‘I was thinking,’ said Dame Joan craftily, ‘that with God’s help, and a little word from me, my cousin from the Founder House might fill Johanna’s stall. Now, there’s a saint! If she were to eat roast sturgeon, then should we all; were there gems on her finger, ours would not go bare. The Queen is dead! Long live the Queen!’
Her fanaticism frightened me. Kate was coughing. I lost head and temper and slapped Dame Joan hard, thinking instantly: Is this the beginning? She stopped midspeech and looked at me, the turning worm.
‘What ails you?’ she demanded.
‘My babe’s sick,’ I said, shaken with rage. ‘Do something, for Jesu’s love.’
She shook her head mazedly. ‘Yes,’ she said, quieter. ‘Edyth, fetch the brown jar from my shelf. And a gallon of well-water. I’ll make an infusion.’
Edyth kissed Katherine tenderly. ‘Stay quiet, honey sweet,’ she said. Only when she spoke to Kate did all the knots in her tongue come loose. Her leg dragging, she went out.
‘Don’t you want the Prioress shamed?’ Joan asked curiously. ‘She took your dower and misused it, like she did to that old fool Brygge. It’s just that she should be punished.’
‘If that were all...’ I began, and Joan threw back her head, braying.
‘All! By St Loy, let me list her crimes.’ She hooked thumbs into her wimple, aping a lawyer. ‘Madame is guilty of: using the nuns like beasts of toil; simony in its direst form; selling the holy plate and the wool to pay for her own sports; luting and dancing after Compline; letting the house and all its demesne fall into disrepair.’
I was thinking of the rooks and their parliament. Black and ugly, waddling towards the lone infidel, a vast, vengeful crowd, the one against many. Yet Johanna was a Woodville lover. Bless them that curse you.
Joan was still recounting the Prioress’s shortcomings: ‘Not setting a good example to her sisters; neglecting to go to Confession; ill-temper—’
‘Ill-temper!’ I cried. ‘Why, you have the illest temper of all!’
She ceased, and glared at me. Her eye rolled red.
‘Would you then be her advocate?’ she asked with menace. At that moment the door opened and Edyth came back. Joan pointed, crying: ‘You saw her strike that child! Can you love her, after that?’
And I was about to say, Nay, a thousand times, Joan, when I saw Edyth’s face. She could go no paler, but her eyes were sunken as if she had sustained an hundred fresh blows.
‘Where’s the water?’ Joan asked.
Edyth’s lips trembled on a hoarse sound.
‘The well...’ Her words dragged out. ‘I saw. Drowning. Deep.’
So at last, Bridget has made an end, I thought, as we hurried across the cloister-garth. And as she seemed to lust for death and was so unhappy, I was glad.
But I was not glad a moment later, when James Mustarde, who had brought hooks and a rope, leaned with his lantern over the well’s black mouth, or when the swinging light picked out a shape that bobbed beneath the slime. Slime clung to the face, a trail of weed made blind the staring eyes, and one hand, lapped like a lily by the water, clung on the crucifix at its breast.
What’s that on her cross?’ asked James Mustarde, fishing brutally with his hooks.
Even the depths could not darken the flaming glory of a wisp of hair twined shockingly around the dead Christ.
Ah, Adelysia, Adelysia. Was it l’accidie that ruined you, or was it love?
‘Sweet mistress,’ said Patch rapturously. ‘Sweet mistress. I never knew you were to buy a corrody.’
Because for several moments I could not own him anything but a ghost, I held the guttering dip high over my head so that its light filled the upper air and ringed him round. Demons love only the darkness.
He did not vanish; he was real. Fog filmed his cloak and dew shone in the creases of his cheeks. A rude diamond sat on the end of his nose. He looked hearty and roguish and robust as ever, and he was glad to see me. Round a waist grown mayhap a trifle stouter he wore a broad leather belt in which was tucked his knife and his jester’s bauble, the one with the full-moon face, the same, I vow, with which he had tormented the lords at court. He took my hand and held it tight in broad calloused palm. I had held my hand out for his once, and he not there to take it, but another, and three years fled away...
Take my hand, and say you have not forgotten!
And turn your face about, sweet, silly, shivering country maid, and see what God has sent you under cover of a song. A royal Duke, no less!
