In the Heart of the Garden

by Leah Fleming

  *

  All that fateful year and the months following, Ambrosine prayed for a settlement to be agreed. How could her will be so thwarted by a peasant, a serf of the lowest order? Her first instinct was to dismiss Aella from her service for being a relative of that abominable man. At the hearing he’d doffed his hood and winked in his lady’s presence as if she was a serving wench. Christian forbearance forbade her to punish Aella for her father’s insolence. Yet the sins of the father was something they had in common now.

  Not once had she been tempted to reveal her own knowledge of the hut by the well, though. She played her part as innocent bystander and dutiful daughter, defending the de Saultain honour by her silence. No accusation would ever be placed at their door. The hearsay of a drunken serf would stand for nothing in the shire court. Right would prevail.

  Then came the wonderful day when the Bishop in his wisdom decided that Fridswell was a place of holy martyrdom in a time long past and would therefore make a suitable place for a house of seclusion. The bones of those innocents found in what must once have been the fish pond should be placed in casks and interred in the stone walls of the new chapel in righteous memorial to the slaughter of innocents by persons known only to God.

  *

  It was left to Aella and the Reeve to break the news to Bagnold. He refused to hear their words, pulling his hood over his ears as he ran off. The Reeve tried to tell him that he would be given three extra pigs for his own use as compensation. ‘Food for your stew pot, think about it, and no payment to her ladyship!’ Bagnold, however, was having none of it, disappearing into the woods for two nights. Eldwyth feared for his safety and persuaded Aella to ask permission to seek him out. She knew exactly where he would be found, hidden in the bushes by the clearing, watching the hermit brothers tending their patches.

  ‘It’s not fair! All this on our land… She’ll never get an ounce of goodness out of it while I’m alive to see to it and I’ll haunt her when I’m gone.’

  ‘Oh, Pa! What can you do to stop her ladyship? Her mind is set on her blessed nunnery. Who are we to gainsay it?’

  ‘There’ll be no building on my mam’s patch. Never. I can still see her bending over them weeds, proud as a peacock when her crops had fat heads on them. She used to tell me this soil was blessed by the well so now I’ll make sure it’s cursed by that same water.’

  For the first time in her life Aella felt compassion for her father who seemed to shrivel before her eyes, drained of colour, his shoulders hunched and jaw sagging. Before her was an old man, as limp and useless as a bolster with no stuffing.

  ‘It’s not that bad. With those extra pigs no one will go hungry this winter and Edric will soon take over from you. We, of Baggi’s shotts will be freemen again, you’ll see. It may take time but one day we’ll hold our heads up alongside them de Saultains, just you wait on.’

  ‘I’ll not be there to see it! This’ll be the death of me.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it’ll come in my day either but we have to hope that our children do better than us.’ Aella patted her belly gently.

  ‘Here, are you telling me you’ve got a pup in there?’ Bagnold sighed for a moment, lifting himself out of his despair.

  ‘Of course not… but one day there will be and I’m going to make sure my childer gets a step up the ladder of life not a kick back like us. That Lady Ambrosine has another think coming if she expects me to rot inside her Priory. She can find someone else to sweep her walls and give the bugs in her corners a fright.’

  ‘That’s it, you tell her. You’re one of Baggishotts and this’ll always be our land, our plot, our place in the sun. No de Saultain will ever thrive on it without our say so and that’s my last word on it!’ Bagnold doused himself in the spring, rinsing away his anger and disappointment, but Aella to her surprise found herself carrying hers home. They festered and rankled in her head for weeks. She could not shake them off. Only when Matt the farrier’s lad hugged her like a bear and patted her with his leathery paws did the sadness melt for a few moments.

  *

  Soon the leaves drifted across the clearing once more, filling the half-dug ditches and foundations of the chapel and the Priory walls. The lay brothers returned to the Minster where there were plans to build a larger church in stone, and only three hermits chose to stay on to guard the site. The last bequest of Guy de Saultain lay beneath a covering of ice and snow. Only his daughter burned with indignation at yet further delay. Gilbert was now the master of the house and married to Madline, a wealthy maid from Cheslay who’d brought a handsome dowry. Another woman had taken the solar chamber and already they were building a stone buttery and dining chamber in her honour. The village was full of builders and masons, carpenters and joiners, and all thought of the Priory faded from her brother’s mind. There was nothing Ambrosine could do to fulfil the bequest but pray.

