Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  Sister Jean-Baptiste halts before a door which she opens and stands aside for Gytha to enter. She finds herself in a dormitory containing a row of narrow box beds, each with a linen chest at its foot. The room is dark, with no natural light other than what trickles into it from the hall through a series of narrow apertures close to the ceiling. A fire burns in a brick hearth at the far end of the room, smoking a little from rain finding its way down the chimney. So that is what the tower is. Gytha has heard of chimneys, but she has never seen one before. She is sceptical of their usefulness. Surely the heat of the fire must all be sucked up the great stone chute without ever warming the room it stands in.

  A deep half barrel stands before the hearth. A bath, thinks Gytha, feeling the longing in every cold, battered bone of her body, like the ones Adam used to make as a sideline to his coopering business, copper lined for waterproofing and insulation. They had sold quite a few of them, to the monasteries, merchants’ households and the like. She turns back toward Sister Jean-Baptiste.

  “But there don’t seem to be any fighting scenes.”

  “Oh there are, I assure you. But battles are like the tip of a pyramid. One has to consider all the negotiations, misunderstandings, and fallings out that lead to them, and the practical preparations. And remember that ordinary life continues to flow on around them. You are not the only one to be concerned with the truth, Gytha. Now, look at you, you’re wet through. Here is a bed for you, a straw pallet only, I’m afraid, but clean. I will send in the servant to help you bathe, but don’t undress yet. The men will be on their way from the bakehouse with hot water. You will find fresh clothes in the chest.”

  “A straw pallet only,” she mutters to herself, mimicking Sister Jean’s strong Norman accent as she gives the pallet a cautious prod. As if she was used to sleeping on anything else. And this at least is covered with a clean blanket, the wool fulled for warmth, a welcome luxury as the beds are clearly only intended for a single sleeper. Bishop Odo must either shit gold or not have the sense he was born with where spending it is concerned.

  She peers inside the linen chest and sees, but does not touch, a starched linen cap, carefully folded undergarments and a dress of some dark, demure stuff beneath them. She crosses to the fireside and looks into the barrel, and it is indeed a bath, with a little crossbench, waiting to be filled.

  As if on cue, the door opens and a girl enters, followed by a man carrying two iron cauldrons of hot water suspended from a yoke.

  “You must be Gytha.” She is perhaps sixteen or seventeen, a tall, big boned girl with pale, freckled skin and a mass of red-gold curls pushing against the cap, identical to the one in the linen chest, balanced on top of them. Like a dove sitting on a bush, thinks Gytha.

  “Are you the servant?”

  “Me? No, I’m Margaret. My sister Alwys and I are embroiderers here. Sister Jean said to make sure you were all right. She always sends us packing when she comes back from a journey, so she can look at what we’ve been doing in peace, she says.”

  The man empties the water into the bath and takes his leave, lingering fractionally too long in the doorway. Gytha turns away, folding her arms tight across her breasts. She hates being trapped in this body that speaks a language at odds with that of her rational mind, a language so rich and complex she shrinks from the effort of translation.

  “No need to wait for Leofgeat,” Margaret is saying, “I’ll help you. She’s got a sweetheart in the bakehouse. I imagine they’re dallying over the next batch of hot water. You might freeze while true love burns on the other side of the ward.”

  “Is it love bakes the bread and warms the water here then?” Gytha unpins her cloak and sits on the edge of her bed to remove her shoes and hose. Her feet, the skin mud-stained and puckered from the wet, look like something that has been hidden under a stone.

  “Hardly,” says Margaret, testing the temperature of the water with her elbow. “Art,” she says, straightening up and smoothing her skirt over her broad hips and round child’s belly. Her dress is of the same dark grey stuff Gytha has seen in her own linen chest, a shapeless tunic like a nun’s habit, with a girdle to match from which Margaret has a thread box hanging. “Sister Jean never tires of telling us that art is the master here. Apparently it’s not our skills as needlewomen, nor hers as designer, nor even the earl’s as…whatever he’s good at.”

  Looting, thinks Gytha, killing, imposing curfews, inflicting floggings, bundling defenceless, grief-stricken widows into carts and packing them off into oblivion. Not art, not the beautiful images pinned to the walls outside.

