Sylvia

by Bryce Courtenay

  This caused more laughter and several of the women called out, ‘We will bring food, Johanna!’ I was thrilled at this prospect and smiled my gratitude to the widow. Reinhardt the Ratcatcher had kept his promise and I was to be safe this night.

  Now he removed his broad-brimmed hat and bowed to the woman. ‘Thank you, good dame, then it is settled. As for myself, I am happy with clean straw spread in the corner of a cowshed.’

  ‘Nay, you may share with us – we all snore!’ a man with a large belly, rubicund face and a wild bush of fiery red hair called out. ‘There is cider and fresh ale. My wife is a most worthy cook!’

  Under cover of the crowd’s laughter I nudged the ratcatcher. ‘Reinhardt, I am freezing, can we not start?’ I whispered.

  While my voice was affected by the cold and not at its best, we seemed to greatly please the villagers with the rendering of several folksongs. When we finally came to the end it was almost dark and Reinhardt addressed them I hoped for the last time, as the hem of my gown was not yet completely dry and I was truly cold.

  ‘We will sing a Gloria in the name of Jesus Christ the Saviour, who has given us the ripened summer corn, the cow’s milk, cheese from the sheep and the goats, pickled cabbage and turnips, the fare to see us through the darkest winter. We ask Him to cause the rats to be barren and to give the cats sharp claws and to keep them hungry.’ With the mention of rats a cheer came from the crowd. It seemed clear the household corn bins must be greatly troubled by these wicked rodents. I hoped this mention of rats and cats to be the last of his speechifying, but alas, his gift for yapping was not yet done and I must shiver and shake with a grin fixed to my face yet a while longer. ‘We thank you all for your welcome and for your hospitality, and if any of you return here at sunrise, then you will witness a scene so strange you will tell of it to your grandchildren and they to theirs forever and a day!’ With this astonishing promise Reinhardt raised his flute and blew the opening notes, whereupon I sang the Gloria Patri while many of the village folk fell to their knees.

  At this, the long day’s journey had finally reached the night. My fears of being the object of the ratcatcher’s desires had been in vain. So what is it about a woman with a man? That having maintained my chastity and remained pure in spirit, I felt somewhat discontented.

  A night breeze had risen blowing cold. The villagers wished themselves beside their hearths and there was no time to ask Reinhardt what he meant by the invitation to sunrise in the square the following morning. The widow Johanna quickly gathered me up, while ‘Red the Belly’, as I had named the ratcatcher’s fat host, bade Reinhardt follow him to a krug of ale or cider and a meal worthy of his wife’s talent as a cook.

  The widow Johanna, a slim and comely woman, reminded me somewhat of my mother; her house was well scrubbed and clean and a fire burned brightly on the hearth. All three children, daughters all, the youngest three and the eldest seven, were quiet and well behaved and the two older ones were much taken with the stories I told them. Several other children arrived with food delivered from their mothers. One brought pork sidemeat, another the first of the salted fish for winter, a third, walking with care mindful of spilling it, a jug of ale, yet another goats’ milk. Then arrived variously a loaf of white bread, cheese, pickled kraut, autumn pears, nuts and apples. At one stage the widow brought her hands to her head and cried, ‘How shall we eat it all?’

  ‘I will take some for tomorrow’s journey if you will allow it?’ I asked politely.

  This she promised and more. Warmed at the hearth and well fed, with the children finally sent to bed, we sat a short while. She told me her husband had died during the spring when a ploughshare had severely cut his leg when he’d gone alone into their field to plough on St Peter’s Day. He had bled to death while the remainder of the village prayed in the church situated in an adjacent village. ‘Folks say it was God’s wrath for working on a holy day that struck him down.’ She paused. ‘But I think no such thing. He was a clumsy oaf, lazy and too ignorant to take advice and always careless with the harnessing of the ox. He was ploughing too early in the spring and the plough jumped on the frozen soil, the harness broke loose and the plough severed an artery in his leg.’

  ‘But who will plough for you next spring?’ I asked.

