by Karen Brooks
Propped near the hearth, the loom beckoned me. At first, I resisted its siren call. But once I moved it close to the bed, I found comfort in the familiar actions. Though I was the one to teach Alyson to weave, through her I came to appreciate how, when I was behind the loom, my fingers quick and busy, my body became still. The faint trembling of the stationary warp against the over and under action of the weft mimicked my form. I was all but unmoving on the outside, but just like my busy hands, I was restless in my mind and heart as my thoughts took flight. As the fabric slowly grew, row upon row of colour and sometimes patterns, I was reminded of the seasons and the changes they wrought. We too were like cloth – even the animals and the harvests: we grew in increments, woven by nature and God’s guiding hands, shaped by the care or abuse of those around us. We stayed bright and well-kept, or faded and mended; or, if unfortunate, torn and ruined. Just as every bit of cloth held the story of its maker, and the sheep, the wool, the carders, spinners, fullers and weavers who took part in its development, so did we. It was a wondrous thing to consider and it helped, if not to accept Fulk’s condition, to become reconciled to it.
I stayed by my husband’s side as much as possible, weaving cloth and stories and sharing any gossip.
By early June, Fulk’s grunts had turned into words of a sort. I knew my name: ‘El’. Alyson became ‘Al’, which sounded much the same. He could also make it known if he wanted Theo or Beton to carry him to the necessarium.
As summer announced itself with hot and humid clarions, I had to make decisions regarding the wool. What was to go for fulling, what to remain undyed, where to sell it. I also had to decide whether or not to buy more sheep to replace those we lost or let the flock reproduce naturally. Turbet offered advice.
At these times, Fulk listened intently, becoming very still. Sometimes he’d reach for my hand and grip it as tightly as he was able. ‘El, El, El,’ he would say, his eyes darting about. I knew he wished to relay something important. I tried to guess, running a series of words past him. It wasn’t until I said ‘sheep?’ that he raised his right arm and let it fall against the bedclothes over and over. When I gave an insistent Turbet permission to attend the markets in Bedford and Brighton and purchase more sheep for our flock, not relinquish some of our sheep to him, Fulk’s arm ceased to flail.
At last, we’d worked out a way to communicate. Together, we managed the sheep, wool and our basic trade.
Not long after Turbet returned with the additional beasts, he drew me away from my husband’s side.
We stood near the window, in Fulk’s sight but not so close he could hear. ‘What is it you wish to say, Turbet, that cannot be said before Fulk?’
Turbet glanced across the room at my husband and sighed. ‘I don’t know how to raise this with you, my dear –’
‘Just speak what you must.’ I’d no patience with dissembling. I was no longer twelve. I’d also grown weary of Turbet’s constant smile; as Alyson once observed, it promised more than it ever delivered – unless it was for his benefit.
‘Very well,’ said Turbet, flashing me a glimpse of his great yellow teeth. ‘I feel it’s incumbent upon me to tell you what others may not feel they have the right or are uncomfortable expressing.’
I folded my arms.
‘Ah … it’s evident that Fulk, may God bless him, isn’t going to recover anytime soon, or mayhap, and I say this with utmost respect and love for him, ever.’
It was only gratitude for the help Turbet had rendered that prevented me from shoving him in the chest and ordering him from the house.
‘In which case, you may need to reconsider not only your flock, but how you manage the lands.’
‘Is that so?’ I used a tone that made Alyson and Milda pause in their work, and even Hereward and Wake raised their heads.
‘I mean no offence, lady. On the contrary, what you have done holding together not only the household, but Fulk’s affairs, defies belief. For one still so young, your business acumen is not what one would expect. It’s unnatural.’
Was it my youth or the fact I was a woman that gave him cause to marvel?
I remembered my manners. ‘Your praise means much.’ That was true. Gaining his approval was no mean feat. I think that’s why what he said next caught me unawares.
‘And so, I’m prepared to offer an excellent deal in exchange.’ Without hesitation, he did.
What?
‘Correct me if I’m mistaken,’ I said when he’d finished. ‘But you were saying something about me releasing some of our land to you? A percentage of the flock?’
