The Anchoress, page 10
I heard the stool shift.
‘Sister, I can talk to you through this window, but if I could come in and bring you some oils and herbs as will help—’
‘Lizzie, thank you, but I won’t need oils or herbs. A little more rest and I will be well.’
‘Sister, no. Your condition’s not one as will change with rest. It’s too much rest as is the problem. Anna tells me that you haven’t had your flowers for some time. Every month a woman needs her flowers, as you would know, to clean out the waste inside. And for a woman such as you, not working in the fields or standing cooking or scrubbing at clothes, it stands to reason you won’t have your flowers. It’s work as helps them come on.’
‘I know, Lizzie. But that’s part of my enclosure, it brings me closer to Christ. I need not care for my health, it’s—’
‘Being close to Christ is what you know about, Sister, and what you chose. But you know too that a woman as has no man can have problems. We all have desires; it’s how God made us, to lie with a man.’
‘Lizzie, you mistake God’s creation. It was Eve’s first sin that made women desire to lie with men. It’s sin, not how God made us. That’s why I live like this, to be with Christ alone, to stay away from men, to deny those desires. Women are lustful because they are sinful.’
‘Whether it be sin or no, Sister, a body is a body, created by God. And a woman must have certain ways, outlets for her longings, or she becomes ill. As you have. I leave the talk of God to holy people, but I know the ways of bodies, and if you don’t lie with a man some time, you become ill.’
I said nothing.
‘So, Sister, even though I think it would be best for me to bleed you from the foot, we can begin with some herbs in wine or as tea, as you’re not sure. Fennel, cumin, cowbane, spikenard — nothing very strong; and with some honey to make it easier to drink. I’ll mix it up and give it to Anna to heat up for you. Will you agree, Sister? Nothing too much, but a beginning. You might find that you piss a bit more, that’s all, but it should bring your flowers on again, and that’s what you need.’
I was tired of being told what I should do: pray, eat, stop eating, suffer, stop suffering, read, listen, stop listening. And here was another voice, certain that she knew what I needed.
‘So, I’ll do that, Sister.’ Her healing advice given, Lizzie again sounded hesitant. ‘I’ll come back in a few days, and see.’
I was too tired to argue.
Would I take the herbs? Being without a monthly bleed meant that I had been shedding my weak woman’s body. Holy women, virgins like Agnes, had denied their bodies and become like men. I thought again of Swallow and his leap, his flight, his neat spinning in the air. I wanted no blood, no leaking seed, but I drank the tea, still waiting to understand what it meant, this living death.
The women who usually visited me had mostly stayed away since my illness. I was glad not to hear Jocelyn’s voice, so thin and sad, and Louise had probably told Winifred to keep away, thinking her loud and merry ways would overwhelm me. In church, her prayers were louder than anyone else’s, and sometimes in the evening I could hear her shouting at Roger in their garden, even though she lived across the village road and well towards Colley’s Hill. Despite all that, when she had come to me for counsel she had been subdued and thoughtful, asking how the crucifixion could make a difference to those like her who brewed ale for a living. I spoke about love and suffering, but I knew I hadn’t really answered her question.
Eleanor had not been to visit; no doubt her mother told her to leave me be until I was well again, and though I missed her, I was glad to have a pause from her questions.
Only Maud came, and more often than usual, but for a short visit each time.
‘’S not for me to say, Sister,’ she said, ‘but those as get so ill need us living ones to be sure they come right back to life, you know. Right back, not just a little way. And I like to visit anyways, just as being company.’
I had no strength to argue or to be offended by the idea that I might need her to help me heal, so I let her stay and chat. Each time she came she told me about her work in the fields, and slowly I recognised that she was teaching me all that she knew.
‘Not having enough oxen to pull the plough, we had to use cows in the team as well, though it may as well be ducks or pigs for all the use they are. Slows down the work so as the men get angry.
