The Butcher's Daughter

by Victoria Glendinning

  It was bean soup, made on a mutton-bone stock. There are never enough spoons so the old men and women – they are mostly old, the people who come to be fed at the Broad Hall – raise their bowls to their mouths and suck in the soup, raking up the solid bits at the bottom with their fingers. The bowls are so ancient that that the wood has cracked, and they leak. We rinse the woodware afterwards under the pump, but it does not become properly clean. I would speak up in Chapter about the need to replace the bowls, but there is no future. Yet we go on behaving as if there were, as if the momentum of continuity might in itself prevent catastrophe.

  Old men piss in the corners of the Hall. Clearing up after the mid-day soup is an arduous and messy business. We go down on our knees with a pail of water and handfuls of rags and wipe the floor clean of dirt and spillages. The stones are irregular and filth is embedded in the cracks. I do my best, telling myself that such labour teaches me the true meaning of holy charity – which is principally, if you are female, concerned with the bodily needs of others. I am destined to be a Martha whether I like it or not. Eleanor Wilmer has as much holy charity in her as a dead rat. She was on her knees as I was, but praying, and beckoning to those old biddies who had not stumbled away or fallen asleep on the benches to join her in prayer.

  I struggled to my feet to tip the pail of dirty water out of the door. Just outside, on a bench, sat Father Pomfret. He came often to the Broad Hall to hear the confession of anyone who had a mind to make one. There was an anteroom set aside for the purpose. It was not frequently put to use. What he really enjoyed was playing with the town children. Today half a dozen little ones, barefoot and runny-nosed boys and girls, in little more than raggy shirts in spite of the winter cold, were clambering all over him, climbing on to his knees and up on to his shoulders, pulling at his clothes and his ears and his nose like puppies, shrieking and laughing. He was growling like a bear, grabbing the wriggling little creatures by the leg, or round the middle, tickling them, nuzzling them, pretending to eat them. They were over-excited. One little girl of about three years old fell off, hitting her head on the ground, and began to howl. I picked her up and tried to calm her but she fought her way out of my arms still snivelling and stumbled back to join the game.

  Eleanor and I walked back to the Abbey in silence. I stopped in the gatehouse and she went on into the Abbey precinct. I sat on the bench in the gatehouse in order to clean the mud from the road off the soles of my shoes with a stick. Father Pomfret appeared. It was obvious from his appearance and demeanour that he had stopped on the way from the Broad Hall to fill or refill himself with ale. Ale loosened his tongue. He slumped down beside me.

  ‘May I speak with you, Sister Agnes?’

  ‘Of course, Father.’

  ‘I think perhaps you understand human nature and its frailties.’

  ‘I hope I do, Father.’

  And then he began to speak about himself, with a great pressure of talk. He told me that his late father was an under-steward in Salisbury, in the palace of the Bishop.

  ‘Not this one, not Shaxton, but the one before the one before.’

  His father worked all hours and at the whim of his superiors and of the Bishop. He had not liked to see his father so craven and so obligated.

  ‘I was enamoured – enamoured, you must understand, when I was a boy, by the liturgy and the ritual and the music. Salisbury Cathedral. The candles and the colours and the incense and gold. The unspeakable beauty of God. Only in the Cathedral did I see beauty. Everything outside its great doors was squalor. I wanted to serve God Himself, directly. I did not want to serve like my father some human acolyte of God. So I studied, and was ordained a priest. And have ended up here, in a house of women, hearing their petty confessions. It is not what I intended for myself. It is not. It is not.’

  He spoke as if he were making his confession to me, instead of me making my usual dishonest confession to him. And he had not finished.

  ‘Because you see, Sister Agnes, I have weaknesses. Urges. I am riddled with what I fear is sinfulness. But I do not harm those little ones. I swear to you. Christ says in the gospels, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me.” And they do come unto me.’

  He pulled a bottle out from somewhere within his garments and took a swallow. He began to ramble, and I understood but slowly that he was talking about his desire for boys.

