by Anya Seton
The days and nights merged into a long grey plodding. The ankle swelled, Katherine’s feet festered until she could not walk, and she lay over at a convent where the nuns were good to her. After some time her feet and ankle healed, she gave the nuns her last jewel, an emerald-studded buckle, in gratitude, and they sent her on her way again, begging that she would remember them in her prayers at Walsingham.
It was on a searing hot day that Katherine at last reached Houghton-in-the-Dale, a mile south of the shrine, and stopped as did all pilgrims at the little stone slipper chapel. Here she encountered a noisy party of mounted men and women who had left London but a few days ago, though Katherine had been weeks on the road. They were a gaily clad group of young merchants and their wives, and it was apparent from the ribald tune that one of the men played on his bagpipes, from the flask of wine that they passed from hand to hand, and from their noisy laughter, that this pilgrimage was but pious excuse for a summer junket.
Even the casual pilgrim however was required to leave his shoes at the slipper chapel and walk the last mile barefoot. Many were the little shrieks of pain, and giggles, as one by one the London wives filed into the chapel, and came out treading like cats on hot bricks.
Katherine, who had no shoes to remove, drew apart, waiting on the brink of the little river Stiffkey until she might go in and say a prayer in peace. So near at last to journey’s end that she could not believe it, she dared not let herself think of the Holy Sight which lay ahead of her, nor of the miracle that she was certain would take place.
They glanced at her incuriously as they passed her by, the Londoners all bright as popinjays in their scarlets and blues and greens, and one of the men - a grocer it would seem by the scales embroidered on his shoulder badge - said crossly in a loud voice to the others, “You shall see what mummery all this’ll prove to be. Hurry on, Alison, and let’s be done with the bowing and scraping. By God, ‘tis not the Virgin’s milk I long for, ‘tis good brown Norfolk ale!”
“Hush, Andrew!” cried his wife angrily. “Here’s no place for your wicked Lollard talk!”
Andrew grumbled and walked on.
Katherine heard, and something in her cringed: a doubt, a fear, darted and was gone. She prayed in the chapel and was filled with exalted hope. Her lassitude and headache vanished, she sped along the sacred mile beside the river. Her skin no longer reddened under the fierce sun-rays, the soles of her feet were as tough and calloused as a friar’s. She did not feel the torturing fleabites nor the sweat that bathed her body under the hair shirt and the heavy black robe, nor the sore pains in her gums and loosened teeth, pain that had lately made so difficult chewing of the coarse bread, which was all she had allowed herself to eat since starting on pilgrimage. Foul-smelling little sores had broken out on her legs but she had made no effort to poultice them. These afflictions were all sent by God to prove her true contrition, and would ensure the Blessed Lady’s favour.
As she neared Wajsingham, other penitential pilgrims joined her on the road, clad in sackcloth, wearing the wide palmer’s hat, with ashes on their brows. These kept their eyes fixed on the ground as Katherine did; they did not glance at the little booths which began to line the way, though the owners of these stalls cried their wares incessantly in hoarse pleading voices.
“Come, buy my Walsingham medals - all personally blessed by Our Lady!” Or rosaries, or souvenirs, or gingerbread images of the Virgin, or tin replicas of the vial that held Her Holy Milk.
The town itself was crammed with pilgrim hostels, cook-shops and taverns; by the time Katherine reached the abbey gate she was one of a great throng, amongst them many cripples, and sick folk borne on litters by their relatives. Voices hummed around her speaking in a score of accents, not only the strange dialects of remoter parts of England but in the French tongue, and Flemish, and others that she did not recognise.
Beneath a miraculous copper image of a knight, there was a small postern in the abbey gate, and one by one they filed through under the watchful eye of an Austin canon from the priory which had charge of the shrine.
Katherine’s heart beat fast, she wanted to hold back, to think and pray again before entering the sacred enclosure, but she could not. Canons ranged on either side the pilgrim path hurried the folk along, while behind her new pilgrims kept pressing through the gate. They were herded first through a little chapel, where they knelt and kissed a bone, big as the shank of an ox. It was the fingerbone of St. Peter, the attendant canon told them, watching while the pilgrims put pennies in a box.
