The Anchoress, page 3
Father Peter visited a few days later. He was my confessor, and I had been hoping he would visit to see that all was well.
The scrape of the stool, and he grunted as he sat down. ‘Sister Sarah? God bless you, my child. Are you well, Sister?’
‘Yes, Father, thank you.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. You seemed weak at your enclosure, though, of course, it demanded much.’
His voice made me think of the river where it runs deepest, the silken sound of its slow eddies, but that seemed fanciful. His face had frightened me when I met him before my enclosure: the filaments in his watery eyes, foggy white rings on the blue, the red blotches on his sagging cheeks. He’d seemed weary, like a thick rug worn down. But he had smiled more quickly than I’d expected and there had been a gentle concern in his eyes. That was the last time I would see his face; from now on, it would be only his voice on the other side of the curtain.
‘I’m sorry that I haven’t come earlier, but I understand that Father Simon hears your confession when I cannot come. Have you warmth and sufficient food?’
‘Yes, Father, though I eat sparingly. My Rule tells me that keeping my body in need will bring me to God.’
‘Yes, it does. But it also says not to suffer needlessly. You must be strong enough to do God’s work; it says that also.’
‘And I’m teaching my maids from the Rule each day and making sure they pray.’
‘Very good. There’s a lot for you to get used to, child; don’t rush at this new life. You have all the time you need to grow into it. I’m old, and slowing down; that’s why I can’t visit more often. The walk from the priory is pleasant, especially when the weather is fine, but my legs don’t carry me as easily as they once did. Still, the slow walk makes me look around at the world. I’ve seen things I never noticed when I strode along as a young man. You’re young, Sarah. Think of yourself as a child, still learning to walk, and that will be two of us, learning to lean on God together.’ A chuckle. ‘And now, would you make your confession?’
I submitted, wanting all the time to argue. A child? Me? I was no novice nun; I’d chosen this hardest life of all, and he called me a child! He was kind, but he was old, and perhaps he’d forgotten the strength of being young. He absolved me of my sin, though not the anger and argument in my heart.
‘You will have read in your Rule that this life you’ve chosen is penance itself as you hang on the cross with our Lord. No need for me to add more, my child. God bless you, Sarah, and Mother Mary embrace you.’
I could hear the wheeze of his breath. ‘Are you unwell, Father?’
‘’Tis the rheum that never really leaves me now.’ He coughed, and sniffed loudly. ‘Sister, I see your new maid has arrived. Anna, isn’t it? I know it’s customary for the younger maid to stay indoors praying, away from temptation, and for the older maid to spend more time outside the cell, fetching and cooking and washing, but I hear Louise is no longer able for such hard work. I understand how she feels.’
Another chuckle. ‘I’m sure Anna’s capable, having spent time in Lord Maunsell’s manor at Friaston, but that isn’t what concerns me. She’s very young and I’m not sure that she wants this kind of life. A maid to an anchoress should be committed to God and to service, but it seems this is what the manor and Father Simon have decided, at least for now. It’s a good living for a young girl but you will need to guide her well, Sister. Be sure she prays and reads; perhaps let her do some simple sewing. Not too much wandering about the village, mind.’
The bishop had told me I was to care for my maids, but not this, guiding a young girl who reminded me of Emma, of so much I’d left behind.
Again, the scrape of the stool and a grunt. ‘But I’m sure you’re wise on such matters,’ Father Peter said. ‘And your Rule has a section on the care of your maids. I’ll come again, as soon as I’m able. God bless you, child.’ Some shuffling, then the protest of my parlour door as he pushed it shut.
NOISES OUTSIDE — SHOUTING, LAUGHTER, squeals, and curses. It was All Hallows Eve, and though I couldn’t see the fires on the green just beyond the church, it seemed right that so soon after my enclosure I could pray for the dead, my dead. If I was to guide Anna as my Rule required, I needed first to commit Emma to God. I moved to my altar and knelt to pray, saying the words once more, willing my heart to let go of memories of my sister.
