by Niamh Boyce
Meitheamh
* * *
JUNE
A settlement of Flemish artificers took place not long after the English invasion. Fullers, cooks, brewers and weavers of linen and wool; they inhabited a suburb of Kilkennie, built a town of forty-five orchards and gardens, and fortified it with gates and towers.
‘Ancient Flemish Colony in Kilkenny’,
John G. A. Prim
5. Basilia
We were almost three weeks in Kytler’s, when Dame Alice summoned me to her chamber. I opened the heavy door to find her perched on a canopied bed, her pale hair fluffed like a dandelion clock. One side of the room was strewn with Roger’s high boots, cloaks, furs, poulaines and damp hose. The other side was tidy except for the large desk in the corner, which was laden with scales, weights, scrolls, loose parchments, inks and quills. Alice smiled, showing tiny sharp teeth, and beckoned me closer. The bed cover was embroidered with gold-and-red branches swirling around tiny bluebirds.
I sat waiting for instructions, but Alice said that all she required was company and folded her hands on her lap. I looked at her bright rings, the mauve veins beneath her pale skin. One fingertip was stained black from ink. I felt, as I stared, that this, whatever it was, had happened before. I had seen it all – the neatly stitched bluebirds, her jewelled ink-stained fingers – once before. The dame, noticing how I stared, thought I liked her rings and began to list the precious stones.
‘Garnet, amethyst, ruby, pearl … I earned these, every one. You must not think my father sailed from Flanders with caskets of finery. It was hard work, some luck, but mostly hard work that brought our family wealth. Jose taught me to write but, more importantly, to stay alert, be watchful, and let no opportunity pass. “Do not rest,” he always said; “you can rest in your grave.”’
Though Alice kept busy, her work was far from hard. The servants claimed Jose Kytler left Flanders in a ship so laden it had almost sunk. Maybe both tales were true – I didn’t really care. The dame leant forward and gently tugged a lock free from my cap. She peered closely but didn’t mention the colour like most would.
‘I might even teach you your letters, what say you? Yes, perhaps I will.’
She placed her hand over mine then – it was dry as parchment. I wanted to take mine away, but I didn’t dare. Dame Kytler seemed to be thinking, or maybe she was drifting off.
After a while, she spoke about her physician, a learned man. He might visit sometime – might he ‘examine’ me? I shook my head. I’d had my throat blessed, tied with red ribbon, anointed in fat. It made no difference. Her doctor couldn’t help me speak, for I no longer wanted to. Most people didn’t like the silence that followed their words to me. After a while they didn’t even see me any more – people like Lucia Hatton and Alice’s husband, Roger. Even my mother had stopped urging me to speak, but she had always preferred quiet to clamour.
When Alice dismissed me, I slipped from the house and wandered the town. The Hightown Gates were shut, though it was not yet curfew. The keeper eyed me sourly from the turret, the armour on his chest glinting. The gate was gridded and barbed. A gaunt, bearded man stood upon a dunghill, tugging a carcass from the mess. With much swearing, he wrenched up a ribcage that might’ve once belonged to a deer. I followed as he carried it down through Hightown and towards Watergate.
The keeper waved him through the gate. ‘Show me your wares?’ he jested, as I approached. He knew I’d no wares and no business there, but he seemed less strict than the keeper who guarded Hightown. On Sunday, he had just left the gates open, perched on his window ledge, and saluted the prettiest girls making their way to Saint Canice’s. I passed over the low bridge, a few steps behind the man and the carcass. I had to run to keep up. He didn’t climb the steep steps to the cathedral, but turned off on to Dean Street and ducked down a muck lane, where he entered a lone hut.
The door was open, so I peered in. The man glanced up; he didn’t seem annoyed so I sidled in and leant against the wall. He said he was a comb-maker, and his name was Fiachra. Had he not such a hooked nose, he would’ve been handsome. He dumped the carcass into a steaming cauldron and added more turf to the fire beneath.
