So it is that I catch her on the fifth morning, a day of unrelenting rain, sniffing around the corner of the room and pawing at the floor. I grab her just as she cocks her leg: it is a particular annoyance that she always chooses the freshest reeds to relieve herself upon.
‘No you don’t,’ I growl.
I drag her towards the door. She falls like a stone, just as a small child does when hauled away from a game by its mother. She whines in irritation, but I’m having none of it.
‘Stop this,’ I say. ‘You are not an infant, so stop behaving like one.’
Her answer is to squeal the louder, a thin sound that shreds the air into sharp pieces.
‘You can stop that, too. I’ll not have you pissing all over the floor. As if I haven’t got enough to do, chasing after him.’
She is a dead weight, but I’ve lifted far heavier. As I pull, her body clears a path through the reeds. I tut. It’ll make her shift filthy. Yet more work. But I shall finish what I have begun. If a dog can be taught tricks, then I shall teach this pup to piss out of doors. She grabs hold of the bench as we pass and drags that behind us also, thumping and bouncing.
‘Do what you will. You’re going outdoors and there’s an end to it. You’re no more a dog than I am.’
I pull. She pulls back, barking as if to disprove what I have said.
‘You little—’ I mutter.
My kerchief is working loose. Strands of hair droop across my eyes and stick to my brow. I gasp wildly: it’s like dragging a full-grown sow away from her wallow rather than a skinny girl. I haul the Vixen to the door and step over the threshold. Of course it is still raining. It never seems to stop. She wraps her free arm around the doorframe so that I am without and she within.
‘I don’t care if it’s wet,’ I grunt. ‘You are going out.’
I take a deep breath and give an almighty tug that I hope will dislodge her, but my palm is so sweaty our hands slip apart. I fall backwards out of the house and land on my arse with skirts rucked up to the knee. I have lost my kerchief and the rain pelts down upon my bare head. We stare at each other for a few surprised moments. She looks frightened, full of know-ledge that she’s taken things too far. It is an expression that is the opposite of animal. She tries to wipe it away and resume her dull stare, but it is too late. I have seen what I have seen.
I tip back my head and laugh; whether at the ridiculous spectacle I am making, or because I know for sure that she’s not as daft as she makes out, I cannot say. I am filled with the delicious realisation that I have uncovered a secret and Thomas knows absolutely nothing about it.
‘Look at me!’ I crow. ‘The great lady of the house, soaking her backside in a puddle!’
I throw my arms around myself, rock back and forth, hugging myself with glee. The Maid gets to her feet and stands in the doorway, one toe making circles in the dirt.
‘Trying to work out if it’s me who’s the madwoman, or you?’ I giggle.
She gives that familiar tilt of her head and I dismiss the gesture with a flick of my hand.
‘I know you understand more than you appear to, so you can leave off the dumbshow. It’s wasted on me. Keep it for him.’
She eyes me carefully.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ I continue. ‘Whatever you’re hiding, I’ll not go gabbing it to all and sundry.’
Her eyebrows rise.
‘I know, I know. You’ve no reason to trust me. But you’ve seen how it goes under this roof.’ I make my voice gentle. ‘I may live in a priest’s house, but I am no priest’s woman, nor his slave, nor his whore.’
She regards me with such grave consideration that it sets me off again, laughing so hard I get a stitch in my side. The rain is coming down in streams and I must look a fright.
‘Well,’ I say, slapping my sodden thighs. ‘Enough of these games. The gobbling gizzard-neck will be back sooner than you can say knife, and I have no desire to greet him like this.’
I roll to one side and start to scramble to my feet, hampered by my kirtle, for it is laden with water. I look up to find her hand hovering before my face. She nods and jabs her fingers at me in case I am too addled to understand the gesture. I grasp her hand and she pulls me to my feet. Despite the thinness of her frame, she draws me up as easily as a feather bolster.
