Towers in the Mist

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Yet when at last broken feverish dreams took the place of her wakefulness she knew she was beaten. A great wind was blowing against her, pushing her backwards, until at last she could not stand against it any longer and it forced her to her knees; and she found herself kneeling in the church of Saint Michael at the North Gate, vowing herself to renunciation.

  Then she opened her eyes for the twentieth time to find that the green sky had faded and in its place had come another, equally strange, of silver mist shot through with gold.

  The cuckoos were calling and it was Midsummer Day.

  Chapter 8: Sunday

  Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust;

  And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;

  Grow rich in that which never taketh rust;

  Whatever jades but fading pleasure brings.

  Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might

  To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;

  Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light,

  That doth both shine and give us sight to see.

  O take fast hold; let that light be thy guide

  In this small course which birth draws out to death,

  And think how evil becometh him to slide,

  Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.

  Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see;

  Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

  PHILIP SIDNEY.

  1.

  WILL and Thomas Leigh, waking up three days later in their big bed, realized with pleasure that it was Sunday. They were not pious children and their pleasure sprang solely from the fact that they would not have to go to school today. They would have to go to church, unfortunately, but church did not take so long as school and there was no necessity to listen to what was said.

  Will woke first and pulling aside the crimson curtains of the bed he peeped out at the room. It was over the study and was reached through Canon Leigh’s, so that no nocturnal adventures were possible without their father knowing of them. Its tapestries, representing David getting the better of Goliath and Absalom at his last gasp hanging from the oaktree, were not as beautiful as the tapestries in the girls’ room but no doubt more suited to the boys in subject matter, portraying as they did the reward of courage and the frightful fate in store for those who do not behave nicely to their parents. The crimson curtains of the four-poster were not embroidered, but then it was no good wasting fine embroidery on Will and Thomas, for they did not care for such things.

  Will looked anxiously at Absalom hanging from the oaktree. If Absalom’s beautiful hair looked very bright and golden, and if his terrified, dying face had a pink tinge to it, Will knew that the sun was shining and hastened to get out of bed, but if Absalom’s death agonies were shadowed Will knew it was raining and burrowed back under the blankets again until someone dragged him out. Today Absalom was brightly illumined and Will awoke Thomas by a blow on the chest and pulled back all the curtains.

  Thomas shut his mouth—he had adenoids and slept with it ajar—opened his eyes and lay staring at the crimson canopy over his head until full consciousness returned to him.

  “Sunday,” he said. “We shall have to wash.”

  They washed really properly on Sundays, all over, with hot water, and then they put on their clean clothes. Their hair had its weekly brush, and their nails were cleaned, and when they were finished they really looked quite nice.

  Before they had time to get out of bed Diggory entered upon them with a huge basin and a ewer of hot water. Diggory’s Sunday morning was most exhausting. He got up in what was almost the middle of the night and cleaned the animals, then he cleaned himself and then he cleaned Will and Thomas.

  “You needn’t stop, Diggory,” said Will, “we can wash ourselves.”

  This remark was made weekly, as a matter of form, but Diggory knew better than to permit any such thing. He set the basin upon the floor, poured water into it, and advanced upon the bed in a grim silence, hailing our first Will and then Thomas.

  He watched them while they washed, his old face set like a mask, and he made no sound at all unless he saw them skimping the job, when he bellowed like a bull and his hairy hands shot out to box their ears. When the agony was over he departed as silently as he had come, taking the basin and ewer with him.

  “That’s over for another week,” sighed Will in satisfaction, and with chattering teeth he got himself into his clean shirt and his Sunday doublet of peacock blue. . . . It was cold work stripping so early in the morning. . . . In winter the family ablutions took place before the kitchen fire on Saturday night, and that was really pleasanter.

  When they were dressed Joyeuce came in, carrying a hairbrush and two little snowy ruffs. She had been up till midnight the night before, washing and ironing the ruffs for them all, and plaiting them with pokesticks.