There were tools and blades on a table. Baskets lined the room: they were filled with cleaned bones, some smoothed into shapes, some already turned into loom weights, knife handles, dye stones or beads. I sat on the ground; it was covered in bone dust, so I drew with my finger. The clay beneath was red. I drew a moon. I drew a bird. A small bird like the one on Alice’s bedcover. A bird of earth and bone.
The comb-maker stood over his table and fixed a pale disc into a clamp. He began to saw teeth into it, one by one.
‘Gabh go mall. Go slow and careful,’ he said, ‘that’s the trick.’
He spoke as if to an apprentice but didn’t look for answers. His tunic was stuck to his back with sweat. He pulled it over his head and hung it on a nail. A line of fur ran from his belt up to his navel; a pendant hung around his neck. A wolf’s tooth. I rose to my feet. He lifted it to his mouth and kissed it. ‘For luck and a long life,’ he said, and something else, but I didn’t hear, for I left as quickly as my feet could carry me.
The wolf fang stayed in my mind as I walked towards Watergate. I shivered. I thought of the wolf that had circled me and my mother. I leant over the bridge and gazed into the ferny water. The keeper was shouting down at someone; I wished he’d cease. I wanted to listen to the stream and forget about the wolf, but I kept seeing us there, crouched behind the cairn. The wolf had been rib-thin, head low to the ground, ready to pounce. My mother gripped her dagger so tightly her nails whitened. Was she about to stab the wolf? She locked her arm about my neck. I couldn’t breathe. A pack howled in the distance then, and the wolf just flipped away. She released me and I touched my neck. Blood came away on my fingertips. My mother hadn’t lifted her knife against the wolf at all – it was me she’d been about to kill. The blade had sliced a raw notch at my neck. In my fear, I had felt no pain.
Afterwards, my mother hoisted our bag on to her shoulder and began walking. She hurried down a slope. I remember her slashing through a thicket, till she found the low, black mouth of a cave. She led me inside, her back bent, bidding me to follow carefully, to take just one step for each of hers, to place my foot in the very same spot – ‘There are drops so sharp …’ It was dim, yet she was sure of her way. A thought came then – that before there was mother and me – there was just mother, a girl unknown to me who knew of caves like this.
The narrow entrance opened out into a great stone room. Above us was a huge fang. I grabbed her cloak. ‘It’s rock, only a spear of stone.’ We veered to the side for many paces and heard running water. There was a small spring, I cupped the ice-cold water and drank. A rabbit ran past, in the direction of the entrance. Mother left me to gather kindling for a fire, dry grass for a bed.
I sat in the dark and remembered watching her making sparks as a child. I had three years, maybe less. She was crouched over a nest: it was woven with hair, grasses, and down – she admired the magpie’s delicate work. She struck her hands together till stars sprang out and the nest singed and smoked and flames rose up. I didn’t know what a flint was, or that she held one. I thought my mother could make fire from her fingers.
In the cave that night, I slept beside my mother, hating that I needed her warmth, that I was too ignorant to survive alone. I thought of our horse, Finn. Did the pack get him, is that why they howled, did his death prevent ours? When morning came, mother found us a road to follow; we were going to Flemingstown, where she’d lived as a girl, where she’d last seen her own mother. She never mentioned Finn, or what she had done to me. That’s when I decided to hate her, and it was a relief, so much easier than what I’d felt before.
We walked for one day and arrived at dusk to find a stone arch that led to nothing but wilderness. Her Flemingstown no longer existed. Beyond the arch was waist-high grass, bushes and stones. There was no sign that anyone had ever live
d there. Set high on the arch was a woman’s stone. My mother reached up and rubbed the worn place between the hag’s legs. Now you cry, I thought, as I watched her, for a place called Flemingstown, for a somewhere I’ve never known.
We should’ve stayed on the mountain, hidden till the raid was over. We were abroad in a strange place and night was falling. I was growing scared. I’d heard all about the robbers and cut-throats of the roadways. I knew by her face that my mother longed to pass through the arch but she didn’t. She led me off the road and towards a river instead.
