‘Shall I fetch the Infirmaress?’ I asked. ‘Or the Abbess? Or the Steward? Our sisters have all gone quite mad.’
‘No,’ she said. She held tight on to my sleeve, which was just as well.
‘I have seen this before. In a convent in France. It is something that happens to women and girls. The worst thing you can do is try and stop them, or reprimand them. Any intervention sends them off again. They must be left. It will blow over. They will exhaust themselves and the devil-spirit will go from them.’
She was right. At supper it was as if nothing had happened. We talk and think so much in the religious life about suppressing the self and being of one mind. It can lead, I now see, down some peculiar paths.
My own cleaving was other. I walked slowly with Dorothy Clausey round and round the precinct in the chill of the wind. We were lost in our own thoughts and did not speak much, but it was comforting to be together. I was going to miss her. I had an impulse to give her something of mine. No, not my emerald dolphin, not that. As we went round the cloister for the second time, I pulled off my green hood, which I had retrieved with my other belongings from the Chambress.
‘Would you like to have this? To wear, to remember me by?’
She flushed and smiled and put it on and looked at me.
‘It becomes you, it brings out the green in your eyes.’
‘Thank you. Thank you, Agnes Peppin.’
‘What are you going to do? Have you decided?’
We sat down on a bench under cover and out of the wind.
‘Did Dame Elizabeth not tell you? I thought she told you everything.’
No, Dame Elizabeth had told me nothing. Dorothy grimaced. Dame Elizabeth, she said, had received a visitor from London, from one of Master Cromwell’s people on his way to inspect Glastonbury Abbey, requesting that arrangements should be made somehow for Dorothy to remain in Shaftesbury.
‘It would be inconvenient for me to appear in London. That was the word: inconvenient. But it was an order.’
‘Because of your father?’
‘Yes. I am the Cardinal’s – I will not say the word. I am an inconvenience, an embarrassment. Dame Elizabeth sent for me to tell me this, and she was kind enough, but I was stiff with her, I was mortified. I told her that I would comply, and remain in Shaftesbury, but that I would make my own arrangements.’
‘But where will you go? How will you live?’
She looked me in the eye and said, ‘I am going to live with the Winterbournes.’
I was aghast. My scholarly, nervous Dorothy, in that cabin with no windows, day and night, shut in there with the two Johns, and Emilia and Little John, and – and then, then I understood.
‘You will be with Esther!’
‘I will be with Esther.’
She smiled, her eyes brimming with tears.
Of course. She can never look after Esther on her own. Do not ask me why, but she cannot. With Emilia in charge, and the two Johns to provide for them, Dorothy can learn to be content. Her tears were tears of hope. I had a flash of seeing how it might be. There may be more children for Dorothy and Emilia. Maybe no one will ever know which John fathered which? I laughed inwardly at this thought, though the idea of such mixings in such close and foetid quarters is disagreeable.
But in the long summer evenings the fields and woods down the steep lanes outside the town are above all things agreeable. Dorothy’s father may have been the Cardinal, but the Cardinal’s father was a butcher, like my father. There is common blood in her veins. Such an arrangement as she envisaged will not be is unprecedented, life being what it is and love being wherever you can find it.
I cannot tell whether Dorothy’s imagination ran quite so far ahead as mine did. I rather think not.
‘I shall teach Esther and Little John to read and write. I shall teach Esther to understand Latin. I might have a little school, just for girls.’
Truly her face, framed by my green hood, was radiant.
‘What will you do?’ I asked Anne Cathcart.
We were walking down into the Park, away from everyone. She linked her arm in mine, leaning into me. I shall miss her easy, fleshly affection.
‘I shall go back to London. It is where I belong. The Percevals will take me in, for my father’s sake of course, until I establish myself.’
‘But they said you might be in danger. I did not really understand.’
Anne stopped, I stopped, and she pulled out the ring, on its string, from the top of her tunic. She turned it in her hand.
‘You are a little obtuse sometimes, Agnes. But I will tell you.’
So she confessed to me at last the whole story. She had told me before that she was a good acquaintance of Mary Zouche, who was lady-in-waiting to Ann Boleyn before the King married her. She used to visit Mary Zouche in Anne Boleyn’s apartments when the lady herself was absent.
‘Did you see Anne Boleyn?’
‘No, I never did. So, one day, while Mary Zouche was in a closet off the bedchamber, folding laundered nightgowns and laying them in a chest, I picked up a diamond ring from an open box on the table. I put it in my pocket.’
‘Why that one?’
‘I knew about it. We used to go through all Anne Boleyn’s belongings, trying things on. That was normal, anyone in such a situation does that. How would one not, why would one not?’
She had not particularly coveted the ring. It was not showy. The thick gold band was good, but the diamond was uncut and unpolished. Yet she knew it was the most valuable one of all, because la Zouche had told her so.
‘I did not decide to take it. My hand did it.’
I can well imagine how that might be.
The loss of the valuable ring was swiftly noticed.
‘Mary Zouche was dismissed and to save her skin she named me as the only possible thief. I had to run away. I had to leave London, or I would have been arrested.’
