A Cloud of Outrageous Blue

by Vesper Stamper

  Just as I lifted my fist to knock on the door, Mason came out of the barn, clapping dust and straw off his hands.

  “Edyth!” He started. “What are you doing here?”

  I pulled my hood back a little; I couldn’t hide the despair in my eyes. “Could we go somewhere?” I asked flatly. “I need to tell you something.”

  He searched my face with apprehension. “Let me tell my father.”

  Mason came out of the house a few minutes later. We walked to Saint Andrew’s churchyard and sat beneath the yew tree, where we had talked for the first time in May.

  “I made you something, Mason. Here…I’m your Saint Nicholas.” I placed the square of parchment in his palm, smiling to conceal the way my heart was being sliced in half. It was a miniature drawing of this yew tree, our tree, cut away to show two doves inside, with the tips of their beaks touching.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Did you draw this?”

  “Yes.”

  He quietly traced the thin lines with his finger. “There’s so much I wanted to—” His voice caught, and he didn’t finish.

  “Mason, I don’t hold it against you. Since Da was killed, I know you’ve had to dodge me, just like everyone else. But I wanted to tell you myself—I have to leave Hartley Cross.”

  “What do you mean, leave?”

  “Henry’s sending me away,” I said. “We can’t run the croft ourselves. We barely met Lord Geoffrey’s wool and grain quotas, just for the right to stay in our house for the winter.”

  “What? Why would he—” Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Where is he sending you?”

  “To some priory in Yorkshire…Saint Christopher’s.”

  “A priory?” He turned his head in disbelief. “You’re going to be a nun?”

  “No. No. I could never be a nun.” I shook my head. “Just a laborer. There’s a wagon coming tomorrow at dawn.”

  “Tomorrow?” He unwittingly began to crumple the drawing in his hand. “He couldn’t give you more time?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s my only chance to avoid begging or…or worse.”

  Mason rubbed his eyes in frustration. I decided to risk an idea, one I’d been thinking of but never dared to say out loud.

  “Mason, what if…I…stayed with you? And your da, I mean. I could help you take care of him—”

  “What?”

  I pressed on. “Or we could leave together, like we always dreamed about. Go where no one knows us. You’re a freeman, and a stonemason. You can find work anywhere—”

  “It’s not that simple, Edyth!”

  His shout rang in my ears, reverberating like white-hot coils in front of me, and I shut my eyes tight against the assault of noise and color.

  “Of course.” I got up quickly and gathered my skirts to run home, away from the growing seed of shame. “You can’t be with an orphan from a cursed family. I’m sorry.”

  Mason grabbed my hand. “Edyth, wait. I’m sorry. Please sit, please.” He turned my hand over. “I have something for you, too.” He opened my palm and placed there another stone cross, as smooth as glass, carved with a trail of oak leaves. Its color was just like the one in the box on our doorstep.

  “You’re the one who’s been leaving us meals, aren’t you?”

  “You don’t deserve all that cruelty,” he said. “But I couldn’t come see you. Not because of these stupid Hartley Cross folks. Who cares about them? ” He drew a long breath and blinked, hard. “My father is dying.”

  “Oh…Mason…I don’t know what to say.”

  The snow clouds cleared away, and the early moon reflected glittering crystals off the white, like the ground was twilight.

  “So you see why,” he said.

  I nodded and hung my head, wanting to fall forward into the earth.

  “Everything’s changing, Mason. Everything’s fading away.”

  He opened his cloak and wrapped it around both of us. We grew quiet, holding each other’s gifts. There was the comfort of Mason and the loss of him, and I craved to keep feeling this moment, willing tomorrow never to come.

  — 3 —

  Henry and I arrived home at the same time that night, not speaking, and we lay down to sleep in the single bed. Pounce whined at our feet, his brow wrinkled above his big fire-lit dog eyes. Rain began to crackle on the thatch.