  “It’s all art,” continues Margaret. “Come on now, before the water gets cold. The others will be here in a minute.”

  “Others?” Gytha has pulled off her dress and, her clothes being so wet, her shift has come with it, leaving her naked. She bows her head, shaking her hair forward so it covers her breasts, notices her garters, stiff with water, have left livid wheals in the pads of flesh just above her knees. “What others?”

  “Oh, some of the others who stay here. There are some local women who embroider vestments and things for Saint Augustine’s, but the rest live here, in the castle. Alwys is coming, and Emma who’s…well, you’ll see, and Judith. She’s a thegn’s widow and never lets us forget it. We sleep in this dormitory.”

  “Like nuns yourselves.”

  “Sister Jean seems to have very particular views about us sharing beds, but we do when it gets so cold you’d rather be kicked all night than freeze. Would you like me to wash your hair for you?”

  The water is hot enough to make her gasp as she slides into it, sitting a little gingerly on the crossbench, and to bring out goosebumps on the parts of her back and shoulders that remain exposed. Steam envelops her, warm tongues of water lap her aching backside, and the tender skin on the backs of her thighs chafed by the saddle. Her toes tingle as the blood begins to flow back into them.

  She tips back her head to wet her hair. “Why not?”

  “You have such lovely hair.” Margaret kneads Gytha’s scalp with camomile and thyme until she feels as though a new skin is being pulled over her head. “I wish mine was straight.”

  “Nettle is good for straightening hair. Pound it into a paste, comb it through, and leave it overnight.” Gytha closes her eyes, surrenders herself to the pummelling, to the soothing gurgle of water and smells of the herbs blending with woodsmoke and hot copper. Even when she hears the door open again, and the rustle of floor rushes disturbed by several pairs of feet, she feels too lazy to be curious.

  “I’m just rinsing her hair,” says Margaret to the newcomers, “then we’ll get her dry and dressed.”

  “I’m not an invalid,” says Gytha idly. “I can dress myself.”

  “It’s just something we like to do,” says a strange voice, “to help make you one of us.”

  Gytha bridles at the imperious tone. She sits up straight and opens her eyes.

  The speaker is taking clothes out of the linen chest at the foot of Gytha’s bed and laying them out. Gytha notices that her own small bundle of possessions has been relegated to the floor and her old clothes handed to the servant, Leofgeat, who is even now pushing them into the fire with a long poker, grumbling that the cloak is too wet to burn properly. A pile of towels has been placed beside the tub. Gytha signals impatiently to Margaret to hand her one, which she wraps around her hair, and another, with which she covers herself as she steps out of the tub.

  “How can you know that I want to be one of you?” she asks. “Or that you want me to? You know nothing about me. And why is she burning my clothes? I never said anyone could burn my clothes.” Unaware of how she looks, with her hair scraped back from the strong upward sweep of her cheekbones and her dark brows arched, she feels foolish and powerless, clad only in a towel and smaller than the rest of them.

  “Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” The older woman straightens up, having completed her tirewoman’s duties with the removal of a pair of dark blue hos
e from the chest. Indigo dyed, Gytha notices, expensive. The woman has the spare bones of a well bred horse, with pale, prominent eyes and a pursed, loveless mouth. “None of us has to be here. This is not a house of correction.” She makes no reference to the burning clothes.

  “After what I’ve seen of the mistress of this house, I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I’d like to see how she’d react if any of you tried to leave.” She unwinds the towel from her hair and shakes it down well below her waist.

  “What do you mean?” asks the horsey woman. With a short, bitter laugh, Gytha sits on the end of the bed closest to the hearth and crosses her legs, exposing strong calves scattered with dark, silky hair. Welsh legs, her mother used to say, good for climbing hills. She looks from one to the next. Besides Margaret, Leofgeat, and the horse-faced woman, there are two others in the room, though Gytha has to double check this with herself because one of them, at first, and even second, glance is identical to Margaret. The sister, Alwys, she assumes, not surprised that Margaret failed to mention their being twins. Twins are nothing to boast of, even boys; Alwys’ and Margaret’s father was likely very grateful to have found them a place in an earl’s household, even a Norman earl, even this Norman earl. It is only when she concentrates that she can tell them apart by minor variations in dress and the fact that Alwys’ hair is a shade darker and a little less curly than her sister’s.

