by Niamh Boyce
9. Petronelle
I woke to the apprentice bell and wondered where my mother was waking this morning. How quickly Alice had turned when she heard mention of Líthgen. It was a side of her I’d almost forgotten, one Líadan hadn’t seen before. I looked over to my daughter’s cot, where she slept on, arms thrown over her head, her fingers curled. There was a leather thong around her neck, strung with beads of coloured glass. Where had it come from? She had taken on a secretive air. I almost wished she was four again, crawling into my lap and playing with the ends of my hair. I felt an awful grief, as if the child I’d known was gone and a changeling had taken her place. One who adored Alice, just as I once had. Perhaps it was only natural – she had been good to us. But I worried. Our mistress liked to acquire things.
I went to Alice’s chamber. She was seated at her mirror, her face crumpled from sleep and her hair in a frizz. I set warmed water on her table and handed her a cloth.
‘I’m all alone in the world!’ she said, as she wiped her face.
She used a thick accent meant to be mine. Was that how I had sounded that night I had sought shelter?
‘We were alone,’ I answered.
I hadn’t lied. How could I know that Líthgen had survived when I saw Flemingstown gone?
‘Sixteen years,’ I had whispered to my mother. ‘Sixteen years and you didn’t seek me out?’
‘I knew you would return some day.’
What did I expect? A mother who would’ve left everything and ridden through the Leix Hills till she found me again? Yes, I suppose I did.
I began to lay out Alice’s various combs and pins, and knocked over her favourite flask of scent. Nothing was spilt; it was well corked.
‘Perhaps I need a defter pair of hands. Maybe Basilia would be better suited to this position? At least her mouth is unsullied by deceit.’
I combed Alice’s hair, and she began to talk about Líadan, of curing her silence. On and on she went, about the muteness. Waging that if the girl were capable of speech once, she could be again.
‘Isn’t there something pure about our silent one?’ Esme had said. That I found comfort in those words made me uneasy.
‘My physician will see her. He’s an unusual man, but good with his hands.’
The idea of a physician examining my daughter, bleeding her, cutting some part of her body … I felt sickened. I had done it myself – I would’ve cut her throat to spare her being torn apart by wolves. Had I been wrong? What if the wolf had not turned?
‘I long to hear her speak,’ said Alice, ‘to say my name.’
To say my name. As if my daughter were her poppet. Alice had no idea who my daughter was, who I was. I suddenly wanted to tell Alice what I had done in the woods.
‘She’ll speak in time; you see our journey here was difficult –’
Alice interrupted and began to rail against Ledrede and his taxes. Our journey did not interest her. Perhaps there was room enough in her dry head only for measures – of clothes, skins, spoons, grain, silver … All must tally. Alice gave nothing away, nothing in her house, nothing in her heart – not without reason or reward.
As she babbled on, my mind travelled outside the walls to build a shelter beside my mother’s, wherever it was. I was not plaiting Alice’s hair; I was weaving new skeps for the hives I’d tend there. I could almost hear the dry grasses flick.
Sir Roger had been poorly of late. His sickness had taken our master by surprise. ‘A man like me – taken ill like this!’ All professed to share his shock, though corpulent old sinners such as Roger suffered bad health sooner or later.
The physician came to bleed the master. A slender figure in a grey tunic, he mounted the stairs as we followed behind, with Helene carrying his medicine chest. Roger lay low in the bed – there was a yellow pallor to his skin. Dame Alice sat beside him, holding his hand, giving it little squeezes. She had taken off her rings so she would not hurt him. The physician studied the contents of the chamber-pot and advised more bleeding. Poor Roger sighed, and sank further into his bed.
While everyone was distracted with the patient, I sought out Milo. He was a steady boy, not prone to gossip. I found him by the stables with Ralph. They were throwing horse shoes. I took him aside and asked him to find a certain soothsayer; that she was outside the walls, most likely near the ruins of Flemingstown. He looked up at me with his round serious face and said he had never heard tell of such a place. I was saddened. I thought of the busy town, its weavers, houses and bells. To think that to some it had never existed. I told him where it used to be. My description of Líthgen made him laugh.