  ‘Some of them do not mind. They come for the penny and the sweets. And maybe they love me too, a little. Am I deceiving myself? I think not. The ones who find no love at home, or who have no home. I can give them love.’

  ‘And the ones who do mind? Who run away?’

  I was thinking of Dick and Weasel.

  ‘They are just silly boys. They do not understand.’

  Oh God, he took another draught from his bottle. This could only get worse.

  ‘My only true and honest life lies in what men may say is my sin, or is it just a weakness? I made a vow of celibacy and indeed I have violated no woman. But I am a dead man, outside the joy that my desires brings me. Is it a sin, Sister?’

  I thought perhaps it was not but remained silent because I wished him to refrain from unburdening himself further. It was unseemly.

  ‘Whence comes this love, this joy, this rapture, if not from Christ Himself, who is all love?’

  I did not know what to say to him. Looking back, it seems to me that Christ cannot be greatly concerned about whom or what or how we love, so long as we do love.

  I said: ‘So long as we do no harm.’

  ‘Sometimes I let into my lodging older boys, young men, rough types from the town. After dark. There is danger in it. They could do me harm. The danger is – delicious.’

  He seemed unwell, fetching his breath with difficulty, his chest rasping.

  ‘But enough, enough. What does it all matter, now.’

  ‘But then what does matter now, Father?’

  I really wanted to know.

  ‘Nothing matters. And everything matters. It’s the same thing. It depends on your point of view. Look to yourself, Agnes Peppin.’

  He lurched to his feet and shambled away into the precinct. I sat there, bewildered, wishing I had given him some comfort, unsavoury though he was. I do think that he was a little crazy that day. But was there not a logic and even a wisdom in all that he said, and what do I know?

  We had until the end of April to make our arrangements. That month was bitterly cold, colder than February, though there were more and larger snowdrops in the cloister garden than ever before. I saw them as a good omen. Something surely would happen to bring us redemption.

  The icy wind tore at our garments and scoured our faces and hands. We wore our cloaks and hoods all day, indoors and out. Our clothes were always damp, and our outer garments stiff with frost when we put them on after being in bed. Wetness seeped up through the flagstones even within doors, and froze overnight. The older sisters were always slipping and falling. My feet and hands were never warm. The earth outside was rock-hard, with a scattering of snow which did not melt.

  Dick was ill. Weasel wheeled him round in the handcart with Finbarr prancing alongside. Many of the sisters fell ill too and the infirmary was overwhelmed.

  ‘My chest hurts,’ said Dick. ‘When I breathe.’

  I found him an extra blanket and told him to lie down in the kennel-house. After that he slept. Weasel and Finbarr sat beside him. Weasel was not well either. He shivered and coughed. I brought them bread, but Dick remained asleep and Weasel gave both their shares to Finbarr.

  When I went to see them the next morning Weasel was lying down and could barely speak for coughing. Dick was dead. I said nothing to Weasel, and went to tell the Steward. When they came to take Dick away, Finbarr growled and bared her teeth. Weasel did not even notice. He died that evening alone while we were at Vespers.

  The labourers buried the boys after dark in the lay churchyard – shallowly, the ground was so hard. They died unshriven. But they had committed no mortal sins
and I prayed to St Nicholas, the patron saint of children, to intercede for them. Old Father Bucket unwillingly muttered a few prayers over their shared grave, then scuttled back out of the wind, his hood up and hands tucked into his sleeves. I was the only other person there to hear him speak the words. Afterwards I cried and cried, in my cubicle in the dorter. I loved Dick and Weasel.

  Finbarr would not leave the place where the boys were buried. No one could approach her. She snarled, she became savage. After a couple of days the Steward sent orders that she should be killed. When I saw a workman approaching her with an iron bar, I could not endure it and pleaded with him to spare her. I was so distressed that he lumbered off, swearing at me and throwing down the bar. I sat down on the ground beside Finbarr and talked to her and stroked her, and slipped her rope collar over her head, and she came away with me.

  She has become my dog. She lives in the kennel-house and I bring her food, and I exercise her on the rope. Sometimes I tether her to the old handcart and she will sit in it bolt upright and front paws together, her nose to the wind, waiting for the boys to come back.