She rests one hand on her hip, leans all her weight on one leg. The easy way she does so sweeps the last scrap of foolishness from her and in the relaxed stance I see a woman no different from myself. We stare at each other for the length of time it would take to sort stones from a plateful of peas. Neither of us speaks a word, nor needs to.
‘Well,’ I say.
It is not the most engaging way to begin a conversation but I can stand the silence no longer.
‘Well,’ she says.
With that, everything changes.
‘I knew it,’ I say.
‘You did,’ she answers.
We go back into the house and dry ourselves by the fire. Things are different from this moment on, but not always in the way either of us expects them to be.
VIXEN
I cannot believe Anne is as good as she appears. More importantly, I must not believe. I don’t know why I am getting caught up in all their sticky business. I ought to stand aside and let him get on with beating the breath out of her.
It’s a game. All of this is a game, and I’ve never lost one yet. Not one of them will get the mastery of me. Especially not her. I have her wrapped around my finger. She thinks she’s found me out and for now I am content to let her ramble down that path, me dancing ahead, for I do love to lead folk a dance. I’m glad to be able to lay off acting the idiot, with her at least. It is an exhausting part. Of course, I must keep it up with him, at least until I choose otherwise. And I will be the one to choose.
She thinks she’s seen the whole of me. Not so. She’s peeled one blanket off the bed. Now she is looking at the one beneath, for I am heaped with them: I am sheet after sheet and each a different colour and weave. I have a hundred faces to show and not one of them is my own. It occurs to me that it is so long since I wore my true face that I do not recall who that person is. The thought slides a claw down my spine, so I thrust it away and stop thinking about it. No one sees my face and that is how it shall stay. Not even Death’s seen that.
I am still on my guard, more than ever. I sleep with one eye open, waiting for the mob at the door. I am affrighted by dreams. Always the same one: Anne, crowing, You fool. You trusted me? Ha! I shall close my eyes and count to ten. We want for sport. Run. Be the Vixen you are.
I fall to my knees and beg, just as I begged my mother in my other life. Begged for kindness, for mercy, for my small body to be given back to me. She throws back her head and laughs, Anne or my mother, I cannot tell. If it’s not Anne in my nightmares then it’s Knot-Beard, hanging over me. Where’s my virgin? he leers. I grow hungry. I start awake, heart thundering so wildly I am sure it will break free through my breast.
Knot-Beard will forget my bargain. I’ll take someone else. If I can’t find someone else then I’ll take her, be done with it and feel nothing. I’ll work out something. I always do. Anne doesn’t matter. Of course she doesn’t. No one has ever mattered. But there’s a thrumming within my belly as though some hand has plucked a string deep inside my gut.
As for the priest, he never lets me be. He spies on me through the stable wall, worming his fingers into the daub and picking holes in the plaster, the better to gawp at his miracle, for that is what he has decided I am. If he gets some shrivelled-up pleasure watching me, then I am content, for I’ve had far worse.
It amuses me to throw crumbs in his path and watch him dive at them like a famished crow. I give him a fair old show. One day I coo as sweetly as a dove when he reads me a passage from the Gospel, the next I strip off my shift and caper naked. One moment I kneel and force my features to match those of the angels painted on the wall, the next I howl like a pup, and how I keep from laughing out loud at my
own antics, I do not know.
By God, it makes me merry to see the dolt bounce in my wake as I frolic through the village. He doesn’t even have the excuse of being an old dolt. He’s young. Considering the efforts I go to, he ought to throw pennies to thank me for the entertainment, the tight-fisted lizard. Poorer folk have done as much and more.
He is not entirely stupid, for all his stiff neck and pretence at a limp pintle. Perhaps I should not test him so. I might slip and make a mistake: the birds proved I am capable of error. I shake the thought from my head. No. By Saint Peter’s fishy farts, that was no mistake. I was duped. Anyone would have done the same. I’ll not birch myself for something that was not my fault.