  The other is a mousy creature with lank hair and sallow skin bearing the pits of small pox. She also has a vigorous tic that wrenches her chin round toward her left shoulder. The muscles in the right side of her neck are oddly thickened and corded as a result. In repose, if you can call it that, she keeps her hands thrust deep into the pockets of a linen apron she wears over her dark grey dress. With this variation, all the women are dressed in the same dark tunics and white caps as Margaret. The horse-faced woman has a key hanging from her girdle. She’s the one to watch, then, thinks Gytha, Sister Jean-Baptiste’s journeywoman. Judith, the thegn’s widow.

  “I mean, if you cross her, she might just have you shot.”

  “Shot?” says Margaret. “Don’t be silly.”

  “From what I’ve seen, she doesn’t have much respect for human life, even by Norman standards.” And she tells the women the tale of the executed poacher.

  A resentful silence settles over them. Everyone wishes Gytha had kept her shocking story to herself. Now they know they are prisoners. Me and my big mouth, thinks Gytha, me and truth. A self-destructive relationship if ever there was one. She should carry a sprig of myrtle under her tongue, to curb its talkativeness.

  “Nothing she does surprises me any more,” says Alwys. “She makes us bathe once a month, whether we want to or not. You can only get out of it by saying you’ve got your monthly visitor. She even offered to teach Meg Latin. What would Meg need to know that for? If you ask me, she’s mad.”

  “It’s not her fault, though, is it?” says Margaret. “It was wrong of the earl to expect her to be able to design the hanging. Women’s minds aren’t suited to that kind of work. I expect it’s the strain of having to behave like a man.”

  “And she truly is the king’s sister?” asks Gytha.

  “Yes,” Margaret replies.

  “She and the earl are his half brother and sister,” says the horse-faced woman. “They have the same mother.”

  “Judith’s our authority for these things, our Book of Genesis,” Margaret teases. “She’s the only one of us ever to have set eyes on the earl. He hasn’t been here since any of us arrived. Judith’s husband used to be something high up at court.”

  “King Harold’s court,” adds Judith, seeing the expression on Gytha’s face, unaware its fall is due to the discovery that the earl is absent from his castle rather than anything to do with her husband. Gytha’s plans are going to have to wait.

  “What happened to him?” she asks, wondering if she might have known him. He might well have sought refuge from a harridan like Judith in the relaxed atmosphere of Lady Edith’s household.

  “He was killed just before Hastings. He was on his way to meet the king when his party was intercepted by Norman raiders.”

  “And yet you’re here? Prostituting yourself to the Bastard’s brother? Why?”

  Judith’s face remains impassive, though its expression seems to become more set, as though she has assumed a mask of herself, and her neck and ears flush a deep, dull pink. Margaret stops brushing Gytha’s hair.

  “Obviously you can’t be expected to understand these things. The earl came to me as a man of honour. He had known my husband slightly. He praised his valour and loyalty, knightly qualities in any gentleman, he said, whether he be Saxon, Norman, or the Emperor of Byzantium. He understood I was skilled at fine needlework. He explained his vision to me, that he wished to make a faithful record of the actions of great men at a turning point in history. For the enlightenment of those who come after them. He thought my rank and experience would help to bring balance to the work and that his sister would be grateful for a companion of equal status in whom to confide. He promised to make good all the damage done to our estates during the occupation, swore on the Cross to keep my husband’s lands under his personal authority until my work here was finished. He even sent me some of his own men to help me get in the harvest. I believe it would have dishonoured Emeric’s memory to refuse his offer.”

  “You dropped into his palm like a ripe plum, Judith. He’ll look after your estates so he can marry you off to one of his vassals once he’s finished with you himself. That’s what men do with us women; they take what they want and hand us on like batons in a relay. Only the high born ones dress it up by talking about honour and reciting poetry.”

  “Oh, so she is one of us now, is she?” laughs Margaret.

  “You’re pulling my hair. Here, give me the brush. If you carry on like that, I’ll be bald.”

  “He quoted Virgil,” says Judith doubtfully.

  “‘Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram uertere, Maecenas.’”