They left the chapel and went through a covered way into a shed thatched with reeds and garnished with flowers. Here on the ground there were two holy wells, side by side. The monk in charge waved the people back, for a child had been laid in the little space between the twin wells.
The child was a boy of about four, but his head was big as that of a grown man, his tongue lolled from his slack spittle-dribbling mouth, his dull-swollen eyes were mindless as a dead lamb’s. The mother knelt beside him, to pull his arms apart so that one little hand should touch each pool. Her lips moved in desperate prayer while the monk made the sign of the cross over the child. The pilgrims watched, holding their breath.
The child struggled, trying to jerk his hands from the water, then let out a long sobbing animal wail.
The mother gave a great cry and gathered the child up in her arms. “A miracle!” she cried rocking the child. “For sure, it is a miracle! He has made no sound in months. Our Blessed Lady has cured him!”
While the people gasped and fell to their knees, the monk smiled, laying his hand on the boy’s head. Tears ran down Katherine’s cheeks, she turned away and could not look at the mother’s wild hopeful face. When her own time came to kneel between the holy wells and plunge her hands in each, she could form no proper prayer. She saw nothing but Blanchette’s trusting, adoring eyes, as they had been long ago.
Our Lady of Walsingham’s shrine adjoined the church. It was a small chapel without windows, nor needed any, for its hundred votive candles glittered on walls lined with gold and silver offerings, while the Blessed Image, larger than a woman, was crusted so thick with diamonds, rubies, pearls and other precious stones that the eye was blinded.
Katherine had waited long outside the shrine for her turn - though most pilgrims went through in groups, those who wished might worship alone - but before she finally knelt by the dazzling image a priest in white chasuble came up to her to ask what offering she would make to the Queen of Heaven.
She opened her scrip and taking out the Duke’s betrothal ring held it up, whispering, “This, Father.”
He took the ring, glanced sharply at the gold and sapphire. “It will be acceptable to Our Gracious Lady, my daughter.”
He drew aside while Katherine kissed the statue’s golden beringed foot, staring up through clouds of blue incense at the smooth painted wooden face beneath a diamond crown.
In the moments that she knelt there, Katherine prayed with the pent-up violence she had not dared to feel before, she prayed in desperation, she supplicated, she commanded. “Give me back my child! Show me the way to forgiveness. Lady, Lady, you who are all-merciful, tell me how Hugh’s murder may be forgiven. Tell me where is my child!”
And there was no answer. The white and red painted face, the round upward-staring eyes remained as before, bland, wooden, indifferent.
Still she knelt, until the priest touched her on the shoulder. “There are many waiting to come in here, daughter.”
She gave him so frantic and despairing a look that he said, “Come, come, would you gaze on the precious relic? It works more miracles than any other in Christendom!”
She bowed her head, and he waited, glancing at her scrip. “I’ve but a few pence left, Father,” she said in a strangled voice. “And this - -” She held out four silver pennies and the tarnished silver brooch the Queen had given her at Windsor.
“Ah?” said the priest in a flatter tone. “Well, since you have already donate
d - -” He took the pennies, and ignored the tawdry brooch. He unlocked a small diamond-studded door beneath the Virgin’s feet, exposing a crystal vial mounted in the centre of a gold and ivory crucifix. The vial seemed to contain a whitish powder.
Katherine gazed at the vial. It was said that when the Virgin was inclined to answer a pilgrim’s prayer, the Holy Milk would leap and quiver within the crystal. She strained her eyes until they blurred with pain, her body pounded, but there was no sign from the relic.
The priest closed the reliquary and locked it, he hurried to the exit door on the other side of the shrine; held it wide open for Katherine to leave.
She went out along another covered way and through a gate into the brilliant sunshine of the street. Something pricked her hand and she looked down at the Queen’s brooch which she still clasped. “Foi vainquera” was the motto on that brooch - a lie. Faith had conquered nothing. Our Lady had neither heard nor answered. There were no miracles. Her hand dropped slack. The brooch fell into the filth of the gutter.
