by Niamh Boyce
‘Don’t be insolent – you know what Dame Alice means. Whose likeness is this?’ said his master.
‘Agnes.’
‘The anchoress?’ asked Alice.
He nodded.
‘I don’t believe you. I see plain as day who that is.’
Alice launched herself up the ladder. She reached towards the face and smeared her palm across it. Jasper swore an oath beneath his breath. She put out her hand and I held it while she climbed back down.
‘The Virgin should have the features of a noble woman, not a noble woman’s maid.’
I hadn’t time to catch up with my thoughts, for I was dragged from the church by Alice. She held my hand aloft, as if we were about to dance. Out in the churchyard, she released her grip. It had become a beautiful clean blue day, the sky as bright as the robes on the images inside.
She looked across at me. ‘That face was like yours,’ she accused.
‘Not a bit,’ I said, though I hadn’t really seen it.
‘Perhaps. It was smoother; not as weathered and aged.’
‘Ageing I may be, but I’m younger than you by half a decade.’
I ducked then, knowing she would swipe, which she did. It was just like when we were young.
‘The audacity!’ she laughed. ‘So few dare speak the truth to me nowadays.’
She linked my arm, and we were somehow friends again. Alice marched in the direction of a mausoleum. The priest, who must’ve been watching, appeared. He shuffled ahead with an enormous key.
‘Don’t encourage Jasper’s attentions – he’s a foolish boy,’ said Alice.
‘You are mistaken,’ I answered.
A shield nailed to the wall bore a coat of arms. The priest opened the padlocked door. My mistress stepped down into the crypt, which as far as I could see was a crowded place, with monuments stacked in each other’s shadow. I stayed put as she recited her prayers for William Outlawe’s soul, and then added some private soft petitions of her own. She came to the door after a while and beckoned. I took my place beside her. The tomb was a waist-high table, and I was shocked to decipher a figure lying upon it – the corpse of her husband had been carved into stone, with every feature represented, from his rings to the fine details on his codpiece. I wanted to cover my eyes, but Alice seemed so proud.
‘The same mason will create my effigy. The drawings will soon be ready.’
She cupped the square jaw of the stone corpse and kissed his mouth. Thankfully, she began to sneeze and we had to leave.
7. Basilia
It was Midsummer’s Eve, and I was as far from mountain bonfires as could be, snug in a hammock in a merchant lady’s chamber. My mother was tacking Dame Alice’s hem. The gown had even more cloth than usual, so the task was taking an age. She rubbed her eyes often but didn’t complain. Dame Alice looked over at me and smiled. She liked that I was wearing her gift, a heavy necklace. It was not precious but it was beautiful.
‘Why don’t you wear the pretty things I give you?’ Alice asked my mother.
‘I keep them for old age; I may need to sell them for bread.’
She said it in jest but I knew it to be true.
‘But wear some, till then.’
‘Oh, they’d just get in the way.’
‘Stop pretending you like to be plain. Wear trinkets, oil your hair, laugh more often – maybe then you’ll find a sweetheart.’
Our mistress seemed to find amusement in that notion.
‘I have no wish to marry again.’
‘Again?’ Alice asked, suddenly harsh. ‘And in which church doorway was that?’
My mother did not answer.
‘Ah, what difference does it make …’ said our mistress, touching the top of my mother’s head. ‘You’re good to me. Petronelle.’ She drew my mother’s new name out slowly.
‘No more than any maid.’
‘Ah, but you have my trust. Few have that.’
Sir Roger bounded in then, kissed his wife on the forehead and almost tripped over my mother. He was searching for a pair of poulaines for the feast day celebrations. Oxblood, he said. All his silly pointed shoes looked the same to me. He thumped about the room hunting for them. I looked at his bulging belly and his hose in slack creases around his thin ankles and wondered how Alice could lie with him. Had the dame a gift for finding something to cherish amongst us oddments? Me, with my voice still trapped in my throat, him with his beetroot complexion and bandy legs.
