by Non Bramley
Here I learnt of the great re-formation. At the fall, all the things that men and women looked towards to keep them safe, failed. There were so few people who were invulnerable to the sickness, and they were hunted by the damned like hares chased by dogs. The blessed it seemed would not be blessed for long as their houses proved flimsy, with windows it was easy to break and doors it was easy to force; no protection from the creatures that had once been their neighbours.
The eyes of the survived searched their worlds for stone walls, thick doors and tiny windows. Quietly sleeping through the ages, their ancient parish churches revealed themselves as what they had first been designed to be – havens from the ravening Saxons, Danes and Normans. Now it was the damned that threw themselves against oak doors and scrabbled at windows that were mere slits in stone. The survived huddled inside, living on food collected for the poor and communion wine, or starving if they were unlucky. Oddly, some churches were never troubled by the damned, even at the worst times. Back then, no one knew why.
Eventually the clever and more predatory damned started to eat each other as well as us. We think this is how the wolves were created. They breed in the quiet places and each generation is further from humanity and closer to the beasts. After several months the remaining damned were too rotted to be of interest to wolves and too weak to be a danger to us.
When the survived emerged from their sanctuaries there was nothing left. The church had saved them in the most literal way. Now that network of clerics stepped into the void and started to build. The abbeys rose again as men and women of God settled into any habitable building that clustered around a handful of cathedral churches. It’s not vainglorious design that makes an abbey; it’s the will of the people. It was as if the bad reformation of 1517 had never happened.
Progress was painfully slow. There were so few of us left. Seventy years later we were beginning to do more than just build shelter and find food. Gradually we created things that couldn’t be held in the hand but were made of knowledge and law and learning.
I became a Reeve for the Diocese of Saint Ivo. It was hard going. I made mistakes and collected scars that ached and itched on wet days. Abbot Vesey changed my name to Jude of Calder, as there was already a Sister Judith within the walls. In a small way we built some rule of law. An abbey court ruled on the most serious cases; I would give evidence for or against the accused. Execution was rare as who could afford to lose an able-bodied man or woman? Only in the very worst cases, the ones that kept you awake at night and put you off your food for months, only then was the culprit hung until dead. If it was my job to see justice done I used a knife, it’s quicker and less cruel. I was good at it.
As I got older I discovered another talent. I can read the words behind the words. Life is more complicated but it’s an excellent skill for a Reeve to possess. I always thought everyone could do it. They can’t. It explains a lot about the world.
Richard Vesey, Prior of Saint Ivo’s was another Calder Island foundling. The fact made me like his ambitious little soul.
The abbey precincts are well laid out with a scattering of one-room houses and workshops that it is easy to thatch, or cover with scavenged metal or slate. The best had windows covered with highly prized plastic sheets that bellied and snapped in the wind. Lesser dwellings, like mine, had to make do with scraped horn fragments that let in a yellow light.
A stream ran through the grassy streets, powering the mill and carrying the contents of piss pails away. There was an orchard and hives for bees. What it didn’t have was people. Forty at most lived inside the walls and visitors were rare. This was not enough for Prior Vesey’s plans.
As the years went on I winced at the memory of my shameful leave-taking of Calder. If I thought about it too much it still made me angry. Isn’t ambivalence the essence of life? Living with love, loss and anger made me more complex; more able to understand the horrors of my job.
I still liked sex, but John was right, in a small community you have to pick your partners well. Little jealousies can cause chaos, leave you bouncing around like peas in a drum. My incapacity to swoon and flutter made me more attractive to some; others it made aggressive. How bloody contrary are we all? I was often evil-tempered through lack of release.
This impasse was solved with the arrival of Philip carpenter who travelled the abbeys of the West earning his keep mending, sawing and fixing. The sex was extraordinary. I had no illusions – he was good because of all of the practice he had put in with other women. I liked the blue whorls of tattoos on his thick golden skin and his smell of fresh cut wood. He visited us regularly; it was a comfortable routine. I was pleased to see him arrive and serene when he left. He was charming rogue, a connoisseur of women and completely untrustworthy. Luckily it wasn’t his moral rectitude that interested me. When you’re young good sex can make you overlook most character flaws.
I don’t know if I can say that I was well liked. My size is a challenge. I take up space in the world and I glory in it.
Four years into my work as Reeve, on a spring morning that tasted of pollen and sap I heard another command to leave home. It was becoming a recurring theme in my life.
The abbey church of Saint Ivo is a beautiful place. Step inside and it’s like a sea cave. Amorphous lumps of stone turn out to be ancient faces and every surface is nibbled away by the carving of masons or the pious graffiti of the faithful, scored into the sandstone. At first its sheer size was wondrous. The more time I spent there the smaller it got.
Where does my story start?
It starts here.
The brethren and sistren were leaving the great church after Terce prayers. As I passed him, Prior Richard pulled me to one side and we let the procession of clerics pass us by.
‘God keep you, Jude,’ he said. ‘Walk with me.’
He led me quickly down the nave, across the transept and on to the great shrine of Saint Ivo, where the saint’s bones were kept on an altar in their silver reliquary, now black with age. Behind us, the last of the congregation left the church and I heard the doors closing, leaving us in silence but for the piping of birds nesting in the roof.