After all that, the boy made me wait for an answer. He came when I was at the hives a day later. He’d go on his next day off. All he wanted was a parcel of food. For that, he said, he would find my mother’s whereabouts.
‘How do you know she’s my mother?’
‘You said.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes.’
Milo left that Saturday evening. When a full day and night had passed, I became worried. Had the wild dogs got him, had some blaggard killed him for fun? Before supper I went to check and was relieved to find the boy had returned, asleep in his loft. I climbed the ladder and tapped his back. He uncurled from the straw, eyes drunk with sleep. Why had I sent one so young outside the walls? Yes, he’d found Líthgen, but she wouldn’t let him travel back in the dark – that was what had delayed him, nothing more.
‘She has a shack all to herself,’ he said, impressed.
‘Where is it?’
‘Between the ruined arch and the Black Woods.’
He must have meant Flemingstown Woods.
‘Is that what you call it? The Black Woods?’
‘Yes, everybody does.’
‘Did you tell her who sent you?’
He nodded.
‘What did she say?’
‘Not much.’
I handed him the covered basket. I’d filled it with plums, hard cheese, warm bread and a slice of pork. As I walked through the orchard, I heard the boy yell with joy. He had discovered the meat.
I stopped and sat on the wicker love seat. The garden was alive with flowers and bees. Blossoms formed circlets beneath the trees. I thought of my mother. The settlement had fallen, but she hadn’t budged. I should’ve ventured through Flemingstown Arch that night with Líadan and searched the land beyond it. I had been afraid. Any woman would be, on the savage roads with darkness falling.
Early the next morning, I opened the front door to an elegant lady in a blue gown. Holding a baby, she was very pale and rather flustered.
‘Where’s your mistress?’ she demanded. ‘I need to speak with her.’
She stepped inside, handing the child to me. It was a new-born, wrapped tightly and asleep. Oh, such a beauty, and barely the weight of a feather.
‘Alice!’ I called, and the baby’s arm jerked as he woke.
‘I meant you to fetch her! My Lord, the whole world will know my business.’
I tickled the baby’s damp chin; it grabbed my finger, pulled it into its mouth and clamped its gums down.
‘What’s he called?’
She looked hurt by the question. ‘Let’s see if he lives first …’
Alice entered the room, and at the sight of her the lady released a sob.
‘My priest has thrown us from him; we’ve nowhere to go. How could he do this to the children, when he loves them so much?’
‘Are you squabbling again, Sabina?’
‘No, it’s Ledrede. He’s forcing priests to shun their families. Some protested, but he said anyone who speaks against their bishop is either a lunatic or a heretic.’
‘You take him too seriously.’
‘And so should you. Look what happened to the anchoress: she displeased him and now where is she?’
‘She was too vigorous in her fasting.’
‘That’s not what my priest said. He heard her cell was sealed and her food stopped. Oh, what am I to do
, dear friend, with no roof over my head?’
‘The bishop is just giving a display. Let him strut around, declaring all he wants to declare. Things will still be run as we wish them to be run. Move from the house you share with the priest; find somewhere, wait a few weeks and then go back, and go on just as before.’
‘Find somewhere?’ The lady’s words were dealt quick and cold. ‘My baby is not strong. Are there no beds here?’
‘No, no, there are too many happenings in this house. My husband is ailing – it cannot be done.’
The baby was snatched from my arms, and the lady trounced out.
‘She’s upset, but it can’t be helped,’ said Alice. ‘It’s not a good time for lodgers, not with poor Roger.’
My mistress didn’t wait for my response but hurried from the room, the train of her gown catching in her rush through the door.
The real reason Alice didn’t want visitors wasn’t her husband’s illness. An extra pair of eyes would not be welcome, especially not a woman’s. Our mistress might be tending Sir Roger by day, but she had begun to tend someone else by night.