We were heading to a place called Kilkennie; only one more day’s walk. She said a man called Jose Kytler would be there, a moneylender famed for his wealth, and he was known to our family. We followed the river all night, past a watermill churning in the darkness, creatures entering and leaving the water, till we reached a moonlit moat and a huge castle. My mother tugged me on as I stared. Where were we going, I thought, if not there? Then I saw the lit rushes, the shadow of two watchtowers and the city gate between them staked with skulls …
The bells rang, bringing me out of my memory and back to the bridge and the grasses in the riverbed beneath, rippling back and forth like the pelt of some sleeping beast. I longed to swim in it, to feel more than the breeze coming off its waters. Instead I headed back to the house, slipped into the kitchen and sat by the hearth. Esme handed me a bowl of broth and patted my head. What happened in the woods seemed far away then; almost like a tale, but not one for telling.
Mother didn’t like my spending so long away from the house. In our room that night, she chided me: ‘It’s different here; you cannot wander any more. From now on, your time is to be spent helping in the kitchen.’ The next day, I found myself cleaving capon while Helene made crumbs and sang Welsh rhymes at the top of her voice.
‘That girl gets on my goat,’ she said, when Esme arrived, ‘the way she never speaks; the mad eyes on her. Why on earth does Alice favour her so?’
Esme didn’t answer; she was late and flustered. She just sent me to the garden to gather lemon thyme.
On my fourth day of life as a kitchen maid, Helene had ceased to speak to me, paid me no heed and gave no instructions. Delighted, I slipped out the door, past Milo, who was busily weeding. He was a hard worker, not like the other helper, Ralph. There was no sign of him. He was probably idling about the stables. He groomed his own black hair more than the mares. I passed through the orchard and down to the coiled straw skeps. I sat and watched the bees fly in and out of the tiny doors. Soon they’d be smothered, and small silver dishes would be filled with honey. One landed on my hand but I didn’t worry. I was rarely stung. Bees picked up the scent of fear, the way other animals did.
I wandered on down to the river bank and watched some boys wade for pearls. One of them waved, a dark-skinned, sandy-haired boy I’d seen sometimes in the lane. He kept looking. I turned around to see if he was smiling at someone else but there was no one there, only me. I watched him move further out into the river, the sun on his shoulders. Even my breath felt happy. If fear had a scent, I wondered, did love?
That night my mother noticed the muck on my gown. I was surprised, for, though she denied it, her eyesight had started to weaken. As she picked off the briars and sticky tendrils, she chastised me again for idle straying. ‘This isn’t our world; our place in it has to be earned.’ I didn’t agree: the house was my world; there was nothing to earn.
Alice instructed my mother to take me to the anchoress. It was said her fasts were powerful. If anyone could find my voice, she could. When we got to the cathedral grounds, a small group was gathered by an elm. They were lowering a body into the ground. It was bound in a white sheet. There were only two people besides the priest: the young gravedigger and a decrepit nun. We stood back, heads bowed, until the slab was fixed in place, and the rites were finished. The gravedigger stayed on after the others left, praying with his head bent.
We went over to the anchoress’s cell and my mother knelt on the worn patch of ground beside the cleft in the wall. It was only then we noticed that the chink was blocked. The gravedigger approached, moving as if his feet were made of mortar.
‘She’s not there – she lies beneath the earth.’
For someone used to burying bodies, he seemed troubled. My mother blessed herself and rose to her feet.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘She starved.’
He peered at my mother’s face.
‘Were you kin to her?’ he asked.
‘No, no, we are just maids, seeking a cure.’
He walked away from us backwards, all the time looking at my mother. He pointed at her then. ‘You,’ he shouted, ‘are a liar!’
Startled, my mother grabbed my hand. She held it as he returned to the grave. He lay on the hermit nun’s slab, his cheek pressed against the stone. I let go of my mother’s hand – her grip hurt.
‘The poor man has gone mad,’ she said.
We slipped away. Once home, my mother told Esme and Helene what we had seen. The cook wondered why Agnes was buried so swiftly. The townspeople, who had worn a path to her cell these past five years, would have liked to have paid their respects one last time.
