The Butcher's Daughter

by Victoria Glendinning

  There was no point in my attempting to go after her. When the Devil is in her, Finbarr is not to be caught. She did not reappear until daylight end, and then only because she was hungry. I gave her some bread in broth. There was no purpose in being angry with her. She would have no notion of why she was being punished. I watched her as she gobbled her food. I knew exactly what she would have done down in the Park. She would have buried the bag as she buries all her stolen treasures.

  What she buried has no value. It is possible that the true remains of St Edward were lost or stolen, and substitutions quietly made, and nothing said. It is equally possible that St Edward was saintly. Because I never did understood his story. He became King when he was thirteen years old and was murdered by relatives who wished his half-brother to be King. I do not see why that makes him a saint and a martyr. He was the grandson of our first Abbess. Maybe it was a family matter and he was made a saint in compensation for the wrong done to him.

  For it seems there is no spiritual advantage to souls after death that cannot be bought or sold or bargained for. Meanwhile, what was I going to do?

  I decided to do nothing at all. If I told my story there would be wailing and outcry. The Abbess would be furious, and mortified, and maybe punished, for having her ruse for the rescue of the relics known. Finbarr would be arraigned as the Devil’s tool and killed, and a search of the Park would be called for.

  The Park is vast, and the ground, even where it is not covered by trees and bushes, is much grubbed up by rabbits, deer, foxes, badgers. The bag would never be found.

  I persuaded myself that the Abbess in her wisdom, or what remained of it, would approve of my decision to keep silent, and also that it would be kinder in me not to lay this burden of knowledge upon her. Again, what is not put into words has not happened. If in the future I have to account for the bones I shall tell some monstrous lie.

  Finbarr curled up beside me where I sat on the ground and went to sleep. I stroked her silky ears. I still sometimes, even now, think about that bag of pig’s bones. There, I have named the animal. The bundle will not have lasted long. The canvas and the silk wrapping will have rotted away, and the bones themselves been chewed or scattered by the animals.

  I can give no coherent account of the final few weeks. The destroyers move in. The roof of the Abbey Church is brought down. The precinct has always been alive with noise, but it was the noise of repairing and making, not of destroying. Walking in the precinct, we pick our way through rubble and around smouldering fires and piles of wood and lead. Fragments of stone carving, grotesque heads, the hands and the feet of holy images lie scattered around. A charnel house. It was on one of the first days that the old nun I mentioned before was struck on the head by a gargoyle on her way to the kitchen, and died instantly. I have also told how I went into the church after the destroyers had stopped work for the day, and saw my sisters standing apart and aghast in the roofless nave, and encountered Father Pomfret. I did not tell it all. Not the worst sacrilege.

  The beautiful Holy Rood, the great crucifix with the gaunt figure of the dead Christ hanging from it, lay awkwardly across the top of the nave. An arm of the cross was broken off, and Christ Himself lay face down on the ground, torn away.

  The back of the figure was not shaped or coloured at all, except for streaks of paint round the edges. It was just a piece of splintery old timber, scarred by marks of tools and nails.

  Someone came up behind me and stood close. I knew from the odour that it was Father Pomfret. He was no longer insane, but he was not totally sane either. I moved a little distance away. He stood there staring at the meaningless lumber at our feet.

  ‘It is all mummery. Cheap mummery. It always was.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’

  I could not engage with him about the Holy Rood only ever being a representation. Its crudity was shocking. But I would not comfort him. Because of what is happening I am becoming less kind. I have little tolerance.

  ‘It is sad,’ I said. ‘It is just very sad.’

  That was when I stooped and picked up the lion tile from among the dislodged floor-tiles beside the broken Cross and went away from him.

  The next evening we sang our last Vespers in the ruined choir under the dark sky. We never ever knew, until a moment before, who would be called upon by the Prioress to give out, alone, the first phrases of the Magnificat. She would point her baton, and the chosen one would take a deep breath and begin. I was never chosen. My voice does not carry. Dorothy Clausey was not there. The Prioress pointed at Eleanor Wilmer. Her voice has depth.