The squeak of metal close by, the sound of wood on wood as the church door shut. The smell of dirt floated in to me as it always did when someone entered the church. Muffled footsteps, a few soft thumps, and then quietness. The cough of a sick man, dry and rasping, the sound of breath dragged in and out. Perhaps he had come to pray, grieving for a wife or a son or a brother. I moved to my altar, knelt to pray for him, asking Christ to ease that hollow pain of loss I understood. The church bell began to ring, an insistent tolling, driving back time …
I was with Ma and Emma, eight years past on All Hallows Eve, outside in the frosty night. Ma was telling us we had to keep away the angry spirits of the dead; they came with the chill winds that swept bare the trees, she said, when the earth was dying, when the boundary between the world of the dead and the world of the living was weakest. And so we built fires and rang bells. I imagined the dead floating in the air like smoke, with black misty holes for eyes and large wailing mouths, their legs stretching long and thin, hands over their ears, trying to get close to us but forced back by the rolling clangour of the bells. Father John urged us to give thanks for the food God had given us in the harvest, food to sustain us in the frozen winter, and on this night when life and death met, he asked us to pray for the souls of the dead.
It sounded so serious and frightening that after Mass I played at ghouls with Emma and the other children, shouting and whooping, and ate more than usual — nuts and apples and soul cakes — as my own way of warding off the dead.
A piercing screech and I startled, looked around, came back to my dark cell; the smell of smoke, flickers of orange high on my wall, coming in through gaps in the thatch. Outside, the crackle of burning wood, screams of merriment, drumbeats and bells. Children would be wearing masks, running, dancing, cackling, and whooping like monsters or ghosts, now shadow, now golden in the firelight. The sounds faded and then grew louder by turn as revellers ran up and down the village lanes.
This year, on this night of the dead, there was no one with me to see or touch, no one to reassure me that I was alive. But I wasn’t; my Rule told me that I was dead to the world, that this cell was my grave. I looked around, wondered where they would dig the hole for my body. Agnes was here, just below my squint; had they buried Isabella there as well? A shiver ran from my hair all the way down my back, into my legs and through to my toes. Dread and excitement — in this place of life in death, what else could I feel, closed to the world and open to the unseen? Of a sudden I noticed I was cold, as if winter had walked in weeks before his time. I dragged a blanket from my bed and pulled it around my shoulders.
My candle cut shadows into Christ’s face on the crucifix above me and for a moment I saw Ma, her cheeks thin, her eyes hollow. Perhaps she had lived an All Hallows vigil for the last few months of her life: half in the next world, where food and clothing and sleep mean nothing. At first she’d looked after the new baby with a distracted care, then she stopped eating. She would let Alfred cry on and on until one of us picked him up and took him to her to suckle, and after a few weeks his cries became higher and more desperate with hunger. When Madge, the midwife, told us she had found a wet nurse, Ma’s smile was empty, as if she hadn’t heard or grasped what Madge had said. Her face dull, looking at nothing, tears sometimes trickling onto the pillow; her body and heart worn out from what a baby demands in being born into this world.
‘Despair is a sin,’ Father John said to me when I told him of my mother’s sadness. ‘Her pain is the price of Eve’s fall in Eden and all women pay for it. Your mother must pray and confess her despair, and God will hear her. She’s a good woman.’ He smiled at me. ‘And you must pray for her, too, Sarah.’
I wanted to shout at him, to ask him: Are women made to bear the kind of pain that crushes them underfoot like grass trampled into the soil? It’s easy then to call it despair and a sin. Alfred is grown now, stronger and taller than my father; he thrived where my mother sank, sucked under, drawn into the earth — but it’s not for me to blame him.
‘Holy Sister, a soul cake on this night of the dead?’
I blenched, fright jagged in my chest. My cell was black and I could see nothing but the yellow glow of my candle. The laughter and shouting outside were distant now. I held up my candle and peered around me. A man’s voice. He must be in my parlour. I rose and took the few steps to the window.
‘Who is it?’
‘Just a traveller, Sister.’
I turned so quickly my candle flickered, guttered, nearly went out, then steadied. The voice hadn’t come from my parlour; where was he?
