Godiva

by Nerys Jones

  ‘But, mistress, how can I travel? I can’t ride.’ Gwen frowned with worry.

  ‘I won’t be riding there. Riding is another thing I am giving up. I’m going to go in the wagons . . .’

  ‘The ones we use to carry the hay? But that’s unseemly for a lady, for your dignity, mistress.’

  ‘All the more suitable, then, for my future.’

  ‘Oh, holy mother,’ Gwen murmured, wanting to know more about the penance, but afraid to ask. Her face darkened and she began to wring her hands like a laundress, but Godiva did not recognize these signs that others knew to be the cue for leaving Gwen alone.

  ‘It will be a slow but comfortable journey,’ Godiva continued. ‘You’ll like Evesham. There are lovely gardens with birds and streams and small groves where nuns pray or read. I will try to learn to read while I am there . . .’

  ‘Oh, mistress!’ Gwen blurted out, her face twisting with the effort to suppress herself. ‘The fucking nuns would hate me. Take someone else. Damn it to hell, Godiva, do as I say, you stupid fucking bitch.’

  Godiva sat back in astonishment and stared at Gwen. The curling side of her lip had risen by a tiny fraction of an inch, but it was enough to evoke images of werewolves and other creatures of the night.

  ‘You see!’ said Gwen miserably. ‘That was a perfect example for you. I was going to tell you, but it burst out of me because I was getting upset.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bad talk. Dirty words such as I never used in my whole life. The nurse said it might get better, but I don’t see much improve-

  ment yet. If you took me to Evesham I would be agitated, and who knows what I’d say to all them lady-nuns they must have at a nice convent like that? They’d be saying I’m possessed by unclean spirits.’

  ‘I wish someone had told me about this before now,’ Godiva sighed. ‘There is a monk at the priory who could help. Prior Edwin says he is an exorcist, but he is more than that. He is learned and wise about such things. I’ll send someone to bring him here at once.’

  ‘Can I be cured, then?’ Gwen asked, her face alight with hope.

  ‘I don’t know. But at least there’ll be no more talk of demons after you’ve been examined.’

  ‘I’m still not sure of leaving here, though,’ Gwen said, her anxiety returning.

  ‘It will be better than staying here. Coventry might not be a restful place after I am gone. In Evesham I can make sure that you are untroubled, and that the sisters understand your condition. Trust in God’s mercy, dear Gwen.’

  ‘Very well, I suppose, perhaps, I agree,’ said Gwen, surprised at how the conversation had ended.

  Godiva walked her to the door and told one of the kitchen servants to lead her back to the sick-room to rest. She watched Gwen’s laboured, listing walk and thought how cruel it was that one who had always been so tireless was now condemned to a lingering decline.

  Just then she saw Agatha coming towards her, clutching her headdress round her face and studying the ground beneath her small feet. She had Odo with her and the two were talking as though exchanging secrets. Godiva smiled. Odo would be telling her of Wulf’s imminent return, and Agatha would be recalling the promises Godiva had made about a dowry and trousseau. It helped to offset the pain of the forthcoming penance to think of all the good she was doing this day for the people who depended on her. She leaned against the door-post, watching, anticipating the conversation that would follow.

  Odo patted Agatha on the shoulder, as though reassuring her about something, and then went off. As Agatha approached, Godiva smiled in welcome and ran her fingers along the smooth, jewelled rosary which these days hung about her neck both night and day, as much a part of her body as the thick, fading plait of fair hair in which the string of stones often lay tangled. Agatha’s eyes followed her fingers and knew that Godiva was unwittingly counting each Hail Mary, her mind following the silent words of prayer as involuntarily as her lungs breathed in the moist air of Coventry. She is longing for salvation, thought Agatha bitterly. If she prays enough, perhaps He, the Lord or the king, will lift her penance. So she fingers that pretty thing of pearls and jet that she calls a rosary, but that I have other names for. Your halter, lady. Your chain. And even – though I hate to think of it this way and fear my guardian angel will take offence and desert me – your noose, mistress.