  Our open-air singing that evening had little resonance, but I think the chanting was more carefully done than ever before. It was perfect. Before we finished a small rain began to fall. Our veils were damp as we moved afterwards into the body of the church – the headless body of the church – carrying tapers. Owls called above our heads, and there was a scuttering in the dimness of the nave from some animal or animals whom we were disturbing with our footfalls.

  We saw then why animals were in the nave, and what had lured them in. There was a dark mass on the floor which did not seem to be just another pile of masonry or timber. We gathered around it with our tapers. It was the corpse of a man. It was the corpse of Father Louis Pomfret. There were stab-wounds in the back of his neck. Congealing blood lay in a sticky pool around his head, which lay downwards. I could not help thinking of black pudding. I wondered if anyone had ever made black pudding with human blood. I expect so, because there is nothing that could happen which has not happened, somewhere, at some time. The Prioress bent and turned him with her foot, and we saw his face. There were more stab wounds all around his throat, the gashes livid now, the blood having ceased to flow. The deed must have been done some time ago.

  The Prioress sent someone for the Steward. The rest of us remained, keeping watch, motionless. The Steward and Gregory came with lanterns and a handcart.

  ‘It would be for the best, ladies, if you left us now,’ said the Steward, and we did. I do not know if the blood was ever cleaned away. What does it matter? I did not go into the church ever again, not once.

  If anyone, other than the perpetrator, knows who murdered Father Louis Pomfret, they have not yet told me. We talk about it, but guardedly, and do not speculate. It is too dangerous, and perhaps better not to know. Every single man and woman in the Abbey carries a knife for the needs of daily life, and everyone takes pride in keeping them sharp. We sisters call them our ‘little sharpies’. The killer or killers could have been from among the rough young men of the town whom poor Father Pomfret found so dangerous and delectable. It would be impossible to interrogate the hundred or so souls who came and went from the Abbey in those last days. The machinery of the Abbey’s law and enforcement was no longer in operation in any case.

  During the night I did wonder if Anne Cathcart had done it, to shut his mouth about her theft of the ring. But next day she was the same as ever. Surely one could not do such a thing and remain so calm. But perhaps one could? A mission successfully accomplished? I even wondered whether the murder had been ordered by the Abbess, because of what he might have known about her antecedents. She kept within her house and did not appear at the burial, clumsily conducted by Father Bucket.

  I did not regret Father Pomfret’s death. No one could. He will not be missed. But I did find consolation for such horror in the thought that our last and lovely Vespers served as his requiem.

  The murder of Father Pomfret was like a disturbing dream. It might as well not have happened, because a new horror obliterated it. The death of our unloved priest was petty compared with what happened at Glastonbury Abbey. We could think and speak of nothing else.

  Our Abbess and her friend Abbot Richard Whiting of Glastonbury were always on good though not confidential terms. I saw the letters which passed between them, as they kept one another abreast of the state of the country and the fate of different religious Houses. I would read his aloud to her, and transcribe
her replies. Their letters were circumspect. Letters could be intercepted.

  I recall their discussing the fates of the surrendered abbeys in our West Country, and the fates of the heads of these Houses. He thought to amaze her by telling her about Sherborne Abbey. Its new Abbot Barnstable and his sixteen remaining monks had just surrendered to the Commissioners. But Sherborne Abbey would not be destroyed. Sir John Horsey, wrote Abbot Whiting, was negotiating with the Crown – for which read Master Thomas Cromwell – to buy the Abbey and its properties for himself.

  Well, the Abbess was not amazed, we knew all about that that already, from Sir Thomas Arundell. For once we were ahead of the news. We knew too that Sir John Horsey was selling the great Abbey Church to the parishioners of Sherborne, cheaply, thus healing more than a hundred years of bad feeling in the town and securing its survival. So Sir John Horsey was not a bad or avaricious creature, and not all the opportunities grasped by the new men are selfish ones.

