‘Horse piss?’ quavers a lone voice, and a questioning murmur rumbles through the mob.
I fix the doubter with a grim look. Anne speaks, her voice clear.
‘However strange, this is a sovereign tincture. When the children of Israel fled Egypt, they daubed blood on their doors and the Angel of Death passed over. This is your sign. Heed the Maid. Do this and be safe,’ she says. ‘Or die.’
The people nod with frantic obedience. I distribute the linen, nodding soberly as if they were pieces torn from the Virgin’s veil itself. A woman unwraps a slice of bread from her apron and lays it at my feet. I grunt acknowledgement. The next woman removes her kerchief, folds it neatly, and places it alongside. James comes running from the alehouse and presents a jug of ale.
Geoffrey is the first to earn a smile. He lays down a farthing and I beam at him. At this, the whole company scramble forwards, pressing pennies between my toes. I raise my eyebrows at Anne until she grasps my meaning and busies herself shoving them safely into her bodice. Not that that is all she does. She might think I am too busy to notice, but amongst the goings-on, I see her talking to an old woman.
She has been hanging back, chewing her fingers nervously. Anne digs between her breasts, pulls out a coin and presses it into the gnarled hand. As if that is not bad enough, I watch as she retrieves another and adds it to the first. It glitters silver. If I could leap to her side and grab it away, I would.
The old woman gawps at these treasures, then at Anne, showing what remains of her teeth, all four of them, in a broad pink grin. She mumbles a blessing and pats Anne’s sleeve with a speckled hand. For the briefest instant I see Anne freeze; but the brown marks are the spatters of age, nothing more.
Then the crone hobbles over and drops a farthing at my feet. The copper coin. Not the silver. When she’s done, she totters away, leaning on her stick and peering into her palm at the bright gift Anne gave her. I can do nothing about it but fume.
The folk might have emptied their pockets but they are not finished. One man kisses my foot. Another grabs a fistful of the sheet, then another, pawing and clutching and tugging until it sets me off balance. I throw a glance at Anne and she springs to my side.
‘Enough!’ she cries. ‘Would you injure the Maid?’
They fall back, mumbling penitence.
‘Come tomorrow,’ I say. ‘I shall succour every one.’
‘You know where you can find her,’ Anne declares. ‘Come to the stable.’ I squeeze her fingers tightly. ‘Bring gifts,’ she adds, rather unwillingly for my taste.
Anne scoops the offerings into her apron and picks up the pitcher of ale. I stride ahead and the crowd parts, but some follow and will not let go. The cling of fingers sears my arm; I have never wanted to escape the touch of people so fervently. I dive into the sanctuary of the stable and Anne slams the door.
‘Leave us!’ she cries, her voice swelling with command.
Through the wall I can hear a gabble of apologies. Eventually, the yard grows quiet.
‘Are they gone?’ I whisper.
‘Gone. Quite gone.’
I shudder. ‘I cannot stand the touching.’
‘I know. Look. They have given us gifts.’
She empties the contents of her bodice and apron onto the dirt. I turn over the pile of offerings with my foot.
‘Bread,’ I mutter. ‘A jug of ale. A kerchief, like we haven’t got enough linen already.’
‘What’s the matter?’ she grumbles. ‘You’re in a foul temper today. What about the money?’
I ignore her and give the jug a kick. It sprays its contents across the floor. The earth drinks it straight away.
‘What are you doing?’ she says. ‘Of all the ungrateful—’
‘Me? Ungrateful?’ I shove my face close to hers. ‘This is rubbish. Rubbish, do you hear me?’
‘Maid,’ she says, calmly.
I wish she would shout. I wish she would fight. I would know what to do.
‘I saw you,’ I growl. ‘You gave that old witch some money.’ I try to make my voice furious, but it comes out as petulance.
‘Gammer Kaly? Yes. I gave her a sixpence and a farthing. She gave you the farthing back.’
‘By all that is holy – sixpence?’
‘She needs the money. She is a widow.’