  ‘The cottage is mine and also three fields, six cows, five goats and a gaggle of geese. Most days there comes some greedy oaf knocking at my door, all toothless grin and promise of his fealty. I would rather share a portion of my barley or oat crop in return for work than take another such clodhopper to my bed.’ She looked at me sternly. ‘Your womanhood will soon ripen, Sylvia. How old are you?’

  ‘Eleven,’ I replied.

  ‘Then next birthday you will be a woman and may be betrothed. When the time comes choose carefully. Men are for the most part poor company, dull lovers and wine-bibbers; you are better served remaining in the company of women.’

  ‘I have no wish to be a nun,’ I laughed.

  ‘Nay, that’s not what I meant,’ she said. ‘Do not rush to the altar, there is lots of time. Though the Church allows it, twelve is too young to become some brute’s wife!’

  ‘I would hope not to choose such a man,’ I said quietly.

  ‘My dear, at first we all think we have chosen well, but alas, we seldom do.’ She reached out her hand to me. ‘Come, it is time we went to bed.’

  ‘I have no nightgown and the hem of my dress is damp,’ I confessed.

  The widow Johanna laughed. ‘Goodness, Sylvia, we are five women, there are logs on the hearth to last the night and the bed is well covered and already warmed by the children. What care you for a nightgown? Why, I do not myself possess one.’ She held out her hand. ‘Come, give me your dress and we will hang it by the fire to dry.’

  ‘I am not sure,’ I said, hesitating.

  ‘What is it child, are you bleeding?’

  ‘No!’ I said, alarmed. ‘It is just that I have not been naked in the presence of women since my mother died near three years ago.’ I decided the disrobing by the stream in front of Fraus Anna, Frogface and Gooseneck didn’t count.

  ‘What fear you then?’

  Of course I couldn’t say, and even now I hesitate. I had always feared that my father’s brutal mounting would show that I was no longer a virgin, that his wanton thrusting had changed my woman’s part. The three old fraus who had seen me naked knew of his wickedness and so would not have pointed out an alteration to my body, though what form such might take I had no idea. ‘It is perhaps modesty,’ I said shyly.

  ‘Modesty is a luxury only afforded by knights and fair maidens, by my lords and their grand ladies. It is a dainty game they play in courtship, but it’s not for such as us, Sylvia. We are peasants and our men know little of courtship and even less of gentleness – only of rough passage and grunting. They will pass by a rose and leave it unplucked, then bring you a pickled pig’s trotter and not know the difference.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Remember always, the one-eyed serpent overrides all sensibility! Men are pigs and so will treat you like a sow!’ She looked at me steadily, then asked gently, ‘Soon you will become a woman, what know you of your time of bleeding? If modesty forbids you asking, how will you manage these female matters?’

  Frau Anna had also inquired about my bleeding but I was still not sure what it was. Only that it would soon occur and that it was a most frightening passage I must endure to become a woman, though I had no idea what I would need to do when it did. ‘Since my mother’s death there have been no women to tell me these things,’ I confessed to Johanna.

  ‘Aye, I thought as much. You poor child. Now, off with your dress, let me look at you,’ she instructed in a no-nonsense manner.

  I removed my dress standing within the warmth of the hearth, the fire and the pale lamplight revealing my naked body. I stood with my hands cupped between my thighs as Frau Johanna took a step towards me and stooped to pick up my dress and arranged it so that the wet portion around the hem lay nearest to the wa
rmth. ‘Your breasts are budding, it will not be long now, Sylvia,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Tomorrow I will show you how to prepare linen strips to make a pouch,’ she said, ‘but now it is to the bed,’ she pointed to where I held my hands, ‘where I will examine you.’

  She had said all this in such a straightforward and womanly manner that I hadn’t the words to object, and her promise of instruction in the morning I thought most generous. She would see that I was no longer a virgin and expose my shame, but if I must confess, I thought Frau Johanna, with her apparent repugnance for what men do to women, the one who might best understand. ‘I would very much like instruction on the matter of this bleeding, but, perforce, I must be at the village square at sunrise,’ I said.

