Katherine

by Anya Seton

She had been enclosed now for eight years, nor had ever left her cell.

  ” ‘Tis dismal,” murmured Katherine, “yet by misery perhaps she best shares the misery of others.” “Not dismal at all!” cried Father Clement, with his deep chuckle. “Julian is a most happy saint. God has made a pleasaunce in her soul. No one so ready to laugh as Dame Julian.”

  Katherine was puzzled, and distrustful. She had never heard of a saint who laughed, nor a recluse who did not dolefully agonise over the sins of the world. It seemed too that though Dame Julian followed the rules prescribed for anchorites, yet these allowed her to receive visitors at times, and that Father Clement had seen her often, when he wrote down her memories of her visions, and the further teachings that came to her through the spirit.

  Visions, Katherine thought bitterly. Of what help could it be to listen to some woman’s visions? The bleak empty years like a winter sea stretched out their limitless miles before Katherine, and she had no will to live through them. Though the frenzied impulse by the mill pond had passed.

  She could not put upon her children the shameful horror of a mother who died by her own act, yet the small Beauforts would never have known. And it were better if everyone thought her dead. The Beauforts then would be less embarrassment to their father. Hawise would care for them, the great castle staffs would care for them, and the Duke, notwithstanding that he had reviled the mother, would provide for them. Tom Swynford was a nearly grown lad and safe-berthed with the young Lord Henry. There was but one child who needed her - and Blanchette was gone.

  I will hide me away, thought Katherine, at Sheppey - until I die. Nor would it be long. She felt death near in the increasing pains her body suffered, in the blurring of her sight, and the dragging weakness.

  Sometime before they rode through Norwich to the hillside above the river Wensum where Father Clement’s little church stood, the priest had fallen into silence. He felt how grievous was the illness of body and soul that afflicted Katherine, and he knew that she was no longer accessible to him.

  Guided by Father Clement, Katherine reluctantly entered the dark churchyard behind the flint church. The sky was overcast and an evening drizzle had set in. On the south side beyond the round Saxon church tower, she dimly saw the boxlike outline of the anchorage which clung to the church wall. Breast-high on its churchyard side there was a window, closed by a wooden shutter. The priest tapped on the shutter and called in his bell-toned voice, “Dame Julian, here is someone who has need.”

  At once the shutter opened. “Welcoom, who’er it be that seeks me.”

  Father Clement gently pushed Katherine towards the window, which was obscured by a thin black cloth. “Speak to her,” he said.

  Katherine had no wish to speak. It seemed to her that this was a crowning humiliation, that she should be standing in a tiny unfamiliar churchyard with a hunchback and commanded to reveal her suffering, to ask for help, from some unseen woman whose voice was homely and prosaic as Dame Emma’s, and who spoke moreover with a thick East Anglian burr.

  “My name is Katherine,” she said. Through her weary pain resentment flashed. “There’s nothing else to say.”

  “Coom closer, Kawtherine,” The voice behind the curtain was soothing as to a child. “Gi’ me your hand.” A corner of the black cloth lifted; faintly white in the darkness a hand was held out. Unwillingly Katherine obeyed. At the instant of contact with a firm warm clasp, she was conscience of fragrance. A subtle perfume such as she had never smelled, like herbs, flowers, incense, spices, yet not quite like these. While the hand held hers, she smelled this fragrance and felt a warm tingle in her arm. Then her hand was loosed and the curtain dropped.

  “Kawtherine,” said the voice, “you are ill. Before you coom to me again, you must rest and drink fresh bullock’s blood, tonight, at once - and for days - -“

  “By the rood, lady!” Katherine cried angrily, “I’ve tasted no flesh food in months. ‘Tis part of my penance.”

  “Did our moost Dearworthy Lord Jesus gi’ you the penance, Kawtherine?” There was a hint of a smile in the voice, and Katherine’s confused resentment increased. Everyone knew that the sinful flesh which had betrayed her must be mortified.

