Her Kind

by Niamh Boyce

  ‘You did.’

  ‘He’s soon to receive his accolades and will be a knight before long.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ I answered.

  I did not think it wonderful. Had I a son, I would keep him as far from battle as I could. I thought of Otto, his likeness stitched into the tapestry downstairs, his bones somewhere under the earth.

  Will strode into the room then. A young squire used to servants, he didn’t acknowledge my presence. At fourteen, he was already tall and broad of shoulder. A battle scar ran from the corner of his eye to his chin, tugging his mouth downwards. His mother doted, kissing him on both cheeks and pressing her hands over his. They left with great excitement for the seneschal’s election.

  I decided to visit the Altar Room. Esme had shown it to us the day before. A small room off the hall had been turned into a chapel with a simple altar and one pew. Alice created it shortly after the bishop accused her of usury. It meant she could hold mass under her own roof if she pleased. He was furious at her arrogance, as were some of the merchants. ‘They needn’t have concerned themselves – Alice isn’t at all pious. There hasn’t been a mass here yet,’ laughed Esme.

  I entered the sweet-smelling silence of the Altar Room and knelt at the pew. After a while, Otto’s face came to mind. Seeing him woven as the hunter had startled me at first, but now I was glad he was there. I remembered the two of us, our feet dangling from the banks of the stream. How we dipped our toes but did not swim, because the water was moving fast and floods had torn away the bridge.

  Since I had to go to church the next morning, I prepared an old recipe for the bees. Esme watched with her feet up as I mixed foxglove, tansy, honey and a dab of butter in a crock. She was delighted not to have to attend the cathedral, so took a great interest in my recipe and was very encouraging. I carried the concoction down to the orchard till I found a place not far from the hives, in what I hoped would be the path of their flight. I coated the hollow of a large oak there in the paste. A sweet snare. With some luck, any bees that swarmed would settle there to build their kingdom, and not on another’s land, gifting someone else with honey, wax and mead.

  I called my daughter, and we set out for the cathedral. I was over-warm; Alice had insisted I wear a lavishly embroidered cloak of hers. The furred cuffs alone could keep a family for a year. I felt ashamed passing the clutch of beggars by Watergate. A gaunt woman, her belly swollen with child, stared at me with hatred. The gates had been raised to let worshippers into Irishtown for the sermon. A watchman sat in the window of his tower, precariously close to the edge. He saluted us grandly. As we passed under the arch, I looked up and saw the teeth of the black gate overhead and said a prayer that it was more firmly secured than its keeper.

  As we crossed the bridge, Líadan stopped and gazed into the river. I tugged her on, drawn by the huge building on the hill. Just like Hightown and Irishtown, the cathedral itself was behind walls. Kilkennie, it seemed, was a riddle of walls, a stone honeycomb. We climbed steps to yet another archway and entered the grounds. Before us, stood the highest, narrowest bell tower I’d ever seen. Its door was set off the ground, with no stairs or ladder to reach it. The cathedral huddled behind it, like a giant child. I walked towards the church, taking in the coloured-glass windows and enormous oak door. Heads were carved above it, watchful monkish faces, peering down. We wandered amongst the grave slabs and yews that surrounded the building. The grass was speckled with buttercups, daisies and piss-beds.

  I felt someone’s eyes on me, as sure as if they had reached out and touched the side of my face. I looked about; there was no one else here. Yet the feeling didn’t go away. I noticed a path worn to a narrow wall that jutted from the cathedral. There was a slit in the stone, a dark cavity. From there, an eye met mine, blinked, then disappeared. A hermit within the walls. No one had said. I knew it was a woman who watched, but I couldn’t say why. I wondered what it was like, to live within the walls of a church. I longed to go closer, to kneel by the opening and beg a blessing for my daughter. The prayers of an anchoress had great power.

  A light laugh distracted me from my thoughts. Two ladies approached. One waved. From her manner, I knew she had mistook me for Dame Kytler. I had almost forgotten I was wearing her cloak. ‘Besides,’ whispered one, as they came closer, ‘she’s much too tall to be Alice.’