‘A young gravedigger was there,’ said my mother.
‘Jasper.’ Esme didn’t seem surprised.
‘He was half mad with sorrow. He shouted at us.’
‘He got fond of her, that’s all. Lots of people did,’ said Esme.
‘Jasper’s always in love,’ added Helene.
‘A talented boy, though: there’s not much he couldn’t turn his hand to,’ said Esme. She held up her own hands, and we all looked at them. Rough-skinned, and large, they could’ve been a man’s.
Late into the night, I heard muffled footsteps outside my door, then the rustling skirts of women. They seemed to be rushing down the stairs, frightened and wanting escape. While my mother slept on in her bed, I quietly left our chamber and followed the sounds. At the bottom of the stairs, I entered the hall to find nothing but shadows and the glow of low embers – yet I could almost taste the fear.
The next thing, it was morning and I didn’t know which part was dream and which real. Had I gone downstairs during the night? I looked at the shut door of our chamber and did not know.
Dreams had always troubled me. It was a dream that had set us on the road here. In it, I was standing in the centre of our settlement. Everyone was asleep in their huts. I could barely see but every sound was louder than ever: the snoring of the men, the animals shifting in their pens, the creak of the trees outside our staked fence. Then came a sound that began soft and slow: that of grass being crushed beneath a careful foot, then another foot, and another and another, till it became like rushes being whipped by the wind. Before I could take one step, a hail of lit arrows swooped from the sky and each hut became a bonfire so swiftly that no one could crawl out.
It terrified me so much I woke my mother to tell her. She believed it was an omen. She told Donagh, but her uncle didn’t listen – no one did. We left the next day, just the two of us. At the bottom of the mountain, we almost ran into the troops, but hid in the thicket while their horses drank on the other side of the stream.
You have foresight, my mother whispered. I thought of my friends, of the newest baby, Áine, and her clear cries that morning. It made me never want to sleep again. If only it was as easy to stop dreaming as it was to stop speaking.
6. Petronelle
Bells rang from dawn until dusk here – telling us when to rise, when to pray, when to work and when to stop. The latrines overflowed and the dunghills grew, for the night-soil man had been found smothered in one of the pits and no one had taken his position yet. The place was in a state of high stench but that didn’t stop Alice from venturing out. She wanted to inspect the altar mural in Saint Mary’s, and visit Sir William Outlawe’s grave. She liked to consult her late husband on business decisions.
A sedate priest met us on the church porch, casting his e
yes to Alice’s purse and pressing his hands together in reverence. An old man rushed forward and practically kissed her hem. Going by his soiled tunic and paint-spattered legs, I took him for the artist. They praised Alice, and the weather, and she admitted that both were indeed wonderful. I was not spoken to or required to speak. Together, we entered the cool of the church. The workers all turned and bowed the best they could, allowing for the brushes and pots they held. The fresco was incomplete, showing bright painted robes from which finely drawn hands and feet emerged. There were three workers: two were strangers, but the third, and the one most covered in plaster, was Jasper. Seeing him, I felt nervous. He was standing on a ladder, drawing with chalk on the wall behind the altar.
Alice conversed a little with the artist, before slowly counting out some coins and placing them in his hand. My mistress walked to the front of the church to inspect the mural more closely. I followed as she went up the aisle and in behind the altar. Jasper reluctantly stepped down from the ladder, his eyes not leaving his work. He was chalking a face framed in dark braids.
‘Her hair should be golden, not dun,’ she said. ‘Brighten it up.’
‘Mary wasn’t blonde,’ he answered quietly.
‘My Mary is,’ she snapped.
Alice stared up at the face on the plaster. She looked from the image to me and back again. I stared at the blur of chalk and wondered what annoyed her so. The artist, sensing strife, had joined us. He smelt wonderful, of some rich sweet musk. It had become rather crowded behind the altar.
‘Whose face is this?’ Alice asked Jasper.
‘Why, the Virgin’s.’ He seemed mortified, yet also slightly angry at the attention.