  Suddenly the voice changed its tone, became lower, humble and yet imbued with power. Katherine was not conscious of the provincial accent as Julian said, “It was shown to me that Christ ministers to us His gifts of grace, our soul with our body, and our body with our soul, either of them taking help with the other. God has no disdain to serve the body.”

  For a startled moment Katherine felt a touch of awe. “That is strange to me, lady,” she said to the black curtain. “I cannot believe that the foul body is of any worth to God.”

  “And shall not try tonight,” said the voice gently. “Father Clement?”

  The priest, who had drawn away, came up to the window. Julian spoke to him at some length.

  Katherine was given a chamber reserved for travellers in the rectory across the alley from the church. She was put to bed and cared for by Father Clement’s old servant, a bright-eyed woman of sixty, who adored him.

  They brought Katherine fresh blood from the slaughterhouse, and a bullock’s liver, which they chopped up raw and blended into a mortrewe with egg, they fed her boiled dandelion greens, minced so that she need not chew. They made her eat. Katherine for the first day thought this was a worse penance than any she had undergone, but she was too weak to protest or even to wonder that Dame Julian had said she should not be bled, that it was not sensible to put in blood at one place and take it away from another.

  Father Clement twinkled as he told Katherine this, and she smiled feebly, wondering how it was that a man so hideous and deformed always seemed happy. He laboured tirelessly for his parish, yet was always unhurried. He never scolded, or questioned, or exhorted. There was a sunniness about him that shone through all his clean shabby little rectory.

  In four days Katherine had gained strength, her pains were less, the bluish sores on her legs had ceased oozing. She began to worry about the expense that she was giving Father Clement, but he laughed at her, saying with truth that the odd things Lady Julian had prescribed for her to eat were to be had for the asking at the shambles, while the greens came from his own garden.

  “Never did I think that I should he destitute as I am now,” Katherine said on a long sigh. Yet it had become a dream - the glamour and the lavish bounty of all those past years. A guilty dream.

  The priest looked at her softly. “Destitute? Perhaps ‘tis that you’ve always been. For our soul may never have rest in things that are beneath itself.”

  “Ah, see-” she cried bitterly. “Now at last you speak like a priest. ‘Tis what Brother William would have said - God keep him - that was killed because of me - he, and others.”

  The priest seemed not to notice. “The Lady Julian waits for you,” he said quietly. “She believes you well enough to come to her today.”

  Katherine had thought much about the anchoress during these days of recovery, and been astonished to find a longing to speak with her again. She went back that afternoon to the little churchyard and knocked at the cell window. The voice through the black cloth told her to come in at the door which had been unlocked.

  Katherine entered Julian’s cell nervously, puzzled, curious. It was but six paces long and wide, and curtained down the middle with fine blue wool. There were two windows, the “parloir” window to the churchyard, and above a wooden prie-dieu a narrow slitted window that opened into the church. Through this, Julian could see the altar and take part in the Mass. There was a small fireplace, a table and two wooden chairs on the warm brick floor. The bumpy flint walls had been painted white.

  A moment after Katherine shut the door, Julian came around the blue curtain. A plain little woman, neither fat nor thin, with greying hair beneath a. white coif. She wore a soft unbleached linen gown. A woman nearing forty and so ordinary that one might see a hundred like her in any market-square, except that, as s
he took Katherine’s hand and smiled, the cell filled with the undefinable fragrance, and at the touch of the square blunt fingers Katherine felt a strange sensation, as though there had been an iron fetter around her chest that now shattered, to let her breathe a light golden air.

  “So you are the Katherine Father Clement brought,” said Julian, in her comfortable slow voice. She sat down in one chair and motioned Katherine to the other. “The pains’re better? Can you chew? ‘Twould be a shame to lose those pretty teeth, and tell me-” She asked several frank physical questions, which Katherine answered with faint amusement and disappointment. She had come for the spiritual guidance that Father Clement seemed so certain of, and Lady Julian talked of laxatives. Yet there was still the strange sense of freedom.

  “This sickness that you have,” said Julian, “I too had once, when I had fasted overmuch. And was in great trouble and pain, so near death that my confessor stood over me.” She glanced towards the crucifix that was mounted on her prie-dieu, and said simply, “God in His marvellous courtesy did save me.”

