A Cloud of Outrageous Blue

by Vesper Stamper

  “My favorite part is seeing everyone out there in their skivvies.” Mason laughed, tugging on his woolen braies.

  I smiled and looked at my chemise. “Good thing the dancing sped up—I was freezing!”

  “Me too! It felt like the sun would never come up.”

  “Longest winter ever,” I mused.

  “I didn’t mind it so much,” said Mason. “With Henry and me trading work for our fathers, I got to see you every Sunday.”

  I whipped a look of shock at Mason.

  “What?” He shrugged. “I looked forward to it.”

  “But we’ve never talked or anything.”

  “We’re talking now, aren’t we?” He tugged at my sleeve.

  “Y-you’re not playing a trick on me, right?” I leaned back and looked over the wall to be sure no one was lying in wait. I sat up quickly and brushed his arm—he seemed closer than before.

  “A trick?” He looked confused.

  Between us was the spring air, the fading perfume of my flower crown and the gruit, and I let myself look at him, like we did at the dance—like I was supposed to be there, like I was meant to memorize the deep blue of his eyes.

  Mason broke his egg-and-onion pie in half and handed me the larger piece, and I did the same with mine. We talked, and joked, way into the night by the bonfire, and every scrap of my awkwardness blew away in the fresh air.

  I wasn’t sure what was happening, only that things were different, and that all things were possible.

  — 17 —

  “I was hoping you’d be out here.” A voice shakes me back into the present. I look over my shoulder—Mason is walking toward me. The Saint John bonfires throw gold all over his skin, the flames wavering in his eyes as he looks at me.

  “I thought you’d be in town, Mason. Decided to celebrate with the frozen chosen instead?”

  “Nice dress,” he chuckles. “Is that new?”

  “I got dressed up in cloth of gold for the event,” I say, mocking the gray habit I have to wear now.

  “Come with me,” he says. I eye him nervously. “Don’t worry. They won’t see us.” We keep to the perimeter of the walls until we get to the field gate and push through into the free dark.

  The midsummer fires are burning in the fields, kindled from hay stubble and great logs donated to the priory. The farmworkers wave torches above the grainfields to dispel any bad air. The bonfires build up until the whole field is under a glowing, smoking tent of protection. We lean against the outside of the wall and watch the smoke rise. Things feel clean and changing.

  “You sure you don’t want to be down in Thornchester with the town girls?” I ask.

  “Never thought about it,” he says. “In fact, I made you something.”

  “Really?” I smile.

  He removes my veil pin and lets the linen fall into his hand. From under his tunic, Mason produces a crown of Saint John flowers. He lifts it and places it on my head.

  “A diadem for the queen,” he says, doffing his cap, bowing ridiculously. I know how to laugh along with a joke at my own expense. But Mason has another kind of smile playing on his lips. “Different flowers than you had on at that maypole, but the face makes the flowers, not the other way around.”

  “This face?” I point. “Don’t you know what they called me back home? Edyth, Edyth, Round and Red?”

  “Pig muckers and leech collectors, all of ’em,” he says, plopping down next to me. “To me, you’re Lady Edyth of Flower and Fire.”

  And his fingers brush mine, there in the shadow where no one can see. He softly pinches my thumb and lets his fingers wander to my wrist, stroking its thin bones. A petal of my flowery crown is falling; he reaches up with his other hand and plucks it, and the rest of the petals fall away in a shower around my face. We laugh a little, just to see each other smile.

  Mason begins to sing softly—

  Douce dame jolie

  Pour Dieu ne pensés mie

  Que nulle ait signorie

  Seur moy fors vous seulement.

  Sweet, lovely lady

  For God’s sake do not think

  That anyone has power

  Over me but you alone.

  I’m surprised—I’ve never heard him sing before. His voice is beautiful, blue like his eyes. It reminds me so much of Da’s, lilting and sweet. I know the language is French.

  “Where did you learn that?” I ask, enchanted.