  The signs were not good. There had been bad harvests when famine and failed crops clawed at the empty bellies of the villagers. Only the most thrifty and careful managed to stave off hunger pangs. All were weakened by sickness and cold. Aella had paid her fine to marry Matthias and begged permission to leave the hall without a backward glance. Such was the ingratitude of serfs!

  Robert ran wild around the district, hunting, hawking, wenching. He listened to no one, least of all his sister. On the feast of St Ambrose 1095 Ambrosine found three grey hairs as she combed her thick locks which were no longer spun gold but more the colour of wet sand. For seven long years she had waited for her life to begin, seven years of prayer and frustration and resisting Gilbert’s hints that he would find her a suitable match.

  To mark the feast she asked the chaplain and her maidservant to accompany her on her regular route up to Fridswell where she would donate food, oil and candles to the hermits who had so faithfully kept the clearing open, pollarding the forest trees and planting an orchard of apples, pears, cherry trees and walnuts. She knew the men by name, almost as friends. They could read her impatience and frustration and would humour her request to pace over the site, planning this and that, as if it would be built tomorrow.

  Ambrosine and her maid came often to the spring. Here she could listen to the trickle of the water and pray fervently that God would turn away from his deafness and answer her pleas. Doomsday was fast approaching as another century passed and still no sign of the King returned in Glory. There were strange portents in the sky of great events to come. The heavens were troubled by a warrior wind which blew into her mind the distressing thought that the year 1100 was fast approaching and then there would be great darkness over the earth. What if her family was caught unprepared on Judgement Day? All she had accomplished so far was promises, promises. That would not be enough to save them.

  As she peered into the water, the sunlight refracted into a wondrous star of light on its surface and she thought she saw the face of a girl with dark hair in braids, weeping and rocking something in her arms. Such a piteous sight. Ambrosine reached out to her but the girl vanished, only the ripples on the surface witness to the scene. Had she dreamt such a vision? Was the Holy Maid of Nazareth there before her?

  Ambrosine knelt on the bank side and crossed herself. She must be patient. This was a sign meant just for her feast day. She had seen the Lady Mary in the well and the place was sanctified by such a presence. Here at last was her heart’s desire, a holy place dedicated to the Holy One. Suddenly she felt a certainty as rich and fulsome as any banquet. Here too would be her own dwelling, her home, her cell, her future joy. Only here would she find peace for herself and those who would surely follow. Here she would live out her days in solitude and prayer into old age and agues, weakness and infirmity, until her last breath.

  She must wait no longer for others to decide for her. If needs be she would dig the chapel with her bare hands whatever the cost. Ambrosine de Saultain would become an anchoress and then they would have to leave her in this holy place. How it would all come about was no longer her concern. If it was t
he Saviour’s will then it would happen.

  Only after she opened her eyes did she spy a little black spider crawling over the folds of her gown, struggling to climb each mountain of cloth. She watched in wonderment as its separate legs worked in a harmony of movement. Such a tiny piece of God’s creation. How could she ever have feared it would harm her? It was so small and she a giant with the power to crush and destroy it.

  There had been enough destruction in her family to last many generations. All the creepy crawlies of Fridswell would be safe in her hands for she would live alongside them and learn their ways with humility and thankfulness.

  The Warrior Wind

  ‘This world’s jumping over the moon!’ sighed Aella, as she scrubbed the winter grime off the family tunics in the hot tub. Tom’s hose with holes in the feet dangled from the branches; rough wool shifts left to bleach in the sunshine lay spreadeagled over the hedgerows like strange blossoms. Everything was changing since that awesome night close to St Ambrose’s feast when stars showered the night sky and the villagers rushed out of their huts to witness the wondrous sight of God shooting sparks from His smithy above them. Old Meg the wise woman shook her head and said heaven was preparing for battle. Father Anselm, the new priest, said Doomsday was fast approaching and they must be shriven to await the Coming of the Lord in Glory. How relieved Aella was when dawn kept breaking just as usual without His arrival. Today baby Hilde had risen from her bed, gurgling and full of the joys of spring. The sounds of the smithy next door were as a cock crowing to the child and only the banging of hammers would send her to sleep.

