by Niamh Boyce
Later that morning, while Alice was at a meeting of the Greater Twelve, someone rapped on the front door. When I opened it, the wind blustered through the room, and smoke rose from the fire. A portly Franciscan stood on the step. I ushered him in and quickly shut the door. He rubbed rain from his face and said he had come to record ‘the knight’s complaints’. A short cheerful man calling himself Manchin, he carried a tablet and shouted like I was deaf. A lot of people did that, but I didn’t mind this time, for he also smiled, as if to say, ‘It’s all a lot of nonsense, but what can you do?’ When I finally understood it was Sir John he wished to see, I led him up to the chamber and left them to it.
When Alice returned some time later, our visitor was summoned down to the hall. I tucked myself into Helene’s alcove, sat in the straw and watched the dame stride in slow circles around the friar. He flushed deeper with each question, till even his bald spot was red.
Cristine had paid a visit to Ledrede, he admitted, claiming her father was being poisoned.
‘Who does the bishop think he is, sending an emissary across my threshold to collect false accusations?’
And they were false – Alice wanted Sir John well, anyone could see that. He had cost her a fortune in physician’s fees. She had Esme cooking up remedies night and day. Whatever Sir John had said was now written on the tablet, but I could not see it.
‘The girl mentioned that none of your other husbands … made old bones.’
‘Sir William made ancient ones! We were wed for over a decade! She’s just a spite-filled stepchild.’
‘I assure you, Dame Kytler, that if your stepdaughter is revealed to hold a grudge, her testimony will be considered unreliable, and the dame will be judged –’
‘Judged?’ Alice sputtered. ‘Me? By you?’
She flung open the front door and stared at him. As the monk scuttled past, Alice reached out and tried to grab his tablet, but he clutched it tightly to his chest. So he and Sir John’s testimony made their escape.
‘Johnny’s not on the way out,’ Alice shouted after him. ‘He’s just a poor fool panicking.’
There was never anything poor about Sir John – couldn’t Dame Alice see that? I stepped out into the lane and watched the friar scurry off, the rain beating down, darkening his brown robes.
Dame Alice called for my mother, who arrived muttering that she’d been in the Altar Room. She was always there of late, chanting prayer after prayer, as if she alone could save that old monk’s soul. I don’t know why she cared so much; it wasn’t as if he were innocent. He’d flung manuscripts into the Nore. Pages and pages were plucked from the water, like the wet wings of some strange bird.
‘Remove all possessions belonging to those wretched twins, Petronelle,’ she instructed. ‘Throw them into Low Lane, on the dung heaps if you so wish.’
Mother went upstairs to the girls, and such screaming and screeching as came from them. I was about to run up, when my mother appeared, her skirts soaked and filthy.
‘They’re not girls, they’re animals. Beatrice flung a chamber-pot at me.’
She marched off, refusing to go next or near the sisters. Alice sent up Esme instead. The cook reappeared almost immediately, carrying baggage in her arms. The twins followed, howling after their clothes, ornaments and powders. Grabbing after the bags, Cristine wept and pleaded. They called for their father, but he did not come. Their possessions were flung out into Low Lane, the sisters followed, and the door slammed behind them.
‘Bolt it for the rest of the day,’ said Alice. ‘The back one, too.’
I followed quietly, as Dame Alice went upstairs. What would she say to a husband who had complained against her, whose daughters she had just booted into the lane? Would more piss-pots fly? I watched her go in and waited. Yet, there was no shouting from the chamber, just murmuring and the odd cough. I pressed myself against the wood, and listened. ‘I would never harm you,’ Alice whispered, ‘believe me.’ Then there were no sounds at all. It made no sense. Why would she humble herself to go to him … after all that had happened?
That night, after my mother fell asleep, I went down to the hall. I couldn’t tolerate another night of dreaming. I was being woken more and more often by the panicked whispers of women trying to flee the house – something had to be done. I greased the lock with butter, and the heavy bolt slid back without a sound. Anyone who wanted out could get out. Tonight the women would escape. Though I fell asleep quickly, I woke before dawn to a weeping sound. As my mother slept on, I sneaked downstairs. Perhaps Alice had discovered the unlocked door and was chiding Helene, threatening her with the whipping post.
