by Alis Hawkins
‘And you are a collyer?’
‘Yes, I am Hob Collyer. But, here, I shall be Hob Freeman. For I am free born and as a free man I come to Salster with my saint.’
Hob Cleve. He is twisting a new truth. The truth he wants. He wants to be me. The corpse is me. I am lying there. Am I dead now? This floating in the air, is this Purgatory?
No. This is the world. And Hob Cleve is bending it to a shape that suits him.
The world. And I am in it. Lying there, dead. How, then, am I looking at myself?
The monk is speaking again. ‘What will you do, now?’
‘I’ll go to the priory and pray for my father’s soul. And then I’ll find a place for our saint in Salster. I promised him, before he died, that I’d bring her back to her city and see her properly honoured.’
‘A place for her?’
‘In a church, or the priory.’
No! She must be in the woods! She must be where springs rise. She has the care of wells and springs. He must not confine her here for his profit. I will not let him.
‘Martin.’ I turn my eyes — or such miraculous sight as I have, being outside my body — from my corpse on the bed. Next to it stands a man, dressed in good green cloth, as if he is going to a fair with his family. He smiles — an unaccustomed expression from him. My father.
But he is not smiling at the corpse on the bed, he is smiling up at me. Can he truly see me, floating here?
‘Martin.’ It is my father’s voice but I hear it in my head, not out there in the world. ‘Come with me. I’m safe now. Leave this sad world and come with me.’
Something in me longs to go with him. My heart? My soul?
I look away from him, fasten my gaze on Hob Cleve. He is holding the smeared and touch-stained statue of our little saint. The saint I have served all these weeks. He is claiming her.
‘Come, Martin. Come and join me.’
Is that the right thing to do? It would be so easy to float away from the pain. My father is safe, my task accomplished.
‘You must go to the priory,’ the monk tells Hob, ‘speak to the new prior, tell him about your saint. If she has done miracles, he will welcome her, I am sure.’
No! She must be in the woods. Her shrine must be in the woods. I had a vision. I know I did. The saint healed me. And she sent me a vision.
I feel myself drawn away from my father, towards the battered little figure leaning against Hob Cleve’s legs. Her hand is reaching out to me. Reaching in that gesture I know so well.
I move towards her, slowly, so slowly. And, as I move, she is transfigured before my eyes until she is no longer a supplicant-worn statue but a living, breathing woman. A woman whose white kirtle and cloak shine and dazzle, like water from a sunlit spring.
She reaches out to me. Not to the poor corpse on the bed but into the air above her. She does not speak but her hand reaches towards me. And, as I am drawn silently down to her, in her eyes I see the Exile, the fairy she reached out to as he fled from King Halstan’s wrath.
I turn to my father and he smiles. He knows what I have seen.
Now, I know what I must do. I must be Halstan’s priest who woke from his revelation-dream and ran to the king to warn him about the Exile’s true nature. I must be Halstan himself, who swung his sword and thwarted the fairy’s plan. I must not let him have Cynryth.
‘I must pray for this poor dead soul.’ The monk turns to the body on the bed but there is no pity on his face. He is sated with death, it cannot move him now. Yet he will do what needs to be done.
I watch his hand rise to the poor, broken brow.
‘Placebo Domino,’ he begins. The prayer for the dead. I hear the meaning of the psalm as well as its Latin words. ‘I have loved, and the Lord will hear the voice of my prayer.’
I will my dead mouth to open, give evidence that I am alive. But I am in the air, not in my body. How can I return?
‘Because he has inclined his ear unto me,’ the prayer continues in the monk’s dry, quiet voice, ‘while I am alive I will call upon him.’
I try to move, will myself to descend into the body lying there and call on God. Is it too late? Must I go with my father to Purgatory?
I look around for him. But my father is gone.
‘The sorrows of death have surrounded me, and the perils of hell have found me.’
I hear the words but my soul cries out. I am not yet in hell. I am here, still! God cannot mean to leave the saint in Hob Cleve’s hands. Saint Cynryth cannot. I have brought her all this way, she will not abandon me now, nor I her.