‘Ah, aye, I was.’ He turned his back to Fulk. I made sure I faced my husband and repeated what Turbet said very carefully and loudly.
‘You wish to purchase the lease on seventeen acres of pasture – the portion that adjoins your lands – and buy some thirty sheep being a mixture of wethers, hogs and ewes. Is that correct?’
‘And a ram,’ called out Alyson. Good. She’d been listening too.
Fulk became agitated, his arm thrashing the air. ‘El, El, El,’ he repeated.
‘It’s alright, husband. I understand.’ I tried to calm him, but it was difficult. Turbet Gerrish was obviously annoyed. He wouldn’t go so far as to frown, but his smile was forced through thin lips.
‘I think it’s probably best I leave.’
Fulk’s cries grew guttural.
‘Think on it, Eleanor,’ he said, his fingers curling around my forearm. ‘This –’ he described the house and the lands beyond with a sweep of his arm, ‘is all your responsibility now. What I’m suggesting isn’t much to lose in the scheme of things and would not only provide you with ready coin for doctors and medicines, but make management much easier. Something, as a woman, you need to consider.’
Suddenly, I wanted him gone. To think of profiting from his friend’s misfortune, my misery.
But of course, once an idea is planted, even one you know is somehow wrong, it takes root in the mind and grows like a weed, spreading to infect every sensible thought and some not so sensible ones. Though I managed to settle Fulk swiftly after Turbet left, his offer remained between us, and I turned it over and over like lumps of clod.
Was Turbet’s proposal wrong? It made a great deal of sense in some respects to reduce the size of our holdings. We’d ample. And, with the coin we’d earn, I could not only pay for Fulk’s treatment, but hire extra workers. And we could think about buying wool from other suppliers and concentrating on weaving. I could even seek advice on applying to the guild for membership. I knew it was unlikely they’d grant it to me, a woman, but if someone like Lord Hugh vouched … Or Master Geoffrey … Aye, I would go and see Father Elias and ask him to write a letter to his lordship on my behalf. Dear Lord, I owed Geoffrey a letter as well. I hadn’t even told him about Fulk …
These thoughts occupied me over the next week or so. Every day, Turbet returned and repeated his offer. Oh, he used different words each time, and waited until we’d moved out of Fulk’s earshot to deliver them, but he was beginning to wear me down.
As midsummer approached and preparations began for feasting, I had to organise crews of men to shear the sheep. This proved harder than usual as those we regularly hired had agreed to work elsewhere – where a man was in charge. That cut deep, I admit, and made my anger, which had lain dormant since Fulk’s apoplexy, rise once more.
I sat by Fulk’s bed a week before midsummer and bewailed our situation, then outlined as reasonably as I could why accepting Turbet’s offer might be a good thing. I didn’t mention the men being unable to shear. Anyway, Theo and Beton were more than capable of doing that and, bless, said they’d train Warren. Between them, they’d manage; it would just mean working harder.
‘What do you think?’ I asked Fulk. ‘Should we sell, husband?’
Fulk held my hand and stared at me with such earnestness, then said, as clear as the bell in the Noke Manor chapel, ‘Nay.’
I stared, then leapt to my feet, shouting in joy.
‘You spoke!’
‘Nay. Nay. Nay,’ he repeated, smiling a lopsided grin.
Alyson threw aside the shuttle and darted to the bed.
‘Pa!’ she cried. Milda and Sophie slowly approached, hope writ on their faces.
We threw our arms around each other and danced about the bed, Fulk watching us, shouting out, ‘Nay, nay, nay!’ as if he were a babe practising his first word or mimicking a horse. Every time we passed the bed, we deposited a kiss on his sunken cheeks.
That night, I thanked the Lord, and the following day, delivered the verdict to Turbet, telling him that far from declining, as the doctor predicted, my husband was slowly recovering. Therefore, I rejected his most gracious offer.
A strained smile split Turbet’s face. ‘God be praised,’ he said. ‘Though I’m disappointed you won’t be selling, how can I not rejoice?’
If I doubted his sincerity, then the present he delivered a few days later in honour of Fulk’s recovery, a recovery evidenced by the fact he also managed to say my name in full, made those doubts vanish. Turbet only stayed long enough to hand his gift to Sophie before he departed.