There was no one there. The shutters were closed, the fire staunched with ash, and the pup asleep beside it. I heard a lady’s hem sweep across the floor. I turned, but there was nothing to see, just the tapestry, its borders embroidered with golden suns. The dog stretched and stood, ears alert. I felt a presence, as if someone had come close and was about to speak.
The alcove curtain opened and Helene came out, rubbing her eyes. She released the dog into the lane, then knelt by the hearth and began shovelling ash. She had not yet covered her head and her black braids hung loose. A grey cat slinked in and rubbed against her skirts before settling under the window bench. Helene worked on, her shovel grating against the stone slabs. She straightened, lifted her ash bucket and walked back through the kitchen door. As if I weren’t there at all. I raised my hand and looked at the lines on it, at the creases on my fingers. The apprentice bell rang. I blew on to my palm, felt breath against my skin. ‘I am here, I am real.’
We were eating our pottage. Esme’s eyes were swollen; she looked awful. She sighed and yawned, until Helene finally asked her what was wrong.
‘I passed a terrible night; I saw something.’
‘What?’
‘A woman – she wandered about, as if searching for something or someone.’
‘A lover?’ said Helene.
This was Helene’s kind of talk. She had a lively interest both in men and in spirits. They spoke on about other things – banshees, ghost horses and changelings. The talk changed Esme’s mood. After a while, she was laughing about a widow who claimed to be pregnant by the ghost of her husband. The next time Esme mentioned her terrible night, the spectre she’d seen was just a figment. She stood and retied her apron.
‘Or … now that I think on it, she seemed very familiar, that lass – a redhead.’
She winked at me, and in that wink all she’d said turned to jest. She threw it over to me so deftly; I almost felt it land in my lap. But it wasn’t me; I’d been in bed asleep, dreaming that awful dream.
24. The Bishop’s Quarters
Ledrede arrived to his door to find a messenger dozing on the floor. His irritation dissolved when the boy jumped to attention and held out a letter with a papal seal. He threw the lad a coin and dismissed him. Once inside his chamber, he checked the seal was unbroken, ran his knife under it and settled down to read. When he got to the end of the missive, he could barely contain himself. So many auguries in one week! Christ was showing him the way, as sure as if he stood before him and said, ‘Richard, the time has come.’ He could finally dislodge Kytler from her position of power.
Here in his hands, all the way from his holiness in Avignon, was a list of magickal offences – Super illius specula. ‘Upon His Watchtower,’ mouthed the bishop, translating – thinking of the ancient tower that shared the hill with his own cathedral.
But he shouldn’t … he shouldn’t have let his mind stray outside his chamber – for all at once he saw the dark chink in the anchoress’s cell, the eyes that used to stare, felt her name in his throat, Agnes. They rise up, rise up if you don’t stake them to the ground. Should he go out now? Could she? No, there was stone, heavy stone, on top of her. At night, at night sometimes the bishop saw … No. No. Don’t think on it.
A young monk came in with a tray. A new boy. The bishop didn’t ask his name. He found the young expectant face
irritating. He let him leave without a word, before lifting the cover from the tray – wine, apple pie, berries and custard sauce. He smelt autumn, apples baking – became a small child again.
‘Mother,’ he pleaded, clutching at her skirts, ‘reach up, fetch it for me!’ She lifted him by the waist, held him high above her head. He saw then how far away the moon really was, and that even his mother could not reach it.
Ledrede shook his head clear, put a few drops of Aqua Vitae into the goblet and drank back the wine. He already had the stepdaughter’s testimony. Her father’s, collected by Manchin, was currently being transcribed – albeit with some difficulty, as, in pressing it to his chest, Manchin had caused the wax to become hatched with the weave of his habit.