  They entered the house together and Agatha closed the door behind her. With her back turned to Godiva she slowly let down her headdress. Then she raised her face and let Godiva look at her.

  ‘Great God,’ Godiva whispered. ‘Not again! Bertha?’

  She put her hand out to comfort her, but Agatha shied away, protecting her swelling eye and split lip as though expecting another blow.

  ‘I hit her back this time,’ Agatha muttered, ‘and that were worse than her hitting me. She fell down and hurt her shoulder on a milking stool, and then I kicked her, too. I’m so sorry, mistress.’ Suddenly Agatha’s deadpan composure dissolved and she started to sob, shaking quietly with outrage. ‘I do still love her, but she ain’t got no right.’

  ‘No. She has no right,’ Godiva said, taking Agatha in her arms and dabbing her eyes with her own sleeve.

  ‘She call me a whore,’ Agatha whispered, ‘and say she will tell Wulf’s mother I ain’t no maiden and he can’t marry me, for I have another man’s seed in my belly, and . . .’

  ‘Sh! Drink this,’ said Godiva, pouring her best red wine into a goblet and pressing it to Agatha’s wounded lips. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me what is the matter.’

  ‘I were in the dairy . . .’

  ‘Agatha!’ Godiva snapped, ‘talk proper English. I know you can. I’ve heard Gwen teaching you.’

  Her fear is overcoming her, thought Agatha resentfully, but nevertheless she made the effort to speak as Godiva wished, for at this moment she wanted nothing to do with anything that belonged to her mother, not even her broad Mercian dialect.

  ‘I was in the dairy, just finished with wrapping the cheeses in straw and linen, and up comes mother behind me, creeping quietly like a cat, like she always does when she’s snooping. So, she sees what I got on the table, and she pounces on me, and pulls my hair. Next thing she’s hitting my face and head and calling me a whore, all because she saw the money I was looking at.’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘This, mistress,’ Agatha said, reaching inside her clothing to produce a leather coin bag. She sighed sadly as she passed it to Godiva, who pulled out a coin, examined it and put it back.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Pieces of silver. Newly minted. And in a bag stamped with the crest of the royal mint.’

  ‘Yes, mistress. But I ain’t no whore.’

  ‘No. But explain yourself, Agatha.’

  ‘It were Bret.’

  Godiva squeezed her eyes tightly shut and clenched her fists.

  ‘It was Bret,’ Agatha began again. ‘He loves you, you see, mistress, and he could not bear to see you so unhappy. He has run away . . .’

  ‘Agatha, you don’t have to lie to me. If Bret ran away, it was for his own good and no one else’s.’

  ‘Oh, mistress!’ Agatha mumbled abjectly. ‘But I’m still sure he loves you. He must!’

  ‘Never mind that. He’s gone, you say?’

  ‘He didn’t tell where. And no one seen him since yesterday.’

  ‘And the money?’

  ‘I don’t truly understand, mistress. He was angry at me for something I said, and then he squeezed my throat and said he’d kill me. But straight away he was sorry for doing that and then he gave me the money and told me to use it as a dowry, so I could get married . . .’

  Godiva held the little bag in her hand and felt its weight pressing into her palm. The distrust she had felt ever since Egg Ring had this at its foundation. This was the price of secrets given to the king. Then it was given away, as if it meant nothing, after all, to have these silver coins. He was a gambler, she remembered. Ga
mblers never did value money, even prize-money. Where was he now, though? Not at Cleley, where he still had enemies; not at his penniless parents’ home. Where could he go without money? Nowhere. He was dead already, she was sure.

  ‘Mistress! Lady!’ Agatha was shouting at her and pulling her sleeve. ‘Are you well? You been standing still as a post and just as deaf, for minutes now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Godiva whispered.

  ‘He loved you, mistress. I know he did. He said so,’ Agatha insisted so fiercely that Godiva almost believed her and for a moment felt tears behind her eyes.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  ‘It does matter!’ Agatha argued vehemently, entirely forgetting her station. ‘It wasn’t a good love for you, and he weren’t a good man, but that don’t mean his love was not a real love.’

  ‘You are too young to know, girl. Hush now.’