  Joyeuce had been very odd the last few days and her family had not known what to make of her. Sometimes she had seemed marvelously happy, singing at her work, or falling upon her brothers and sisters and kissing them at the most unexpected moments, but at other times she had moved about the house as though weighed down by some guilty secret, and would set to and polish and spin and wash up with a grim energy, as though reproaching herself for loss of time. She was in this latter mood now. She brushed the boys’ hair until they yelled for mercy, and the Spanish Inquisition would have been a picnic compared to the way in which she cleaned their nails.

  “Ow!” squeaked Thomas indignantly, as with his right arm pinioned beneath hers she worked at his nails with a sharp silver instrument of torture.

  “Filthy little pig,” said Joyeuce. “What do you do to get your hands like this?” With a sigh of despair she spread out his grubby little paw and looked at it. She had not made much impression upon his nails with her silver instrument, though she had made some, but upon the actual hand Diggory’s soap and water had made no impression whatsoever. . . . The dirt was engrained. . . . “I wonder what Mother did for your hands?” she pondered, her forehead wrinkled in a worried frown. She tried hard never to fall below her mother’s standard of cleanliness and housewifery, but there were times when no one seemed to remember what Mother had done.

  “But we didn’t go to school when Mother was alive,” said Will, “and so we didn’t get like this. Education,” he explained, “is very soiling.”

  “Don’t be unhappy, Joyeuce,” said Will. “Lots of good people are dirty. They say Saint Frideswide only washed once a year and the Queen’s Grace herself only has a bath once in three weeks.” He flung his arms round her and kissed her, for he was a loving little boy and he did not like to see her looking worried, and he did not squeak at all while she did his other hand.

  They all had an extra large breakfast on Sunday, and really they needed it after all the washing they had done, a very satisfying breakfast of meat and beer and bread, and when it was over, and Joyeuce and Dorothy had washed it up and made the beds, they got ready for church.

  The Sunday morning church-going was the great event of their week and took a lot of preparing for. . . . Great-Aunt came with them. . . . It was practically the only time in the week when she went out and she insisted on riding her white mule Susan to the Cathedral door. There was no reason whatever why she should not have walked the short distance, but the getting her on her mule, and the getting her off again, made a lot of fuss and commotion, and she liked fuss and commotion. Canon Leigh did not assist in getting Great-Aunt off to church. . . . He said his duties called him elsewhere.

  No one but Joyeuce herself knew how exhausted she was by the time she had got the family dressed and they were all waiting by the front door for Diggory to bring Susan round from the stables; yet she had the satisfaction of knowing that they looked magnificent. Great-Aunt wore black velvet, over a crimson kirtle, and an immense ruff. The veil she wore over her black wig wa
s worked in gold thread, and she had rubies in her ears and on the bodice of her gown. Grace wore her green silk kirtle, scattered over with yellow and silver dots, with a farthingale of rose color, the twins were dressed in forget-me-not blue, Will and Thomas in peacock blue and Diccon in his faerie green. . . . While as for Joyeuce herself, she wore the clothes she had worn on that never to be forgotten evening at the Tavern that was only a few days ago but yet seemed parted from her by several years.

  Diggory came in through the Fair Gate, leading Susan in her saddle and trappings of crimson velvet, and Will and Thomas held Susan while Diggory and Joyeuce lifted Great-Aunt up so that she sat sideways on her saddle, with her feet planted firmly on the board below and her fine skirts billowing out over Susan’s white back. She looked magnificent when she was in place but the language she used while she was being got there was staggering. The great ladies of the day could swear like the proverbial trooper, the Queen’s Grace herself not being behindhand in the art, but Great-Aunt, when she really got going, could put the lot of them completely in the shade.

  Then they started, Diggory leading Susan, Joyeuce and Diccon walking hand in hand beside Great-Aunt, and the twins, Grace, Will and Thomas walking behind. They all carried large prayer books, and the girls had posies of flowers to match their frocks.