When I woke the next morning, it was Midsummer. My mother was already in Dame Alice’s room. When our mistress finally appeared, she looked a wonder in her pearly gown. Her sleeves were embroidered with crimson and she waved a black feathered fan. As Alice made her way across the hall, I noticed specks of blood on the hem of her train. If the dame had known, she wouldn’t be so full of smiles. My mother must’ve pricked her finger as she’d sewn the dress. She was upstairs still, exhausted after working through the night.
Dame Alice turned around and slipped me a shining coin. ‘Freshly minted in Kilkennie Castle,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let on I gave you that, or every servant in the house will want a handout.’
I crossed my heart. I wouldn’t tell a soul. I had never held a coin before. It was cool, and light. I imagined two little men, working side by side in a castle turret stamping King Edward’s face into coins as the room about them filled with silver till it spilt out the door and down the winding stairs. Dame Alice left, swishing her fan. Ralph and Milo followed in her wake, carrying her train between them. Dressed like squires for the day, they wore gloves, piped hose and stiff tunics. Their necks were puce from embarrassment.
I heard Lucia Hatton going into raptures out in the lane, then glimpsed her flushed face as she joined the dame, fussing and complimenting, yap, yap, yap. ‘Oh, Alice’ this, ‘Oh, Alice’ that. ‘Silk! Swan feathers! And such threads!’ I did not like that woman. I was the one age with Lucia’s daughter, Sofia. I had overheard Alice suggest that we might become companions. Lucia had laughed and said, ‘With a servant? I think not!’
Mother, Esme, Helene and I went out together a little later. Hightown was full of traders, jugglers, fortune-tellers, dancers, hagglers, pipers and rhymers for Midsummer. There were pies, crubeens and cakes for sale. The alewives were doing good business. By noon, I was lost from the others, and happy with it. I bought a pastry, and a carved frog so polished he looked wet. I had heard a parrot talking, seen a man gobble fire and watched part of a play. It ended with Saint John’s head on a plate and Salome dancing her seven veils off. I watched as she spun, her arms in the air, ringlets as red as mine, the tiny bells stitched to her skirts chiming.
I became queasy from the pie and let a beggar child take mine. There were more than usual about, half naked and half starved. One scrambled after a piece of fallen crust, a boy so skinny I could see each rib. I glimpsed his face before he ran off: it was Jack – the orphan the convent had forsaken.
Near dusk, the drummers began to play. The beat slowed, sped up, stopped and began again. A youth was vomiting yet holding his mug of ale steady lest he spill a drop. There were many outsiders about, some in rich colours and some in rags. Most of the musicians were Gaels, and it wasn’t just their long hair that made me know this – there was something about their faces. I wondered about mine and my mother’s. Did our faces tell on us, too?
Some harlots paraded by, stripped to the waist. One had got a smack for her efforts if her split lip was anything to go by. A couple rutted against a wall. I thought of last Midsummer in the mountain: sitting around the fire pit till dawn, listening to old songs and making up new ones, and how, if a girl met a boy, they’d walk hand in hand away from the flames and into the dark together, not fooster against a wall, his paws gripping the cushion of her behind.
It was almost dark now. The patrollers blew their horns and began to rally outsiders towards the gates. It was time for them to leave. I saw my mother: she stood at the corner of Red Lane, at the edge of a small crowd. I we
nt over. A woman sat on a low stool, a kerchief half covering her white hair. She untied a leather pouch and removed a cloudy glass sphere. A maid from Hattons’ stepped forward and asked a question. The soothsayer held her amulet at arm’s length and it began to swing in a small circle, then a wider one. A large woman patted my shoulder.
‘Get back, little one: too close and you’ll lose a tooth,’ she laughed.
The soothsayer looked up at the Hattons’ maid. ‘The woods beyond Irishtown; search there …’
‘But those woods are strange – all the women say so.’
The seer shrugged; the maid handed her a small parcel and left.
‘Are you here, my girl?’ The seer peered about suddenly. ‘Are you here?’
My mother stepped forward and crouched before her. They hugged then. It went on so long the other women began to elbow each other. Eventually, my mother rose to her feet and called me closer. I went, and the soothsayer reached out and touched my cheek.
A patrol man stepped near and frowned. ‘It’s the other side of the gates for you,’ he said to the seer.