‘What follows you must keep secret. I hold you to your vows of obedience.’
I didn’t remind him that I had no vows to stand by; I’d been released from them years ago. He would have ignored the fact anyway. You can’t be a contemplative and a Reeve.
The round figure of Sister Pippa stood by the shrine gates. She was the abbey’s Sacristan – a woman so devout her faith was more of a scourge than a comfort. In truth she was a soul of strong desires caught in a body that was not truly desirable. She annoyed me. Every word she spoke was weighted with dissatisfaction.
We three entered the vaulted space and Pippa lit the lamps as Richard locked the wrought-iron gates, an odd thing to do as it gave us no more privacy. Turning to the altar, he stood in front of the reliquary which was modelled as a small version of the great church we stood in – grasped the lid and heaved. It didn’t move. Pippa tried to help, wrapping her mottled arms around the box. Still nothing. It didn’t want to be opened.
Eventually, when their strugglings had left them both pink in the face, I was given permission to touch the blessed box and get the damn thing open.
‘Careful you don’t break anything. It’s too precious for brute force,’ Pippa said, looking away when I grinned at her.
I prised the great metal lid off, carefully. Inside there was nothing. No bones, not even dust.
The saint had gone.
‘There’s a thing! He’s been taken. The bones have been stolen,’ I said, thinking my skills were needed to catch a thief.
The Prior ignored me, reaching into the empty box to bring out a scrap of parchment I hadn’t noticed as it lay in shadow. He peered at the crabbed writing on the fragment, then sat on the altar steps and rubbed his face with his sleeve.
‘It’s worse than I thought.’
‘You knew?’ I said.
‘I
suspected.’
Richard looked at Pippa and something private passed between them. She came to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘We were examining the shrine, and the reliquary, well, it was dropped. We both noticed there was no … no clatter. It sounded empty. We thought maybe the blessed saint’s bones had simply turned to dust.’
‘Who’s to say they haven’t?’ I said.
‘The bones have been gone for centuries, Jude,’ Richard said, handing me the scrap of parchment. I read it. The letters were faded but I could just make out oddly formed words which read : So end all papist lies.
Richard looked haggard. ‘They must have been destroyed 500 years ago, and this is a message from the bastard iconoclast that did it. No one must ever know. We’ve lost enough.’
I understood the feeling of loss, but at the time I didn’t know how Richard’s grand plan had also been thwarted.
Later, with the reliquary sealed and the shrine gates open again I was ordered to wait alone in his lodgings. He was gone some time, but I was content to warm my bones by his fire while he and Pippa did whatever it was they needed to do. Bees tapped against the windows and the warmth and quiet almost lulled me to sleep. You take rest when you can in my job.
Richard took his time. It was obvious there was some relationship between our Prior and Sacristan, but Pippa was, as far as I knew, already married. Where her husband was I had no idea. Their tentative love affair was probably chaste and would evaporate if it ever became known. No wonder she was so bitter.
Eventually Richard joined me. ‘This is a bloody disaster, Jude,’ he said, sitting to pull off his boots.
I drew in my legs to give him space. ‘Why? This is still Saint Ivo’s church. It’s as holy now as it’s ever been.’
‘To us, yes, but the common people want relics, they want to feel that the blessed Ivo is here, and we have an empty shrine. Have you not heard about these new miracles? About the bones of the saints healing the most grievous sickness?’
Philip had mentioned it only that morning, laughing at the gullibility of folk. ‘It’s just superstition and rumour. Relics aren’t magic. It’s not like the past.’
Richard handed me a cup of cider, tapping the rim of his own cup absentmindedly.
‘I’d agree with you, but I’ve seen it myself. I saw a cancer melt off a woman’s face while I stood and watched, not two feet away. I saw miracles - a twisted leg healed in moments! I have faith, but this frightens me, and it changes everything.’
‘Where did you see all this?’ I asked.
‘Tolbury, a shit heap of a place, not even a church there. I slept on straw like a pauper. They didn’t know who I was. I wanted to see the truth for myself. That’s where I was for those weeks I was away. These scavengers have the bones of a real saint, a real Anglo Saxon saint.’
‘It’s a trick, or why aren’t these miracles happening in every chapel that holds bones? Or are you saying they all have empty reliquaries, like us?’
‘That seems likely, doesn’t it,’ he said, looking into the fire.
Privately, I thought it more likely that our shrewd Prior had been taken in by a clever bit of theatre, but his sincerity rang in every word. That was intriguing.
‘Do you really believe that the bones of the saints have, well, woken up? That they’re potent again? It’s not just a clever ruse to fool the desperate?’
‘It’s not a trick, I swear it. Something has happened. There’s been some, tilt … shift … Maybe faith has come back to the world and opened a door that was shut. Whatever it is, it’s happening. Pilgrims were pouring in. What I could build with all those grateful hands! It’s like Pippa said – people need jam today not jam tomorrow.’
‘And we have no relics,’ I said.