  “By the visions,” said Katherine, sighing. “Father Clement told me of them.”

  “Ay - by the sixteen showings, but I don’t know why they were vouchsafed to me. Truly it was not shown me that God loved me better than the least soul that is in grace. I’m certain here be many that never had showings, nor sight but of the common teaching of Holy Church, that love God better than I.”

  “It’s very hard to love God,” said Katharine below her breath, “when He does not love us.”

  “Oh Katherine, Katherine - -” Lady Julian smiled, shaking her head. “Love is our Lord’s whole meaning. It was shown me full surely that ere God made us He loved us, and when we were made, we loved Him.”

  It was not Julian’s words, which Katherine barely heard, that brought an odd half-frightened thrill. Like the first time Katherine had climbed to the top of the minster tower at Sheppey and seen the island stretching out for miles to other villages and blue water in the distance, a landscape she had not dreamed of.

  She stared unbelieving at the homely broad face beneath the greying hair and wimple, for suddenly it looked beautiful, made of shining mist.

  “Lady,” whispered Katherine, “it must be these visions were vouchsafed to you because you knew naught of sin - not sins like mine - lady, what would you know of - of adultery - of murder - -“

  Julian rose quickly and placed her hand on Katherine’s shoulder. At the touch, a soft rose flame enveloped her, and she could not go on.

  “I have known all manner of sin,” said Julian quietly. “Sin is the sharpest scourge. And verily as sin is unclean, so verily it is a disease or monstrous thing against nature. Yet listen to what I was shown in the thirteenth vision.” She moved away from Katherine. Her voice took on the low chanting note of power.

  “I had been thinking of my sins, I was in great sorrow. Then I saw Him. He turned on me His face of lovely pity and He said: It is truth that sin is cause of all this pain: sin is behovable - none the less all shall be well, and all shall be well, you shall see yourself that all manner of thing shall be well. These words were said to me tenderly, showing no kind of blame. And then He said, Accuse not thyself overdone much, deeming that thy tribulation and thy woe is all thy fault: for I will not that thou be heavy or sorrowful indiscreetly. Then I understood that it was great disobedience to blame or wonder on God for my sin, since He blamed me not for it.

  “And with these words, I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in heaven; where we shall truly see the cause why He suffered sin to come. For He made me see that from failure of love on our part, therefore is all our travail, and naught else.”

  Julian looked at Katherine and smiled. “Do you understand?”

  “Nay, lady,” said Katherine slowly, “I cannot believe there could be so much comfort.” Julian sat down and spoke again, simply and quietly.

  When Katherine left Julian’s cell that day, she did not know how long she had stayed, nor clearly remember the things that had been told her, but for the time she had ceased to question. As she walked out into the little churchyard, it seemed lit with beauty. She stood bemused in a corner by a dark yew tree and saw meaning, blissful meaning in everything her eye rested on: the blue floweret of the speedwell, the moss on a gravestone, an ant that laboured to push a crumb through the grass - all these were radiant, as though she looked at them through a crystal.

  She picked up a black flint pebble that seemed to glow with light like a diamond, while some of Lady Julian’s words came back to her. “In this same time, our Lord showed me a spiritual sight of His homely loving. A little thing like a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and I thought what may this be? And it was answered: It lasteth and ever shall, for that God loveth it.”

  During that moment that she held the pebble, Katherine understood this, and why Julian had said, “After this I saw God-in a point, by which sight I saw that He is in all things, be it never so little. Nothing is done by hap or adventure - if it be hap or chance in the sight of man, our blindness is the cause.”

  These words echoed in Katherine’s mind as she held the pebble, joy shimmered through its black flint, there was joy in the grass, the yew tree, the gravestones, the moss. Slowly it faded, and a great sleepiness came over her. She dropped the flint. She scarcely could drag her heavy limbs across the alley to her chamber in the rectory. She laid herself on the bed and slept the night through. There were no dreams.

  Each day Katherine went to Julian’s cell and listened, each day came back refreshed by glimpses of a love she had not known existed, though the exaltation of that moment in the churchyard did not return.