‘S’pose I don’t think of it much, just go out and work in the fields like always, but telling you, Sister, as don’t know about it, makes me think of the sense of it. The first plough turns under the weeds and straw and they rot, give the soil food, and then a second one is shallow and not so hard, so it’s quicker. And then the harrowing, breaking up the clods so it’s easier for the seeds to grow. Breaks my back, too, it does. Sometimes I think it’d be easier to be an ox dragging that plough than following behind it like we do.’ I could smell the soil, rich and dark, so different from the dry dust that floated in from the church porch.
By the following visit, the beans had been planted: ‘careful like, so’s not to waste any. Though this year the rain’s made the soil like mud so the mounds where we plant collapse and the soil slips down into the ditches and we have to dig it all up and put it back. Sister, you need to pray as it don’t rain any more now, not till the roots get a hold.’
It felt strange, but I prayed for the crops, and I imagined the hard, shiny beans softening and swelling in the dark. On the visit after that, Maud pronounced the beans were shooting: ‘And now they’re coming up, thin stalks, and with this sun you can almost watch ’em grow … and the weeds, of course, they never go away; no matter what we do, they grow just as fast.’
I thought of the tiny green shoots, twisting around sticks, or each other, climbing upwards and unfurling each leaf. Maud’s chatter was drawing me back into life.
I worried then that I was no longer helping her but instead, I was drawing deep on her goodness when she had scant time to sit with me. Apart from work in the fields, she had a family to tend, vegetables to cultivate, a cow to milk, cheese to make, and much more. Even with those thoughts of Maud my mind was straying beyond my four walls, the cracks opening up again. But whether I prayed for the women or the crops, my prayers were no longer empty words.
Avice had only visited me once or twice, but she came to see me after church at Whitsun, confused by the day’s reading. Her voice was light, seeming to float through the curtain to me. It was confusing, she said, the Holy Ghost coming from the sky like that, in tongues of fire on the heads of the disciples, and all of them talking in different languages.
‘That shows us that God calls to everyone, whatever language they speak,’ I said.
‘I see that, Sister. But it’s the words I mean. All those languages, all those strange words people use. How is it we use a word for something, like tree, and someone in another land uses a different word?’ She paused. ‘After all, a tree is always a tree, a pot is always a pot, however we say or think on it.’
She was right; at first I was surprised at such thoughts from a woman who couldn’t read. But we all use words to think. Why shouldn’t Avice have such ideas, even without books?
She asked me to pray for her husband, Sam, weak with a sickness that wouldn’t leave.
‘Lizzie gives us some herbs that help for a time, and then he sickens again. But I’m glad you’re well now, Sister. Each time I go past this cell I think of you inside praying.’
I was pleased to see the women again, though I had begun to feel ashamed of how I had spoken to Jocelyn, and to worry about her. I asked Louise how she was faring.
‘Well, Sister, Jocelyn is poorly.’
‘Is it a fever? Or Hugh, did he do something?’
‘A fire it was, in her house. Jocelyn says she was careless of her skirts by the open fire and they caught alight. It’s common enough. Some years back, five houses burned down over Colley’s Lane, all from one spark in the straw.’
‘But Jocelyn, is she all right? Is she badly burned?’
‘One leg and her hand. Lizzie says they will heal in time. Jocelyn says it was a blessing Hugh was nearby to beat out the flames. But Sister, you know as I don’t like to gossip, but I saw her the next day and her face and shoulder were bruised, like she fell as well. Or were pushed.’
‘Oh, no! Louise, if you see her, tell her …’
A silence fell.
‘Yes, Sister. I’ll do that,’ she said quietly.
‘Thank you, Louise.’
I was surprised that Louise had said very little about my collapse, but she knocked on the shutters sometimes in the evening.
‘Sister, there’s a sunset as might cheer you,’ she would say.
The door to the maids’ room was on the opposite wall to the window into my cell, but set to one side of it, so that I could not see through it to the world outside. Even so, in the warmer months some light from the setting sun would flow into the room and reach my cell. I’d open the shutters and let the gold of the sun colour the walls while I sat at my desk. Sometimes Scat came in through the window and curled up on my knee, sleepy after a day roaming outdoors. Louise would sit outside her door, watching the sun sinking through the tangle of trees on Cram Hill, and once or twice Anna sat with us. In my mind I would see the tangle of her curls, the full roundness of her chin, still with its trace of childhood, the tilt of her head and shoulder.