I wondered instantly whether he knew. Gossip was his second trade. Worse than a woman for whispering tales, he was the sort that kings employ. Sow the seed where it can fruit the most. Out of the past he came; I loved and hated him. I let my hand lie still in his. I remembered a bad moment, a moment that could have been direst humiliation for my lord, and how Patch had averted it, merely by handing him a cup of wine. My thanks for that, Patch. I began to jest with him, my heart warming a little. He would make a fine monk, I said, or some such heathen banter, I can’t recall.
We talked first of the Prioress, and I was moved by poor Adelysia’s death to make some gibe about her clothes, for in a more disciplined house Adelysia might have lived happy, grown old and saintly and attained Paradise; had Johanna spent less time at board and hawk and lute, that is. They had not let Adelysia lie within the cloister. James Mustarde had buried her, and worse, had sworn he had seen her walking through the rowans one night since, when he was feeding the swine, so that none now went near that place, save I. It was sad, among the shady rowans, but I was not afraid of poor sweet Adelysia, and I made the Intercession at that shallow grave, little dreaming, as I shaped my tools of prayer, that I would use them to cut a far more bitter grief.
I told Patch none of this. He would not have got my drift. I spoke only of apostasy, and love, and my changing colour may have shown kinship with Adelysia’s trial. Either that, or Patch was acute beyond my understanding. He began at once to speak fully of the court, all that I could ask no stranger, and I did not even need to probe him. I heard the story of their exile. I knew that Warwick was dead, slain outside London, at the place called Barnet, where King Edward sought the aid of a White Witch, Friar Bungay, who conjured fog to blind the enemy.
Nobly stern looked Earl Warwick, lying in stately death. Young Dickon (no need for him to tell me this) took it hard. Then he went down to Kent, and, returning, found they had executed Daft King Harry, or that Harry had pined and died from sheer melancholy. Men said he took this harder still. Why did he call him young Dickon? Sheer habit, a nickname, for he was twenty—a man in truth, Constable and Admiral of England, wounded at Barnet—Lord of the North, and dwelling at Middleham. And Patch was his servant, bound to entertain him on the morrow, with song and caper.
I could not say a word. He was again at Middleham, and I ignorant of it till now. He would have passed again along our road, coming up through the Fosse Way and on to York and into Galtres Forest, to Wensleydale, with its harsh cleansing gales and haunted mists, while I was—what? praying, eating, tending Katherine, sleeping, weeping, over Adelysia, or myself—or him.
Ah, holy God! He could not have been driven by fog into our cloister, nay, not he, only Patch, who stood there gibbering courtly silliness at me before launching into yet another tale.
And a fanciful one indeed, all about cookshops, and a fire, with himself playing the hero’s part, and Lady Anne Neville, she that was Princess of Wales, greasy as a penny pie and nicely restored into the arms of her loving cousin, Sir Richard of Gloucester, the same. I wondered if Patch heard my heart thumping in the quiet room. If he did, it was not apparent.
Edyth came timidly to listen, and I sent her away. Now Patch brought in George of Clarence, laughing so much over some private victory that some of his words were lost. And how George forbade the match. What match? Why, Richard to Anne, of course.
Though I knew it to be, on my part, arrant foolishness, for I had always known he must marry somebody, this
did not make it any less a mortal blow. I stood in front of Patch, while he shook his bauble, parading it up and down his arm to demonstrate how George addressed the Bench. ‘He—shall—not—have—her!’ he shouted, while I stood there alive, but dying, all the blood in my heart draining away and my spirit flickering up and down, like the rushlight. Had he tried to be cruel, he could not have laboured to greater effect, for even then he gave me a reprieve, led me to think that George had utterly, irrevocably forbidden the marriage, so that I, like one in the last moments before the axe falls, half in death, half in life, seized parchment and pen.
‘Will you bear a letter?’
Patch was for Middleham, to his service. I would have changed places with Patch, envying not only his destiny but his light, unloving heart. Patch would see him tomorrow, could pass my letter into his hands. Patch had been sent by heaven. He watched me write; I turned the roll away from his eyes.
And I knew not how to begin, for the usual greeting—Right Worshipful and well beloved—used by all, meant naught, even if I wrote it in my blood. So after thinking, I began ‘Your Grace’, for he was indeed gracious, and lovely beyond belief, and I wrote it somehow, telling him of Katherine. Even now, I wonder, would he have smiled had that letter ever reached him? It was a piteous, wanton, desperate bill.