  Perhaps they have been spared Limbo and are running and laughing together in Paradise, waiting for Finbarr to join them. I imagine Paradise to be a green sunlit garden, with a river running through it and kingfishers and dragonflies. Perhaps I would have done better to let her go to them there straight away, and not saved her life. Mother Onion says there is no Heaven for animals because they have no souls. I do not know how anyone can be certain about that.

  After the momentous meeting in the Chapter House, Mother Onion became an old woman overnight. She all but lost the use of her legs and could only move about with the help of two sticks. As for our greedy Sister Catherine Hunt, she lost her wits. She scampered around brandishing an ale-bottle filled with what she said was holy water, cackling with laughter and sprinkling the water on anyone who did not get out of her way quickly enough. The bedridden creatures in the Infirmary, who could not evade her, were soaked.

  ‘Sister Catherine is away with the fairies,’ said Mother Onion.

  At the next meeting in the Chapter House the sisters broke out of their silence and wailed out their woe. A discordant choir of fear and grief. The Fairheads did not weep, they stared around them, aghast, frightened like children by such misrule even though they themselves had never embraced any Rule.

  I wept, not for myself only but for injustice and cruelty so smoothly accomplished. I wish I had stabbed Tregonwell in the nape of his thick neck with the small sharp knife in my belt on the day of the signing. Yes, I could have done it. That was a sinful thought and I pushed it away.

  Only my Melancholy did not weep or cry out. She sat upright, like Finbarr, with her hands folded in her lap.

  Mother Onion staggered to her feet and howled through her sobs how she could never return to Ireland, she did not know the way.

  ‘My family will not know me now. There is no place for me at all in this world, I will die among strangers.’

  Sister Mary Amor went over to Mother Onion and made her sit, stroking her face while the wailing of the sisters rose and fell. That weak wailing will echo among the stars until the Day of Judgment. Faith, fortitude, dignity, lost and gone with everything else.

  The Abbess finally raised her hand for silence. There was no reassurance she could give and she attempted none.

  ‘Before each of you leave, you should collect your pension for this coming year from the Treasurer’s office. The amount each one of us receives is a private matter. There will, I implore you, be no resentful comparisons. Sisters who have been here the longest or who have served the Abbey in an official capacity as an Obedientiary will naturally receive more than some others. But you must believe that I have striven to ensure that each one of you receives her due and that no one will be without the makings of a new life outside the Abbey.’

  She took a deep breath and made the sign of the Cross over us all.

  ‘All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. That is not my saying, it is the saying of a holy nun who died more than a hundred years ago. I want you to carry her words in your heart always, wherever you are. God bless and keep us all.’

  Then she left the Chapter House.

  Afterwards we clustered in the cloister. We needed to be together, as if of one mind though we were not. This last Chapter broke the community into fragments. That was our actual dissolution. We were all afraid of being left alone. Sister Catherine, her bottle empty, but still frenzied, came up close to me and whispered in my ear:

  ‘There will be changes. I am to be Bishop now. It will soon be announced. I have had intimations. You will be my chaplain.’

  I put my arms round her and rocked her back and forth.

  We moved into the parlour, drawn by music. Father Robert Parker was in there alone, playing a melody on his lute, idly, with stops and starts. We sat and stood around him and listened to the music. No one spoke. He changed key and began to sing to us in his clear light voice:

  ‘I had a little nut tree

  Nothing would it bear,

  But a silver nutmeg

  And a golden pear.

  The King of Spain’s daughter

  Came to visit me,

  And all for the sake

  Of my little nut tree.’

  It is a sweet air, one of the old songs that my mother used to sing to the dead. So the words cannot be about our King and his first Queen, who did come from Spain. Maybe it is about another King. I suspect there is a lewdness in the words, if one knew. Just then the bell rang for Holy Office. We did not expect this. Tregonwell had ordered the clock to be stopped. A few old dames rose and moved off towards the church, as dogs called by a whistle. The rest of us stayed where we were.

  ‘It does not matter now,’ said Anne Cathcart.

