Ladygrove

by John Burke

  They walked casually to the edge of the lawn as she disappeared, an infinity below, into the grove.

  ‘If we’re to help,’ said Caspian in little more than a whisper, ‘we must follow her in.’

  ‘She may not want our company.’

  ‘She is not to know that she has it.’

  They went swiftly but unobtrusively to the fringe of the grove and found themselves a sheltered patch within a clump of bushes, shielded from the house and from the entrance to the maze. The house was in any case meaningless now. But they saw the opening into the maze clearly enough, and the trickery of the hedges within: saw it all through Judith’s languid eyes.

  Caspian propped his shoulder against his wife’s and let his muscles go slack. Bronwen’s weight adjusted to his. They let their minds mesh; and let them float in a gossamer net over and around Judith, so lightly that she was aware of no contact, while they were aware of every tremor.

  She was still half in a trance of boredom, letting herself tread unseeking through the yew avenues. She did not know why she had come here; but did not know why she might better be anywhere else.

  Then slowly, shifting, like the blackness of a silhouette blurring and fading and then intensifying into a new shape on a shadow-play screen, she was Judith no longer. She surrendered her consciousness to things she would not, later, remember.

  The Caspians drifted with her on the swell of the past, beating soundlessly in through the sluice of the present. But there was no present, never had been and never could be: the present was, is, and shall be only an infinitesimal instant, a watershed where the past accumulates in order to erode the future.

  They were in Judith and in that other for minutes only, yet those minutes were simultaneously hours and months and years, and had endured for centuries. Pain and desire were immediate but eternal; ephemeral but undying.

  * * * *

  I am here, I offer myself humbly, I beg for deliverance from the world. The ills of the world shall be set behind me. Grant me this, and my prayers for the sufferers shall not cease.

  There shall be no temptation and no falsehood. This shall be made a holy place, a rock of sanctity firm in the swamps of wickedness. I pray for it to become so.

  And so it shall be. The cell is consecrated and I have been prepared for it. I am shriven, and shall be protected from further sin. The bishop himself says the office and places his own seal on the last stone to be set in place. Prayers are said within and without the church, and psalms chanted below my single slit of a window. And if I—perhaps I alone—hear the laughter foul and destructive below the prayers and singing, I fear not. Let them laugh and blaspheme those who shun truth and cling to error. I will not be afraid. They will not relinquish the old ways and the old demons. Still they will practise the older abominations in the older places in the hills, and the secret places of this accursed valley. But I will fear not, they shall have no power over me. With my prayers and with God’s help they shall be cast out.

  The entrance is sealed, the words have been said, they have all devoutly gone and left me to my devotions. There is silence outside, and blessed silence within.

  Dicamus omnes, Domine, miserere.

  I am alone but not alone. How can there be loneliness where there is perfect love and perfect peace?

  The stone of the floor is cold. The walls are cold. Day and night, all is cold. I wake and pray, and am cold. But I am warmed by love and sustained by love, by the adoration and the needs of all those who come to breathe and murmur against the outward walls.

  ‘Pray for us, Matilda. For my daughter who is sick with a fever, and for my son taken in the covert by the king’s warrener.’

  I will pray for you.

  ‘Pray for us on this our wedding day.…’

  I will pray.

  ‘Blessed Matilda, intercede for my erring child.…’

  ‘We bring thanks for prayers answered.…’

  Deo gratias.

  They bring alms. They bring food and gifts, and I hear them being placed outside my cell. Then comes the priest to decide which food shall be laid within the slit of window, and which shall be apportioned between his and the bishop’s households.

  What does it taste like, the food they take away from my offerings?

  Pray for their souls.

  I have sinned. I have thought with envy of meats and bread, I have coveted that which was offered not to me but to the greater glory of God.

  Deus, miserere. Deus, miserere.

