Needle in the Blood (38 page)

Agatha praises the Archbishop’s proposal. It is her understanding that there was, in former times, a strong tradition of female religious life in England, but that it lapsed somewhat during the rule of Harold Godwinson. She knows that many widows and daughters of the defeated English have sought the veil and counts it an act of compassion on the Archbishop’s part that he should thus consider their welfare. If it pleases His Grace, she will come to him before None, so as to avoid having to travel back after dusk.

Odo’s name is not mentioned.

Agatha decides Margaret will accompany her. This invitation is a sign, confirmation that her plans for Margaret meet with God’s approval. What better way to begin her education in the Rule than by listening to the discourse of a monk as learned and virtuous as Lanfranc of Bec? And if, as Agatha anticipates it will, the conversation should turn at any point to the matter of Odo and his mistress, well, she will send Margaret to Brother Thorold in the infirmary to beg some of his linctus for coughs and sore chests. By this late in the winter, her own supplies are running low.

Margaret can scarcely touch her midday meal. She has not been outside the castle walls since she cannot remember when, except for yesterday’s procession, of course, and the joust held for Lord Odo’s birthday last November, but they don’t count. The excitement of going into town, past all the shops and cookhouses, through the Buttermarket with its stalls selling everything from songbirds to sausages, its cock fights and ale counters, is almost unbearable. Not to mention the prospect of seeing the builders at work on the new cathedral, in their short tunics and bare arms. All that male sweat and casual mastery of cranes and pumps, levels and set squares. If she tries to put food in her stomach, she thinks she may explode. Why her? Why not Judith? Of course, Sister Jean would probably have taken Gytha for company if Gytha were here. Has she somehow inherited the wit and worldliness, the air of being surprised by nothing, in awe of nobody, that gave Gytha her unique position in the atelier? Has some element of Gytha rubbed off on her from the years of sharing a frame and washing one another’s hair, the way woad or madder might become ingrained in the skin of a dyer? She feels she is at the beginning of some great adventure. She has only to place her feet in the little imprints left by Gytha’s green satin dancing shoes to find the way to her own prince.

“I intend that you should be in the room with us while we talk. You will find our conversation instructive,” Sister Jean explains as they walk, taking care not to stumble in the frozen ruts of the roads. They pause in the Longmarket while a man tries to drive a large and uncooperative sow through the narrow space between the buildings with their overhanging eaves and bankers open onto the street. Margaret laughs as the sow swerves into a display of game, knocks a truss of partridges to the ground and proceeds to eat them, snuffling and grunting, blood and feathers sticking to her snout.

“But you must keep a modest demeanour. Only speak if spoken to. Do not look His Grace the Archbishop in the eye. Lanfranc of Bec is a great man,” Sister Jean continues.

“Not greater than Lord Odo, surely,” says Margaret, artlessly, between giggles, as voices are raised between the owner of the sow and the game merchant.

“Different,” Sister Jean replies, stamping her feet with cold, or impatience. “Come along. I think we can slip past while the pig is distracted.”

***

They are shown into the Archbishop’s private office. The Archbishop raises his eyebrows when Agatha asks if her young companion can sit in on their meeting, but recovers himself quickly and apologises for the lack of space. There is, he explains, no fire as yet lit in his parlour, and he fears it would be too cold to be comfortable for the ladies.

“And there,” says Agatha, “is one prejudice you must disabuse yourself of, Your Grace, if you are to understand the application of the Rule to women’s houses. That we are in every respect less strong than men. The female humour being generally cold and damp, it might be argued that too much warmth or dryness in our surroundings might distract us from the pursuit of the fire of God’s love. The airiness of women may serve to make them more receptive to the Holy Spirit.”

“Or,” counters Lanfranc, waving Agatha into a chair opposite his desk, as Margaret takes her place on a low stool set against the wall beside the door, “it may be that an excess of cold will cause a predominance of the feminine in the humour, thus hindering women from aspiring to the spiritual by causing them to become preoccupied with physical discomforts.” He sneezes.