  Edric, Aella’s brother, was already hard at work with Matt but he wore a sullen expression. His heart was not in his tasks. He was too clever with words, too argumentative with his betters. He lived in his head not by his hands which were clumsy and lumpen. At twelve years of age he still had the plumpness of his early years.

  This fat had saved his life when all Bagnold’s family were struck with the sickness. Half the village caught the pox, and Bagnold and Eldwyth and Aella’s sisters withered and died. Only Edric clung on and now lived with his sister like a cuckoo in the nest, eating them out of house and home. Aella had feared for their own health but the Angel of Death had been merciful to the smithy, passing their door without a mark, and soon another child was swelling her stomach.

  At first Edric was suspicious of their strange habits. Aella tried to copy the ways of the big hall: eating with a sharp knife, cleaning her one precious wooden bowl and goblet, a late gift from her mistress. She tried to prepare any meat they could forage with herbs and sauces gleaned from her vegetable patch, spit-roasting flesh on the hearth instead of flinging everything into the kale pot, but Matt complained she was too extravagant with their meagre wood supply and made her stop.

  Her husband laughed at her fancy ways even as he wolfed down her meals. She made sure that her face was always clean, hair neatly bound under her head scarf, and clothes washed long before their rancid smelly armpits stank to high heaven. The soot and metal dust were always ingrained in their skin but she insisted that the men should douse themselves in the brook before Sunday Mass. It was the only way Aella could pretend they were not still bound serfs. She smiled to think how some of her father’s aspirations had rubbed off on to her.

  When the blacksmith caught the fever Matt stepped in quickly to take over the forge. Sometimes they were so busy that it was all hands to the hammers and Hilde was perched safely out of harm’s reach while Aella fetched and carried like a slave at the mill quern. The child would observe them all, jumping with glee as the sparks shot up off the hot metal.

  The first they knew about the Holy Cross of Jerusalem was when Father Anselm prayed for Pope Urbano and his great pilgrimage to rescue the Holy City from the Infidel – whoever he was. A savage murderer no doubt. The call to all Christian knights to follow his banner meant nothing to the likes of a blacksmith’s wife until all the armour at the manor suddenly appeared for sharpening, repairs, upgrading, links to be soldered, shafts tightened. The horses were reshod. No guesses where the knights were heading then.

  On the day of their departure the whole village stopped work briefly to wave them on their way. The two brothers, Gilbert and Robert de Saultain, rode out proudly, silver chainmail polished, helmets flashing, and a line of mounted serving men with panniers bulging for the long journey to the end of the world falling in behind. It was whispered they would join up with soldiers from the four corners of the land in a great procession south to the open sea.

  Aella caught sight of her former mistress, the Lady Ambrosine, who now looked so severe and pale in her severe garb, like a widow or a nun. Clad top to toe in black, she wore a gold cross on her chest. Sire Gilbert’s wife went to the gate to lift up her children for a last glimpse of him. By the looks of her there was another de Saultain growing fast under her surcoat. For a fleeting second Aella felt a twinge of sadness for the poor woman until she thought of how many servants and maids would help her cope in his absence. It would be a relief not to have the Lord of the Manor in residence, and his brother too. The Steward and Bailiff were bad enough, breathing down their necks, checking everything was duly paid up.

  Once the novelty of being lordless was over Longhall settled back to its usual pace of life. Edric was so restless and difficult, Aella went to see the priest who suggested that he might join a few scholars to learn some letters and perhaps if he did well he would be accepted as a lay brother at the Minster. Edric was eager to try something other than smithy work but Matt was furious that he might lose even a pair of unwilling hands.