  The women stopped and introduced themselves. Annota Lange and Lucia Hatton. They had heard Alice had a new maid for they were both very good friends, they told us, of the dame. Annota was a kind-faced woman with pocked skin, plainly garbed for a merchant. Her powdered companion was short, with soft brown eyes and a sharp nose. Lucia was a neighbour of ours, she said, looking at us from head to toe. She clutched a lapdog and did all the talking.

  The grounds began to fill with people who milled towards the cathedral doors. The bells rang, with one toll running into another, urging us inside. We followed the ladies, stopping as they did at the entrance to dip a finger in a white marble font. The burgesses settled into pews, but I noticed our kind stood in the centre aisle, so that’s where we went. It was a far cry from our mountainside church, with swallows in the eaves. Gold-painted angels in loin cloths blew trumpets from the beams. There were carvings on the stone columns. Directly above my head, leaves sprouted from the open mouth of a river god, as if a song he’d been singing had come alive.

  My daughter stared at the tiles and shuffled her feet. The smell of church wax and incense mixed with that of wool and sweat. I would’ve much preferred the apple blossoms in Alice’s orchard. The bees would swarm, I felt it in my gut. If they settled on another’s land, we’d be obliged to share the honey. Worse, if I couldn’t find them, a season’s harvest would be lost.

  The hum from the congregation ceased as a neat robed figure appeared on the altar. I rubbed Líadan’s shoulder, and when she looked up her eyes were as dark as slate. They’d taken an offended expression recently, just like the one she’d had as a new-born.

  With a voice befitting a town crier, the bishop reeled off a Latin mass. The morning brightened, the windows behind him becoming lances of light that dulled as clouds passed.

  When the mass was over, Ledrede spoke to us in English. Someone worthy had drawn the bishop’s attention to the lepers in Magdalene House, someone fearing contagion, who wanted the hospital to close its doors. Ledrede announced Kilkennie had no need to fear the lepers, for many citizens were as unclean as they, just as malignant and diseased.

  ‘Heresy is the worse contagion; you must be vigilant. Those of you who know of a heretic, whether neighbour or kin, must tell.’

  Heretics, he went on, worshipped demons, performed obscene rites, spat on the Holy Cross. How could anyone spit on the Holy Cross, I wondered, on Christ in his Passion, sacrificing his life so ours could be saved? They also committed sodomy, bestiality and necromancy. There wasn’t a whisper; the bishop had them in his thrall – denouncing acts I hardly recognized.

  I thought of the anchoress kneeling in her cell, pictured a soft face and dark woollen hood, beneath which braids must be coiled over each ear. I imagined them as conch shells echoing the waves of distant shores, drowning the bishop’s words.

  His voice rose a pitch. He knew how to weed them out, for he, Richard Ledrede, had been at the papal court when the pope rounded up the Templar monks, each one. Now you’d not find a Templar anywhere, not in Avignon, nor in the Holy Land, nor in Ireland …

  The bishop stood there, staring into the congregation, letting the silence linger. Líadan was swaying slightly, light-headed from standing so long. I laid my hand on her back.

  The bishop carried on. ‘The pope lives under constant threat of revenge. His enemies are everywhere – even now, in the sanctity of Avignon. You, too, must keep your eyes open, and be brave in Christ’s name. Be vigilant. Disobedience is everywhere. Look about you! There are clerics here, in this very town, living as common men do, siring children. This very morning, a priest tarried down Dean Street with his chil
d on his shoulders! Singing!’

  There were no gasps from the congregation this time, just a rather meek shuffling, and a few laughs.

  ‘You snigger? I tell you this. Any priest who keeps a concubine should put her away. Shun the woman and her offspring, or be suspended.’

  There was a snort from behind us. The bishop spoke in French then; he went on for some time. I thought my legs would buckle.

  ‘Sodomy’, ‘bestiality’, ‘necromancy’ – I committed the words to memory as we left the cathedral, wondering what on earth they meant. It was drizzling now, and rivulets of swill ran on to the street from between the dwellings.

  Back at the house, I went up to Alice’s chamber to give my report. She was propped up in bed, her tray of food untouched. She made much of my return and, with mock appreciation, thanked me for not running off with her valuable cloak.

  ‘The last maid did. Hard to blame her, I suppose.’

  ‘Yet you got it back?’