‘And will be dead within the week. All of them will be.’ I sweep my hands in a circle, encompassing this stable, this village, this manor, shire, land. ‘Every single one. Dead. And we’ll be propping up six foot of earth unless we get enough money to pay our way through the forest.’
I pause, panting with the effort of my outburst.
She takes a deep breath. ‘If you wish me to argue with you, then I shall, although it seems a fearful waste of time and breath. If you wish me to bring money to you, I shall do that also.’ She points at the scattered coins on the ground. ‘There are plenty left. Look.’
I shake my fist at the roof-beam. ‘Plenty? There’s barely enough to get us to the Staple. Aren’t you listening? We need safe passage through the forest.’
‘The forest, the forest. What is the matter with you?’
‘Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? There are dangerous men there.’
‘Then we shall pay them.’
‘What if they want more than money? What will I give them then?’ I shout.
There is silence. She stares at me, a long look that drones its insistence and will not leave me be.
‘Maid. What have you done?’
I cannot meet her eye as an equal. I turn to the wall. It is pockmarked with the peepholes Thomas made when he was spying on me. I can’t remember when he stopped doing that. I would rather have a hundred men ogle me for an hour than endure one minute of Anne’s stare.
‘With what did you bargain?’ she says to the back of my head.
If I stand completely still, perhaps she will stop asking questions. Perhaps she will go.
‘You do not need to say anything,’ she sighs.
I want to be small enough to squeeze through the holes in the wattle and daub. Small as a beetle, a spider, a flea. Something to be trampled underfoot. When her hand brushes my shoulder I almost leap through the roof. She twists me round and forces me look at her.
‘Tell me one thing,’ she says, her expression a strange mixture of iron and honey. ‘Is this still your plan?’
I do not ask what she means by plan. I know; she knows.
‘No,’ I whisper.
‘No?’ she growls. ‘Be sure, Maid. Would you do this thing now?’
‘No! By all— No!’
‘Good,’ she says, very calmly. ‘That is all I need to know.’
She turns her attention to the discarded coins, counting them into the empty basket. She picks up the jug, examines it for cracks and, finding none, places it beside the door.
‘Anne?’ I say. She straightens up and looks at me. ‘Aren’t you going to shout? Throw me out?’
‘No.’
‘You aren’t going to give me up?’
‘No,’ she snorts, with something that sounds like humour. It might be contempt. I thought I had the full measure of this woman.
‘Why not?’ I say, my voice the most insignificant of squeaks.
‘Have you learned so little about me?’
I blink at her. ‘You forgive me?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘You were very different when you first came here. I have changed. I believe you have also.’
Never before have I wanted for words; now I seek within my great store and find nothing.
‘So,’ she continues, with the same fortitude, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘We shall not cheat my people out of everything they have. There will be exchange, and fair to boot. I will not be reduced to thieving, even if Death is staring me in the face.’
I stare at her, blood heating my cheeks. The late-morning sun squeezes thin fingers through the breaches in the stable wall and pricks the l
inen of her kerchief with light. She takes my hand in hers. I feel my throat work as I swallow her words.
‘Yes.’
‘I am not a fool,’ she says, with a great deal more kindness. ‘I have no desire to remain here and die. If the world is coming to an end, I shall search for a new one with you.’
I want to pull a face and slip into any one of my hundred disguises, feel the muffle of its cloak. But her hand on mine tethers me to my body and I cannot escape.
‘You see me in all my ugliness and still you want me?’ I ask.
‘I see how you have been twisted into ugliness.’
‘This—’ I point at my painted face, my outlandish hair ‘has protected me, Anne. Being cold, being clever, being anyone but myself. It is a thick coat and has kept me warm and dry all my life, since … Since I can remember, and I remember a long way back, even though I wish I could not.’
‘Maid. Tell me what you remember. Who you are.’
I look at her, and look at her truly. ‘It is difficult, Anne.’
She nods. ‘Yes.’