  My brother and I had slept on the same pallet together since I was a toddler, and after our parents died, Henry was there in the night to get a new rag to dry my tears when the last one was soaked through. He was my closest companion, the one who stood up for me against the cruelty of the other village children. But I guess this is what happens to orphans: life turns you the wrong way round like magnets and forces you apart.

  Just then, the frost came so sudden, it slid under the door and crawled into bed with us. And, I knew, anything green outside was now dead. That was that. I blew out the rushlight.

  But cold as it was, I got out of bed, walked away from my brother and lay down on the hard floor where our parents’ bed had been. And that night it was Henry who shed tears, silently, and alone.

  * * *

  —

  The packed earth radiated cold up through my body as I woke alone in the still-dark house. Pounce lay pressed against me—Henry must have left him and gone to feed the animals. Embers glowed on the hearth, bits of wood seizing and popping, though the fire was pretty far gone.

  I sat on the stool, stoking what remained, and let thoughts fill my head.

  In one long thread they came, spinning themselves before my eyes:

  I have to leave this house today and go to a place where I don’t know anyone. I will bring Mam’s blue wool dress, and her pale green linen one. And the little pack of parchments Da gave me. And the drawings I did of the family. Henry’ll take Pounce, and Juniper will have to live on field mice. And I will be utterly alone. Henry can force me to go to some priory, but maybe I’ll show him and die early, and then I will be free. I will be with Mam and Da, and I will be free.

  And Henry will be sorry he sent me away. He’ll be sorry he broke up what was left of us.

  I shook myself and tried to resurrect the fire, blowing on the glowing embers. Once winter finally settled upon the house, the only thing for Henry to do would be to endure.

  I rummaged through the rough-hewn wooden chest, and at the bottom was my father’s old rucksack with the drawstring top. I ran my fingers over the rough, waxed weave, then went around the house, packing things into it.

  Suddenly I felt how red I was getting, how hard I was shoving my belongings into the sack. Soon I was punching the bag, punching and screaming, and explosions of hot colors mixed with my steaming tears. I threw the bag across the room. It hit the stool, and both tumbled into the fire. Startled, I opened my swollen eyes: the corner of the bag had caught alight. Pounce cowered and Juniper puffed up. I jumped and grabbed the sack, rolling it over to put out the flame. The scorched corner of the bag revealed a singed dress hem and an unfortunate knitted stocking—nothing that couldn’t be mended.

  But the drawings—the drawings were badly burned. I held them to my gut and folded over, laid my head on the rucksack and waited for dawn.

  * * *

  —

  Well, this is it, I thought. I strapped on my pattens, shouldered Da’s satchel and trudged outside into the darkness, waiting for the wagon to come. Clouds pulled apart like carded wool, and a bright moon, just shy of full, peeked through the torn sky to shine blue on the whiteness. Across the field, a cloud squalled, and powdery snow rolled and dissipated, falling like a thin veil. I flinched at the sight of a mouse—no, a leaf skimming the surface of the snow.

  The stillness was killing me, so I walked to the sheep pen, took off my mittens and ran my hands over the warm, growing fleeces, pressing into the wool and letting the heat swirl aroun
d my cold fingers. And the voices of Mam and Da were so present in my ears that the agony of their missingness made my knees buckle under, and I was grateful the sheep were there to lean on. Just then, the dawn light emerged, streaked with the dull sound of a horse’s hooves, and of cartwheels rolling up to the market cross.

  — 4 —

  “This’ll be Thornchester,” says the driver. “The rest of us’ll get out here and seek the guesthouse, but you two, monk and young maid, see the gatekeeper on your own.”

  The passengers begin packing up. The father breaks off some bread and cheese for his son, who offers me a few dried Spanish apricots. My knitted brow softens; my pressed-white lips part and I thank the boy. The tart sweetness of the apricots tickles the inside of my nose like little blue sparks. I take a deep breath and chew as slowly as I can.