‘Ain’t eaten for two days, Sister. Might you have a cake this vigil, or bread, may be? P’rhaps ale?’ The sound came from my squint. He coughed. Of course, he was in the church; it was the man I’d heard earlier.
‘You’re not to speak to me. I’m enclosed here. But I’m praying for you. What’s your name?’
‘I’m Harry, Sister, an’ you might pray, but food is my need.’
I wanted him to leave. ‘Ask for food in the village. They have—’
‘Can’t show this face, can I? Or these hands. They’d beat me out of town for it.’
My belly was suddenly hot. I stepped back into the wall, put my candle on the desk, both hands to my mouth.
‘You are, you’re a …?’
‘Leper, Sister, is the word you’re after. Yes. An’ you being holy, I know you’d—’
‘Well, there’s no food here for you.’ I looked down at my desk to the cake Anna had brought me. I would not eat it, but I would not pass it to his tainted hands, even through my squint. ‘This is a vigil and I fast. You must leave. You cannot be here. There are places for you to go.’ In my mind I could see the ragged cloth binding his face and hands, hiding the horror beneath, the slow creep of death.
‘’Tis where I’m headed. But meanwhiles I must eat and sleep.’
‘It’s not for me to help you. Leave.’ I was sure now that I could smell goats and their musky urine stink. How could he be here, so close to me? Would my cell keep away nothing of the world?
‘You can’t make me leave this church, you and your holiness that won’t help. What’s prayers when a man’s stomach twists in pain? I thought you’d help me, you or the Father … but no. ’Tis too holy for us, shut away, pure an’ all …’ The squeak of the church door drowned his muttering.
I sank onto my chair, my legs shaking. I wanted to crawl into bed, but it was near my squint, near his disease. I watched the flame of my candle burn, its steady heart of gold, until finally it died. I went over and over the same thoughts: it was what my Rule demanded, what my life was to be — shut off from the world and its demands. That was right, I was sure. I would pray for Harry; that was my life now — to pray for others. And it was true, wasn’t it, that lepers were sick because they had sinned? Yet whatever firm arguments I mustered, I knew I was simply afraid.
There was no noise from the church and I was shivering now, my blanket on the floor where I had dropped it at my altar. It was easy, by this time, to feel my way across to pick it up, pull it onto my bed and curl up, but I lay on the edge, keeping as far from the church wall as I could. My mother’s face lingered in the dark.
Minutes later, sounds woke me: the squeak of the church door, fumbling, whispering. I recognised a voice, a man’s, but younger than the leper’s. It was Martin, the priest’s assistant, speaking quietly. I crept to my squint, my ear turned to listen. The smell was putrid, the fetid stink of rotting flesh, and I pulled back slightly, covered my nose.
‘’Tis warmer over here. Here’s my robe and that’s another blanket. They should keep you warm. There. And I’ll come in the morning with some more bread … Father Simon won’t be here until Terce. You won’t be seen. Oh, but quiet, the anchoress, you know, is in there and we mustn’t disturb her.’
The bang of the church door.
Jesus had healed lepers, had touched them with love, hadn’t he?
I lay awake in the accusing silence, the rank smell in the air, remembering the night of my enclosure, the prayers for burial read over my body. How had Harry felt when they read the same rites for him and sent him away to a life he hadn’t chosen? We two were dead to the world, though it looked on us so differently, and I had joined the world in shunning him.
I loved to read in my Rule that a virgin was just a little lower than the angels, but all I could hear now was the beating in my head like the throb of angels’ wings, slowing, getting fainter, leaving me.
St Christopher’s Priory
Cramford, English Midlands
St Crispin’s Day, 19 November 1255
RANAULF
HIS FACE BURNED; HE felt he was being watched, though he was alone. His third mistake this morning. Ranaulf put down his quill, moved the knife from his left to his right hand, took a deep breath. Slowly, catching only the ink and the thinnest layer of parchment, he scraped away the f that should have been a t. His jaw ached; the muscles in his neck pulled tight. He set down the knife, gently brushed the page and slipped out from behind the desk. Standing, he stretched his left shoulder up and back, then his right. A muscle contracted as if tied with twine, tugging all the way down his right side. Gristly sounds echoed from his neck into his head as he turned it from side to side.