  Frau Johanna laughed. ‘Be careful of that sweet youth, he is the type who will pluck the rose in passing,’ she advised me. ‘We will rise before sun-up and I will show you what is necessary.’ Then without further ado she removed her dress and, turning down the lamp, she took me by the hand and led me to the bed where the three girls lay asleep, firelight playing across their faces, the youngest with her thumb stuck in her mouth.

  The room was warm and it was most snug under the eiderdown, but my anxiety grew as Frau Johanna placed her hand upon my pubescent breasts. ‘Sylvia, you will soon be a woman with all of a woman’s needs. I will show you how to care for yourself without a man. It is something we can share for it is called “the widow’s husband and the virgin’s knight” but every maid and every woman needs to know it for the comfort it brings.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, my voice hesitant. I was about to be exposed; she would touch me down there and she would know immediately. ‘Frau Johanna, I am not chaste . . . It . . . it . . . w as my father!’ Unable to contain myself I burst into tears. Frau Johanna took me into her arms. ‘Shush, sweet Sylvia. Men are wanton pigs and if I should have a pfennig for every married man who this very night will “pluck the poulet” in his family then I should be the richest widow in Christendom. You should count your blessings that you were still too young and your belly isn’t swollen with a child that, should you not abort, would bring yet another idiot into the world.’ She kissed me lightly on my eyes. ‘Dry your eyes, it is not a shame of your own making.’ She reached over and took my right hand, and then my second finger. ‘Have you found the way to please yourself, do you know the way of the virgin’s knight?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied, frightened.

  She pressed my finger. ‘This is the knight’s dream rod and I will show you how to use it.’ She released my finger and I felt her hand slip across my belly and soon her finger found a spot to rest. ‘Here it is, know you this tender spot. I must needs touch softly, tell me if I rub too hard. Slowly, play slowly for there is no haste and the longer you tarry the better; there needs be time to linger, to think of loving things. Close your pretty eyes, relax, this is time well spent.’ She fell silent, her finger gently working within me until I felt a pleasure grow such as I had never known. I began to pant and then to gasp. ‘Feel you how good it is, this loving of a woman’s own making,’ she whispered, and kissed me lightly on the cheek. I had become wet and Frau Johanna’s finger started to increase its rubbing until I could bear it no longer and cried out in ecstasy as an overwhelming joyousness filled my entire body. I lay panting, gasping, unable to speak when Frau Johanna said softly, ‘Next time you will please yourself, Sylvia.’ Then she took me into her arms and we lay still.

  Perhaps I should confess that I cried out in alarm and pushed her away, but my body was so washed with a feeling of serenity that I simply let her be, thinking this new intimacy a lesson in womanly loving. No! That too is a lie. I hungered for more such caring. I had not been embraced in a loving way since I was a child, nor received a kiss or felt the soft touch of another woman. The widow Johanna who now held me to her breast caused me to sob softly for the memory of my mother and my lost childhood.

  Some might say that I was still a child and that the widow Johanna had not the right to instruct me as she had done, and by touching me she had violated my body in a way no different to my father. Perhaps they are right: a woman’s body is sacred unto herself and I had not given her permission to touch me in so intimate a manner. All I can say in defence of both of us is that at the age of eleven I did not see it as a violation. I now know that most young girls discover this pleasure without instruction, but I had not done so myself. That part of my body had been so crudely violated by my father that I saw it as unclean, forever changed and the cause of most of my subsequent misery and deep sense of having sinned. Now I had been shown that it could also be a source of personal pleasure, but of course, after my initial euphoria, my first concern was whether this too was a sin. I knew well that selfish pleasure is regarded as sinful.

  ‘Is what we have done a sin, Frau Johanna?’ I asked.

  She gave a merry laugh then kissed me lightly on the cheek. ‘No, I think not,’ she replied, and then seemed to think for a moment. ‘But then again, there is such a welter of sins, of mays and may nots, all the declarations of men, bishops and priests, holy men and hermits, clerics, clerks and lay preachers. They seem to all be vying with each other to proclaim new and better ways to accuse women of sinning. What know we of the latest declaration when today’s blessing becomes tomorrow’s sin? Methinks such womanly matters should not be left to a priest to decide upon. Sometimes we must go to our own conscience for confirmation. If what I have shown you is a sin, then every convent and nunnery has its share of sinners. But, if it is wrong to do as we have done, then it is I and not thou who is the sinner, for you came unknowingly to this bed with your thoughts chaste and pure. You must decide, as every woman must, if you wish to embrace the virgin’s knight.’