If he didn’t force the wizened stick of his faith down my throat, maybe I’d be kinder, though I doubt it. I have so many baptisms I have the cleanest head this side of Bristol. He drones the same words every day at the same hour and everything he says sticks in my throat sharp as a fishbone. Perhaps angels are comforted by this day-in, day-out repetition. If I were the Ear of God I should be mortally bored.
The closest I get to his money is the shrine, for saints love nothing better than to rest their bones on golden beds, but it’s locked fast. He lets me poke about in the cupboards, for he takes my curiosity as one of his interminable signs of godliness. My nose twitches, but all I find are books and more books. He’s so proud of his psalteries and gospels and legendaries it makes me want to choke. I watch him lift them off the shelf gently as a first-born son, kiss their furrowed covers and gabble on about the word of the Lord. I can fill neither my belly nor my pockets on a diet of words.
‘You called her good,’ he says. ‘The female,’ he adds, dragging the word out to breaking point, for in his eyes I am still too stupid to understand. ‘That was generous,’ he says, and sourly too, for he makes no secret of his jealousy that my first word was for her. ‘But there are things far more worthy of praise. We must praise God above all, must we not?’
I blow a raspberry. He marches me to the church wall, grabs my ears and twists my head in the direction of a painting of Christ.
‘You know who that is, don’t you? He is our Saviour.’
You could have fooled me. This creature has a nose like a turnip and a halo the shape of a failed pancake, drawn with all the skill of a sow clasping a brush in her trotters. If that is our Saviour, then God help us all.
‘Yes?’ he warbles hopefully.
No, you fool, I think. It’s not Christ. It’s a painting, and a shameful one at that. I waggle my tongue at it.
‘Come now. You said good about that woman. Won’t you give me the same? Do it.’ He jabs a stubby finger at the wall. ‘That is Christ your Redeemer. He is good. Good, damn you. Good!’
His arm falls, his chin falls. He claps his hand over his eyes.
‘Dear Lord,’ he croaks. ‘Forgive me.’
He drops to his knees, wringing his paws together. With a lurch, he heaves to one side and cracks his head against the plaster. I see stars even if he does not. It’ll do me no good if he splits his pate open. I’m the only one around and will end up charged with murder as likely as not. That’d be a pretty pass: accused of something I had no hand in for once.
I pat his sleeve and whine piteously, careful not to say a word. I don’t think for one moment he’s crafty enough to snare me thus into speaking, but trickery comes in all shapes and sizes.
‘Mew,’ I say. ‘Mew.’
He groans and clasps his head. ‘God have mercy! Forgive my pride!’
So that’s it: he is penitent only, not mad. He gives his brow a second whack for good measure and resumes his usual prattle about pestilence and miracles and what have you. His skull must be as solid as a keystone to withstand the battering he’s just dealt it. Which explains a great deal, I think, and chuckle. He is out of his remorseful daze in an instant, hands gripping my shoulders. I twist my chuckle into a gurgle.
‘Yes?’ he asks, bruised noggin forgotten. ‘A word for Father Thomas?’
I feel sorry for the poor sap. Not that sorry, however. I think of how quick he’d turf me out if I wasn’t his celestial toy. I gag, and gulp, and swim my hands about and by-and-by he sighs and lets me go.
I have had enough. Enough of being tossed to and fro on the churning seas of this man’s need, self-pity, envy, greed, pride and who can guess what else: more deadly sins than you can shake a stick at. Now that it’s clear he has nothing worth stealing, or at least nothing I can get my paws on, I’ll waste no more time in this church.
I turn about, flip up the hem of my shift and bare my arse at the wall. Wrinkling my brow, I make a drawn-out groan and squeeze out a turd. He watches, unable to stir. When I’m done, I rub my buttocks against the plaster and race out of the door into the sunlight, turning cartwheels as I go.
Kindness is always a trick. I must not trust Anne. If I do, what then?
I know mouths opened only to curse, hands raised only to strike me down. I am so used to cruelty that I do not know what it is to taste sweetness; so used to running that I do not know what it means to stand still. It is not a skill I have ever had to learn. I can lie, cheat, cozen, simper and act a hundred parts, and not one of them is real. My heart has grown as crooked as this disguise I wear.