‘All that I told my lord when last we met is changed. Then, it was meant only with my whole heart. Since then my heart has grown ten thousand times. Today the bell struck nine: I thought of him. It struck again, nine times, my thoughts had never left him, and a day was gone. This, then, the pattern of my days.’
The saints whose blessing I invoked upon him filled half of the page. Without planning it, I ended with St Jude, the patron of lost causes. Only now do I know that this was hindsight.
Patch was a skilled executioner. He watched me roll and seal the letter, and then he let fall the axe. My voice was marvellously gay as I replied: ‘So they were married after all,’ while part of me rolled bloody in the dust. It was only when he went onto tell me, casual as ever, that the Duchess of Bedford was dead, and letting me think they had burned her for necromancy, that dreadful fears overcame me: I wept and cried aloud. A good torturer, Patch; again, in his next breath, she had died in her bed. I saw his shocked eyes as I raved of love-sorcery; then, before him, I burned the letter. Jude’s name was the last to go.
I kissed him when we parted; he was for Middleham, and the Duke of Gloucester. There was a Duchess of Gloucester too, so I kissed Patch farewell, nevermore to meet. That was the sum of it, a little like Joan’s counterfeit household book; plain and black on the face, yet rife with hidden reason. I could never go to Middleham.
Not for hours did I see the one blessing in Patch’s dreadful visit. The Duchess of Bedford was dead. My chains were off.
I did not lie down all that night, but stood at the window. Just before Matins, the heavy fog that had lain on us for days lifted, and I strained my sight through the grim grey arch, trying to push back the long distance to where he lay. I saw only dark trees, their branches raised like weapons against the sullen moor. Then arose one of the sudden sharp winds peculiar to those parts. There was a verse that I had to remember, from the foolish song that kept me sane.
Though in the wood I understood
Ye had a paramour,
All this may nought remove my thought,
But that I will be your.
And she shall find me soft and kind
And courteous every hour;
Glad to fulfil all that she will
Command me, to my power:
For had ye, lo, an hundred mo’,
Yet would I be that one:
For in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.
I listened vainly for his voice in the wind’s howling. The curlew’s shriek blew back my cry, and the night-owl, bird of heresy, joined in our lament.
Dried peas, black and brittle, filled a cask to the brim. Carlings, Joan called them; before coming to Yorkshire I had never heard the name, but in Lent, on Care Sunday, each nun received a little sack of them to eat in token of remembrance. This year, I foresaw difficulty in tackling the hard food myself. I had something wrong with my gums, they wept blood and all my teeth were loose; in fact I had pulled one with ease and saw myself getting as gat-faced as Joan. I had not looked in a glass for nearly three years, and all the fishpond told me was that I was very pale. There was only one mirror in the convent, and even that had lately disappeared, for it had hung in the Prioress’s room, which in itself had undergone the startling change to complete austerity. Holy symbols hung everywhere; the walls were draped in black. Her lutes and hunting whips had vanished, and she herself preserved a silent withdrawal. It was the week before Valentine.
Edyth sat beside me, sorting the carlings, while Katherine, at my right hand, rolled the peas about. I was making the little bags, a task in which my mind could wander. Most of my thoughts were of a grim thankfulness that Kate was better, for Joan’s inhalations had worked a miracle of sorts, a mixed blessing, for now Edyth had the cough, just as if Joan by alchemy had transferred it. And Edyth’s cough was worse ever than Kate’s had been. She was coughing now; the poison rattled in her chest like the carlings in their tub. In the corner, Dame Joan swilled ale, while James Mustarde, protesting mildly, filled with peas the bags I had made.
‘Pack them hard, boy,’ I heard her say. ‘Madame shall take some with her into banishment. I warrant she’ll have care aplenty!’ She laughed at her own jest.
‘I must feed my swine,’ muttered James. Then, anxiously:
‘Reverend Dame, if the Mother is sent away, shall I lose my employment?’
‘Nay, never!’ she cried. ‘When my cousin from Cîteaux is installed, you’ll wear a silk smock. You’ll wait on us both, and I’ll share my lady’s chamber!’
‘I’d liefer tend the hogs,’ ‘said James wistfully.