  ‘No. I know some things.’ Agatha shouted. ‘Even if he were a bad man and wicked in many ways, I still believe his love for you were no more false than many other loves, even the Holy Virgin’s or the Lord’s Himself. They let you down, too, just when you need them most. They let babies die, and bad people rule, and let all manner of suffering loose on the innocent, and yet them priests say their holy love be better than our poor love here on Earth. Well, I don’t believe that, and I don’t believe you should do no penance, neither. No one does. Whatever you done wrong, it were far, far less than all the good you done.’

  ‘Agatha!’ Godiva exclaimed. ‘We have no right to question God’s love. Evil is beyond our understanding . . .’

  ‘Damn right it is. So for what do we take orders from priests, when no one understands anything? And who are they to make you do penance? Everyone in Cheylesmore manor and Coventry town know about prior and Cherub, and about Father Godric and the hermit nun, and about his whores, too. You should refuse to do this penance.’

  ‘The king would send in his swordsmen to raid us.’

  ‘Unjustly.’

  ‘That never stopped any king before.’

  ‘Then let us all suffer together. Mistress, why martyr yourself?’

  ‘Because the people who work my lands, and make a living in my town, are all I have. If they are made to starve because of me and the earl, I would die of shame. It would be more dishonourable even than this penance I must do. One day, after it is over, we will live happily together again. I’m sure of that. That is why I must perform the penance.’ She paused as Agatha’s disapproval filled the silence between them. ‘There’s another reason, too,’ Godiva continued. ‘I feel that perhaps . . .’ But she stopped, not wanting to put into words something she was not quite clear about herself – that by accepting the penance she would somehow be in a stronger position than were she to refuse. It made little sense, and it would make none to Agatha, and yet she was convinced that she was right.

  Agatha scowled silently at Godiva, who turned away, ignoring her burning black eyes. At last Agatha dared to ask about what was uppermost in her mind.

  ‘No. I will not reveal what I must do until the night before,’ Godiva replied. ‘I won’t change my mind on that.’

  Agatha folded her arms defiantly and took a deep breath before carrying on. ‘Then I can’t stay with you,’ she said sternly. ‘I can’t serve you over these next days if I don’t know what must come to pass. If you won’t tell me, I’ll beg your leave to let me go from the manor, mistress, and go and work somewhere else.’

  ‘Agatha! What is this rebellion for?’ Godiva asked, surprised and hurt.

  Suddenly Agatha jammed her mouth shut, her lips disappearing into a hard line that perfectly replicated her mother’s obdurate jaws. Godiva stared at her until she realized that Agatha would not say plainly what she meant: she could not serve a woman she no longer respected.

  Godiva scrutinized her maid for several moments as the girl stared at her feet and clutched herself tightly with her crossed arms. She had grown since this summer began. She was still short and slight, but somehow she was more of a woman, and now she wanted to be her own woman. Regardless of the present turmoil on the manor, it was inevitable that she would have rebelled at her servitude in some way – though covertly, through episodes of clumsiness, forgetfulness and such like. It often happened with maids at her age.

  ‘Then it would be best for you to go, child,’ she said.

  ‘No, mistress!’ Agatha wailed, appalled at what she had just done.

  ‘Go until the end of summer. Take the money with you, guard it well and tell no one else about it. Come and see me on the day before All Souls’ Night. By then your Wulf will be back home and settled in. My penance will be over and I’ll be back from Evesham, I trust. And Lovric might be back here, too, and perhaps the boys with him.’

  ‘Oh, my lady!’ Agatha’s face puckered, then she curtsied like a little girl, turned and ran out of the house, almost knocking Bertha over as she went.

  ‘Mistress, I so sorry,’ Bertha said, and then she too started to cry.