Now I am faced with a truth of feeling and it terrifies me more than Death. In Death there is familiarity. With Anne, there is the chance that I might live. A different life.
SEXT
1349
From Saint Sidwell to John the Baptist
THOMAS OF UPCOTE
The mare gasped her surprise as I slapped her side and tightened the belly-strap. Anne filled the empty page of the stable door.
‘Why do you not speak?’ I grunted.
‘I am not spoken to, sir.’
‘You are now.’
She folded her hands before her apron. ‘It is raining, sir.’
‘It has been raining since Easter.’
‘You are riding out?’
‘I have the horse. I am riding out, yes.’
‘I must prepare a meal. When do you wish to eat, sir?’
‘I do not know. I do God’s work in the Staple. Bread-making is not my concern.’
‘Yes, sir.’
She did not move away. I stuck my foot into the stirrup and hoisted myself onto the saddle.
‘Well then, mistress. I will go now.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She gazed into the eyes of the beast. It shook its lips and rubbed its nose in her armpit.
‘I shall visit Father John at Saint Petroc’s.’ I would not say, And the icon also, for that was of no significance.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Will you wish me Godspeed?’
Her face turned up to mine. ‘Godspeed, sir. And a safe return.’
My heart loosened and I smiled at her. ‘I shall not be gone long, Anne. I shall be back by evening, to be certain.’
‘There will be food waiting for you, sir.’
She unwrapped one hand from the other and I thought she would reach up and take mine: I flushed beneath my shirt at the thought, even leaned forward to receive her touch the more easily, but she patted her smooth apron even smoother and turned away towards the house.
I twitched the reins and the mare plodded to the gateway. I turned and saw Anne waving. I waved back, but it was not meant for me. Quick as a breath the Maid sprang across the yard to Anne’s side. I watched a moment: even at this span of distance I could see Anne smile as she took the girl’s hand. In my fancy, I saw the Maid return the smile. My heart turned over inside the cage of my ribs and I counselled myself it was gladness to see Anne so affectionate a mother.
As I reached the edge of the village the rain slowed to a drizzle, and I was cheered by this good omen. The blessed Maid was safe under my roof. I had given the people a miracle. Now, I saw respect in their eyes when I passed one or other of them as I walked about. Sometimes I wished she was a little more – saintly. But the Lord’s gifts are sent to edify a
nd instruct, not to satisfy selfish desires. Wishing her meek and pious was the easy path, and my path had never been easy.
My clothes began to dry as I clucked the horse up the high road to the Staple. At last, the sky was unfettered by hills and trees: to the south was the broad sweep of the estuary; to the west the Great Field, beautiful and varicoloured as any tapestry. Beyond that spread the dun-coloured marshes, all cut about with the steel blades of water channels. Beyond that, the banked sand-hills; and beyond all, the sea. To the north was the forest, stretching more leagues than I cared to count.
Clouds piled up over the estuary, high as bales of wool on the quayside. But to the east there were breaks in the grey, with streaks of blue and white to be seen. Some small light struggled through these chinks, sprinkling itself upon the water below. Lapwings stood up to their knees at the water’s edge, beaking the mud. I drew in a draught of air and felt it clean and bright as water from the well, enough to make me tremble with delight at God’s creation. I was so caught up that I discovered my voice raised in song:
O Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament sheweth His handiwork!
This took me as far as the vill of Ashford, straggling along each side of the highway. I thought to greet its people, for I knew many of them from the Saint’s holy day. Strings of smoke crept up from gaps in the frayed thatch, so I knew men were within, but each door gaped dumbly. A cow moaned to be milked. There was a thick smell of hog’s lard, and laid beneath it something darker, as of flesh sickening.
‘Good day!’ I cried, pulling in the reins to slow the mare, glad enough to drop her head and snuff about for blades of grass. I lowered my head and shouted through the window of the closest hut. ‘God’s blessings upon you!’
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