‘Mo leanbh. Come see me,’ she said.
‘I will,’ answered my mother.
The patroller began to guide the soothsayer away. My mother made as if to follow, but I caught her by the elbow. She stopped, but she did not stop staring. We watched them leave. Despite his rough talk, the patroller guided the woman towards the gates as if leading his own mother home. Mine stood beside me, weeping.
‘Even now, you don’t speak, not even to ask who she is.’
I didn’t need to ask, I knew. I had heard of her many times as a child. She was Flemingstown’s finest weaver, Líthgen, my grandmother. As she disappeared, my mother hugged herself and sighed. Then she noticed the frog I was carrying.
‘Where did you get that? You can’t just take things here; everything has to be paid for.’ She gestured at the dancer. ‘Look, look what happens to light-fingered girls.’
Salome was dancing slowly now, her arms weaving above her head as her body swayed. I saw then what my mother wanted me to see. On one of the dancer’s hands was a thumb of flesh; the rest of her fingers were pewter. My mother snatched my carved frog and flung it into a ditch before marching me back to Kytler’s.
Everything being topsy-turvy for the feast, Esme and Helene sat at the table like men, nursing ale and sharing their day. It lifted my mood, to see them like that. I imagined them in doublets and hose. Alice, too, was there: she swung back and forth in her cloth cradle, which had been strung from a beam in the middle of the hall. She didn’t care that her silken trains were sweeping the floor, or that the pup was excitedly snapping in their wake. My mother went to her and asked to retire, but Alice said she should remain ‘at hand’. Sir Roger stumbled in then and felt his way to the stairs like a blind man. The women did not laugh till he was gone, and then they couldn’t stop.
My mother sat on a stool and stared into the fire. She had wanted me to show feeling for Líthgen, but none was there. My grandmother had haunted us all my life, but she was my mother’s ghost, not mine. I wondered if the soothsayer could tell us if Donagh had survived the raid, if Áine had lived long enough to crawl? They were the people I cared about, not her. Shush crying, my mother had said, as we left the mountain. She told me to pray for their souls and keep walking.
Esme and Helene were chatting loudly about the people they’d met at the fête. My mother didn’t join in. Her eyes were closed. Had she gone back to the mountain, too? The tilt of her head said yes. The mountain path was white with elderflower the last time I’d looked back.
There was a sudden change of mood. I looked up. Helene was saying something about the teller with a crystal amulet. Alice had stopped swinging back and forth.
‘The one called Líthgen?’ asked Esme. ‘She came last year, too.’
‘That wretched creature was inside these walls?’ cried Alice.
‘Oh, was she banished? What was she banished for?’ asked Helene.
Helene couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to live inside Hightown – that Líthgen wasn’t banished, that she chose to live somewhere else. No one answered, so Helene tried some answers herself, dragging her thumb through the spilt ale as she did. ‘She has her limbs, so not thieving. Maybe she was a silly thing with men, maybe she was love-struck –’
‘It’s a pity you aren’t dumb-struck,’ said Alice.
‘But what could be the wretch’s crime, to be kept outside the walls?’
‘Enough, Helene,’ my mother said, ‘or you’ll soon find yourself cast out.’
Alice jumped down, flung her skirts over her arm and strode over to my mother. ‘I give the orders here. You are not, nor will you ever be, mistress of this house.’
I did not understand, or much like, Alice’s words. My mother rose and left. We heard her stomping upstairs and banging her door.
‘Trollop,’ spat Helene.
I skipped over and smacked the maid with all my strength and prayed it hurt her well. Alice stared at me then. ‘Oh,’ she said in a silky voice, ‘the kitten has claws.’
8. The Bishop’s House
After days of stifling heat, the rain fell. It fell on Hightown and Irishtown, on the haymakers, on the sheep in the bishop’s pastures. It turned the cathedral from grey to black; made a mire of the graveyard, swamping the offerings on the anchoress’s grave – the reed crosses, rosary beads, scapulars and an infant’s coral necklace – till they floated away. Inside the bishop’s house, Ledrede sat at the head of his table and ate with his clergy. There was some excitement amongst the new recruits, who kept staring up at the bishop and whispering. What were they saying? What had they heard? Ledrede raised a heavy goblet to his lips. The wine didn’t lift his mood.