  ‘Oh, she didn’t get far,’ Alice said, tapping her eye tooth.

  I was humiliated to learn my trust had been tested, but perhaps that was the point. I relayed Ledrede’s sermon and Alice listened. She explained what sodomy and bestiality were. I knew of these acts, but not what they were called. That there were names for them made them seem worse somehow.

  ‘He has said some of this before, but not as vilely. The congregation’s becoming conversant with a great many intriguing topics,’ Alice said. ‘Is the bishop entirely sure of what he’s doing?’

  Yes, he is, I thought, but did not say, for Alice was not really asking.

  ‘There is a cell there, a hermit?’ I asked, removing the heavy cloak.

  ‘Yes, Agnes has a good reputation – she cured one of the lepers through fast and prayer. Bring Basilia to her: she might cure her silence.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I answered, irked by the name Basilia. ‘Where will I put your cloak?’

  ‘Antechamber. Where else?’

  She glanced over at her counting table, frustrated at being kept from her accounts. I hung the cloak in the small room set off from the chamber. It was stocked with various chests and hung with cloaks and hoods. The air tasted of pelt. I quickly left.

  ‘Might Líadan remain here next Sunday? I’d rather she didn’t hear such sermons?’

  Alice corrected me for calling my daughter Líadan. She sensed rebellion, and she was correct. I had named my child; she couldn’t change that. There was only so much Alice could control: my tongue and my daughter were my own.

  ‘And that’s nonsense; the sermons won’t do her any harm. Our Basilia is no frail poppet. She survived those savage mountains well enough – I heard you ate each other up there, that last famine winter.’

  I remembered the baby I saw suckling from its dead mother, and I longed to slap Alice. What would she know about anything, safe here in her stone coop, fed and watered like a prized pet?

  I finally got to the hives. Seven glorious skeps set on low tables, surrounded by apple trees at the end of Alice’s orchard. I was just in time to catch a swarm leaving. A smoky buzzing cloud, it veered in the direction of the river. I gathered my skirts and followed a while before tripping. I damned the overlong kirtle I had to wear. As the cool blades tickled my face, I remembered being breathless and a child, racing unhampered through the grove towards the giant tree in Flemingstown. I rose to my feet and called out the charm to keep the swarm close. ‘Do not fly wildly to the woods, be ye mindful of my good.’ After some time I found the oak. My snare had worked. Smoky and silver-winged, the swarm hummed from inside its breast.

  4. Cathedral Hill

  The young clerics formed a solemn row and left the choir stalls; once outside, they raced across the green, flinging their psalters in the air and catching them. Inside, the bishop strolled from the altar, satisfied with his morning, despite the distraction of the anchoress’s voice trembling along with the hymns. High and out of tune, Agnes’s voice irritated his very bowels. He had briefly envisioned jumping from the pulpit, and driving his staff through the slot in the wall and into her warbling neck. Instead, he called on the Virgin Mary for strength and rallied on with his sermon.

  His words had had the desired effect: the congregation had shuffled out afterwards, not gossiping half as much as usual. They were unnerved, and that was how it must be. Otherwise they would never betray the heretics amongst them.

  He had presumed the woman wearing Kytler’s cream cloak was the moneylender. When she ignored the pews and stood amongst the commoners, he briefly thought the dame had repented. But then the woman looked up. For a horrible instant, he thought it was the anchoress – she had the same oval face and dark eyes. As if by some perverse miracle Agnes had been transported from her cell to torture him further. But it was someone else, some stranger garbed in the moneylender’s robes, an impostor whose mouth reminded the bishop of the sour whores in Italian frescoes.

  Ledrede made his way down the aisle to where Bede bent over his tablet, scoring the wax. He was in the burgesses’ section, tallying the morning’s head count. The names of the wealthiest merchants were carved into the oak pews: Outlawe, Le Poer, De Valle, Hatton … some had followed Kytler’s lead and stopped attending in person. They worshiped instead in Saint Mary’s of Hightown; a glorified oratory where the corporation held its cackling assembly. The bishop ran his finger over the fat K of Kytler at the end of the bench.

  ‘Seems Dame Kytler’s stout servant has been relieved of cathedral duty,’ he said.