So, having nowhere to go, and being of good family, she applied to enter Shaftesbury Abbey.
‘Piers Perceval spoke for me to the Abbess and provided my dowry – a good one, a mill in Dorchester.’
‘But why should he do that? What was his interest?’
‘You are being obtuse again. Let’s just say he had, still has, a long-standing interest. In, ahem, me.’
I still found it puzzling.
‘And then you contacted Mary Zouche again? To find out about the Abbess?’
‘I was so very curious, when I first came here. I do like to know things. Knowing things always comes in useful.’
‘Did Mary tell you what relation she was to our Dame Elizabeth?’
‘She told me nothing at all, and worse still she let it be known that I had been making disobliging enquiries about our Abbess, and it was reported to her. The Abbess looks just as they all look, but no one knows which one fathered her or who her mother was. The Zouche men are incontinent and not fastidious as to the beds they lie in at night as they ride around the country. There are lads and girls in all the villages calling themselves Zouche who work as day-labourers and servants. Our Abbess was a fortunate one.’
‘Perhaps she had a Piers Perceval of her own.’
‘I think we’ll never know.’
We had reached at the bottom of the Park and were walking beside the fishponds.
‘You could throw the ring into the water, now. Then you would be safe.’
‘Are you quite mad? Listen, Agnes. Anne Boleyn is dead. God only knows where Mary Zouche is now. She is probably married off to some halfwit gentleman and living in a crumbling castle at the back of beyond. Or she may be dead. Dead would be best. I shall sell the ring in London. No diamond merchant in Hatton Garden will think to enquire how I come to have it. He will look at it through his glass and all he will recognise is its quality. He will think about how little he dare offer for it and how much he dare ask for it afterwards. I shall drive a hard bargain. Then I shall hire with the proceeds a house in a good street, and rent out apartments, and give ent
ertainments. Piers Perceval will introduce me to all his friends – Sir Thomas Wyatt I hear is back in favour – and to ladies who desire to widen their social circle.’
We did not speak as we walked back, because Anne carries much soft flesh and finds it hard to get her breath when walking uphill. I had time to think over what she said. It seemed to me that Anne meant to become a fashionable kind of brothel-keeper. She will surely thrive, for a while anyway. She is handsome and generous and ruthless. Her judgment is not always sound, however, so when we reached the top, I said:
‘You might have to watch out for Mistress Agnes Perceval. She seems like a jealous woman who could do you harm.’
‘Do not speak of what you do not understand, Agnes Peppin. You are impertinent and know nothing of the great world.’
That is true.
Anne was angry. She walked away from me and called back over her shoulder:
‘Go back to the butcher’s shop where you belong, Agnes Peppin!’
But when we met outside the church next morning after Mass she laughed and opened her arms to me and we embraced. She bore no grudge and honest to God neither did I. Anne is Anne.
I came upon Dame Philippa and Dame Joanna sitting on the ground in a sheltered corner of the bakehouse court, their walking-sticks at their feet. They turned their faces towards me when they heard my footsteps on the stones, and I greeted them.
‘Is that you, Sister Agnes? The light hurts my eyes and I cannot tell.’ That was Dame Joanna. They shifted closer together and Dame Philippa patted the ground, indicating that I might sit with them.
‘What will you do? Where will you go?’ I asked them, with trepidation, because I could not think what they could possibly do, or anywhere they could possibly go.
They beamed at me. Dame Joanna leant forward, straining across Dame Philippa’s amplitude:
‘We will go nowhere. We are going to remain here!’
And they nodded in unison, still beaming.
Had they lost their senses? I explained with a heavy heart that none of us could stay here. Our community was dissolved. Our Abbey will be destroyed. We have to leave. It is over, for us.
‘No. We have heard,’ said Dame Joanna, ‘that the chantry priests’ tenements are not being demolished. Or not straight away. We heard the workmen talking. There is nothing of value there for the robbers, you see.’
‘We have decided,’ said Dame Philippa, ‘that we will move by night into Father Robert’s house as soon as he leaves. It is not so large as Father Bucket’s or some of the others, but it will smell less foul. No one will know we are there. When the robbers have departed, we shall venture out.’
‘But how will you live, what will you eat?’
‘We will beg for bread in the town. And we know where the barrels of last year’s onions and roots are hidden. The Steward has shown us. His boy Gregory is going to help us to carry some in baskets to our new home when the time comes. We shall make pottage.’
‘Will we have no peas or beans for the pottage?’ said Dame Joanna. ‘I do love beans, I need beans, I would miss beans.’
‘The Lord will provide, sister. We may find beans. Later, there will be blackberries, and apples from the orchard.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Dame Joanna rocked back and forth, hugging herself. ‘We shall have plenty.’
I was not convinced.
‘What if they destroy the wellhead and block up the well?’
‘What if, what if, little Sister Agnes? We shall find water. All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’
They were looking forward. I stood up and kissed each old face in turn. No one had been caring for them in these recent days. The creases in their faces were inlaid with dirt. Their habits were so worn and soiled, their wimples so creased and askew, that it would take little to transform them into the kind of poor old women one saw on every street corner. And if the citizens of Shaftesbury recognised them for what they were, they would surely take pity.