Agnes. He saw her small hand reaching through the chink in the wall of her cell, beseeching. He was glad she was gone. Five years of those eyes watching from that hole. The squint, they called it here.
The wine felt like swill in his stomach. Where was the usual warmth, the vigour? He had added quite a few drops of Aqua Vitae to his cup. The tonic had no potency. Proper preparation was another lesson he must teach them. He cleared his throat and began to address the clergy regarding the virtues of Aqua Vitae. Friar Bede was especially attentive; perhaps he had a good mind, it was hard to tell – at times his speech was a nuisance to decipher.
‘If you moisten a piece of cloth with Aqua Vitae and place it on your tongue, Bede, it will prevent your stutter.’
On seeing the other monks look up with interest, the bishop continued: ‘Its properties are useful to alchemists. Aqua Vitae can cure all passions. It’s lethal to worms, toads, spiders, it cures snakebites –’
‘How miraculous,’ interrupted the archdeacon. ‘Were there many alchemists around your last table?’
‘There were plenty of alchemists at Avignon.’
There was something snide in the archdeacon’s manner. A bald, wax-faced man with a disconcertingly vivid mouth, he smirked whenever Ledrede spoke. Did he perceive poverty in the bishop’s vowels? Did he despise those who earned their positions through diligent education?
The bishop suddenly heard his mother’s hoarse voice. Richie! Richie! He was briefly convinced she would waltz in carrying a serving of pottage.
‘Tell the boys of life in the papal court at Avignon, Brother Richard,’ said an elder scribe.
The bishop told the youths about the huge fortress that was Avignon, of Pope John’s battle against evil, particularly against the Templars, whose forked tongues spoke prayers by day and summoned demons by night. How his holiness was not even safe in his own palace and had to use a magickal snakeskin to test his food for poison.
He watched the entranced faces of the younger clerics; they wished to hear more of these sins, of the kissing of goats’ behinds, of illicit rites. He spoke instead of his own learning at the feet of Pope John, of the vigilance which was needed in these times, the rewards available to those who kept their eyes open
– like Jacques Fournier, for instance, who was currently ridding Pamiers of the heretical Cathars.
‘In fact,’ he told them, ‘Jacques just received a sheaf of indulgences from Pope John.’
‘Straight to ’eaven for him so,’ quipped the archdeacon.
‘You dare to sneer at my accent – you who couldn’t even begin to comprehend the legal canons I’ve memorized?’
The archdeacon bowed his head and all were silent. Ledrede rose and made his way to his private chambers. Halfway up the spiral stairs, he stopped to catch his breath. Voices rose up from below. The bishop peered down the stairwell.
‘Snakebites!’ said the archdeacon. ‘The bishop promises us remedies for ills that do not exist. How little he knows – there has never been a snake on this island.’
‘There hasn’t,’ the old scribe answered, ‘but Brother Richard will find one.’
The bishop would ensure the scribe would be illuminating serpents till he saw them in his sleep. The Garden of Eden perhaps, in miniature, and in triplicate. May the old scribe go blind inking their fangs.
He entered his chamber and sat at his desk. The serving boy refilled his goblet and stoked the brazier before disappearing again behind the curtain of his alcove. He sighed. Until he arrived, the clerics here had never even heard tell of Fournier, so sealed were they in their own petty world. And they certainly had no idea of perils he himself had endured travelling across land and sea, just to bring salvation to Kilkennie.
The bishop decided to write to Jacques Fournier. He would compose the letter in his own hand. There were indications that Jacques would be made cardinal soon. Ledrede and he had studied at the papal court in Avignon; had both been given bishoprics by Pope John; and had both risen from humble but honest beginnings. No doubt, their futures might be similarly linked. Cardinal Ledrede. He wrote to Fournier of his own ambitions as Bishop of Ossory. ‘I hope to distinguish myself here,’ he wrote, ‘as you have done in Pamiers.’