‘Forgive me, Eleanor,’ he called from the doorway. ‘I’ve business in town.’
Tomorrow, I’d be conducting the same business – with alien wool merchants keen to buy our fleece.
Turbet’s gift was extraordinary and very thoughtful. It was a beautiful woven coverlet lined with rabbit fur to keep Fulk warm throughout winter. Since it was a colder than usual June day, I asked Sophie to spread it over Fulk. His eyes widened and his grin appeared. His good arm rubbed the soft fur, and he tried to press his cheek against where Sophie had tucked it around his neck. She lifted it to her face.
‘This be lovely quality, madam. How generous of Master Gerrish.’
‘It is,’ I agreed, watching Turbet and his squire ride away. Had I misjudged him?
Master Turbet was in my thoughts as I accompanied Theo and Beton into the fields that afternoon, keen to learn what I could about shearing.
We returned when the sun was low on the horizon and, despite a few clouds, the sky was a wash of apricot and rose, throwing the silhouettes of the woods into stark relief. The evening was warm with the promise of summer. The soft bleating of shorn sheep, the smell of cattle and other animals as well as woodsmoke tinged the air. I recall breathing deeply and feeling not just weary, but a sense of accomplishment, of being at peace.
Remember what I said about the Fates and Fortune’s bloody wheel? Aye, well, they were going to have the last laugh, weren’t they, pack of wart-covered whores.
We walked into the house to be greeted by silence and a foul odour. The loom was still, neither Alyson nor Milda were to be seen. The fire had almost banked and Fulk was lying in shadows, no candles were lit. There was the sound of faint coughing, followed by whispering.
‘Alyson?’ I started to feel uneasy. I crossed to Fulk, snatching a candle and flint on the way. ‘Theo, stoke the fire, will you? Beton, find out where your sister is – and Milda and Sophie.’ I was cross poor Fulk had been left untended.
I lit the candle and, calling Fulk’s name softly, held it above the bed.
‘Dear God.’
When I’d left that morning, Fulk had been comfortable, happy – with his gift and the warmth it gave. He appeared better than I’d seen him in a long, long time. What greeted me was a man bathed in sweat, his dry mouth gaping, his hands curled into claws. I threw back the blanket, his nightshirt lifting as I did so. His body was exposed and, to my horror, I saw black swellings bulging from his groin.
I tore his shift from his neck and shoulder. The buboes were forming in his armpits as well.
I began to back away, shaking my head. There was a cry from further in the house. Beton came running. ‘Eleanor, Eleanor –’ he said. ‘Alyson, she … she’s terribly ill …’
I glanced towards Fulk. ‘Your father, too,’ I whispered.
‘What? What?’ said Theo, panic making his eyes large as he looked from me to the figure on the bed.
‘It’s the Botch,’ I said.
‘God help us,’ said Theo. The brothers crossed themselves.
I don’t know what came over me. Call it strength – call it madness. First ordering the men to stay with their father, I swept through the other rooms and found Sophie moaning on her pallet, covered in black and purple swellings. Alyson was in a high fever but, as far as I could tell, bore no tokens. Milda was untouched, bravely bathing Alyson’s clammy face, her own a picture of determination. When we found Warren, who’d remained in the fields awhile to stack the shorn fleeces, he was hiding in the barn. He also showed no sign of sickness.
Maintaining a distance, I ordered Warren to take a donkey, go to Father Elias and then Father Roman. I urged him to warn the village and then stay away. He hadn’t come inside the house, hadn’t been near Fulk, Sophie, Milda or Alyson.
After Warren left, Theo, Beton and I stood in the barn. Fear was a living breathing thing keeping us apart. I could feel its sharp teeth nibbling at my resolve to be strong.
All the stories Papa and the older folk from Noke Manor had spun about the Botch, the terrible deaths and their survival, stories I’d ghoulishly absorbed, were now lessons that might yet, God be praised, save us. I ordered water boiled, certain herbs to be crushed and steeped in bowls and mazers, the animals locked away, and the fire kept burning.
I returned to Fulk’s side. Papa always said the pestilence was God’s punishment for man’s sin.