  ‘Stop it,’ Godiva shouted. ‘No work is getting done on the manor because everyone is in tears, or sick or angry. I have nothing to say to you, Bertha, except that you deserved a kicking from your daughter, and you must hurry and tell Wulf’s mother that there is no truth in the lies you made up about Agatha. And,’ she added, seeing Bertha’s mouth opening, ‘I know how that money came into Agatha’s hands, and it is none of your business. Go and tell Gwen to get back to light work if she is able to. And tell Milly she must work too or she will not get fed. You must decide on their duties and do it without making everyone resent you. If you can do that, I will reward you. But if there is one more quarrel on this manor, you can join Agatha wherever she will be spending the rest of the summer.’

  ‘What? Where is Agatha going?’ Bertha interrupted.

  ‘Find out for yourself and stop scowling at me like a bulldog. Now go and tell everyone what they are to do, and above all, tell them I wish to stay alone, in silence, in the upper part of my house. There must be no noise at all in the yard near the manor house. Do you understand? Now be gone.’

  Only when she had been alone in the silence of the darkened room, stretched out and still in her soft feather bed for an hour or more, did Godiva start to feel her fatigue. It started somewhere near the pit of her stomach and filtered out from there through the conduits of bone and ligament, sinew and muscle, until finally it reached her heart, where it filled her arteries with something heavier than blood and water, some colder fluid that seemed more viscous and appeared to play a part in weighing her down, pinned to the bed, awake but not alert, silent but not at peace. It feels like oil, she thought – and then, bitterly, she imagined this pollutant in her veins as holy oil, clogging them with unearthly goodness, fit only for saints and useless to a worn and stretched mortal like herself. That is what rebellious little Agatha would have said, she thought, if only the girl had felt free to say such things.

  Three days before the day of penance two elegant wagons drawn by massive, well-groomed carthorses, trundled as quietly as possible into the yard of Cheylesmore manor. Worried servants ran out of the stable to guide the drivers away from ruts and tussocks, and to warn them that silence was being maintained in the yard on the orders of the mistress.

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ came a crisp voice from inside the biggest wagon as, in a habit of the finest white wool, a middle-aged nun stepped out and gazed round the yard.

  ‘Mercy! Charity!’ she shouted, waving a small whip that hung from her wrist. ‘We have arrived. Get out.’

  Two more sisters in white now appeared, blinked in the bright daylight, and started ordering the grooms to unload the provisions and move them into storage.

  ‘That is the mattress on which your mistress will sleep when we take her away with us to Evesham,’ said the superior nun. ‘So don’t go tearing the cover. Get the wardrobe mistress over here at once to keep this bedding aired and clean.’

  ‘Bertha,’ a groom shouted, and Bertha appeared, r
ed with fury at the noise in the yard.

  ‘I am Sister Mary of the Assumption,’ the nun announced with calm authority. ‘I am deputizing for the Abbess of Evesham and I have come to prepare Godiva for her penance. Those two,’ she said, nodding at Mercy and Charity, ‘are novices. They take orders from me alone. And while I am here, so do you.’ Bertha was too astounded to say anything and Sister Mary continued, ‘We will have the manor house. I will sleep upstairs with Godiva, and those two will sleep downstairs. Whoever presently sleeps in the house must find other quarters. Is that clear?’

  Bertha found her tongue. ‘Can those two cook and clean?’ she asked, looking the novices up and down with pure contempt.

  ‘Of course. Godiva must be purified before her penance. Her food must be cooked our way and blessed by me. Look what I have brought for her,’ she added, producing a small vial of liquid from the folds of her clothing. ‘Holy water from the fountain of St Egwin in Evesham. I will give Godiva three drops of this in each meal she takes from now on.’

  She smiled graciously at Bertha, as though expecting her admiration, and then turned on her heel and headed straight for the house. Bertha spat into the straw behind her and went to tell Agatha to find somewhere for them to sleep for the next few nights.

  Inside the house, Sister Mary looked round curiously. So this is what an earl’s manor house looked like? She herself was the daughter of a cobbler and had never seen anything more splendid than the convent at Evesham. That, she thought, was far superior to this manor, which was really only a very big farmhouse with glass windows.

  ‘Godiva! Godiva! Where are you?’ she shouted at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘In my chamber,’ replied Godiva in a tired voice.

  ‘Well, come down at once. Slouching around in bed will make you frail. You know who I am, don’t you?’