The stool is hard, the plaster behind Margaret’s back uneven, and the learned sparring of the Archbishop and her mistress utterly beyond her comprehension. As their discussion continues, ranging over matters as varied as whether women religious should undertake physical labour, shave their heads, or be permitted mattresses in recognition of their physical frailty, the colour of their habits and the numbers of sets of underwear they should possess, Margaret’s attention wanders. Small things distract her: a food stain on her skirt which reminds her that she is, as always, hungry, and sick of eating salt pork and pickles; some scratches on her fingertips make her think about Alwys, and how lucky, yet unlucky, she has been, and that such issues of luck, or fate, or providence, are doubtless real, yet impossible to understand. Margaret has a fondness for horoscopes and, though she dutifully confesses whenever she indulges in improper speculations about the future, she cannot quite give it up. It is as though she needs to do it to reassure herself that she will, one day, when Lord Odo’s interminable hanging is complete, have a future; that the minute adjustment in the conjunction of the planets between her birth and Alwys’ contains a whole world cut off from Alwys with her hand.

“Excess must be avoided in eating and drinking, but also in abstinence. As the Apostle wrote to Timothy, ‘Godliness with contentment is great gain’,” says the Archbishop. Margaret is at a loss as to what she is supposed to learn from all this. Heaven knows, she has listened to enough sermons in her life. Surely Sundays and the holy days of obligation are enough. She is honoured, of course, that Sister Jean should consider her worthy of an audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that they should trouble to speak in English so she can understand them, but it is not as though she has any vocation to the religious life.

And then she remembers, with a tightening in her chest, that Gytha came here, to this very suite of rooms, with letters for Lord Odo when he was injured, and that she was never quite the same afterwards, both gayer and angrier, and more secretive. Margaret starts to wonder what happened here, and whether, if she looks in the right way, she will be able to see the imprint of those little shoes dancing through the abbey.

“Thank you, Sister, you have been most helpful. You have cleared my mind considerably on these issues. Let me send for some refreshment for you and your companion, and while we wait, tell me your news.” Lanfranc tugs at his beard. “Do you expect your brother of Bayeux back from Gloucester soon? I imagine the king’s court broke up yesterday.”

“His lordship goes to survey his estates in Essex, I believe, Your Grace. I am not sure when we expect to see him again.”

“Yes, he has been making reallocations of land in that county, I think.”

“I do not concern myself with my brother’s business. Your Grace, excuse me, but I have just remembered, there are some things we need from Brother Thorold.” Agatha fishes in the pocket beneath her scapular and withdraws a slip of parchment which she hands to Margaret. “Please take this list to him, Meg. If we delay much longer, we shall lose the light for our journey home.”

How unfair, just when the conversation has finally taken an interesting turn. But a young monk is waiting at the door to guide her through the labyrinth of the abbey buildings to the infirmary, and it is clear from the tense, expectant smiles of Lanfranc and Sister Jean that she has no option but to go. She bows to the Archbishop and arranges to meet Sister Jean outside the chapter house when both have concluded their business.

The abbey is full of quiet activity as monks and servants alike hurry to finish their work before Vespers. Brother Thorold himself is in his dispensary, handing out powders in linen envelopes, little bottles of medicines and pots of salves to a forlorn queue of men and boys, some coughing, one whose hands are cracked and bleeding from eczema. Margaret settles down to wait on a stone bench running along the outside wall, beneath the infirmary windows. The windows are glazed, for Saint Benedict ruled there should be constant consideration for the weakness of the sick and the old, and Margaret cannot help glancing through them in an attempt to distract herself from the cold biting her ears and striking through her clothes as she sits.