  From the other houses round the quadrangle, where lived the seven other Canons, came more family groups, and from the scholars’ rooms the scholars came running in their sober clothes and snowy Sunday ruffs, while under the Fair Gate flowed a steady stream of people in their bright Sunday best. The sun shone gloriously and the blue air seemed clamorous with sound, for all the bells of Oxford were ringing their people to church. The bells of Saint Mary the Virgin, the bells of Saint Martin’s at Carfax, of Saint Michael’s at the North Gate, of All Saints,’ Saint Aldate’s and Saint Ebbe’s, and clearer and more lovely than them all the famous bells of Christ Church, that for years had rung the monks to prayer at Oseney Abbey and now pealed out from the Cathedral tower. They had their own names—Hautclere, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel and John—and personalities that matched their names, and they ranked only second in importance in the world of bells to Great Tom himself.

  There was no way into the Cathedral from the quadrangle and the stream of worshipers passed by the staircase up to the hall and into the fifteenth century cloisters of the original monastery, and from there up a flight of steps into the Cathedral. Susan was brought to a halt at the bottom of the steps with a great clattering of hoofs on the paving stones, and Great-Aunt was with difficulty got down. She entered the Cathedral leaning on Joyeuce’s arm on one side and her stick on the other, with Diccon walking before her carrying her prayer book and nosegay and the other children following behind. She made a point of entering at the last possible moment, and would even wait in the cloisters till that moment arrived, and then she would sail up the central aisle very slowly, with the whole congregation looking at her. . . . She adored it, and so did Diccon. . . . Joyeuce, Grace, Will, Thomas and the twins suffered acute agonies, but that was nothing to Great-Aunt and Diccon. The congregation enjoyed it too, and felt their hearts lifted up to heaven by the spectacle of that cherubic little boy and that saintly old lady entering the mighty Cathedral to praise their God.

  Joyeuce, from her position beside Great-Aunt and behind Diccon, could not see their faces, but if she had she would have been overwhelmed with astonishment. Diccon walked with his head a little lifted and his gaze fixed upon the east window behind the high altar. His green eyes had a rapt, faraway look, as though they beheld not the rich stained glass of the window but the angels of the little children whose eyes behold the Father in heaven, and his red poppy lips had a pathetic, wistful droop that was very affecting. Great-Aunt, on the contrary, kept her piercing dark eyes fixed upon the ground, but over her face had come a strangely noble expression, and the dignity of her carriage and the gracious whisper of her velvets and silks over the stone floor of the aisle spoke volumes to the congregation of the saintliness of her character. When they filed into their seats under the tower, and knelt down to pray, Great-Aunt kept her face uncovered that all might see her devoutly moving lips, but Diccon bowed his curly head low and clasped his fat hands upon his chest. . . . No need today to hit his knees behind to make him kneel down. . . . When they both sat back on their seats they had reason to congratulate themselves upon a really magnificent dramatic performance.

  Will and Thomas knelt too, with their peacock blue caps held over the lower parts of their faces and their wide gray eyes peeping over the top to see if they could see any of their particular friends in the congregation; when they did see a friend they removed their caps from their mouths and grinned broadly; they were nice, sincere little boys and they did not pretend they were addressing their Maker when just at the moment they didn’t happen to be.

  It is pleasant to be able to record that Grace and the twins really prayed, their prayers developing much on the same lines. “Please God, make me a good girl. Please God, bless Father and Joyeuce and everyone I love. Please God, help me not to think about my clothes in the sermon.”

  As for Joyeuce, for the first time in her life she could not pray. The battle that had been fought and won in Saint Michael’s at the North Gate had now to be fought all over again. Her duty was perfectly obvious; confession of her appalling behavior to her father, rejection of Nicolas, lifelong devotion to her father, Great-Aunt, Will, Thomas, the twins, Diccon, the dogs and Tinker; and she knew that she ought to be praying for strength to do her duty. . . . But she did not want to do her duty. . . . With the whole strength and passion of her being she wanted to be a selfish, wicked, intriguing, untruthful girl. She opened her lips to pray but her throat felt dry and her lips felt hot and nothing would come. “Deus, propitius esto mihi peccatori,” she whispered at last, and sat back on her seat with her face white and strained and her mouth sullen and a little defiant. . . . She had heard people say that it was good to be young, but she thought that the comfortable middle-aged people who so often made that platitudinous remark must have forgotten their own youth with its tormenting loves and problems and bewilderments. She wished she was old. She wished that her decisions were behind her and her heart at rest and her feet set firmly upon some path from which there could be no turning back.