‘Soon,’ I say. ‘I swear. Soon. It is difficult to change, however much I wish to.’
‘Do you wish to?’
‘With every ounce of my scrawny being. But know this: I shall never give you up. Not to anyone.’
So do we busy ourselves. I do not cheat them out of money. I give them hope. I play their angel, but only as much as is needed to make them listen, and no more. I teach them as I taught Anne. Before this time, I never helped anyone who was not myself, nor ever wanted to.
VESPERS
1349
From Saint Cornelius to Saint Cosmas
THOMAS OF UPCOTE
I went to say the Office, but was so far distracted from my habitual calmness that I was at the church before I realised my feet were unshod. I should have entered confidently, as barefoot as Our Lord Christ. But the recent weeks had rendered me unsure of anything.
I hovered at the door, hand on the gnarled wood. As if in a dream, I saw myself enter, stride to the altar and speak the well-rubbed words, showing off my poverty to the Lord. But what if this was pride? What did it serve if my so-called humility was a lie, leading me directly into sin? Perhaps going into the church barefoot was excessive. I was no penitent. And yet, if I returned to the house and put on my good boots, would that then be vanity?
I hopped up and down in an agony of indecision. In the end I decided to go back and put on my second-best pair of shoes. Thereby I would be neither vain nor proud. My heart wrenched that it had taken me so long to make such a simple decision. God was waiting in the church, tapping his foot. I hurried through the ford and past the stable.
I heard it first, before I saw them.
It was the sound of two women talking, Anne and one other. The door was ajar and I opened my mouth to cry halloa to Anne, for I had not seen her for three days, but some agency held my tongue. Perhaps if I had shouted I would not have discovered them as I did.
Any intention to fetch my shoes was replaced with curiosity. I stood on tiptoe and held my breath, not knowing why I was being so stealthy, nor what I expected to see. Ordinarily, female chatter would not prompt the slightest interest, but this morning the sound prickled with significance and I was drawn to it as surely as a dog is drawn to the scent of a fox.
Anne was saying yes, yes, yes, over and over.
The other woman was younger, now that my ear was pressed to the wood and I could make out the lightness in her words. Her voice barely grazed the air, in that shy way maidens often speak. But something in this voice was not shy; not shy at all.
I heard the words dodderer, cheese-parer, gizzard-neck and every word declared boldly. Why I did not stride into the stable and demand that Anne return to her duties I do not know. The whole glebe was mine to go where I pleased, but an insistent hand held me back. I breathed softly and listened.
‘No, nothing,’ said Anne, with an unfamiliar authority.
‘You are sure?’
‘He does not even notice the dirt beneath his feet,’ Anne snorted. ‘Dense as a sack of chaff.’
There was a swishing sound of barley stalks chafing against each other when ready to be harvested. I realised it was giggling.
‘A sack of beets.’
‘A sack of beans.’
‘A sack of stones.’
‘A sack of mud.’
They traded insults, and with each one this man of whom they spoke grew more deaf, more blind and more estranged from humanity. I should have gone in then and chastised Anne and her companion for their intemperate speech, but I knew what held me in check. It was shame. I was the man they spoke of, and I deserved every word. The laughter continued, and I burned. Then there was a moist sound I did not recognise.
‘Oh.’ Anne spoke with such passionate release that I knew the stranger had touched her. It was the exhalation of a lover. ‘Make haste.’
‘Ah yes.’
At this there was silence, far more terrible than words. I wondered what Anne meant by haste. I could bear it no longer: I burst in and found Anne cradling the Vixen to her breast as though nursing a babe. The child – for still I thought her so, I was that much of a fool – had the teat between her lips and was sucking on it.
My mouth was open, I suppose, and I blinked. Of all the sights with which I might have been presented, I did not expect this. Anne gave me a startled look, the print of alarm written in crimson upon both cheeks.
‘Mistress!’ I cried, throat so dry it was more like the caw of a rook than a human voice.
