain,” he said in English, and went back to scratching.

  Percy of Alleyn translated. “I could have told him that,” said Matilda, bad-temperedly. Pampi and his son began sullenly to pole them back the way they had come.

  It did rain. Their boat, a peculiar combination of barge and punt with a rocker-bottom and sloped sides, had at the stern an upside down cradle of hoops over which canvas was rolled so that Matilda and Adeliza could sit in the dry. Pampi and his son had sacking round their shoulders which steamed as they poled. Percy of Alleyn and a man-at-arms held dripping cloaks over their heads.

  Matilda brooded. Perhaps the hermit’s words hadn’t been a weather forecast only: perhaps they’d been symbolical.

  Then Pampi gave a shout, an event so unusual that Matilda scrabbled at the calico to see what he had seen. They had reached the Stun, a stone on the starboard bank which marked the ending of Ramsey land and the beginning of Dungesey’s. The river was wide here and swimming across it was a stag; its antlers, head and shoulders rose and dipped in the water. There was immediate pandemonium. “Kill, kill,” yelled Matilda. Percy of Alleyn, hallooing and cursing his lack of a bow, grabbed the man-at-arms’ spear and threw. Even Pampi and his son were ra-ra-ing and waving their poles.

  The spear missed and the stag turned its head, frantically looking for a landing place. A slip in the deplorable bank gave it a chance and it heaved itself up and over the bank and disappeared down the other side. There was a long score across its flank where diluted blood patterned it.

  They were diverted by another body crashing down the port bank from which the stag had come. A moment later a monk was swimming across the river in a careful breaststroke, his head with its tonsure rising and dipping as the stag’s had done.

  “A portent,” said Adeliza getting hysterical. “It is a magic stag and an enchanted monk who pursues it.”

  The monk had gained the stag’s landing place but when he tried to haul himself upright the weight of water in his habit dragged him down. He fell and lay in the mud, gesticulating at them. “See where it goes.”

  “What’s he going to do? Strangle it?” But so urgent were the monk’s pleas that Percy of Alleyn scrambled to the bank.

  “Get me up there.” Matilda gestured to the man-at-arms to carry her, using one hand while with the other she slapped Adeliza back to her senses. As she was carried up the bank she was reminded of its dilapidation. “Are you a Ramsey monk? Because if so…”

  “What’s it doing? What’s it doing?” The monk slimed his way up. The land beyond Monks’ Bank was a long stretch of bog, grey flat surface broken by tussocks of sedge. The stag moved across it in a series of jerky bounds. When it reached midway it looked back to see if it was pursued then did a peculiar thing; it rolled down and on to its wounded side and dragged itself along for some yards in that position. Then it got back up and disappeared into the distance.

  “Ah ha.” The monk crossed his arms over his dreadful habit in triumph. “I thought as much. I spotted him limping. Somebody’s arrow had scored him, and I thought: ‘I bet I know where you’re going, my lad.’ And I was right.” He began squeezing water out of his habit, became aware of the silence and looked up. “I have this theory, you see. That’s bog moss out there, sphagnum moss. The English say wounded animals roll in it. Well, animals are God’s hints to us so I thought: ‘Let’s see. Is He trying to tell us sphagnum’s good for wounds, cleanses and heals?’ Tomorrow I’ll get some of the brothers out here and gather tons of the stuff, dry it and try it out in the infirmary.” The silence discomfited him. “I’m afraid I chatter a lot in company. Also when I’m not, actually.”

  “Are you the infirmarian, then?” He seemed young for such a post. His habit, dragging downwards, revealed an unlined throat and his wet hair clung in leaves to his skull, like a boy’s.

  The monk looked shy. “Actually,” he said, “they elected me abbot. It was nice of them, wasn’t it?”

  Percy of Alleyn pulled himself together and made hasty introductions. The abbot nodded gleefully at them all, even Pampi and son, to whom he was not introduced.

  Matilda said with deference: “Will you come back to Dungesey with us, my lord, to feast and dry out?” She contrasted the ugliness of her island with what Father Alors had told her of the glories of Ramsey.

  “Exceedingly kind, but I must be getting back if you don’t mind. I’ve got a lot of praying to do, you see, and I need to be alone a lot. Brother Daniel understands that and sees I get a lot of time to be alone in.”

  “But you’ll freeze.”

  “Actually I don’t think so.” Politely he held out his drooping skirts. “This is good English wool and wool is a material which retains warmth though wet. Did you know?”

  They did, in the unspecified way they knew all their science.

  “Well, goodbye.” He nodded at all of them, Pampi and son included, tucked his habit into his belt revealing thin, white, muscular legs and jogged off along Monks’ Bank, elbows and knees pumping in co-ordination. He looked ridiculous.

  They were some way downstream before Matilda spoke. “Is he the abbot? Or is he mad?”

  Percy of Alleyn considered. “Both I should think.”

  “Blast,” said Matilda, “I forgot to complain about the bank.” She had a happy thought. “I’ll have to see him again.”

  She had never been a romantic but now she found herself hoping the abbot hadn’t noticed her pregnancy: she wanted him to think her pure. Quite likely the man was a saint in the making; only saints cared for animals and the working-classes.

  As time went on she wove a fantasy in which the abbot did indeed become a saint and Matilda his friend in an intimate – but chaste – tenderness, benefactress to his causes, his confidante. There would be a touching scene in which the abbot declared: “Matilda, you have been my inspiration but the love I feel for you has become a passion against which I can fight no longer. Yet I cannot turn from God. We must meet no more.” He would retire to an abbey and Matilda to a comfortable, well-endowed nunnery but he would know and she would know…

  It was a nice fantasy and Matilda enjoyed it. She took it out on the Fens with her, cutting down her escort so that if she met him again they could have a tête-à-tête.

  So with Pampi, one lady and a man-at-arms she explored her land, sailing along rivers that were sometimes as grey as the heron, sometimes as brown as the cattle, sometimes as bright and jolly blue as the s
ky.

  She was constantly surprised at the variety offered by so flat a land. The mist above the water in the evening differed in quality and colour from that lying above it at dawn. It was never lonely because birds were everywhere and the main rivers were full of traffic and English voices exchanging news as their barges passed.

  She looked for the conch-shell blower she had heard on the night of her resurrection from boredom. Steward Peter said it was a bittern. But it eluded her by its trick of standing in the reeds with its neck, head and beak making a vertical line in a clump of vertical lines.

  A week after meeting the abbot she woke up feeling tired.

  “I told you,” Berte said. “Well, you’re not going today.”

  She and the others had been due to attend the Fen version of a duck hunt. A huge net funnel was to be spread over a stream and thousands of duck driven into it. It was not to be missed, apparently. The abbot might be there.

  “The others may go and take young Pampi. Old Pampi stands by here in case I want to join them later.”

  “You won’t.”

  By midday she felt better, or well enough to defy Berte. “It’s not far and I won’t be long.”

  It was a good clear day. As usual Pampi and Matilda did not exchange a word. He was too sulky at the time she was taking up to talk to her, even if he could. Matilda suspected she already knew more English than he did French.

  They floated up the Swallen, turned right into the Nene and then left into a small tributary called the Fleam, so narrow that branches brushed Pampi’s face. They could hear the call of the decoys tempting the wild duck to perdition. Matilda realised the vague ache she had felt all day had localised in her back and was getting worse. It became shocking.

  She held on to the side of the punt, her eyes wide, breathing hard. The duck calls were a distraction, like flies. There came a moment of such agony that the previous pain seemed nothing at all. It passed then another came. She was giving birth prematurely. The baby would be born in this boat and die. They would both die.