  ‘I saw – a new maid came instead. Wore that sinfully lavish cloak, and was accompanied by a girl.’

  ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘Well, r-r-rumour says –’

  ‘Who is “rumour”?’ The bishop was impatient with Bede’s pride in his flock of spies.

  ‘One of my boys, a new one. He says they came from the Leix Hills.’

  ‘Gaels?’

  ‘Claim to be English. Mother and daughter.’

  ‘Since when did any English live in the hills?’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  He waited as Bede finished his tally. One hundred and forty-two. That was all – a quarter less than last year, and half the number that had attended his very first sermon.

  One sting reminded him of another. That first year of his bishopric, the sheriff came from Dublin to welcome him, to inspect the churches’ taxes and, of course, collect his portion. Ledrede had the best wine ready, eager to share a bottle or two with his guest. A lamb was roasted and a feast prepared, but the sheriff wouldn’t stay. ‘You’ll not journey to Dublin on an empty stomach?’ Ledrede had asked. He could recall the answer word for word. ‘Ah, but we always stay in Kytler’s; the dame’s hospitality is famed. Surely you’ll be there yourself later.’

  No invite came from the dame. Ledrede drank the red himself, while ruminating on the frank way the sheriff had refused his invitation. Had he guessed at Ledrede’s humble origins? Was it in his speech, in his walk, was it etched into the lines around his mouth? However they knew, they always knew – that breed of people. He never did get to sit at Dame Kytler’s table, though officials from all over Ireland were said to sup there.

  The bishop and Bede left the cathedral. They found some of the congregation lingering in the churchyard. They had lined up, in a rather snake-like arrangement, to speak with the hermit nun. On walking further, they saw a young man kneeling by the aperture in the cathedral wall, whispering and nodding.

  Not for the first time did the bishop consider sealing Sister Agnes in. Through two small chinks, one by his altar and this one in the outer wall, the anchoress endlessly annoyed him. Why did the people confide in a mere flesh and blood woman – petitioning their prayers, bringing babies to bless, limbs to heal? Had she not sworn to leave worldly concerns behind, to devote her life only to prayer?

  The woman was lucky even to be here. She had once been a concubine to an Irish chief. ‘A lowly abductee,’ the man’s wife had called her.
No trouble, till she gave birth in the middle of the night to a longed-for boy child. The wife paid a high price to have the girl walled in and her baby taken by the convent. Ran away, she had apparently told her husband – what did you expect? If only these people petitioning the hermit’s prayers knew that, the bishop thought, wondering then if it would make any difference at all. Their sense of shame was not strong.

  ‘There’s something in all this fervour, something heathen,’ the bishop muttered.

  ‘The lepers come, too. They arrive at sunset, shaking their rattles, but still – it’s rather unclean,’ said Bede.

  Ledrede suddenly felt invigorated. Antagonism often had that effect.

  ‘Pope John showed wonderful foresight in allocating Ossory to a man like me, Bede,’ he proclaimed. ‘It must’ve been divine inspiration.’

  He remembered his first sighting of the city of Kilkennie. Beggars had lit on them as he and his company neared the gates, but that didn’t distract from the sudden warm tug in his chest. It wasn’t as if he had arrived in a foreign land, but as if he had come home. He had almost forgotten that sense of purpose, the certainty that his fate was connected to this place.

  He must chronicle his progress as bishop, plan further work … First, a new roof for the cathedral. It often rained on the congregation. He thought of the moneylender, that gemmed white spider, Alice Kytler. She resented his very presence in Hightown. It seemed previous bishops had dwelt elsewhere and were more interested in siring offspring than in writing sermons.

  Her new maid was an odd woman. Seemingly reverent, she had not chattered or whispered. Yet her lips had moved. It was disconcerting – was she praying, or could she be mocking? Just as he had raised the host, she seemed to buckle. When the sacred is raised, the profane will fall.

  One day soon, Kytler and all her ilk would fall, would no longer impose their will over Hightown, set their own laws, nurse wealth rightfully owed to the Church. Kilkennie was full of avaricious merchants like her, mere usurers and gluttons – their bellies protruding as vulgarly over their belts as their houses did on to the street. Arnold, their seneschal, was interested only in power, wealth and reputation. The bishop knew his sort well.