  Dame Elizabeth Zouche’s response to the Sherborne story was that she wished heartily that someone such as Sir John Arundell had negotiated for Shaftesbury Abbey in time to save it from demolition. But Arundell unfortunately had no desire to prevent the destruction. Abbot Whiting’s latest letter, I remember, contained the words:

  ‘I will not go quietly. Glastonbury Abbey will never surrender.’

  That was more than a month ago.

  *

  And now came this, the news that made Father Pomfret’s death pale into insignificance. I saw through an open door the young messenger ride in through the gatehouse in the evening. He and his horse were both sweating and panting; he must have come as fast as he could and Glastonbury is a good distance off, about twenty-five miles I do believe. He threw the reins to Gregory and shouted that he must see the Abbess at once.

  I went on with what I was doing, which was helping the Chambress to sort through chests of gowns and tunics belonging to nuns before they took the habit – nuns who were mostly now dead. Normally, we give some away every year to poor women in the town. Now we were picking out the best to distribute among those professed sisters who do not wish to leave the Abbey and face the world wearing religious dress. Not that religious dress is so different from normal clothes – mainly a matter of colour, or lack of it, and of a severity around the head and in the wimple.

  Something happens to garments which are folded away for a long time. They die, they lose their spirit, the moths and the damp get in. It was a dispiriting exercise. There we sat on the ground, making piles of possibles and impossibles, when Dame Elizabeth’s little maid appeared at the door saying that Madam required me immediately.

  In her parlour, stripped now of all grace and all ornament, all tapestries, holy pictures, cushions, furniture, the Abbess sat on a stool like any other woman. Standing before her in the empty space was the young messenger.

  ‘Write,’ she said to me. ‘Make notes of what he has to say. This gentleman is – he was – the body servant of the Abbot of Glastonbury.’

  It was uncomfortable because I had to squat on the floor with paper and ink and quill beside me, propped on one elbow, since there was no trestle, and no stool other than the Abbess’s. I could have stood, but then there would have been only my hand to support the paper. I have never written so badly or so illegibly.

  The young man was unstrung. He was haranguing Dame Elizabeth, he was unstoppable.

  ‘Do you know, Madam, what this means? Hung, drawn and quartered? Our dear Abbot with Brother Ambrose and Brother William, two of his most loving monks, were tied to hurdles and the hurdles were fixed to the backs of horses, he was dragged from the Abbey to the Tor and all the way up to the top where they’d put up gibbets. I followed. I couldn’t keep up with the horses. They hanged him. Half-naked. He has a sore place on his chest, an insect-bite, I treated it with ointment just the night before, in his bed. I could see it.’

  He put his hands over his face. The Abbess waited, immobile. He raised his head and went on.

  ‘The hanging did not kill him. They did not intend it to. They cut him down and he fell and they took their knives and cut off his privates and stuck their knives into his belly and pulled out his guts with their hands. I was there and I could do nothing at all to help him. I could not tell the moment when his soul flew free from his body but I pray it was fast.’

  He paused again. I looked around for water or wine to offer him, but there was nothing. He went on.

  ‘Then they chopped him into four pieces and threw the bloody bits into a basket. The same with Ambrose and William, George, whom I love well. I could bear it no longer and ran away down the hill. Now the Abbot’s head is fixed on the west door of the Abbey Church, I have seen it. I have seen it, Madam. Parts of him have been carried away to be exposed in other places. The Abbey is deserted. The town is silent, everyone is stunned. Our Glastonbury today is Hell on earth. Hell, I say … And these things are done in God’s name.’

  With that, he gave a cry like that of a despairing child, and slumped down on his haunches against the wall, his head in his hands, shaking. I have never seen a young man so undone, so distressed, and I do not wonder at it. We were in shock ourselves, speechless.

  When he had calmed himself a little, the Abbess thanked him formally for his visit.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

  He was on his way to his father’s house in Warminster.