  I shall not think of the world. All I see of it is not truly this world but the sign of the next. Through my squint I take part in the Mass, seen by none and seeing only the celebrant at the high altar.

  Nor do I wish to see more.

  But I wonder if my sisters are in the church, and if they chattered on the way here and will chatter just as ever on their way down the valley? If either is yet to be wed. And if my brother is there.

  Where sits the knave who seduced the wretched wight Anne, cottar’s daughter from the white brook? I have answered the pleas of the goodwife and prayed for the girl, and will pray for the man also that he may be redeemed, and will think ill of none. But what sports do they play, these knaves, in wilful despite of the damnation that they must know awaits them?

  I would curse them, the proud, the wicked, the wanton.

  But it is not for me to curse but to ask forgiveness.

  And is the daughter of Goodman Peter at Mass, planning another offering to be set outside my cell, that I may offer up prayers for her fertility? How shall I, without unchaste thoughts, ask that she be blessed with child?

  It was from such demands, such shames, that I fled. From such ignominy I have shut myself away.

  I bow my head to the cold stone floor to cool my errant thoughts. But the floor has grown warm. I feel the beat of a heart within it and I think of the heart which shall begin to beat as the girl swells with her child, and if I allow myself to touch myself l can believe that I too.…

  No. It shall not be. These are blasphemous thoughts. They are not mine. I repudiate them.

  I am free of worldly desire. I will speak for others but not for myself.

  Hear my plea. For this old woman in pain. For this man in torment. For shepherd and farrier, for master and vassal. For swineherd.…

  There! There is the laughter again, the same laughter. It is louder now, and no longer outside, but here in the cell with me: below me, making the very floor shake with foul mirth.

  What are these dreams throbbing up from the floor and into my head, my limbs, into every aching secret place of my body?

  I am too hot. I have been ill. It may be that food placed on my ledge carried a plague, that there will be pestilence through the village and the valley and through me. Yesterday I was in prayer when the world went dark and the floor began to burn. Yesterday—or a sennight since?

  Time passes. No, there is no time. It is all one to me: day, night, voices of the faithful outside and in, the chanting of psalms in the church and the laughter of these other voices within my head.

  This is no holy place. It was but is no longer. I bring shame upon it.

  Wicked visions do sorely torment my mind and flesh.

  Here is someone at night, come to whisper a plea to me through the wall There are many of them like this, finding it easier to ask for prayers under cover of darkness than to speak when the priest might pass and overhear. Like this? No, not like this one. He brings temptation, not piety: talks of the spring flowers, the smell of the woodlands, the sound of the river and of children’s voices, and of dancing and bestial good cheer.

  Or is it a voice within these walls—within myself?

  I have begged the priest to bring a birch that I may flagellate myself.

  It does but make me the hotter.

  I am not worthy to be here, I shall bring an abomination upon this place. I am letting in demons.

  Or have the demons been here for untold centuries, waiting for me?

  I m
ust be sent out from here. I cannot endure. I am wretched and infirm, help Thou mine infirmities. I ask to be taken back into the wicked world, for my wickedness is too great for aught else.

  Yes, father, I do so renounce my vows. Yes, my lord bishop, this I do truly intend.

  Vah, perii, nihil est reliqui mihí, cur esse coepi?

  They are waiting outside, so many of them. It might be a market day, or the day of a fair, and I am to be the buffoon, the travelling juggler, the minstrel who will entertain them. The stones are chipped out to make an opening large enough for me to step through, and there is a murmur when I am free and standing on the grass.

  It is true that the grass smells sweet.

  Mercifully the day is masked by cloud, but still it is too bright for my eyes. When I lower them I am aware of the other eyes devouring me; but when I try to look up and meet those other eyes, I am faint with the vastness of sky and hill and valley. If I reach out, there are no safely enclosing walls to touch.

  A man stumbles forward and kneels and would kiss my hand. He is trying to thank me for some prayer I offered on his behalf, but he is too close, and there is no wall between us, and I would run if there were anywhere I might run.