So Joan will be another Juliana, I thought. And, should her cousin offend against Holy Church, would she, in turn, betray her as Juliana did the Prioress? For the hundredth time, I wondered what the Mother at Leicester would think. If I saw her again, if I told her that to my mind, three-quarters of the world were wholly bad, would she sigh agreement? Yet she was ever merciful. When, in my childhood, troubled by unknown fears and hate against those who had slain my father, I was suffering an infant Wanhope, she would say: ‘Look around, child. See that flower, that bird, that tree. The Master wrought them all, in their beauty. Who shall fear to fall into the hands of Him that made these things? It is the pattern. And the pattern is God’s mercy, reflected in man.’
Does she still live, I wondered. Holy in a true sense, I remembered also her warm worldliness. She loved to laugh. There was never spite in her laughter. She liked a tale, and if it were bawdy, she was never outraged. She did not judge. Long ago, there was a plague at Leicester, and one house that none would enter save her. She soaked her habit in asafoetida and garlic and nursed one man back to health. The other members of the household she tended before they died. She had never had plague herself, yet she nursed that man until the boil beneath his arm burst and the evil humours ran out black and stinking. He kissed her feet. And the people of Leicester stoned her when she came into the street, for bringing a risk to their noses, so that her right eyebrow was scarred where a flint had left its mark. And what did she? She laughed, a whit proudly, and said: ‘Poor creatures! Lack of faith has made them afraid.’ There was much trouble afterwards, I remember, and many came to beg her pardon, but the rest is lost. I remember her beating me soundly, and that I deserved it. I know she loved me.
Sitting thus, with my arms about Edyth and Katherine, and the carling-bags slipping unheeded off my lap, I thought on Leicester and the Mother, wondering again if she were still alive.
The sun, good and hot for February, made patterns on the broken floor. Edyth whispered that she must ring for Terce, and coughed long and shatteringly. I bade her let another do it, so she sat on
, until presently we heard the bell’s swooning clamour, and Joan got up.
‘Come,’ she said. ‘I would watch Madame praying for a miracle.’
Madame was in church, but not praying; she looked angry. Her little white dog sat happily in the stall, tongue lolling. Near by, Juliana’s long face was like a block of yellow stone. Between these two women flew a snapping whisper which grew in strength and passion until it outdid the priest’s gabble. Again and again I heard the Prioress mutter: ‘You lie! You lie!’
‘That I do not,’ said Juliana with steady heat. Amazed, I saw Dame Johanna fall on her knees, arms outstretched not to the altar where the priest, open-mouthed, waited halfway through a Homily, but to Juliana, who turned away, haughty and grave.
‘I beg you, Dame,’ cried the Prioress. ‘It’s my whole life!’
Juliana shook her head. ‘I will not be your compurgatress,’ she said, and began her beads. The priest rang the Sanctus bell, but none heeded it. Like great black birds the nuns encroached in a circle upon the two women. The priest waited, and the chaplain, for he too was there, twined his hands, looking anxious for the first time.
‘But you helped me before,’ said the Prioress, very low.
‘Yea, I perjured myself,’ replied Juliana. ‘Till my soul was nigh as dark as yours. I denied your misdoings, covered your sins. On the last visitation I did it. Yet you still treat me like’—her glance slid downward—‘nay, not like a dog! Like a slave, a craven beast. I shall tell my lords—’
The Prioress rose, no longer a suppliant, eyes arched menacingly.
‘Well, Dame,’ she said, still quiet. ‘What will you tell them?’
‘All,’ said Juliana. Unerringly her finger pointed to the chaplain. ‘Including the tale of our poor sister. How she died, and why.’
The Prioress let out a shriek. As if signalled to the chase, the dog flew from her side and launched itself at Juliana, nipping and worrying the hem of her robe. Its hind-quarters writhed under a flurry of black cloth. Juliana raised her sandalled foot and gave the animal a kick, and its yelp was drowned by the Prioress’s second furious scream. In a trice, she had Juliana by the neck. Tall and strong, she tore off the other’s wimple with a rending crack, revealing Juliana’s head, stubbled with grey hair. She had Juliana in a stranglehold, caught round the neck in her own garment; and holding her thus, she dragged the nun up and down the nave, striking her in the face with her free hand.
We Speak No Treason Vol 2 Page 29