A man passing behind Katherine on the street saw the brooch drop, picked it up and lumbered after her, as she wandered blindly along the outside of the abbey walls.
“Good pilgrim dame,” said the man, “you dropped this nouche.”
“Let it be,” she said in a muffled voice, not turning. “I do not want it.”
The man looked up into her dead-still face, then peered closer and read the tiny letters. Because he had suffered very greatly himself, and because his heart was filled with tenderness, he guessed something of what must have happened to this widowed penitent at the shrine. He put the brooch in his pouch and followed Katherine at a distance. People crossed themselves as he walked by them, but some reached out and touched him for luck. He was a hunchback.
Katherine walked until she came to the market square where there were benches along the garden hedge of the Black Lion Tavern, which was jammed with pilgrims who had already visited the shrine, and were now celebrating. Serving-maids ran out from the tavern with strong ale and meat pasties. The party of London merchants, each now wearing the Walsingham medal, were clustered at a table by the hedge, talking at the top of their voices.
Katherine’s throat was parched with thirst, her stomach gnawed. To gain favour from the Miraculous Lady of Walsingham, nothing at all had passed her lips since vespers yesterday. I shall have to beg for my bread now, she thought. She looked at the food the Londoners were guzzling, and was sickened. Pain throbbed in her sore mouth, in her head. Black swimming weakness crushed her. She slumped down on a bench and shut her eyes.
The man with the humped back paused by the market cross some way off, and watched Katherine with compassion.
The voices behind the hedge rose higher. They were shouting London gossip in answer to eager questions from provincial pilgrims. They were recounting with relish the horrors of the revolt in London two months ago, while a Norfolk man insisted that they had had a worse time of it up here than any Londoner could know.
“But ‘tis over now for good, that’s certain,” cried the grocer called Andrew, “since John Ball was caught at Coventry.”
“Ay,” agreed a self-important voice, “and I was there. With my own two eyes I saw it when the King’s men gelded him and gutted him, and he watched his own guts burn - afterwards they quartered him so cannily, he took a rare long time a-dying.”
There was laughter until Andrew cried, “Stale news, that is, my friend - but have ye heard the latest of the Duke o’ Lancaster?”
Katherine started and opened her eyes. She clenched her hands on the rim of the bench. “John o’ Gaunt’s renounced his paramour, that’s what! Shipped her off to France, or some say to one of his northern dungeons. The King commanded it.”
“Nay - but - -” said a woman giggling. ” Tis well known he was tired of her anyway and has found someone else, the wicked lecher.”
“He’ll not dare flaunt his new harlot then, for a Benedictine told me the Duke made public confession of his sins, called his leman witch and whore, then crawled on hands and knees pleading with his poor Duchess to forgive him when they met up in Yorkshire.”
Katherine rose from the bench and began to run. The hunchback hurried after her.
She ran north from the town towards the sea and along the banks of the river Stiffkey, until it widened at one place into a mill pond. Here on the grassy bank by a willow tree she stopped. The mill wheel turned sluggishly, as the falling waters pushed on it splashing downward, flowing towards the sea. Katherine advanced to the brink of the pond. She gazed down into the dark brown depths where long grasses bent in the rushing water. She clasped her hands against her breasts and stood swaying on the brink.
She felt a grip on her arm, a deep gentle voice said, “No, my sister. That is not the way.”
Katherine turned her head and her wild dilated eyes stared down into the calm tender brown ones of the hunchback. “Jesu, let me be!” she cried on a choking sob. “Leave me alone.”
His grip tightened on her arm. “You cry on Jesus’ name?” he said softly. “But you do not know what He has promised. He said not that we should not be tempested, nor travailed nor afflicted, but He promised, Thou shalt not be overcome!”