She sees a long dormitory, white painted, containing a row of pallets, each with a sheet and a woollen blanket, and a dark wooden cross and a semi-circular basin of holy water nailed to the wall above it. Most of the beds are occupied, but Margaret notices only one of the patients. A tall man, his feet, clad in thick woollen socks, stick out from beneath the blanket. He has very long hair, lying in a coarse, sandy plait over his left shoulder, and his upper lip is overgrown, in the Saxon style, by a heavy moustache. He has extraordinary eyes, bright, yet seemingly opaque, like enamel. Green, of course, she knows they are green, as her own are green, but this opacity is new. As if he knows he is being watched, he turns his head slightly in her direction, but his blank expression never changes and she cannot be certain he has seen her. Perhaps he is blind. That would explain why he never came home. He would have felt ashamed.

“Mistress? I think you are waiting for me?”

“What? Oh, yes, sorry, yes, I have a list…somewhere. From Sister Jean-Baptiste.” She looks around distractedly.

“It’s here, in your hand,” says Brother Thorold, taking hold of one edge of the parchment. Margaret cannot immediately let it go; she has forgotten how her hands work. “Come inside, child, your hand is frozen.”

Brother Thorold pauses briefly, her hand in his, looking from it to its companion as though checking something, before leading her into his dispensary, where he pulls up a stool and presses gently on her shoulders until she sits down. Moving quietly and purposefully around the small room, he prepares the medicines Sister Jean has requested, taking down jars and canisters from shelves, weighing and measuring syrups, powders, dried petals, and leaves. From time to time he comments on his work. He is sorry, he cannot spare so much vervain; the dry weather has been terrible for coughs. But if there is angelica in the castle garden, Sister Jean may try a concoction of its root in wine.

The girl will speak if she wants to. Perhaps she is in love and querying within herself whether she dare ask him for some potion to work on her lover’s affections. She might be wrestling with a vocation, as he himself once did. Perhaps it is simply her age, for though she is clearly a grown woman in the eyes of the world, he can see that in her own eyes, she is still a girl, twin, he guesses, to the one who lost her hand in Lent last year. Didn’t Sister Jean say something about a twin, and a curious bout of the falling sickness? Maybe that is the girl’s problem.

Eventually, soothed by Brother Thorold’s quiet industry, she says, “You have a patient in your infirmary, a Saxon man, not a monk. What ails him?”

“It would not be seemly for me to discuss his symptoms with any but a physician or his relatives.”

“But I am his relative,” she blurts out. “You see, he is my brother, my eldest brother. Tom. I thought he was dead. Killed at Hastings. We all thought he was dead. He disappeared. No one saw him again. And now…and now…I know it’s him, but…he looks as though he doesn’t.” She bursts into noisy sobs.

Brother Thorold pours a little wine into a beaker, mixes it with a spoonful of a syrup he uses to dispel melancholy, and offers it to Margaret. The girl is sincere, he does not doubt it, and, if he is honest, his patient’s identity is a mystery he would like to have cleared up. Curiosity is a sin, yet without it, how could men ever come to know or understand any of God’s creation?

“Calm yourself, child, and tell me everything, from the beginning.”

Margaret wipes her eyes and nose on her sleeve. “There is not much to tell, Brother. There were four boys in my family. All went to fight alongside King Harold…” She breaks off and looks fearfully at Brother Thorold, who nods reassuringly.

“He was our king, for a time appointed by God, and now God has seen fit to give us another. Go on.”

“Aelfred and Harry were killed at Stamford Bridge, God rest them.” She and the infirmarer cross themselves. “And Little Walter, the youngest, on Senlac Ridge. Tom died there also, so we thought, though his body was never found. But time passed, and he did not return home. He has a wife, you know, and a little son he’s never seen. So we assumed…”

“Did his ‘widow’ remarry?”

“Thankfully not. Our new lord, a man called Vital, a vassal of the earl, I have made a representation of him in the embroidery, talking to Duke William…the king, I mean…”

“You are getting off the point, child,” Thorold prompts gently.

“I’m sorry. Lord Vital wished it, but did not insist. Perhaps the absence of a body gave him pause. So Christine has remained unmarried. She lives with my parents. She will be overjoyed to know Tom is alive. They had less than a year together before the invasion, and they seemed very happy. Can I see him now?”

“Be patient.”