  ‘Why call they it the virgin’s knight?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, I cannot say for sure, but think it somewhat like this: the mounting of a woman by a man is seldom what a young maid hopes for in her imagination. She wishes a brave knight returned from a pilgrimage will come to “pluck the flower”, but she gets instead a ploughboy who, drunk on cider, grunts and farts and groans and thrusts with only his own pleasure in mind, then rolls over, burps and sets to snoring. It is, for the most part, a great deal of noise from every orifice but in the sum of it there is little that might resound to please her.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘But, ah, when she chooses her own lover, even if it be only in her head, then she may have the shining knight himself.’

  I laughed at her clever reply. I had seen it often in the village, a young maid, perhaps two years older than myself, her belly swollen with child, the result of a brief dalliance with some oaf met at a travelling fair and taken for a hasty rutting behind a haystack.

  ‘Thank you, Johanna,’ I said quietly, though I was yet very confused.

  We lay still for some time but then she must have sensed my confusion because I heard her take an inward breath. ‘You are still too young to know your own mind and have not yet been with a tender man you love or suckled at your breasts an infant of your own. Try to wait until you are sure you know what you want, Sylvia,’ she cautioned me again. ‘Randy young men will pester you and in their whingeing make you feel guilty, accusing you of hurting their feelings by showing no love for them. The urge you feel within you to lie with a man will often become very strong, the strongest emotion a woman, who deep within her desires offspring, can possibly feel. But a fatherless child on your hip when you yourself are not yet fully a grown woman will earn the scorn of others and destroy your life. Better the virgin’s knight than such a calamity.’ She paused, then said, ‘Hear you what I say, Sylvia Honeyeater, that is what I mean by keeping to the company of women.’

  ‘Aye, Frau Johanna, I thank you again.’

  ‘Then it is goodnight.’ She kissed me, then turned from me to slumber.

  It had been a long day since I’d decided to wash the muddy hem of my dress by the side of the brook. I was beginning to discover that life can be a very confu
sing business and I was not at all sure whether I was Sylvia Now or Sylvia Then. But as sleep finally overcame me, what I did sense was that I had returned to my mother’s world. I was to learn it was a country no male can occupy or ever comprehend, be he Pope or cardinal, abbot, bishop or priest or any man, even a ratcatcher who stills the barking dogs and marches children to the magic of his flute.

  I awoke just as it was growing light outside. The widow Johanna was already up and dressed. A fire blazed on the hearth and the smell of cooking pervaded the cottage. The lamp had been trimmed as it was still near dark within the cottage. I glanced over at the three children who slept blissfully, too young to know how difficult a process life can be. Only yesterday I had arrived in this village more child than maid and today I would leave it knowing I was soon to become a woman. I walked over to where my dress lay together with my Father John bag and stout stave. Both his generous gifts had served me well and had, in the few days I’d possessed them, become a part of me.

  ‘Good morrow, Sylvia,’ Johanna said quietly, then reached out and picked up my dress. ‘This is dry but the cloth is old and much patched and will not last much longer.’ She pointed to the circle of light thrown by the lamp where I observed a fresh garment lay. ‘You shall have one of my own that no longer fits me. It will be large on you but we can alter it to fit.’ She indicated my old gown. ‘This one we will use for your bleeding. Alas, I have no boots or clogs your size, but if you will tarry a little longer this morning we will inquire of the bootmaker who may have a second-hand pair that will fit you.’

  I thanked her profusely for the dress but then said, ‘The boots are of no concern. I have not owned a pair since I was seven and my feet are well accustomed to the cold.’

  ‘Phfft! Will your young man not buy you boots? His own are stout enough and his clothes are of a good fit and not much worn.’