I look to one side, away from the body Hob beat and kicked into doing his will, to the saint. She looks upwards no longer, now her gaze rests on the body on the bed. My body. Me.
‘I met with trouble and sorrow, and I called upon the name of the Lord.’
The words of the prayer fill my heart. Lord God, I call out, let me live!
How many times has this monk sat with the dead, intoned the Placebo? He uses no missal, he has it by heart. At the end, he will sign me with the cross and all will be done. If he reaches the end of the prayer, if he says, Placebo Domino: in regione vivorum, I will be dead and despatched into the land of eternal life.
I look in desperation to the White Maiden. Still her cloak and kirtle are dazzling in the gloom and, as I watch her gazing at the still and silent husk of me, I feel myself drawn down, as if her gaze will draw me out of the air and restore me to my body.
Down, down.
Am I going to death or life?
Down.
Dark.
‘Turn, O my soul, to your rest —’
The monk’s voice speaks the prayer which will speed my soul but I cannot see him now. All is dark.
His voice continues. But all is dark.
‘For he has delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling.’
The penultimate line. I hear the saint’s voice and struggle to open my eyes, to speak.
He has delivered my soul from death!
Breath rushes into me as it rushed into Will on the hearth at Tredgham when I dragged Hob from him. Life and pain and hope and light rush in as I open my eyes.
I must be Halstan’s priest! I must be Halstan!
‘Placebo Domino,’ I gasp, ‘in regione vivorum.’
I will please the Lord in the land of the living.
EPILOGUE
May 1350
‘Today. I want — to go — today.’ After all these months, I might be able to speak without pain, but still my words are slow, sentences stiff and sometimes jumbled. Still, I am alive.
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Church. See the saint.’
‘Which saint?’
Which saint. As if there could be more than one that might concern me. But Brother Biddulph is not to know. Though he has saved my life, tended me through fevers and chills, pain and delirium, though he knows my body and its injuries better than I know it myself, he does not know me, or my history. With my speech stopped up for so long by a mangled jaw and disordered wits, he does not know why I came here. He does not know the vision the saint gave me.
‘Saint Cynryth,’ I tell him, taking pains to produce the sounds in the right order.
‘The White Maiden?’
‘Yes.’
He draws in a sudden breath, as if it is he who will walk out of the infirmary, through the physic garden and out of the hospital entrance, not me. ‘It’s a fair step. The Aldermen’s Church is at the other end of the city, almost.’
‘I can walk.’
‘But you’ve not walked so far yet.’
He is wrong. I have walked a good distance every day. While he has been at his work in the infirmary or in his workshop, I have walked around and around his garden, rejoicing in the life and abundance of his plants. I have walked up and down the stone steps that climb the outside wall to the infirmary’s first floor, joy in my heart at the sight of the beautiful city that is revealed to me as I cl
imb.
I can walk as far as I need to. I know it.
‘I can. Today. Now.’
Biddulph looks at me. Does he see what my father used to see when he called me ‘mulish’? Or is my face so changed that no expression, now, will ever be the same? I do not know. But, if it is changed, so much the better. For I am not the youth who left the King’s Dene a year and a half ago. I am no longer, even, the man I was when Hob dragged me into Salster. A year of pain and slow recovery have seen to that. I am grateful to be alive and, for that, I have not only Biddulph but the saint to thank.
‘Very well then. I’ll find somebody to take you.’
The lay brother he finds to accompany me is as loose-lipped a fellow as I’ve ever met. He does not know how to keep his thoughts to himself and, worse, he wants to know mine, too.
‘You’re the one Hob Dene rescued, aren’t you — when he brought the Maiden to Salster?’
When he brought the Maiden. Yes, they all think that, now. All these months, while I have, perforce, been silent, Hob has been talking, talking, talking. Claiming the saint for himself. Claiming my name and my life for himself as he claimed my money and my goods. He has told Salster that the saint is his, and his alone. If folk know of me it is only as some poor fool who was set upon within sight of the city and almost killed. A poor fool rescued by Hob.