  “At Christchurch. You meet people from all over the world when you’re on a job site like that.”

  “I’m jealous. I’d love to travel somewhere else—outside of England, I mean.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  “Like you said once, it’s not that simple,” I respond wistfully.

  We haven’t talked about the idea of leaving together since that one night by the chapel. I don’t want to press him, and I don’t want to know if he’s changed his mind, but the prospect is so tempting. And yet, the thought of leaving the scriptorium makes my heart sink.

  “Can you see it?” he asks abruptly.

  “What?”

  “A thousand nights like this, looking at you in the firelight.” He still has a gentle grip on my fingers. My heart is in a whirlpool, but I can’t let it lead me. I can’t follow a fantasy, no matter how enticing.

  “Do you mean that, John Mason?” I say seriously. “Don’t say it unless you do.”

  His smile grows wider and his grin turns into words playing at the edge of his mouth. There’s something he wants to say, and I wish he would—but instead he grabs both of my hands and pulls me to stand. We run hand in hand, through the field, around the fires. He plays at thrusting me toward the fire, pulling me back just in time. Our bellies hurt with laughter.

  Exhausted and happy, we watch the bonfires begin to dwindle; the nuns have gone up to the dormitory to sleep. I’m not one of them. Instead, I fall asleep in Mason’s arms, close to him, but no closer to an answer about what’s next.

  * * *

  —

  I wake alone against the outside wall with the fields still smoking, the wilted flower crown still on my head, Mason’s woolen hood as a pillow. It’s morning, Saint John’s Day, and by the time the bell rings for terce, it’s already warming up. I hear footsteps on the gravel path coming toward the field gate and know at once that I’m in deep trouble.

  “Get those flowers out of your hair and put your veil back on, you savage thing.” Agnes de Guile stands inside the half-open gate, with Felisia right beside her, waiting for me to come. I try to crumple up Mason’s hood inconspicuously.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” says Agnes. “Do not make me late. We will speak about this later.” Agnes grabs the hood and gives me the stack of books for chapter, storming ahead in disgust. Felisia smiles at me over her shoulder.

  By the dormitory entrance is a large bowl of water steeped with the night’s flowers and dew. The nuns cup handfuls and splash their faces with the flower water to keep cool. The sisters dare to laugh and chat in the greening cloister, but I can’t shake the melancholy I feel, waking up alone outside the wall, without Mason. He never meant to stay, did he? Never meant to take me with him when the chapel job is over, after all.

  Am I a fool?

  As soon as I get to my cell, I crawl onto the bed and grip the blanket, gathering it around me and pressing it to my eyes. Facing the wall, I let the tears come, my heaving sobs dropping into the dry, empty well at the center of my belly.

  Who was I to think I could have it both ways?

  — 18 —

  I long to throw myself into work at the scriptorium, back into the cool of the stone tower, and forget about Mason’s noncommitment. But last night’s bonfires mean today’s cleanup, and we all trudge out to the hayfield to rake up the burnt stubble and get
the soil ready for the winter rye.

  From the corner of my eye, I can see someone marching quickly and decisively toward me. Alice shoots me an alarmed look.

  “It’s the Anti-Pri,” she mutters.

  We bend over the straw, hoping she’ll pass us by. Agnes instead strides right up to me, making me flinch.

  “Edyth, I want to talk to you,” she barks, loud enough that her words will be heard.

  “Yes, Sub-Prioress?” I stand to face her.

  “It’s come to this so soon, has it? You could not wait to undermine me?”

  My skin tenses. “Excuse me, but…what did I do?”

  Agnes’s jaw clenches as she glares at me. She lowers her voice: “Did my eyes deceive me this morning by the field gate? You were with that boy.”

  “I was alone when you woke me, Sub-Prioress. I’m sorry I missed the office.”

  “Are you questioning my judgment? Haven’t I been your teacher, your shepherd? As the Rule says, Id est indisciplinatos et inquietos debet durius arguere. ‘He must sternly rebuke the undisciplined and restless.’ I must order penance.”