  Others grin, and speak behind their hands. They have come to enjoy the spectacle and will talk about it afterwards and laugh about it.

  Already there is laughter.

  I must escape.

  My father is not here, my brother and sisters are not in the throng. They have shunned it. It may be that they will wish to disown me. It is no small thing to have a holy woman in the family, the object of devotion and the interpreter of prayers. It is a very poor thing to have a useless daughter returning to become a burden on the household.

  Yet I have nowhere else to go.

  One man was still grateful and knelt to me. Now an old woman sinks unsteadily to her knees and raises her arms to me. But another woman snarls like an animal, and a man spits. I have betrayed them. If I have shown so little faith, how shall they keep theirs? The cell is open and empty. I am deserting them.

  ‘Matilda, if you would spend some time with an order of sisters of charity, I promise you a welcome.…’

  The bishop is stern but kind, but knows nothing of stone floors and what may rise from them, or of what may ensnare a mind shut away within stone walls. My fortress had become a prison. I could not commit myself to another.

  So I must run.

  They call after me as I begin to hurry away from the cell and the church, running away from them towards the hillside. Some are calling me back, wishing kindness on me. Others scream imprecations. And four of the men set out after me, as they would pursue a runaway bitch.

  I am weak, I have not walked for so long that I have no strength for a chase.

  Now the bishop and priest call them back. They deem it safer to let me run wild than let their pack sink their teeth into me.

  Where shall I flee? There is nobody now in the vale to shelter me, unless I recant and pretend to be once more what I never could be. But there are those in the hills who may accept me.

  Where did I learn that, who spoke of it to me?

  ‘Well, young wench, what seek you?’

  It is a young man’s voice, and the voice of a man of good position, sure of himself. I glimpse only the arrogant set of him, leaning against a tree in the shade of dancing leaves, one foot advanced towards me as if proposing we should both join the dance.

  My ragged woollen habit, coarse against my skin as I had once wished it to be, makes a fool of me out in this alien world. There is too much space, men can see too far and too much. I cross my arms across my breast and roll face down on the earth, and smell earth and grass and cannot but moan at the joy of it. Let the man but go away and leave me to this moment, so that breath and reason can be restored to me.

  ‘Upon my soul, how you do stink.’ This is the laughter I have feared, and a laughter of such vigour that I have other reasons to fear it. I would turn my head to steal a glance, but dare not. ‘Yet it’s a woman’s stink, for all that.’ A foot prods mockingly into my ribs. ‘I have known worse.’

  There comes a ruder jab. I pull awake like the abject, crawling animal it is my fate to be, still shielding my face, for I know it to be grimed and unkempt and fit only to provoke greater mockery from such a man.

  ‘Let me look on you, mistress.’

  ‘Sir, I beg you. I wish to go my way. I seek only solitude and seclusion.’

  ‘You have had your share of solitude, little virgin, and found it little to your taste. So I have heard. Now you seek something other.’

  ‘I seek only to go my own way, sir.’

  ‘Say you so? But your haunches give you the lie.’ He has stamped closer and kicks again, ever more insolently. ‘Would you not taste a man, my fair?’

  ‘No!’

  Fear thrusts me to my feet and fear drives me in spite of my feebleness, drives me on up the hill and along its shoulder. I can choose my path but accept that which falls most readily before me. To my right, a stone hall and wooden outbuildings. Ahead, a rise and fall of land and a wood in which I may seek refuge, and cloudy sky into which I would fain fall and be drowned. Far below, church and cell to which I must never return. Close behind, the footsteps and harsh breath of the hunter, relishing the chase.

  I am burning, deliver me from this heat.

  The earth rocks and rises against me. I fall, and roll twice over before tussocks of grass catch and stop me.