The scratches on my ankles and feet had almost healed and I ran my fingers over the raised criss-crossing of pink lines. I listened for Agnes; she was always there, a restless scraping and shuffling beneath me, but her voice was quiet. I knew, though I wouldn’t admit it, that whatever Agnes said about death and suffering, I had hung on to life. The sunsets glowed like fire on the straw above her grave.
WATCHING THE SUN CAST its orange radiance into the back corner of my cell, onto my altar and crucifix, had seemed harmless, but I had let in more than I recognised.
As the weather warmed I moved more easily, and the price of my ease was restlessness. Though I was still weak and ached with the effort, I walked the short span of my cell, nine paces from windows to door, and back again, my legs wanting to continue outside. I opened my Rule, found the chapter on protecting the heart from the senses, and read, wishing it were Father Peter talking to me, his voice soothing.
Disturbance only comes into the heart from something that has been seen or heard, tasted or smelled, and felt outwardly. And know this to be true, that the more these senses fly outwards, the less they travel inwards. The more the recluse gazes outwards, the less light she has from our Lord inwardly.
I understood the words, but it seemed that in my weakened state I could no longer resist the demands made by my senses. I’d had no idea that sounds and smells could separate themselves; as if unravelling a piece of cloth, day by day, thread by thread, I began to recognise them. This is mill wheel, this is cartwheel, this is dragging a sack, this is throwing a bucket of water, this is digging, scything, ploughing, and even, sometimes, whispered seed scatter. These are Louise’s tired and heavy footsteps, this is Anna’s laugh, that is Eleanor’s chatter; these are curses, sighs, laughter, the moans and gasps of bodies joining, grunts of tiredness, frustration, sadness. This is wind on a warm day; this is a breeze that barely moves the leaves; this is rain on dirt, on stone, on thatch; this is the silence of falling snow.
The smells took longer to recognise: all kinds of shit and mouldering, hay and corn and dried rushes, parsnips freshly dug, ale spilled and stale, drying blood, drying fish, the sweat and dirt that seeped into everything. Of all the smells, what I missed the most was my scented water. It had been a part of my life, the jug in my room that Elsbeth filled each day with water and violet petals, or rosemary and orange. The smell would float around me whenever I poured it, linger on my hands and neck, caress my clothes and bedclothes. Now it was gone, I discovered how much I had loved it. Anna brought bunches of wormwood and rue, occasionally rosemary, to hang in my cell to keep away moths, but the scent was harsh. I longed to tell her to collect some violet or rose petals, and she would have, gladly, telling me they were all given by God.
On church feast days, the smell of incense wafted through my squint, though it soon faded. Louise and Anna carried it faintly on their clothes when I opened the shutters to read with them, and it was then that my own loss felt sharp and strong. For the first time, I felt how silky was Scat’s orange fur, how she smelled sometimes of death, or of straw, or of wet grass. I recognised my own thick smell and washed more often.
Even inside my cell, with work that Father Ranaulf gave me, the touch of my fingers drew me outward. My Rule said that I should sew only simple cloths for the church and for the poor, so when Father Ranaulf suggested I embroider a panel for the altar cloth at St Christopher’s Priory, I was startled. Perhaps he thought it would take my mind from Agnes and her guidance. He passed through my window a scrap of parchment with a design the priory illuminator had sketched in lead. The moment was awkward: his hand pushing through the curtain, the chance of seeing each other, me looking away then glancing back to see his long fingers stained with ink.
I traced the drawing with my fingertip, feeling delight in each curve and straight line, each dot and flourish. It was St Christopher, the priory’s patron saint, who had served God by carrying people safely across a deep river. One day he carried a child, but this child was so heavy that Christopher felt he was carrying the whole world on his shoulders and was afraid he and the child would drown. He staggered to the other side, exhausted. Only then did the child reveal himself as Christ, and that in carrying him Christopher had indeed carried the whole world. In the drawing, the saint was tall, standing knee deep in water, holding the child gently and easily in one arm, a staff in the other, his face strong with a long, straight nose.