My guide takes my silence for acquiescence and draws breath to start again, but something in me rebels. I refuse to be ‘the man Hob saved’. I will not be his man in perpetuity. I pull at the lay brother’s arm, halting him. ‘No. I’m not him.’ I shake my head, knowing my thick speech sounds less than convincing. ‘That was — another man.’
He looks at me, mouth open as if to argue about it, then he seems to change his mind. He shrugs. ‘If you say so.’
We set off again, my limp keeping us at an old man’s pace, and my companion takes up where he left off. ‘Got a nice altar, the White Maiden has. The other parishes must’ve been spittin’ feathers to see such a miracle in Master Edgar’s church. But Hob Dene knew his business, didn’t he? Went straight to the biggest and best.’
I make no response, the bile rising in my throat at the mere thought of Hob going to this priest, this Edgar, and parleying a place in his church for the saint. It’ll work to both our advantages. We will both come out of this the richer, and you, my friend, will be the man who offered Salster’s forgotten saint a home in her own city.
‘Folk come from all over the Weald to see her. From Cranbrook and Tenterden, even.’
My heart swells at his words. People are coming to the saint — her people know her once more! But, of course, Kentish pilgrims will not satisfy Hob, however many there are. He will want them coming from Exeter and Gloucester, London and Norwich. From France, perhaps. And all making their offerings.
‘Alderman Hob sends word out with the carriers and the clothiers who come here for cloth. He tells everybody about the saint and her miracles.’
I nod, encouraging him. Galling though his admiration of Hob is, I am grateful to have this fellow’s company. After my long sojourn in the safety of the cloistered infirmary, Salster’s crowds disturb me. Still partly crippled in speech and body, I am fearful of being jostled and falling, of being asked a question I cannot quickly answer.
And the noise! From the safety of Brother Biddulph’s garden, I have only ever heard the cries of street hawkers and the bell of the crier in the distance, carried on the wind. But here, on Salster’s main thoroughfare, they batter at me till I could weep.
To calm myself, I conjure a memory of the saint to my mind’s eye. Not her little wooden image, much worn by our journey to the city, but the shining, lifelike figure who appeared to me when I lay, battered almost to death, in the infirmary. She saw my soul hovering in the air above my poor, battered body and she reached up to me, gave me her blessing, and drew me back to life once more.
For months, I waited for her to appear again in a vision or a dream. To come and tell me what I must do, how I must rescue her from Hob. For, had she not preserved my life so that I might realise the vision she gave me — an army of the healed and whole flocking to her shrine?
But no new vision came, no dream.
Instead, the months of slow healing, of bone-knitting and word-finding, have taught me humility. Taught me to accept that, perhaps, I am no longer required. That, back in her own city, with her own folk, the saint may have the power to gather her army without me.
But, humility or not, these past few days, I have known that the time has come to make a test of it. Soon, I must leave the infirmary and make my way in the world. So, if the saint will not come to me, then I must go to her. I must know, once and for all, whether I am hers, still. Or whether, weak as I know myself to be, she has no further use for me.
Hope and dread both stir in my breast as I slowly heck and stumble towards the northern end of the city. Hope that, when I stand in front of her image, the saint will come to me as she has before. That she will appear in all her brilliant white, and dispel my fears. Dread that she will not.
The lay brother disturbs my thoughts. ‘See that, up there?’ He points at a high, white tower. ‘That’s the Aldermen’s church.’
The nearer we get to church, the more my heart hammers at my ribs. The more my guts roil within me. After all this time, I will see her again. I will stand before her and I will know.
As I limp doggedly onwards, my guide continues to prattle. On and on about the splendour of Easter, a month and more ago, now; about the preparations for the plays of Corpus Christi; about the great fires of wood and bone which are, even now according to him, being built outside the city walls for St John’s Eve.