  The old monk lifts the wagon covering up front. On a hilltop ahead, the Priory of Saint Christopher rises white-limed and clean from the encircling town. In Hartley Cross, it wasn’t unusual for houses to be raised and fall back into the soil within one generation. The only two stone structures we had were little Saint Andrew’s church and the river wall.

  The huge priory church looms in the moonlight, its heavy base tapering upward to twin quill points laced with tracery that defies its material, like two arms reaching to be picked up by a parent, a rock child learning to walk.

  We ride over the stone bridge and under the massive arch of the gatehouse. I’m surprised to feel solid pavement beneath my feet.

  When I jump out of the cart, the monk gets out, too, helped by the father and greeted by a tall priest. While the driver hands a note to the gatekeeper, I stand in the vestibule, staring back at the river encircling the priory, torchlight rippling reflections in its current.

  The town spreads out on the other side of the river, its two-storied row houses, some timber-framed, some limestone, winding along the streets. Every now and then the flutter of candlelight punctures the darkened windows. There must be glass in those windows; no sane person would keep their shutters open on a wintry night like this.

  After a few minutes, I’m ushered forward by a dark female figure and led through the vestibule into a wide, open space. The moon makes the pale buildings glow and the shadows utterly black. In front of me towers the enormous church. Oh, that stone could fly like this, weightless, above the earth! I think, in spite of myself. We turn in to a doorway and wind through tangled passages, the middle-of-the-night quiet punctuated by loud snoring. That awake-but-am-I-dreaming feeling governs my feet as I follow the silent form to a little room.

  In the light of my guide’s candle, there isn’t much I can see of the tiny, stuffy cell. A hundred questions fill my head, but I think better of asking, since this woman does not speak one word to me. She puts my satchel in a chest at the foot of the bed, lights a candle on a shelf, and leaves me.

  I don’t know what to do. Sleep? Unpack? I stand in the shaft of moonlight and stare blankly, with nothing but an unformed question turning over again and again in my mind, until I begin to wobble on the balls of my feet. I lie down on the bed in my cloak and shoes, too exhausted to cry.

  The light dims, and freezing rain begins, with a different sound than I’ve always known, the soft patter-tap on thatch above and mud below. This roof is timber, and the drops echo on the inside of this wood-and-stone box that is now home. A different rhythm, a different peace, a different color—pale yellow pops of powder on the insides of my eyes.

  Where is the earthen floor beneath me, the animals burrowing holes for their beds beneath my straw pallet? I’m on a second story, lifted from the floor on a bed frame, floating in the air, unconnected to anything I know.

  Pahhh goes the powdery sound, falling and falling, like a game of volleyed wool puffs. On nights like this, Da would sit at the trestle table and watch his family sleep by rushlight, singing to his Heloise a tune he learned in Flanders—

  Car tant vous aim—sans mentir—

  Qu’on porroit avant tarir

  La haute mer

  Et ses ondes retenir

  Que me peüsse alentir

  De vous amer.

  For I love you so much—it’s no lie!—

  That one could dry up

  The high seas

  And hold back their waves

  Before I could hold back

  From loving you.

  The memory makes my heart ache. I fumble in the satchel for the bundle of little parchments and sit at the desk. Da’s face in the burnt drawing is only fractionally recognizable. In the half-light, I try to re-create, on a fresh sheet, what I can remember of him, and stare at the ghost of his image.

  I’m sorry, Da. I’m sorry our last words were quarrels about Mason. I’m sorry I never got to say goodbye.

  I lie down on the warm floor, kiss the brass-point lips and hum his song, falling asleep with the drawing under my cheek.

  * * *

  —

  I wake a little to a change in the atmosphere of my priory cell. At home, I could always tell it was snowing by the color of the light, the way the world became muffled and the Sound grew brighter and wider.

  At night, even when my whole family was asleep, without even the rustle of my wool blanket on the bedsheet, there was always the Sound.

  It’s like the drone of a bow on a psaltery string being played across a field. And it vibrates in a thin green line just out of the corner of my left eye. It’s only disappeared a few times in my life, so it usually blends into the background. But I’ve learned the hard way that no one else hears it or sees these colors except me.