He glanced toward one of the windows. The autumn sun was gleaming weakly, but it would be hours before light would fall on his desk, and then only for a short time. The room was small; he had known it wouldn’t be as grand or airy as the scriptorium at the abbey, and he was pleased to serve God at St Christopher’s, taking charge of the young priory’s manuscripts and no longer just one of many scribes ruling lines and copying. But on days like this the room seemed to narrow and darken.
A noise at the door; Ranaulf recognised the familiar bustling and felt his body tense.
‘Prior Walter.’
‘Father Ranaulf, the corrody. Have you finished copying the corrody for the anchoress of Hartham? You know I’ll be uneasy until we have a copy completed; if the original went missing, the danger to the priory would be immense! I don’t think you appreciate, Father, tucked away as you are, how long it took me to negotiate, how significant is the agreement. Sir Geoffrey is shrewd, even if he does fear for his soul. Is it ready?’
Ranaulf nodded toward the shelves, stepped back to his desk, and restrained a sigh as the prior pushed past him. It had been a difficult day when he’d first arrived at the priory with his equipment, especially this awkward desk that had needed four men to carry and guide it through the narrow doorway of the scriptorium. Initially he had been inclined to complain about the size of the room and the poor light, but the prior’s face had warned him against it. The priory was young, still a tender offshoot of Westmore Abbey, but Prior Walter’s plans were ambitious; work on an additional building had begun, though a larger, brighter scriptorium would be seasons — perhaps years — away.
At the far end of the room, the prior glanced over the few books and scrolls on the shelves lining the raw stone wall. ‘Here we are.’ He lifted down and unwrapped a small bundle. Inside were quires of folded parchment, as yet unbound. ‘Very important. The numbers must be copied correctly, and the details of the land, just as in the original. And the names of all the witnesses, not only the first line. If there are ever questions, Father, it must all be here.’
‘Of course, Prior. I copy carefully. As you know.’
Usually he took little notice of the content of this type of document: numbers of acres, location of the land, amounts of money — but he had been surprised by this one; it betokened a remarkably good arrangement for the prior. Sir Geoffrey, Lord of Friaston and Hartham, had given valuable tracts of land to the priory in return for its physical and spiritual support of the anchoress of Hartham. What was the formulation? Acres of pasture and woodland, some cottages, meadow, three sheepfolds with foldage. And there was more, but he’d forgotten the detail. In return, the priory had to provide a confessor for the anchoress and make sure the anchorhold was maintained and repaired when necessary. In addition, it was to provide sustenance for the anchoress and her maids: basic foods like bread, ale, fish, flour — the amounts were specified, down to the type and number of fish — as well as oil, candles, and wood.
Ranaulf understood Prior Walter’s delight: pasture for their sheep, rental money from the arable land, wood from the forest for building — he could see the advantages. All in return for the care of three devout women — how much time and trouble could that involve?
‘Ah, yes, here’s the corrody. Neatly copied, Father.’ Walter ran his fingers down the page, as if searching for a particular provision. ‘Did you include Sir Thomas, the son? Most important, that part is. Sir Geoffrey won’t live forever, you know, and … yes, here it is. Very good, Father Ranaulf.’
He straightened the documents, began reading again at the top, and turned the pages one by one, muttering contentedly to himself.
At his desk, Ranaulf looked down at the creamy parchment, the tiny shadows cast by its dimples in the weak morning sun, the ruled lines, the letters, even and black, standing one after another. A page well copied was a thing of beauty, especially when enhanced with illumination. The prior sought the written word as a tool only, as surety of his transactions, but it could be so much more. Marks on the page were signs that could communicate such complex ideas: precise dogma of creed and the rules of church discipline, or the deep love of God and the sacrifice of Christ’s Passion. After all, the Gospels they read were written on sheepskin.