It’s only May, I want to tell him. Time enough for midsummer revelries. But I cannot say the words, for the battle between hope and dread has rendered me mute.
Finally, standing before the Aldermen’s church, I see it is a haunt for pilgrims. Sellers of trinkets are gathered there, shouting their wares and conducting business in noisy little knots.
‘Saints’ badges!’ one cries. ‘Brave Saint Dernstan! The White Maiden of the Well! Salster’s saints — show your friends in the village!’
Almost against my will, I hobble over to look at the goods he has laid out on his little hand cart. Just as his patter suggests, the cheap and tawdry badges represent two different saints. But I would not have known Saint Cynryth from her image. Her badges are smaller than those for Dernstan and, instead of a pin to fasten them to cloak or hat in the usual way, they hang on a white ribbon.
I look closer, peering at the blurry pewter image. ‘This is not the White Maiden.’
The seller looks at me, his false friendliness falling away. ‘What do you know about it?’
‘She has her arms out like this,’ I say, reaching towards him in imitation of the saint’s posture. ‘But your image is like this.’ I spread my arms wide as if to embrace a long-lost brother.
‘You try making a flat badge with hands coming forward. Can’t be done. Now, are you buying one or are you pissing off?’
I turn away. This gimcrack is not my saint.
‘Get your saints’ badges here!’ The hawker’s voice mocks me as I move towards the church door. ‘Brave Saint Dernstan! The White Maiden of the Well!’
Inside, my knee bends of its own accord at the font and my fingers find its pilgrim-worn edge. The smells of incense and candle-smoke, old stone and soot, are so familiar that my eyes fill and a lump forms in my throat. I fight back the tears, I must look to the future and not the past.
Besides, when I look about me, the differences between Lysington’s humble little church and this grand one are obvious. Here, there is a wide central nave and, separated from it by sturdy pillars on each side, a north and south aisle. Every wall boasts a number of grand paintings — the Wheel of Fortune and the Acts of Mercy, the Day of Judgement and the Labours of the Seasons. There is fresh paint everywhere — much green and red and yellow on the columns, flashes of
precious gold and blue on the rood screen’s fluting. Has the church recently been made a gift or do the aldermen always see it new-painted for Easter?
‘This way.’ The lay brother takes my arm and leads me, like a dotard, to an altar in the south transept. My heart, quieted by the familiarity of so much around me, now begins its thumping once more, beating on my ribs.
And, suddenly, there she is — Saint Cynryth, on her own altar! My heart soars; and yet, I should not rejoice, for this is not where she should be. Her rightful altar is in a woodland shrine, next to the well which saw her martyrdom, not here in a smoky, borrowed corner of some other saint’s church.
Slowly, my head spinning, I make my way towards her. Her beloved hands reach towards me and I put mine out to touch hers, fingertip to fingertip. As always, her little figure is strangely warm to the touch.
I wait for something to happen, for my vision to fill with the blinding light of her heavenly form. But the air remains dim, her wooden image lit only by the candles beside her and the light from the smoke-smirched window behind.
I move closer. Perhaps, if I can breathe in the smell of her, that linseed oil and sweet hay fragrance, she might be restored to me. But, as I put my face to hers, all at once, I see how changed she is. Someone has repainted her but the work has been quickly and clumsily done, her features almost as blurred as the pewter of the cheap pilgrim badges outside. And her cloak is the wrong colour. It was always white, like her kirtle, but now it is green. Hob’s doing.
I gaze at the little saint’s eyes. In the light of day, they were a bright, speedwell blue. Now, in the candle-lit gloom, they are dark and dead. And they no longer meet mine, as they did when she appeared on our well-side shrine, while I carried her the breadth of England. Now they look past me, as if I were not here.
I shut my own eyes tight and fall to my knees before her.
Lady, do not forsake me, now! Show me that I am still your champion, still the one to bring you home!
But no vision comes. Instead, words slide into my mind. Insistent, like a taunt. Like a smirk. Hob’s her champion now, not you. He’s the one to do her will. You failed. You’re yesterday’s man.