A few nights earlier, I had been woken by a clatter and sat up in bed. I opened the shutter slightly and peeked down on to the courtyard. Her clothes were those of a man but I knew my mistress’s shape. She mounted her steed and rode in the direction of the river, leaning tight to the mane as she galloped, neither human nor animal but both, as if she had become one with the horse. Morning found her in a blissful mood. She had even forgotten to take off her sapphire necklace. There were two things Alice was never too tired to do: one was to check the doors were bolted; the other was to lock up her jewels.
Late the next night, I heard the stable door creak open, hoofs hitting the mud and then nothing but my own breath. I wondered who Alice’s lover might be – could Arnold be her secret sweetheart? It was said he always acted as if Alice were a queen, kissing her hand, lighting up when she spoke. And she married to Sir Roger, who, though very pleasant, didn’t think much of her at all.
‘Why is Sir Arnold so smitten with Dame Alice?’ I had asked Esme once.
‘By all accounts, she funds his battles.’
‘So, is his admiration genuine or flattery?’
‘We’ll never know, will we?’
While not tending her ailing husband, Alice was primping like a girl. She had begun to order warm baths, something she had never needed before. I wasn’t afraid of toil, be it at the earth, the hives or the loom, but I was not a born maid. It was wearying doing everything for a person with healthy arms and legs of their own. I scattered blossoms in her tub and prepared her flesh for some lover’s touch, all the while promising myself: soon, we’ll leave here and join Líthgen. I had whispered as much to Líadan, who stamped her feet and hurled herself on to her bed. I endured no suffering in Kilkennie, no hunger, no pain, but I felt penned in by it all – by the walls, the bishop’s sermons, the curfews and Alice’s demand that my every waking breath be spent in her service.
Unhappy with the greys, she decided her hair must be brightened. I mixed the bowl of paste; added a drop of vinegar to loosen the ash. As I worked it into her hair, I reported on the most recent sermon, or as much of it as I had grasped. The bishop was fond of phrases no one understood. Rather than confuse, the strange words seemed to enchant the congregation with all their endless possible sin-filled meanings.
‘Well,’ she asked, ‘any slurs cast in my direction?’
I told her what I remembered.
‘He said the cathedral hasn’t enough candle wax and the mean light casts shame on the town,’ I told Alice. ‘A church at night should reflect the generosity of God’s light by day. Oh, and he mentioned the other thing again, moneylending, where there’s profit, there’s sin.’
‘I predict the birth of another tax we’ve never heard of – he’ll kill three birds with the one stone. Keep us sinless, keep us profitless and fund his expensive wax.’
I massaged her roots and smoothed her hair up into her crown. Alice became coy, oversweet then, as if her words were morsels laid out to entrap.
‘I envy your hair,’ she said, her own piled in a mustard hillock.
‘It’s just a dull black.’
‘It’s no special colour, but it’s a colour none the least. Now Basilia, bless her, has hair as bright as heaven’s gold, like Líthgen’s was once …’
‘I haven’t seen her since the fair,’ I answered before she could ask.
I had no intention of revealing any more. I never understood the bad feeling between Alice and my mother, but it had not waned with time. I watched the tight-faced woman and tried to match her with the careless girl who had tied knots in her skirts, splashed in streams and dug fire pits. I wiped paste from Alice’s neck, remembering how we climbed trees, pretending the highest branch was the crow’s nest of a pirate ship. Ahoy! Savage, pillage, plunder! I had followed her everywhere; she said I was like a little sister. We built our own shelter, sharpening sticks, pushing them into the ground, skinning saplings, weaving them together. Our handiwork looked like a giant unfinished basket. She laid an old black fur on the ground. We crawled in and lay staring at our wicker roof. We fell quiet then, and after a while the birdsong outside grew louder than we’d ever heard before. ‘So this is what it’s like when no humans are about,’ I had whispered, forgetting what we were.
‘So two knives,’ said Alice, ‘one for the fish, one for … what’s the matter with you? Have you been listening at all?’