The Abbot shifted in his seat. ‘I need your help, Jude. In fact I’ve two jobs for you. Two hundred miles from here in Banfield is the Abbey of Saint Agnes and Saint Credan. Their prior is Johanna. She’s been writing to me for months. Several young women have disappeared, and most recently a child of seven vanished from their pilgrim house. They’ve enough problems there, God knows, without some predator feeding off children and the young. She’s asked for a Reeve to help lead the search. I’m sending you.’
‘They’ve no one there who can help?’
‘No one as experienced as you.’
‘If these missing women are still alive they’ll be miles away by now. Or it could be wolves taking them, and the child. The land round there is thick with them.’
Richard nodded. ‘Just visit them, give them your advice, have a look around. We can’t ignore a request for help but I’m not expecting you to work miracles. The disappearances do seem odd, planned almost.’
‘If it’s not wolves, God knows, men can be just as deadly to the young,’ I said, pondering. ‘I’ve no other case that can’t wait. I’ll leave as soon as it’s safe.’
‘I knew you would. That brings me to my second request.’ He paused, trying to find the words that would make his next request sound less like an incitement to theft. ‘A few miles from Banfield there’s an abandoned village that’s of interest to me, especially now. From what I can gather it may be called Witner, or Witchney, something in that vein. Find the village church if it’s still standing and dig around the altar. You’re looking for the bones of an ancient female saint. I don’t even know her name – it’s been forgotten. I want to bring her to the light again. I want her here, Jude. Be discreet. Find her, wrap her bones in this and bring her back to us.’
‘How do you know about her?’
‘That’s not important. Just do it.’
—This is perilously close to simony, Jude, God forgive you!1
He handed me a piece of fur, beautifully soft and golden brown. Did my conscience trouble me? A little. Stealing away bones felt underhanded. I decided not go out of my way to indulge his superstitious fantasy of potent bones. If I could get to this ghost village I would, but not if it meant risking my life.
‘Why would an English saint heal our sick? She’ll be a long way from home, if she’s there at all,’ I said.
‘Pippa just asked me the same question. I’ll give you the same answer: Why wouldn’t she? There were miracles attributed to her shrine for centuries, but now no one but us knows she’s there; even her name has been forgotten. No one reverences her. She’s all alone. We’ve been lucky here, we live peacefully and we don’t starve but soon people will wonder why the blessed Ivo’s bones do nothing. Few enough pilgrims travel this far as it is. The people we have will drift away to join other communities with real bones, powerful bones, and this place will die. The people will leave, Jude. All my plans for the abbey! Ruined!’
The words behind the words hung in the air and it was then that I knew. ‘You’re going to put her bones in Ivo’s shrine and tell no one,’ I said. ‘She’s not a machine. Even if all of this was true, don’t you have to invoke a saint’s name?’
‘They didn’t in Tolbury,’ he said.
I agreed to go. Richard wasn’t a bad man – I’m sure he felt for poor, beleaguered Prior Johanna – but bones were the real reason I was making the journey to Banfield.
The Abbot’s mood relaxed. ‘The road is dangerous the closer you get to Banfield. There are wolves around the city and you’ll be far from home where I can’t help, so I’m sending Thomas Tavener to travel with you.’
I tried to recall the face. ‘The new novice, just arrived? I’ll go alone.’
‘You’ll take him with you. He’s young and can fetch and carry; help you keep watch. Just between us I’d like you to tell me what you think of him. I’m not sure he’s suited to the religious life, although he has some small knowledge of herbs I’m told and he’s good with his hands.’
‘He’s a beauty. He may have trouble with women, or men,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be protecting his arse on the road.’
The Abbot waved a hand. ‘You’ll do what’s necessary, and it would be a personal favour
to me. Frankly, the lad puzzles me. He’s too eager. Sees everything in black and white, and when your vocation is shepherding the souls of men you need an ability to think in greys. He’s to work in Banfield’s lazar house with the lepers, which is I suppose a sterling lesson in human frailty.’
‘And he agreed to that?’ I said.
‘Without hesitation.’
I poured the dregs of cider from my cup into the fire. ‘A pious teenager sounds an ideal travelling companion,’ I said wryly. ‘The longer I’m alive the more tiring I find unshakeable faith, book-learnt faith.’
‘Everything changes, if you live long enough, even faith,’ Richard answered.
‘We sound like a couple of atheists. Ever think we’re in the wrong job?’
The Abbot stood. ‘Never, but we’ve both seen religious fervour twist into madness. We’re men of faith and reason, and we’re not going back to the dark past.’
Oh Lord, how we fool ourselves.
I had a week to prepare for the journey so I spent the next few days packing provisions and washing my clothing, hanging it over bushes to dry. I never worried about theft as my shirts fit no one else. Philip watched me. He didn’t offer help, but then I didn’t need it.
His visit had been longer than usual and he’d grown increasingly sullen. It made sharing my bare little house with him less than a joy, but we still made love. If anything he was more attentive than usual. Sex started to feel like a fight, both of us retreating after each bout.
In the early hours of the morning I was due to leave he shook my shoulder in the darkness, waking me. I thought there was some danger. ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, sitting up and scraping hair away from my face.
‘I want to talk to you – about the future, about us.’