  If it does not matter now, why was it important only yesterday, and the day before, and for hundreds of years before that? The farmers report to the Abbess that crops are failing, animal are dying, lands are flooded, the winters are more cruel – I can certainly vouch for that. It is the Hand of God, punishing His children. But God is just, so it is we who are at fault. How can we atone? The Abbess says there will always be nuns and monks praying somewhere, if only in other lands. But there are thunderstorms, lightning strikes, sicknesses. Not just the end of Shaftesbury Abbey but the End of Days may be at hand. That’s what Sister Onora says.

  My Melancholy stood up. We all looked at her. She raised her arms high and wide, dropped her head sideways, and began to dip and turn, slowly, and then quicker and quicker, her habit whirling.

  I could not believe my eyes. Melancholy was dancing! Robert adjusted his playing to her dance, following her steps, leading her on.

  I stood up and began to dance too, and one by one so did almost all of us. We wheeled round and round the parlour table each in her own way, touching fingers as we passed, jigging and kicking our legs, veils all awry, until – soon, and suddenly – Robert clamped his hand over the lute-strings, the music stopped and we fell back against the walls and on to the stools round the table, gasping. Robert had seen, as we had not, the Abbess standing in the doorway.

  Only my Melancholy continued to dance, slow and stately now, to a music in her head, finishing what she had begun. If she saw the Abbess it made no difference to her, and the Abbess, white-faced in the half-light, did not stay.

  My Melancholy stopped dancing and stood stock-still, tears pouring down her face. She wept and wept, dragging sobs from deep within. It was frightening. I was nearest to her, and went to embrace her. She is taller than I, it was like embracing a tree. I drew her over to the table and made her sit down. She looked round at our flushed faces, one by one, and for the first time I believe since she came to the Abbey, she smiled. Her face, still wet with tears, was shining.

  ‘Forgive me, sisters. I do not know what possessed me.’

  ‘Was it the Devil?’ asked the littlest Fairhead. ‘I saw a raven
fly over when we passed through the cloister just now.’

  She took the gold pin from the top of her veil, put it in her mouth, adjusted the folds of the veil and repositioned the pin, all without taking her eyes off Melancholy.

  ‘It was not the Devil. It was not grief. It was not fear. It was not joy. It was – it is …’

  She shook her head. ‘I do not have the words.’ She took deep calm breaths and smiled again.

  Was it freedom? My Melancholy could fly free? But not I think only from the Abbey and its routines and the Rule. It was more than that, although until that moment I could not have conceived that anything could be more than that.

  We were like a community again because the tension was broken and we had one vast problem in common. We who were not yet old began to talk fast between ourselves. What might we do? Where might we go? What is London like? How hard is it to take ship to the Continent? Do you have a father, a brother who would take you in? Would the pension run to leasing a tenement and an orchard?

  Castles in the air. And it was an illusion, we were not really a community any more, because every one of us was, in her heart, keeping secret the paltry possibilities of her own future.

  The gales of uncertainty blew us apart and blew us together, back and forth. The more isolated each of us felt, the more we sought to cleave together. How can ‘cleave’ mean both to separate, and to cling? Spin the coin. And after the strange dancing, something even more strange happened.

  The following afternoon the sisters began to laugh. They gathered in the cloister and looked at one another and could not stop laughing. In a mindless way they were utterly of one mind. They laughed until the tears poured down their cheeks and their noses ran and they choked. They laughed themselves to a halt, gasping and clutching their stomachs, then caught another’s eye, and set off laughing again, and set all the others off again. It was an infection. They were having fits. Fits of laughing. They were laughing at nothing. They were laughing because all the others were laughing. They did not really look as if it was giving them pleasure. They just could not stop laughing. Anne was among them, and all the Fairheads, and Mother Onion and Catherine Hunt and the Novice Mistress and even Eleanor. All laughing. Drawn by the noise, and watching from the archway to the slype, I felt the twitch and the itch of it and for two pins I would have stepped among them and joined in. But the Prioress came up beside me and thanks be to God the moment passed.