  “You know Latin?” All eyes upon her now, except for the servant, Leofgeat, who is on her way to the door with a pile of wet towels. Even the one with the tic falls still. Damn. That was stupid. Nobody here must know, or even guess, her connection with King Harold.

  “No, not really.” She gives a dismissive shrug. “I was once in a household where the lord liked to read aloud to us in the evenings. For our improvement, he said, though personally I think it was to make us fall sound asleep so that he and my lady could enjoy one another’s company undisturbed. I have a gift for remembering words, that’s all. I’m not sure what it means; I just know it’s something about farming.”

  “Why are you here, then,” asks Judith, her composure recovered as Gytha found herself wrong footed, “if you’re so set on defying the Normans?”

  “Me? Oh, I had no choice. Now, I’d like to get dressed before I freeze all over again. I doubt even the earl’s handpicked men could be harvesting on a day like this.”

  The women carry her new clothes to the hearthside. Gytha unwinds her towel and stands naked in the guttering firelight, shadows licking her body, seeking out its curves and hollows, bringing roses to her skin. Outside, rain continues to lash the building, drumming on shutters, clattering against the great workshop windows, and now the wind has got up, and snarls around corners, sniffs under doors. There is a hiatus, a confusion in their ritual, as the women look at Gytha and note the line of dark hair running down the center of her belly, forming, with her private hair, an arrow, or a tree uprooted and turned on its head. A mark of promiscuity, of otherness, of demonic knowledge.

  Then, shaking her head as though trying to dislodge a disturbing dream, Alwys says she will fetch the man to empty the tub, while her sister hands Gytha her underclothes. The spell is broken. The woman with the tic, who is mute, Margaret whispers, and called Emma, helps to bind Gytha’s hose with perfectly steady hands. Judith and Margaret pull the grey gown over her head and lace the sides. Fina
lly, Emma offers her an apron like her own.

  “We don’t usually bother,” says Margaret. “Emma only wears hers so she can keep her hands in her pockets to stop them shaking. Don’t you, Emma?”

  Emma smiles apologetically. Not simple as well as mute, then. Gytha takes the apron but returns it to her linen press; the apron is the badge of Emma’s courage. Gytha will find something else.

  “Now,” says Margaret, taking a step back, “let’s take a look at our new novice.”

  Alwys returns and the women gather round Margaret, staring frankly at Gytha, who stands beside her bed, now identical to them in her plain tunic. Yet each of them is acutely aware of something hidden, panting in the shadows like an animal at bay. The sexual authority of her little waist and broad hips, the curve of breasts and thighs suggested by the fall of the fine wool, is like another presence in the room; a satyr exulting in the gift of permanent erection, a cunt carved on a church doorpost to ward off the Devil. Nobody says a word.

  “Is something wrong? I should braid my hair but it isn’t dry yet.” She winds her hair into a rope and coils it on top of her head, only to let it fall again.

  “Perfect,” says a voice from the doorway. How long has Sister Jean been standing there? “Perhaps you would like to see our workshop now.” She feels, as she follows Sister Jean along the hall and up the stairs to the workshop, as if she has forgotten something. But what is there to forget? The white cockade, somewhat squashed? The locket? Let them stay hidden in her bundle, for now. What she needs to remember will not be forgotten.

  Odo’s Dream

  Advent to Saint Stephen’s Day 1070

  Gytha winces as she pushes her needle through the stretched linen. She cannot withhold a sharp intake of breath, making Margaret glance up at her. Margaret is acutely aware of everything Gytha does or says. She feels that, having been the first of the women to meet her on her arrival in Canterbury, she and Gytha are bound by a special tie. Sister Jean is always chopping and changing the pairings of embroiders at each frame, probably, Gytha says, in part for the same reason that she advocates sleeping singly, but Margaret wishes she could always work with Gytha. She is content with Alwys, of course; they have done their sewing together since they were little girls, sitting with their mother and the other women of the household, practising their stitches on worn out shirts while their elders mended, patched, hemmed, or embroidered. But Gytha is different. She is as bold and funny as a boy, always telling jokes that make Judith’s ears turn pink and her thin lips purse as though she has drunk verjuice. Yet she is mysterious, shying suddenly and inexplicably at questions most people would answer without a second thought.