A little wind rustled through the willow fronds, mingling with the sound of the river water as it splashed against the turning mill wheel. She stared at him, while a quiver ran down her back. She did not see him clearly, his brown eyes were part of the beckoning dark depths of the pond. “That was not said for me,” she whispered. “God and His Mother have cast me out!”
“Not so. It is not so,” he smiled at her. “Since He has said, I shall keep you securely. You’re as dearworthy a child of His as anyone.”
Katherine’s gaze cleared and she recoiled. Now she saw what manner of man it was who was speaking to her. A hideous little man with a hump, whose head was twisted deep into his shoulders. A man with a great purple bulbous nose, scarred by pits, and a fringe of fire-red wisps around a tonsure. She crossed herself, while terror cut her breath. An evil demon - summoned by her from the hell depths of that deep beckoning water. “What are you?” she gasped.
He sighed a little, for he was well used to this, and patiently answered. “I am a simple parson from Norwich, my poor child, and called Father Clement.”
Her terror faded. His voice was resonant as a church bell, and his unswerving look met hers with sustaining strength. He wore a much darned but cleanly priest’s robe, a crucifix hung from his girdle.
She stepped uncertainly back from the pond, and began to shiver.
“I’ll warrant,” he said calmly, “you’ve not eaten in a long time.” He opened his pouch, took out slices of buttered barley bread, and a slab of cheese done up in a clean white napkin. “Sit down there,” he pointed to a flat stone by a golden clump of wild mustard. “The mustard will flavour the food.” He chuckled. “Ah, I make foolish jokes that nobody laughs at but the Lady Julian.”
Katherine stared at him dumbly; after a moment, she sat down and took the food.
He saw her wince as she tried to eat and brought her water from the pond in which to soften the bread. He briskly cut the cheese into tiny slivers. While she slowly ate, he pulled a willow whistle from his pouch and with it imitated so perfectly the twitterings of starlings that three of them landed at his feet and twittered answers.
Katherine’s physical weakness passed as her stomach filled, but despair rushed back. She folded the white napkin and handed it to Father Clement. “Thank you,” she said tonelessly.
“What will you do now?” he asked, putting the napkin and whistle in his pouch. From the bulbous-nosed, pitted face his eyes looked at her with an expression she had seen in no man’s eyes before. Love without desire, a kind of gentle merriment.
“I don’t know-” she said. “There’s nothing for me - nay - -” she whispered, flushing as she saw his question, “I’ll not go near - the pond again. But there was no answer for me here at Walsingham, no miracle was
wrought.” She went on speaking because something in him compelled her to, and it was like speaking to herself. “My fearful sins are yet unshriven - my love - he that was my love now despises me, and my child - -“
Father Clement held his peace. He cocked his massive head against his humped shoulders and waited.
“The cloisters,” Katherine said after a while. “There’s nothing else. A lifetime of prayer may yet avail to blunt His vengeance. I’ll go to Sheppey, to the convent of my childhood. I’ve given them many gifts through the years. They will take me as a novice.”
Father Clement nodded. It was much as he had guessed. “Before you enter this convent,” he said, “come with me to the Lady Julian. Speak with her awhile.”
“And who is the Lady Julian?”
“A blessed anchoress of Norwich.”
“Why should I speak with her?”
“Because, through God’s love, I think that she will help you - as she has many - as she once did me.”
“God is made of wrath, not love,” said Katherine dully. “But since you wish it, I will go. It matters naught what I do.”
CHAPTER XXIX
At dusk of the next day when Katherine and the humpbacked parson, Father Clement, rode into Norwich on his mule, Katherine had learned a little about the Lady Julian, though she listened without hope or interest.
Of Julian’s early life in the world the priest said nothing, though he knew of the pains and sorrows that had beset it. But he told Katherine of the fearful illness that had come to Julian when she was thirty, and how that when she had been dying in great torment, God had vouchsafed to her a vision in sixteen separate revelations. These “showings” had healed her illness and so filled her with mystic joy and fervour to help others with their message that she had received permission to dedicate her life to this. She had become an anchoress in a cell attached to the small parish church of St. Julian, where folk in need might come to her.