  ‘You’re just like old Baggi and his Baggshotts, think you’re better than anyone else in this village. Why should Edric be trained up as a scholar? What’s so bad about a smith’s forge?’ Aella could see he was hurt by her eagerness to help Edric.

  ‘Your kin came from the same place as mine. We named Hilde after one of them, way back. They trekked from far away to find a better life for themselves. Surely we owe it to our childer to give them chances when they arise? It’s up to Edric after that. He doesn’t fit in here, you can see that. He has neither the skill nor the inclination to learn. Inside here will be another true son for you to train up.’ Aella patted her belly and smiled, her green eyes pleading, and Matt was silenced by their power over him.

  ‘What if it’s a wench?’ he mumbled.

  ‘No, not this time. It lies differently and kicks harder.’

  ‘You’ll not be able to help me once there are two of them.’

  ‘I’ll manage somehow, Matt.’ Aella sighed and crossed her fingers for an easy birth. How could she ever have feared being cocooned in a convent of nuns, the one which had always been going to be built but never was? She had jumped into Matt’s arms to escape that fate but lately had admitted to herself that perhaps the Lady Ambrosine was the wiser woman after all. Especially at the end of a day like yesterday when Hilde screamed and Matt sulked, the dog stole the bacon hock, Edric dropped the hammer on his toe and somehow it was all her fault.

  At nightfall when she collapsed on to the straw mattress, limbs aching with tiredness, Matt’s hand would stray in her direction, feeling its usual path down between her thighs… A woman’s work was never done!

  *

  A year had passed since Ambrosine’s brothers rode off without a thought for anyone but themselves.

  She knew that neither of them cared a stuff for Jerusalem or the cause. They were spurred on purely by boredom and the challenge. Was this how the Blessed Ambrose had answered her prayer of supplication? Not one stone would be put on another at Fridswell Priory now that her brothers were gone and she was tied forever to Longhall. She did not understand the ways of saints. For years now she had kept her own private vows of chastity and obedience, wore only the habit of a religious woman, kept to fast days and attended services, trying always to act humbly and quietly. But, God’s blood, it was enough to make a saint swear when not one of her wishes was ever granted and no de
cisions would be made without the say so of one of her brothers.

  Her sister-in-law Madline now had three boys to rear alone. It was left to the single maid to see to the everyday running of the manor and its estates. Days were taken up with visits and accounts, inspections, household preparations and decorations, maintenance and supervision as Ambrosine glided around Longhall giving orders, checking that all was as it should be. In the little time that was left she would take her nephews aside to teach them their letters, instruct them in good manners, tell them stories about the Saxon warrior knights, Beowulf and Guthlac the saint, just as her own mother once did to their father, and tried to finish pieces of embroidery before the material became grey with dust and neglect.

  One day a month she did venture to abandon her tasks to visit the old hermits at Fridswell, taking food and gifts and servants to help them tend their patches.

  It was sad to see the clearing so overgrown, reverting once more to scrub and nettles. The men were too infirm for heavy work now. The foundations had long since disappeared under weeds, strangled like her hopes by duties and obligations. The casket of bones was long buried in the church yard and forgotten. But one small patch was always kept tended and clear: the garden by the wellspring where she saw the vision. No thorns would ever be allowed to threaten the simple beauty of the few flowers and herbs planted under the bushes of peonies which bloomed there every year and threatened to swamp all the other plants unless kept pruned back.

  Over the years Ambrosine had gathered a collection of sacred flowers – white lilies, briar roses, violets and the herbs of healing which grew in the manor yard like weeds – and transplanted them here. To these she added the cheerful yellow daffodils which now danced all along the banks of the stream, bluebells and primroses which sprang from nowhere each spring time to give her the hope to carry on. Each planting she watched over like a mother with a new born. Sometimes, when no one else was close by, she would whisper a prayer to the Holy Spirit and to St Mary herself: ‘Holy Mother, hear my plea. Whatsoever herbs of healing thy power here doth produce, grant good success so that all who receive these thy flowers and tend their souls to make them whole again.’ Then she would sneak some soil into a pouch on her waist girdle and take it back with her to the little church to be blessed with holy water, returning it to the plot again on her next visit.