He spent the afternoon rereading the pope’s missive. He almost cried. How fully Pope John XXII, his infallible holiness and God’s representative on earth, held exactly the same convictions as he, Richard Ledrede. ‘We are in the watchtower,’ Pope John wrote, urging his faithful soldiers to hunt down particular miscreants, for ‘Many are Christians only in name.’
Ledrede went over the list of magickal offences again. The pope had seen into the heart of Hightown. He described how heretics constructed rings, mirrors, images, philtres, in which, by the art of their dark magick, evil demons were enclosed. From those spirits, they sought and received aid in satisfying their evil desires. The bishop read again and again, thought of the moneylender who always got what she wanted. Who was her demon, who did her bidding? It came to him then: the stone face of the heathen god carved into this very cathedral.
Ledrede read so late that his eyes became dry and sore, and his neck ached. In bed, though exhausted, he could not sleep. He went over a plan, how to get what he wanted. His legs were restless; he felt a longing for release and was tormented by an old urge: the longing to bury his face between the legs of a woman, to delve his fingers in there, and, after, his tongue.
25. Petronelle
We were in the hall, Líadan and I, readying to leave for the cathedral. Despite my beseeching her otherwise, Alice insisted we attend the Sunday sermon. We trotted on up High Street, my nimble daughter some steps ahead. She was not as thin as when we had first come, and her gait, that, too, had changed. Sofia Hatton and her maid walked by. I nodded but she didn’t notice me; her gaze was fixed on my daughter. Before I knew what she was doing, she ran at Líadan and tugged her veil from her head. She rushed off then, her maid following behind, both laughing. I caught up and helped my daughter to pin her veil into place. She looked at the ground as I tucked her hair back from her face and under the linen. Her wrists were still scarred from Sofia’s nails. Something would have to be done about that girl.
The bells tolled as we entered the church grounds. Word of Cristine’s accusations had spread quickly. That’s her maid, the one she keeps so close, so close they’re almost never apart. I stood where I always did. If I moved further back from the altar, it would indicate guilt and shame. If I stood nearer, it would indicate guilt and shamelessness. Ledrede was particularly lively. He glared at the congregation and then cleared his throat. A scribe sat on the altar. His arm moved in time to the words from the bishop’s mouth: ‘The snake has found a home. A sect has gathered in the house of Kytler.’
What he claimed next beggared belief; it brought gasps from the congregation. ‘Did he say fornication?’ ‘With devils?’ ‘Shush.’
‘Dame Alice Kytler lies with a demon incubus, and all in her house are accomplices; heretical sorceress, haeretici sortilegae!’ he hissed.
The congregation listened without a whisper or nudge.
‘Kytler’s husband is emaciated from her magickal powders and lotions. She has taken a lover from the underworld, a demon known as Robin, and, with his assistance, cast heinous spells. Her brave stepdaughter told me all about her house of witches, the sect she fills with her own kind, who dabble using rings, mirrors and philtres.’
The bishop pointed towards the twins, who were perched in the Hattons’ pew. They bowed their heads in a modest gesture of pleasure.
‘Come forth all who are privy to her sorceries. For she will plummet to Hell, and anyone who does not speak will join her.’
He lifted a scroll and began to recite a curse. ‘Those who do not bear witness shall be cursed, struck from the book of the living, let them not be written down with the just.’
‘Yes, yes,’ gasped a voice behind me.
The bishop left the pulpit, and stepped to the edge of the altar. ‘Let their eyes not see, let their backs be bent. Pour upon them, oh Lord, your anger, let the fury of your rage embrace them.’
He looked up from the scroll. ‘Let their souls plummet to Hell with the devil and his ministers. Let all this happen.’ He raised his hands into the air. ‘Let all this happen. Amen!’
There was fear in the silence that followed. The congregation began to leave the church. Did everyone believe him, believe that women like that existed, and we – my mistress and daughter – were one with them? It wasn’t true, but, even as I thought that, I felt the guilt of a liar. I would’ve believed this awful house of evil existed were it not the one that I ate and slept in.