  His hand is impatient, tearing at the poor soiled cloth, tearing it away from my poor stinking body, even before he looks into my face. When he has me pinned down and rears up to look at me the sweat gleaming along his upper lip, he laughs and curses and then laughs again, and sweats the more.

  Its lines twisting and tightening, the face is in shadow first to the left then to the night, as he wrenches to and fro, back and forth.

  And then descends on me and blots out the world.

  It is a face I shall not forget and not forgive, never throughout eternity.

  * * * *

  It was the face of David Brobury.

  Bronwen flinched instinctively away, and Caspian’s mind reeled with hers. There was a shudder as three, four minds intermingled and then lost their grip. It was not just Matilda but Judith who looked up into those greedy eyes and then into darkness, separate yet incapable of seeing herself so abruptly.

  Bronwen spun around the edge of the whirlpool and then was sucked back m. She held to Caspian, drew him with her

  Drew him into pain and terror. Yet also there was the wild laughter—the pain of the knife in the flesh, but the howl of pagan delight, the ravished girl struggling to pull away from the wound yet clinging to her ravisher and howling into his face.

  Bronwen felt the agony and the frenzy within her, and it was her fingers that tore at the man upon her. Most terrifying of all, consumed by the phantom savagery of the past, she was consumed also by Matilda’s answering frenzy, abandoning herself and knowing all that Matilda knew.

  Then there was the disintegration, the sudden shredding away of mind and body. The man was failing, his flesh shrivelling within her. She—they—were gasping, clinging and imploring But Caspian had deserted her, he was no longer sharing and shoring up her concentration. Out of the whirlpool he pulled away, back to the present,

  It was no longer David Brobury’s face but her husband’s, close to hers. They were behind the copse as when they started, but instead of holding her against his shoulder he was twisted round to face her, staring with something akin to loathing in his eyes.

  Bronwen swayed, and put a hand to the ground to steady herself.

  ‘You were enjoying it.’ He lashed the words at her as if to cut a weal across her face. ‘You…you wanted him. It was you who gave in to him, you who lusted.…’

  Still shaken, she could not believe that they were yet fully restored to reality. She put out a hand to Caspian. ‘My dearest, it was not our mind but hers. To understand, w
e had to suffer—’

  ‘To suffer? For you there was no suffering, nothing but rapture. Your craving…your wantonness.’

  It could not be true. It could not be real, any more than what they had just undergone was real.

  Through the trees came the rustling, unhurried footsteps of Judith returning from the maze.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Where’s Pippin?’ Judith had walked twice round the house, through the stable yard and a few hundred yards up the hill and down again calling. There was no answer. The dog had been missing all day, and now that dusk was taking over the vale Judith began to grow anxious. ‘He couldn’t have gone all the way to Lenhale with Margaret?’

  ‘She would hardly have taken him with her on the train,’ said Caspian.

  ‘There’s no telling what either of them would do,’ said Lady Brobury. ‘Each as uncontrollable as the other.’

  They stood within the casement window opening on to the terrace. Judith felt the cool prickling of the evening air at her throat but was somehow reluctant to turn and go indoors. She would, in any case, have had to push her way past Caspian, who had taken up a stance between her and Lady Brobury. It occurred to her that he had done this two or three times during the course of the afternoon as if, deprived of Pippin’s company, she needed another faithful attendant—and one who would keep Lady Brobury at arm’s length. Judith found it oddly irritating, without being quite sure what was wrong. When Caspian occasionally caught her eye, he seemed to see far too deeply into her, like a man who had once seen her in an unflattering light and now waited to catch her out once more.

  Hadn’t David talked of taking him riding, so that they would have a chance to talk? Yet they had not gone riding; Caspian had been close to her all afternoon, and David was nowhere to be seen.

  Caspian said: ‘I suppose the dog may have encountered David and gone off with him for an hour or so.’

  ‘David has not gone far all day.’ Lady Brobury was staring down the garden. ‘He is already back, but there’s no dog with him.’