  Yet for a few moments, as she looked about her, the beauty of the Cathedral lifted the pall from her spirit. The Saxon pillars of the choir, massive and of colossal strength and seemingly as old as time, gave one a glorious feeling of stability, and the perpendicular clerestory that rose above them, and carried the eye up to the fine and graceful pendant roof, seemed like the arches of the years that carry a man’s soul from the heavy darkness of the physical earth to the airy regions of heaven. This strange mixture of architecture, that spanned the centuries in one great curve, never failed to affect the mind strangely. One felt cowed by it, a little confused by this leap through time, yet comforted too by a sense of union. Ancient glass, that told the story of Saint Frideswide’s life, filled the windows and the sun shone through it to pattern with all the colors of the rainbow pillars and arches and the tombs of the dead that paved the floor.

  From where she sat Joyeuce could see the Lady Chapel, that in Christ Church was built to the north of the choir instead of behind the high altar, so as not to interfere with the city wall that protected the east end of the Cathedral. In it was the shrine of Saint Frideswide and looming above it was the watching tower where in old times a monk sat day and night to protect the relics of the saint. It was the same shrine where Catherine of Aragon had worshiped, and the floor of the Cathedral, from the west door to the shrine, was worn by the feet of the pilgrims who had come there to seek healing and comfort of the saint.

  Only a few years ago, in the reign of Queen Mary, a Canon’s wife had had her history curiously mixed up with the history of the shrine, and now, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, the present Canons’ ladie
s could not look at that shrine without a shiver of horror. . . . And nor could Canon Leigh, who was always seen to avert his eyes from the Lady Chapel when he walked in procession to his stall in the choir. . . . The horrible but veracious history haunted them all.

  2.

  Only fifteen years before, in King Henry’s reign, Peter Martyr Vermilius, a Florentine who had adopted the reformed religion and come to England at Cranmer’s invitation, was made Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, and took up his residence at his canonry house in the quadrangle with Catherine his German wife.

  Poor Catherine had a bad time from the very start. There were a good many Catholic scholars up at Christ Church and Peter Martyr, the pervert, was naturally the object of their hatred and a grand excuse for making a row. They smashed the windows of his house on the north side of the Fair Gate, they sang rude songs under the window of his study by day so that he could not work, and imitated cats under his bedroom window by night so that he could not sleep. Peter Martyr was upset, naturally, but poor Catherine was even more so. She was a foreigner and she couldn’t speak the language. Her servants bullied her and the tradespeople cheated her and the Dean’s wife, Mistress Cox, the only other lady living at that time within the precincts of Christ Church, was not as kind as she might have been because she was not quite certain whether Catherine was really a lady. What with being so bullied by day, and so frightened by night with the row the scholars made, and getting no sleep and being so homesick, poor Catherine got ill and after only two years at Christ Church she died. Christ Church was sorry, then, and wished it hadn’t done it. It was too late now to be nice to the living Catherine but they were as nice as they knew how to the dead one; they gave her a splendid funeral and buried her in the Cathedral near the shrine of Saint Frideswide, on the same spot where a few years earlier that other tragic Catherine had knelt and prayed. The bones of the saint were no longer there, having been cast out fourteen years earlier by the command of Henry Tudor, and somehow or other completely mislaid, but the desecrated shrine still seemed to the people of Christ Church the heart of their college, and to be laid near it was an honor for Catherine that they hoped was appreciated by her in whichever of the courts of heaven she might happen to be at the moment.