  ‘I regret that I have little to give you at this moment, but what I have here is yours.’

  She gave him some coins from the pocket of her gown, and thanked him again. He struggled to his feet, saluted us, and stumbled out.

  She had preserved her composure throughout, although as pale as death. That is only a façon de parler, how fond I am of that French phrase, for death is only pale for a short time before stagnant blood collects in black-blue puddles under the skin. As was the case with Father Pomfret.

  After the young man left, she put her hand to her throat: ‘I am ill.’

  The Abbess of Shaftesbury staggered across to the spittoon and vomited. When that was over I helped her into her bedchamber. To my relief her great bed was still there, for which I felt gratitude – gratitude! – to the Commissioners. But it was without curtains or pillows. A blanket lay on the mattress. She lay down and closed her eyes. She was shivering. I sent her maid to fetch the Infirmaress.

  Before I left, she opened her eyes and said to me, ‘He was an old man. He was a good man. He was a brave man. Braver than I. He was my friend. God rest his soul.’

  I remember my own discomfort, trying to take notes for the Abbess without any trestle or stool. It is a sorry fact that pettiness proliferates in proportion to great events, or so it has seemed to me in these days.

  *

  The matter of the Library keys, for example. One of Master Tregonwell’s clerkly assistants, the nose-picker, was in charge of stripping the Library and supervising the packing of the books, scrolls and ledgers, including the precious Psalter locked in its cupboard. Again I was called for, and found the clerk fuming outside the locked Library door, with half a dozen workmen hanging around, and a stack of wooden cases.

  ‘The door is locked!’ he snarled at me. ‘Kindly hand me the key. I am informed that it is in your charge.’

  ‘I know where it should be, sir,’ I replied. ‘I will go and see.’ Since the destroyers are happy to break down any door which they find locked anywhere in the Abbey, it was hard to see why he had such scruples. He was one of those minor people who assert themselves by insisting on some random point. You find them everywhere, women as well as men.

  I picked my way around the ruined cloister to the niche where stood the figure of St Catherine. Dorothy and I always stowed the keys there, behind her. Neither of us had used them for a long time. Quiet afternoons in the Library were a thing of the past.

  St Catherine was no longer in her niche. She was on the ground, her face broken and bashed. The destroyers applied their hammers to the faces of our
saints, even when they left the figures intact. I do not know why they did that. I had to clamber over wreckage to get my hands into the niche. Its base was covered in fragments. There were no keys there. I ran my hands through the fragments again and again. The ground at my feet was a jumble of broken stone. St Catherine lay across the top, too heavy for me to shift.

  Then I remembered the Blessed Zita, the servant, the perfect Martha, whose special gift is the finding of lost keys. I closed my eyes. I prayed to Zita. Please, Zita. Please. I will never ask you for anything again. Please. When we pray properly, part of us closes down. The breath slows. Everyone knows this. I am not special. When I opened my eyes, I looked again at the rubble at my feet, inch by inch. I saw rusty metal protruding and pulled at it, and there was the ring with the two keys. Thank you, Zita.

  I took them back to the nose-picker. I followed him into the Library.

  ‘And the great Psalter?’ he asked. ‘His Majesty the King knows of it and is anxious to have it brought to him.’

  I indicated the little door high in the wall. ‘The smaller key.’

  The key had rusted and the door would not open, however much he twisted and turned it. Then the shaft snapped. He swore and went away and came back with a man with a heavy hammer. Half a dozen thwacks from the hammer and the oak of the door splintered and fell apart.

  The nose-picker thrust in his arm and from the cavity in the wall’s thickness he withdrew the Psalter, and held it in his unwashed hands. I saw its stout cover, and the jewels set into it, but no more. I would have given anything to have him unloose the silver clasps and open the Psalter so that I might glimpse the pages. Never so long as I live shall I have such a chance to see such a glory of illumination. The nose-picker turned his back on me, hiding the Psalter from my sight.