‘What we shall pray for,’ said Dame Philippa, holding tightly on to my hand, ‘is that God in his mercy when he takes one of us, will take the other at the same time. So that we may enter into Heaven together and stand before God’s Holy Mother together. We have always been together. If you pray for us, in the days to come, will you pray that this may come to pass?’
I have so prayed, many times.
As I walked away, I heard them calling after me: ‘Sister Agnes, do you know what is to happen to the Abbess’s bed-curtains? Which we worked for her with our own hands? Will she carry them with her when she leaves? Will the robbers take them?’
This was too painful. I knew they had already been torn down. I pretended not to have heard.
I was worried about what I would do about Finbarr when I left the Abbey. My plans were vague. I might have to walk the roads for many days. How would I find food for her? I might wish to call upon the Zouches at Cockhill, or on my grandmother Hibberd in Tisbury, in the event that I had the courage or the wit or the means to reach either place. Even though I had my emerald dolphin to prove who I was, a shabby young woman leading an exhausted dog on a string would appear a vagrant, and might be turned away. But I was unwilling to part with Finbarr.
I had also suspected for some time that Finbarr was in pup. I always tried to keep an eye on her when she came into season, but she was a little stouter, and her tits were standing out on her belly. So I was not altogether surprised when I found her in the kennel with five tiny creatures, brown and white and flat-nosed and as ugly as sin. I do not care to think to which of the foul chained-up curs she had crept up one dark night in her need. The pups scrabbled all over each other to get at their mother, who looked up at me trustingly.
‘Oh Finbarr! What are we going to do?’
I fetched Dorothy, who sat beside Finbarr and stroked her head. We looked at one another in despair. I did not intend or plan to say what I did:
‘When I leave the Abbey, will you keep Finbarr?’
I began to cry as a child cries, unstoppably, my hands covering my face. A hard stony something crumbled in my heart and the crying came, and not only for Finbarr. Dorothy did not try to comfort me. She sat there on the ground stroking Finbarr and looking at me.
‘But would she stay with me? Would she be happy with me?’
I stopped crying. We had to think.
‘She knows you almost as well as she knows me.’
‘But first we have to dispose of the pups.’
I went to fetch Gregory, and he came with a sack and took four of the pups away. He left one with its mother until the following day, so that the shock of separation would be lessened for her. I do not know whether he drowned them, or gave them away, or sold them. I did not really care.
Finbarr recovered fast. We devised a plan to decide her future. It seems so mad, to think of it now. Like an ordeal, as if we were trying witches, or as of we were witches ourselves. Or like jousting, without lances. It was Dorothy’s idea. She is a strange woman. ‘Not like other people.’ That is what my father said about my mother. Perhaps Dorothy is indeed a witch, or could be. Perhaps my mother is a witch, or could be. Yet no one is ‘like other people’ once you really know them. If any one of us is a witch, then we are all witches.
This is what we did. We walked Finbarr to a flat place near the top of the Park. I told her:
‘Sit. Stay.’
Finbarr is good about that. She can be relied upon to do that.
Dorothy and I moved away twenty paces in opposite directions, and turned. As agreed, I counted to three, raised my hand, and Dorothy and I both called in unison: ‘Finbarr come!’
Finbarr looked at me, looked at Dorothy, put her nose to the ground and sniffed, ran to Dorothy and sat at her feet looking up into her face.
So that was that. It was not inevitable, it could have turned out otherwise. If my voice were louder. If the wind were blowing from the other direction, if some scent in the grass between Finbarr and
Dorothy were less alluring. Who knows?
Finbarr would live with Dorothy and the two children and the two Johns in the hovel on Bimport.
‘When the time comes,’ I said. ‘When the time comes. And – afterwards – I will come back and visit you.’
‘Of course,’ said Dorothy.
‘Meanwhile, she will stay with me.’
‘Of course,’ said Dorothy, adjusting the green hood. There was a strong west wind every day in that last week.
Relief and heartbreak. Opposite sides of the same coin.
I need now to consult with someone wiser than myself about my own future. Not Anne Cathcart, not Dorothy, not my Melancholy. Not the Abbess either.
I need someone not too close, and someone discreet, who might address my difficulties without being excessively intrigued or self-concerned. I really do need help.
I thought of Sister Mary Amor. She is sensible and reasonable. I think she is comfortable with daily life and its challenges, and does not torture herself with scruples or with what might have been. She agreed to meet me in the slype. It was going to be a cold night with no moon, and so unlikely that anyone else would be there.
It was indeed cold and dark in the slype. Pale illumination filtered in from the cressets in the cloister. We drew our cloaks around us and raised our hoods and sat close together. It is easier to speak freely when neither can see the other’s face. I did not want to be searching Mary’s expression for contempt or boredom.
‘What will you do?’ I asked her.
‘There is nothing that I can do. My whole life is in this place. Do not give it another thought.’
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