‘Yes, of course, do go on.’
We had a special name for Flemingstown Woods, Alice and I – but, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what it was. Not the Black Woods, as Milo had called it, not that.
Sir Roger’s health worsened, and he was moved to Jose’s old chamber. After a few days, he ceased answering and hardly opened his eyes. On the last day of June, Roger reached out his hand and asked for his letter of indulgence. Alice went into the anteroom off her chamber and opened an old black chest there. She reached in and recovered what looked like a codpiece. It was a leather pouch, and inside was the tattered letter that would secure Roger his place in Heaven.
That night, the household gathered around his bed to pray, and he was given the last rites. Sir Roger de Valle died before dawn, clutching his letter of indulgence. Just after his passing, an anguished wail came from outside.
‘Oh, Roger, of all the women you could’ve chosen,’ sighed Alice, standing up.
At her instruction, the crier was ushered up to the chamber, already wearing a mourning sash. ‘Margaret Dun,’ someone whispered, ‘Roger’s mistress.’ The girl sat by Roger’s body and began to sing. Her keening filled the house – wailing, chanting and a recitation of utterances that went on and on, in a voice that seemed centuries old. She lamented Roger’s death, easing the way for his soul with blessings, cautions and praise. I hadn’t heard such a caoineadh since Líthgen had mourned my father’s death by wolf. I hurried from the room and went downstairs into the hall, and then down into the kitchen, but I could still hear her. I lifted the cellar latch, picked up my skirts and went down into the darkness, almost tripping on the steps. I stood there amongst the caskets and barrels and wept.
Iúil
* * *
JULY
I tie a knot to seek my love, wherever he may be.
I bless the knot to draw him close, and fasten him to me.
Old love spell
10. Basilia
The house was in mourning. Alice wore a gown the colour of nothing. She sat in her wooden chair at the top of the hall and a long line of people queued to console her. Most spoke of their sorrow at Roger’s passing; some just pressed their hand over hers. I joined them but Helene called me down to the kitchen. I was needed to help feed the throngs.
In the kitchen, there was whispering and gossip. Alice was unhappy: she didn’t want Ledrede to say the funeral mass, but word was sent that he would do it, or no one would. Roger’s family vault was in the cathed
ral – his family were interred there, under the floor. It was his wish to join them. I wondered which slab was the De Valles’. I was always tripping over them, crammed as they were into the church floor, edges rising up to catch your toe.
Esme handed me a tray of carved meat to bring up to mourners. I went up to the hall. Alice looked so sad; she kept pressing her palm against her heart and sighing long sighs. She looked nothing like the red-faced woman who had leapt from the hammock and almost spat at my mother on Midsummer’s Day. I gave the tray to Ralph, who was indoors for a change. He seemed quite at home, weaving through the crowd. I stepped into the queue of mourners: servant or not, I would put my hand on my mistress’s hand.
The next morning my mother brought me up to Alice’s chamber. We were to pack away Roger’s possessions. Too many people were passing through the house to leave them scattered around. She bustled about, shaking out Roger’s cloaks, folding them and handing them to me to put away. I opened his chest and saw his poulaines were there, the oxblood ones he had searched for. Everyone else in the house was moving like a sleepwalker, their faces sad, their voices quiet, but my mother hummed as she worked. She had swollen eyes the morning after he died, but now she seemed refreshed, cheered. She began to sing ‘Lollai, lollai, litil child’, then turned to me, held my face between her palms and kissed my forehead. I smelt cinnamon from her warm skin, heard my old mother in those words – the one who was called Bébinn and told tales by the fire, tales that got wilder and sillier with each telling.
‘Close your eyes and open your hand,’ she said.
I did as she said and felt something heavy and cold in my palm.
‘Now, look.’
It was a crystal sphere, one like Líthgen had.
‘It is hers; she wanted you to have it.’
I felt a terrible dread then and threw the crystal into Roger’s chest. It lay like a glass apple amongst the woollens.
‘You should accept your grandmother’s gift.’