A space formed around Líadan and me as we made our way through the churchyard. I touched my daughter’s shoulder, but she quickened her pace, lifted her gown and skipped down the steps. The people were quiet: there were no rebukes, nor was there any mocking. They were waiting till Alice’s maids were out of earshot. Did they fear us? Someone grabbed my arm – a stab of pain jolted through my shoulder. It was a solemn lady I’d seen once or twice in Alice’s.
‘We know, my husband and I, we know these rumours are spurred by envy. Tell the dame she still has friends.’
She returned to her husband, who waited by the tower. My daughter walked ahead, arms folded, head bowed. Was she ashamed? Had she believed the bishop’s words?
As we neared High Street, I saw Sofia Hatton duck down an alleyway. I bid Líadan to head on home and followed the Hatton girl. She was taking slow steps, one hand steadying herself against the wall, the other lifting her cloak. She looked like a dainty child. I almost returned my scissors to my purse. A boy rushed towards her, from the other end of the alley. His expression of lust transformed into fright at the sight of me. He greeted her brusquely and kept going. Confused, she turned around and saw me, too.
‘Sofia,’ I called.
She reluctantly came up. I grabbed her wrist.
‘You broke my daughter’s skin.’
She tried to wriggle free, but I was stronger. Her nails were long, cut narrow like the nib of a quill. I lodged the blade of the scissors under each and snipped. She cried with wretched frustration, and was still crying as I walked away. It was good that I’d caught her with one of her father’s workers: she would not dare speak of our encounter lest I speak of theirs. It was a pity it was the same boy Líadan had shown such fondness for.
In the house, Lucia Hatton, of all people, had arrived before me. She sat by the fire with Alice, embellishing the bishop’s claims. I would’ve preferred to be the one to tell my mistress. Why else had I endured the sermon? However, Alice said I was not required and waved me away. I tarried by the stairwell and listened a while from the shadows. No matter that it was unlikely to happen, I worried that Sofia would burst in and tell her mother what I had done. Lucia seemed to relish the details, some of which were new to my ears.
‘And you’ve weakened your husband, sapped all his strength using sorcery learnt from your demon lover, with whom you fornicate at midnight wearing nothing but jewels and your wimple.’
‘Who would believe such things? Alice answered. ‘A dame fornicating with a demon. Is that even possible? Surely such a lady would get scorched!’
They both feigned laughter.
‘We’ll have a feast,’ Alice said, ‘and show the bishop, regardless of his words, that he does not reign.’
‘Yes, a feast.’
‘And all my allies will come?’ she
said slowly.
‘We will.’
‘And you’ll each swear an oath, to defend against all attacks the dame’s innocence?’
Lucia cleared her throat.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it,’ Alice went on, ‘that no one warned us against this onslaught of lunacy? I heard that Cristine and Beatrice now dwell under your roof –’
‘They called in the rain … I had little choice –’
With a wave of her hand, Alice halted Lucia’s excuse. ‘And yet you didn’t know what they planned to do?’
‘We didn’t, I can assure you.’
‘You’ll send them from your house now of course …’
Lucia had to return then, to ‘her brood’, as she called them. I watched as Alice left the hall, her velvet skirts trailing, the golden rope of her belt swinging. I imagined giving voice to my thoughts. They say you’re a witch, Alice – are you? Can you cast charms to stir love in the hearts of men, can you make magick happen?
After dinner, at which she ate little and everyone was silent, our mistress licked her lips and announced it was futile to observe the day of rest, considering she was under such threat from the Church. We were all to attend to our chores instead. She added quietly that Líadan and I were to assist her in selecting the relics and sacred objects needed for the swearing of oaths at the feast. When the time came, she explained, after the guests had eaten and drunk their full, each would be invited to swear an oath in front of Sir Arnold, their seneschal; with one hand on a holy relic and one on their heart, they would promise to support Dame Alice against each and every one of the bishop’s claims. A quandary surely, as swearing loyalty to Alice would draw down the wrath of the bishop. I could hear his words as we followed Alice down to the cellar. Let their souls plummet to Hell.