I decided on each colour and type of stitch, excitement pounding in my head, memories of Ma’s words about the way each stitch would produce a different effect. The saint’s robe would be brown in stem stitch, shaded to show the folds, and where the water covered it I could mingle brown and blue threads. Chain stitch for the staff, or perhaps feather stitch, in shades of gold and brown, and in the four corners of the panel, white flowers to tell of his staff that blossomed. Gold thread for the haloes, of course, and silver to mingle with the green of the water in the river; some tiny pearls for the fish, orange with green fins. I thought of the river, the deep flowing water, long sleek fish, red and purple and yellow, floating and weaving like lengths of silk, coils of gold and silver braid, some sinking, some rising.
When I began to sew, each stitch, each coloured thread, made my fingers tingle, a warmth that flowed through my arms and chest, down into my belly. I would ask Anna to help me; we could sew the water and the fish together.
Even though I knew I should limit the amount of time I worked on the cloth each day, so that I kept my rhythm of prayer and reading, my thoughts would wander to it, my eyes would look across to where it was folded on my desk, and sometimes I found myself working on it unaware I had put down my book, or even that I had made a decision.
A stifled laugh, muted footfalls on the grass and they were gone: young girls running past my cell on the way to the river. May Day, and they were up before dawn to collect flowers when they were freshest, their perfume strongest.
As I finished praying Prime, snatches of laughter and words blew in on the breeze. There was the pungent smell of borage, then thyme, even stronger. I could see it: the grass, the sunrise, the bunches of flowers — daisies, gillyflowers, mallow, comfrey, and cowslip; I could imagine the games: boys’ names shouted aloud, cries of delight, disgust, anger, whistles and lewd words, prophecies of couplings, weddings, babies.
Emma, a plaited crown of periwinkle on her head, had been the most excited of them all, collecting flowers, organising the games, giving instructions, arranging the girls in a circle to throw balls made of cowslip, calling to me to join in. I always shook my head; I didn’t want a husband, and offered instead to take bundles of flowers to decorate the houses of our neighbours. Once Emma was married she no longer joined the games of finding a husband, but put on a crown of flowers and pulled Godric out to dance.
I used to frown when she laughed at crudity, drank too much mead, or kissed Godric under the maypole and told him to give her a baby. But that May Day morning at my altar, I no longer saw the lines of pain on her face as she died, but her laugh, the curve of her back, the lift of her feet as she danced, her hair curling with sweat, and I realised, with a shock like being slapped, that in truth I had wanted to do that, to wind around the maypole, to sing and laugh with the others; I had watched on, longing and afraid. A foolish idea; I had always wanted only to pray and serve God. My prayers finished, I stayed on my knees, my face throbbing at the thought. Was it a temptation sent by the Devil? The clack of teeth, a scrape on my ankle, and I felt the tender skin opening once more, the warmth of blood trickling across my foot.
When I heard Louise’s voice at my parlour window, I dabbed at my foot with my robe and stood. Maud had come to see me on her way to church, to wish me happy May Day. She told me then of an argument between her Bill and Winifred’s Roger about the plough.
‘It’s ploughing for the wheat now, Sister, and Roger had agreed that he’d finish with the plough in three days, but it rained so hard one day that the ox couldn’t get a foothold, so by the time his three days were up, his fields weren’t ploughed, were they? My Bill, he had such a set-to with Roger. Both said they were in the right, and they were. Were just the weather, but could they see it? Finally Roger waited till our Bill was done, even agreed to help him out, so I told Bill he was to do the same. Good thing it’s May Day and they can get drunk together, eh, Sister?’ She laughed. ‘Though I worry, drunk men anywhere near Sir Thomas. We saw him ride in a day or so past and no doubt he’ll visit the feast today. Brave or foolish, he is, the men are so angry with him. Word is he’s a mind to get more sheep and take more of the common land for their pasture. We’ve bare enough as it is, the land’s so worked and starved, without he takes more.’