  There are a thousand sounds that make up silence. There’s the wind blowing snow past your ears, right to left and back again. There’s tree branches clacking together like drum beaters. And there’s what surely must be women’s cries for help—until you realize it’s the boughs of a half-fallen tree squeaking against its neighbors’ bark.

  But you can’t know the loudness of silence, can you—unless you’ve known what it is to be truly alone.

  — 5 —

  I wake to a blinding beam of sunlight falling across me through an arched slit of a window set high in the plastered wall, like a bright keyhole. A shadow interrupts the light, and I become aware of a lavender voice repeating—

  “Good morning, miss. Good morning. You must rise now.”

  Finally I focus on two figures standing above me: a plump, middle-aged woman with her hands folded low, and the girl who’s trying to wake me—all smiles and energy, a little older than I am.

  “There she is!” the girl chortles. “Thought you might never wake!”

  “I…uh…” I try to speak through a pang of embarrassment at being found sleeping on the floor when something as luxurious as a bed has been provided me.

  “We’ll be waiting outside your door, then,” says the older woman, with more measure. “Be dressed in five minutes, and we’ll tour the priory.” She looks at my mass of curly dark hair. “You’ll veil your head, please. And bring your psalter for terce prayers.”

  I get up and stretch the cricks in my back. I hadn’t even covered myself last night, but though there’s no fire, it’s warmer in this room than it ever was at home. I open the chest at the foot of the bed. There’s a gray habit inside, folded neatly, with a veil on top and a set of paternoster beads. I put on Mam’s heavy blue dress instead, the thick wool still smelling of her, even months after her death. There’s no reason to put on any nun’s uniform. I’m only here to work.

  Across from the bed is a kneeler and, on it, a prayer book, opened to a picture of the Nativity, and another, thinner book, Saint Benedict’s Rule. Two actual books. Maybe there’s a mistake. Maybe they forgot that I’m a peasant.

  The pitcher of water and towel cloth in a niche in the wall make up the rest of the furnishings. The room is simple
, but clean—so much cleaner than anywhere I’ve been before. I splash my face with the water, pat my cheeks dry and unpack the few other things in my bag.

  I slip a couple of sheets of parchment into the psalter and put my brass stylus in my fitchet pocket, in case I get a chance to draw. But my chaperones are waiting, and they tap once more on the door to hurry me. I grab my wrap and go out to join them, pinning the veil over my tangled braids.

  “She let you sleep late this once, miss, since you’ve had a long journey,” whispers the girl as we fall in step behind the older woman. “But tomorrow, you must be up with the prime bell.” No one’s ever called me miss before. Me, a shepherd’s daughter with dirty fingernails.

  “I am Sub-Prioress Agnes de Guile,” the woman says over her shoulder. “Welcome to our beloved Priory of Saint Christopher. This is Alice Palmer. She is a novice and a promising scholar, aren’t you, Alice? She will be your guide.”

  Alice shifts the attention from herself. “What’s your name?” she asks.

  “Edyth. Le Sherman. Of H-Hartley Cross,” I stammer. “I’m here to work—not to be a scholar.”

  “Conversae usually stay in servants’ quarters,” says the sub-prioress. “You must have had…connections.”

  I’m not sure how to take that.

  But something dawns on me, and I turn to Alice. “Wait, you’re a palmer? You’ve been to the Holy Land?”

  “Yes, with my parents,” she says wistfully as the bell peals for midmorning prayer. “Before I came here.”

  Someone who’s been all the way to Jerusalem and back—the things she must have seen!

  Alice wears the same kind of gray habit that was in my wooden chest, and a simple white veil that goes past her shoulders. I guess from the color of her eyebrows that she’s probably ash-blond under there. She has green, wide-set eyes and a kind face—and a lot of freckles. We walk the long hallway and down the staircase to stand in a large, open room that spans the entire length of the dormitory building.