  Bridgit pipes up, without lifting her eyes from her work. “Isn’t it the prioress’s job, actually, to exercise discipline? Like it says in the Rule and all.”

  I admire Bridgit’s audacity. Agnes’s eyes water and the fat of her neck quivers. I search the sub-prioress’s face.

  “That may be. But Prioress Margaret has gone away again, to see the archbishop. Until she returns, I will give you mercy and not what you really deserve. I am removing you from the scriptorium, Edyth. From now on you will…fetch things.”

  “You can’t do that!” Bridgit protests.

  “Can’t I? I am in charge while Prioress Margaret is away.”

  “You’re punishing me by taking my apprentice!” Suddenly I can see years of history in Bridgit’s scowl. Agnes’s departure from the scriptorium must not have been smooth.

  “Be careful, Bridgit. Remember that you are a conversa, like Edyth.” That makes Bridgit hold her tongue.

  I feel like I’m being sliced open. So that’s it, then?

  Fetch.

  Things.

  What things? From whom?

  I stare at Agnes, not knowing what to say, my mouth open slightly under my overbite. She glares at me. “Is there an issue with your assignment?” she asks coolly, as though Fetcher of Things is a normal job description.

  “I’m sorry, Sub-Prioress, I’m just not sure what you mean by—”

  “What is the sixth step of humility, Edyth?” Agnes puts a hand on my cheek, like Mam used to do when I was little.

  I search my memory. “To be content with the lowest position and most menial treatment. But—”

  “Remember that.” Agnes turns toward the gate. “You are to take one week of silence. And should you break it…” She takes a breath. “Alice Palmer, would you please help your friend learn the value of silence? Thank you, Edyth. That is all.”

  I stand in the burnt field, holding the rake and staring. My new apprenticeship, such as it is, will be to clean up after everyone else.

  * * *

  —

  So that is that. I can’t speak, and because I can’t use words, all I have is anger, rising like bubbling, popping bread dough. My head is full of cobwebs and bursting pockets of sour air. I want to hit something, punch it hard.

  These colors of rage are the worst, like the orange flames of Da’s hanging, like waves along a clothesline. Most of the time, the vibrations are integrated, like the Sound—the washy blue of grass under my bare feet; the angular ochres when gravel crunches under my shoes. It’s been like that from before I learned to speak. At home, they were a bit duller. Safer. But without speech, all I can do is feel.

  Agnes has even forbidden singing the office during this silent punishment. Everything seems out of harmony. During nones, I look around the church, searching for something new to fixate on, something to distract me.

  And suddenly there it is, in a panel of stained glass in the upper gallery.

  I’ve seen this picture before.

  After Da and Mam died, I barely slept. I had nightmares for months. But then I started having an old dream again from my childhood. It replaced the terrors, and now I have it all the time. I’ve become so used to it, I’ve barely given it any thought until now.

  In the dream, I’m standing in a birch wood, but there in the middle is a great, ancient yew tree, like the one in the churchyard. And ever since I saw him by the river at Michaelmas, Mason’s appeared, under its boughs. Ripples of color emanate from the crown of the tree, and Mason climbs right into its heart, like you can with yews, and from underneath ushers a deep stream of water. Then, out from the center of the tree, instead of Mason, climbs a great white stag. He leaps into the pool, disappearing completely. I get on my hands and knees and peer in, and what had looked at first like dark water is clear and bright blue, like a window, and somewhere on the other side of the world, the stag leaps away across a field. The water begins to ripple and obscure as dawn shakes me awake.

  Whenever I’d have the dream at home, I’d go to the barn and pull out my hidden drawing board, trying to depict it, adding more and more detail each time. It was part of me, like it had been sleeping in my mind since I was born. I drew the elaborate yew tree, the stag, the pool. When I’d slide the board back behind the manger, I’d sigh with relief, like I fit a little more squarely in the world by drawing that dream.