In other words, God wasn’t going to help us, no matter what we asked of Him.
So I made sure we did everything we could to help ourselves.
TEN
Bigod Farm
The Year of Our Lord 1369
In the forty-third year of the reign of Edward III
Nothing helped. More buboes sprouted on Fulk and Sophie, swelling before our eyes, oozing pus and blood, filling the house with a rancid stench. When Theo sickened, I began to fear for all our lives. I banned Beton and Milda from touching Fulk or Sophie, or venturing close lest they inhale the same air. Milda, God bless her, ignored my orders, insisting on helping. Beton fetched water, threw wood on the fire, burning the herbs I’d gathered. He ensured the animals were fed, and sat in a corner staring into space when his chores were done.
When Alyson’s fever worsened, I began to wonder, was the sickness in our clothing? In the wool? Or was it the animals who carried it? Hadn’t it started after Turbet’s blanket arrived? I wondered if, since it had come from London, it held the disease in its fur, like a secret courier biding its time to release the deadliest of messages. Did it even matter? With great care, I removed the cover from Fulk’s body and threw it in the yard.
When Sophie died less than two days later, then Theo followed a few hours after, Beton was bereft. Alyson, though lost in the throes of febrile visions, understood and her cries of physical pain became ones of grief. I willed Fulk to wake, to get better, knowing if he did – when he did – it would be to news that would tear him asunder.
In the end, I never had to deliver the tragic blow. On the third day after he sickened, Fulk Bigod, a man with the mightiest of hearts, ceased to be.
Despite my care, all our care, the pestilence claimed my husband’s gentle soul. I didn’t weep. I consoled myself by believing it was a relief to see his pain end. The delirium that had him trying to call for his other wives, his lost children, me, was over. I was afraid if I let my sorrow show it would consume me.
We wrapped Fulk in his bedding, Milda, Beton and I carried him outside and buried him alongside Sophie and Theo – down by the brook, beneath the tree where his sister was interred. The ground was soft on the sward, so digging wasn’t a hard task. Unshriven, knowing neither Father Roman nor Father Elias could heed a summons even if we’d called them, we nevertheless prayed for Fulk’s eternal soul, for the souls of all our dead, even though I was furious with God for taking them – not just from this life, but from m
e.
Pater Nosters and Aves were said, as I reassured Milda and Beton these would do in the absence of a priest. Afterwards we constructed basic wooden crosses – just sticks tied with rope – and inserted them into the mud. I held my hand over my bare stomach and asked Fulk to forgive me for not giving him his heart’s desire. Not for want of trying, you randy old goat. Over the years, our awkward early encounters, where he was careful not to hurt me and I was merely determined to do my duty, had transformed into something loving, tender and, dare I say, passionate. Venus had more than smiled upon our union.
Oh, how I would miss him.
It was then the hot tears flowed.
Before Beton or Milda could see, I turned back to the house, asking over my shoulder they collect any eggs as we needed to eat, keep up our strength. I doubted I could hold down a mouthful.
Though the sun was gone and only a band of gold limned the horizon, the hills about dark and foreboding, I could see the sheep, glowing pearls stark against the gloaming. I stopped and stared. Much to my astonishment, not only had the foldcourses been moved, a man was herding the sheep into one and the entire flock had been shorn. There was only one person who could have organised that: Turbet. He must be well, then. A flash of guilt pierced my chest that I hadn’t given the man a thought. It was followed by a rush of gratitude and relief, a bright, warm rush that made my heart swell. Turbet Gerrish. Dear God.
I crossed the pasture and, ensuring I kept a distance, shouted across to the shepherd. Wary, he remained where he was, and confirmed this was Turbet’s doing. He’d also arranged for shearers and for the wool to be washed, dried and packed.
I raised my face to the heavens, astonished to see God’s lights twinkling in the firmament as if they were living creatures, chattering away about the disaster playing out below. Beautiful, they gave me something I hadn’t felt for days, if not weeks: hope.
‘Mayhap, Lord, you haven’t deserted me.’ I took a few more steps then paused, peering into the silver-spangled night. ‘Shall we put it to the test?’