Anne opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. We stared at each other, locked in mutual confusion. In her eyes I read fear, shock, slyness: all manner of things I never thought to see. But before I could seize on any of them, the Vixen broke the silence.
She squeaked like a featherless chick tipped from the nest, flapping her paws in the helpless, jerky gesture I had seen so many times before. Her piping grew more terrified and piercing to the ear.
‘She is afraid of you, sir,’ remarked Anne, regaining her equanimity and hanging on to it.
‘How so?’
‘Bursting into the stable like that!’
‘What are you doing?’ I blustered, waggling my finger at the Maid.
‘Doing?’ she echoed, eyes bright with something I did not understand. ‘Why, I am comforting her.’
‘Comforting?’ I said, in disbelief.
‘Of course, sir. What else?’
She had recovered her poise with such speed that I began to doubt I had seen her so discomfited. The Maid continued to wave her fingers at me, all the while keening and endeavouring to conceal herself in Anne’s armpit. Anne tucked her breast into her bodice and only then it truly struck me that it had been naked the whole time. Blood sprang to my face, and also to that nether part which marked me as a man.
‘She is such a child,’ Anne said fondly and tickled the girl’s nose, which prompted much gurgling and ecstatic rolling of her eyes. ‘She may be a woman in her body, but she is an infant in her mind,’ she added with remarkable firmness.
As she said this, she fixed her gaze upon my face. Then, very slowly, she let her eyes travel down the length of my body, as though examining me for the first time and finding a stranger. She paused when she reached my belly, lifted her eyebrow at the sign of manhood she found there. After the time it would take to drink a cup of ale, she let her gaze descend to my feet.
‘Why, sir,’ she said, ‘you are unshod.’
Without intending to, I looked down and saw my bare feet. It came as a surprise, for I had quite forgotten. In the preceding few minutes a change had been wrought. I was not sure what it was, but it was as definite as autumn into winter and I was impotent in the face of its inevitable progression.
‘Your feet are muddy,’ Anne said mildly. ‘Shall I fetch a basin of water?’
I gawped as witlessly as the Vixen. ‘No,’ I croaked eventually. ‘I must go and say the Office.’
; ‘Yes, it is the hour.’
She turned her attention back to the girl, bouncing her on her knee, to squeals of idiotic delight. I returned to the church as bare-footed as I came.
Rain streamed off the backs of the men digging at the edge of the village. I thought they might swim, the mud was so thick about their calves. Anne stood at the lip of the trench, watching it gape wider with each spadeful. She was alone. This was so unusual an occurrence that it was as though she had forgotten to put on her gown, for she seemed naked without the Maid at her side.
‘Where is the Maid?’ I asked, despite myself.
‘About,’ she grunted and continued to stare into the hole.
‘What are they doing?’ I shouted.
She crossed her arms over her breasts. ‘A pit must be dug. Before there are none left to dig graves, or willing to.’
‘What for?’
‘For those who will die.’
‘We shall not need it. We are saved.’
‘Sir, we are not. Not any more.’
‘It is almost Michaelmas. We have been preserved all this summer.’
‘We have not.’
‘We have.’ I strove to keep the whine from my voice.
‘You choose to ignore what stands before you. And I know why, even if you do not.’ She lifted her chin into the downpour. ‘There has been a letter from the Bishop.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘You got it four days ago. Why did you not read it in the church?’
My face grew hot. ‘I got a letter, it is true. Do you look into my private business now?’
‘I cannot read it, nor do I need to. Any fool knows the seal of the Bishop.’
‘The Bishop sends me many letters. How can you tell me what was in this one?’
‘It was read out in the Staple, before it was passed to you. They dig a great pit there, beyond the east gate. So we dig here.’
‘The Staple is sinful. They will have need of it.’
‘Will you disobey the order?’
I raised my fist, but she did not flinch away. ‘Will you strike me and deny the Bishop? Beware, sir, that you dishonour your Lord. Tell me I do not speak truth, then hit me as hard as you wish.’
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