  She argued sometimes, at times cried out in disbelief, unable to hide her doubts, and then indeed Julian once sighed and looked sad and humble, as she said, “All this was shown to me in three ways, Katherine, by bodily sight, by word formed in my understanding, and by spiritual sight. But this spiritual sight, I can not, and I may not, show as openly as I would. I trust in God that He will of His Goodness make you take it more spiritually than I can, or may, tell it.”

  Humility. Katherine saw in those days how far she had ever been from truly feeling it. She saw that she had never known the meaning of prayer. Her prayers had all been violent commands and bargainings - dictated by fear.

  To Lady Julian, prayer was communion. “Prayer oneth the soul with God.” And it was thanking. Giving thanks even without reward. In the fourteenth showing, Julian had heard the lovely words, “I am the ground of thy beseeching.” And with these blessed words had seen a full overcoming against all our weakness and all our doubtful dreads.

  Katherine, ever quick to take guilt, had then berated herself for the wrongness of her former prayers, and Julian patiently repeated, “Accuse not thyself overdone much … I am sure that no man asks mercy and grace with true meaning, but if mercy and grace have been first given to him.”

  There came a day when Katherine could no longer listen without pouring out all her anguish to Lady Julian. She did not know what she said, she only heard her own voice calling out the names of those who meant for her the sharpest pain - Hugh, Blanchette and John. When she said the last name, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

  Now she saw that though she had meant her letter of renunciation, and honestly thought to spend her life in penance, yet she had not really believed that John would let her go. Always she had felt that the miracle would happen at Walsingham, in return for her suffering, in return for giving John’s betrothal ring-to the shrine. She had been sure that in some way Blanchette would be restored to her, her sins forgiven, and - -

  “That your old life would start again?” asked Julian smiling. “That it would by miracle become fair and clean in all men’s eyes, in God’s?”

  “Ay - ay - I see now that I thought so. Is it any wonder that God is so angry with me?”

  “Truly, Katherine, in all the showings, I saw no manner o
f wrath in God, neither for short time nor for long. I saw no wrath but on man’s part, and that He forgives in us.”

  Then Katherine cried out that if God had no wrath, why should she fear sin?

  And Julian answered ever patiently, “Because as long as we be meddling with what we know is sin, we shall never see clearly the blissful countenance of Our Lord. And this is to break us in twain. For we are all in Him enclosed. And He in us. He sitteth in our soul.”

  Thai Katherine talked of Sheppey, the convent where she would cloister herself. “- - or even to be an anchoress like you, lady. So with true prayer I might come some day to know Him as you do - and to help others.”

  For the first time, a hint of sternness showed in Julian’s face, for the first time she referred to herself apart from the visions, and she said quietly, “When I came here, I had no one left of my own.”

  Katherine did not understand her meaning then, nor why she said a moment after, “It was shown to me that we may never come to full knowing of God till we know first clearly our own soul.”

  That night, she saw what the Lady Julian had meant. Katherine awoke suddenly from deep sleep, and the little rectory chamber seemed to be suffused with a soft iridescent light. This light was peace. It bathed her, permeated her flesh, her bones, until her being was made of light. The confusions, the gropings, the struggles for escape were all dissolved in that light. In their place came certainty - the answer so simple, so right and inevitable and so hard.

  It would be hard, but now she did not feel it so, for the light sustained her, and in her heart she heard repeated the words the Lady Julian had told her, that He had said: My darling, I am glad thou art come to me: in all thy woe I have ever been with thee; now seest thou my loving.

  The next morning Katherine sought out Father Clement. He was sitting in his garden under a mulberry tree, while five children from the parish capered in front of him. He was teaching them the parts they were to play at the pageant of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin next week. He acted each part in turn for them, now squealing through his huge empurpled nose, now growling in imitation of a bear, now flapping his hands on either side his hump for a crow. The children shrieked with laughter, and called him Bo-Bo, a pet name that they had for him. They did not think him hideous, nor did Katherine. She no longer saw his deformities, as she no longer heard the burr in Lady Julian’s speech.