  And now there it is: a secret I thought was only in my head, in real brilliant blues and greens of stained glass. Why would I have dreamed of something in Hartley Cross only to see it here in this northern priory church?

  When the nones office ends, I can barely restrain myself from running to my cell. I open the wooden chest, but to my horror, I’ve used every one of Da’s parchments, front and back. So I return to the church, in the summer evening light, and draw the image from the stained glass right in the endpapers of my psalter. Agnes can take away the scriptorium, but she can’t take away my prayer book. And there’s plenty of room in the margins.

  The transept door opens.

  Footsteps—

  I tuck the stylus under the book and try to pretend I’ve been praying. Agnes clears her throat, looks at me for a moment—but then she, too, looks up at the window. She climbs the chancel to the statue of Our Lady and changes the spent candles for new ones. I feel her watching me but I don’t look up. She floats back out of the church and shuts the door. I relax, breathe, and keep drawing.

  — 19 —

  The curse of silence has become a kind of gift. I spend the afternoon hours in my cell, working on the dream drawing in my psalter. The sun shines through the keyhole window, lighting up the bright whitewash of the walls, and I realize that I’ve been surrounded by the biggest parchment of all.

  It’s been a while since I drew with the charcoal twigs from my drawing board at home, but I get out the linen bundle and unwrap it—and begin to draw on the wall. All the little bits from the psalter, every detail I can remember from the barn board. A huge yew tree spans the corner where my bed is, each branch radiating needles, the pool gushing forth from its roots in curlicues. It is glorious.

  I’m in the middle of drawing a huge rack of antlers on a stag when there’s a knock on the cell door. My hands are full of charcoal. What do I do?

  Please be Alice. Please, please, please be Alice.

  I get up and open the door a crack, but keep my head down and stay behind it. The guest sweeps in anyway. Without looking up, I know it’s Agnes. I brace myself: whatever she’ll do, it will be something I can’t guess.

  “I came to release you from your sil—” The sub-prioress looks around at the graffiti on the walls, at the desecrated prayer book, and I hear her breathing become deep, slow, deliberate.

  “Come with
me,” says Agnes quietly, turning and exiting into the hallway. My heart begins to race. How could I be so stupid as to think I could get away with vandalizing my cell? She reaches and grabs me by the wrist, dragging me through the calefactory, past the infirmary and orchard to the goat barn. One glance from Agnes is enough to clear the farmworkers out, and she flings me into one of the stalls.

  “Take off your habit,” says Agnes dryly while she searches the floor for something.

  “What?” I scramble for a reason, knowing and not knowing what’s coming. “Why?”

  “Do it. And your tunic, off to the waist.” Agnes returns to the stall with the broken handle of a willow basket. “Turn around.”

  I can’t understand what’s happening quickly enough to resist. I’ve barely gotten the second sleeve off my wrist—

  One lash.

  Two.

  Ten.

  Dark, jagged purple lines hurl through me, like being shot with arrows, clean through the face.

  Agnes throws the bloody handle down in the manure and walks out.

  I pull my tunic up, too numb to feel the fabric beginning to stick in my wounds.

  My ears ring, the green Sound wild in my eyes, shaking and turning the barn upside down.

  I vomit in the corner.

  A cold tremble starts in my middle as I dress: the chill of the barn, the icy shock.

  Once I can stand, I feel for the walls and push myself out into the daylight. I keep my head down, past the goatherds and stonemasons, and wander to the medicine garden, where I know Alice will be working.

  “Edyth?”

  I don’t respond to Alice. I sniff back tears and instinctively reach into my fitchet pocket and feel for the little stone house.

  “There’s…ah, your veil’s crooked. But there’s blood— Oh God.”

  I look up woozily and swoon. Alice steadies me and accidentally touches my back. I cry out but then bite down hard on my bottom lip. I don’t want to draw attention. I just want to disappear.