by Sarah Bower
She has little to pack and spends most of the time he allows her for preparation at prayer in the chapel. She prays for obedience, that she might submit to his will, the will of her bishop, God’s representative on earth, with joy. She prays for strength to resist the world’s temptations, and the vision to distinguish what is good from what is the Devil dressed in angels’ wings. But her prayers become entangled, because in saving her from the marriage William had arranged for her, Odo effectively condoned her sinful instincts, granted her absolution without confession and placed his own soul in as great a peril as hers. It is true what he says, that they are so alike as to be almost the same person in two skins, but she fears this likeness may not be the strength he seems to think it is.
Choice
Lammastide 1068
Two days after William Bastard arrived in Winchester, he was gone again, and his brothers and his chief lieutenants with him. After a hasty, shamefaced coronation service conducted behind closed doors, the blood of the wounded rioters still marking the floor of the choir in patches of faded rust, they set off for London, leaving behind a garrison in the charge of a knight from Calvados, a vassal of Bishop Odo, who had, apparently, an English wife. Not that this seemed to give him any sympathy for the English. He closed the city, taking sole charge of bringing in food supplies, which he then sold at exorbitant prices, keeping the best back for his own table and those of his officers.
Forced to abandon any plans she might have had to return to Colchester, Gytha sought refuge in the households of men who had been loyal to King Harold and friends to Lady Edith. But, as winter hardened and food became scarcer, their welcome wore out. Neither her skill with a needle nor her devotion to her mistress carried much weight with people forced to come to an accommodation with their new overlords to put bread in their children’s mouths. There was no hard news of the fate of Lady Edith or her children. Some said they had been sent into exile, some that they had been executed in spite of the grand assurances of the Bishop of Bayeux back in November, some that Lady Edith had run mad and been locked in a convent. Gradually, the truth ceased to matter, and Edith and her children, like King Harold, began to fade into folklore, flesh metamorphosed into the words of tales and songs, myth dressed in memory’s clothes.
One night, shortly after Epiphany, unable to sleep for cold and hunger, Gytha rose, pulled her cloak about her shoulders, and stepped quietly out of the ladies’ bower of the household she was staying in. Her teeth chattered in the icy air, and her legs shook, so weakened was she by always deferring to her host’s family and housecarls at mealtimes, often giving up most of her portion to the children. But the hard light of the stars seemed to hold her together, she swallowed the frost down into her belly and it gave her strength, the strength of being part of the frozen earth beneath her feet, welcomed back from whence she came. Dust to dust. She knew Death was stalking her, awaiting his chance. Slowly, with arms outstretched as though to embrace a lover, she turned to face him.
But Death had a woman’s eyes with blank, lustreless, dilated pupils like holes in her face. Her body was spatchcocked against the woodpile beside the kitchen house, a gleam of exposed thigh pale in the starlight, shaken by the thrusts of the man fucking her like a dead rat worried by a dog. Gytha tried to turn away, but the woman’s gaze held her. She was captivated by its indifference, the sense that no one actually inhabited the body submitting to the man, now spent, after a moment of inertia straightening his tunic and placing something that looked like a hunk of bread in the woman’s open palm. And remembering the two Norman soldiers up on the wall, she realised there was a way to stay alive, to keep the memory of Harold and Edith golden and feed her hatred for Odo of Bayeux.
***
She rents one of the cells behind the city bathhouse. On her earnings she could afford a room of her own, even a modest house, set herself up in a small way as a courtesan, with regular gentlemen who would disguise payment as gifts, but she has no wish for this work to become entwined with the rest of her life. One-Eye Peg made that mistake, they say. A great beauty in her day, she entertained thegns and merchants and city burgesses, had even bought herself a burial plot under the priory nave. But when she was caught attempting to procure an abortion, none of her high connections could save her from a stoning. Those who remember say her punishment was all the more fierce because half those who sat in judgement on her had also lain with her. So now, scarred and toothless, with a dragging leg and a puckered hole where her right eye used to shine with love, she begs outside the bathhouse, permitted to remain there by the burgesses as a warning to others, or perhaps as a sop to their consciences.
Gytha sees her work as something that happens in the interval between heartbeats, the space between breaths, temporary and marginal, nothing to do with the woman inside her skin. She keeps only what she needs to survive, money for rent and fuel, and new soles for her shoes, cloth for a spare gown and a winter cloak, enough food to preserve the illusion of fecundity in the swell of her breasts, the rise of her belly, the sweep of her hips. The rest she gives to the priory for the maintenance of orphans, going there at dusk with her hood drawn close about her face so she will not be recognised, leaving her gifts of money and food, and the occasional piece of jewellery, with the porter.
She is popular and can charge highly for her services because she knows herself to be barren. The first month after her congress with the soldiers, when she did not bleed, she feared the worst. But then a second month passed, and a third, and though she remained clean, she experienced none of the symptoms of pregnancy and supposed her fertility ended, carried away like Lady Edith in her cart or Harold’s corpse washed out to sea. She had heard of it before, in women who had suffered sudden shocks, and knew it to be widespread during famine years, though then the problem would usually right itself when food was plentiful again.
She has no regrets, for what did a quickening womb bring her but pain overlaid with heartache? At least she does not have to take the precautions the others take to ward off conception. She does not have to swallow bees or drink her clients’ urine or smear her women’s parts with tincture of honey and excrement. No hopping seven times on her left leg after the act for her. The men are not obliged to withdraw and spill themselves on her belly, in the air that, even accounting for the steam from the baths, kills men’s seed with its dryness. She does not try to incite them to ejaculate into orifices forbidden by the Church, unless, of course, that is their preference and they are prepared to pay for the indulgence. She is uncomplicated, and that is what the men like in these days full of rumour and rebellion. They find her indifference irresistible, a challenge they rise to again and again, but never surmount.
Even the kind ones are brutes, writhing and panting on top of her, crushing the air out of her lungs, with their little cries of triumph as they squirt their seed into her useless womb. She will never look at their faces, flushed, contorted, self absorbed, or the tight little smiles with which they rearrange their clothing, hand over their gifts of money, or a joint of meat, some yards of cloth, a modest jewel their wives will not miss, and scuttle away. If she allows herself to indulge the contempt she feels rising in her like bile, she fears it may dilute the hatred she cherishes for William Bastard’s rapacious brother.
***
Sister Jean-Baptiste arrives at the end of a busy day. Hot summer afternoons are good for business. It is the sort of weather that sets the fleas jumping and brings customers to the baths, and what man of affairs, languorous from the steam, skin tingling from the ministrations of the attendants with their brushes and wash cloths, wants to return too quickly to his stuffy counting house or gloomy hall, or the constraints of a nagging wife in her bower? Gytha is lying stretched out on her bed, alone for the time being, the lacing at the front of her dress loosened, her arms crossed behind her head, remembering a story her mother used to tell her, about the Emperor of Rome and his dream of a maiden. In her half waking, half sleeping state she can hear her mother�
�s voice perfectly clearly inside her head, its Welsh song rising and falling as though she were sitting at Gytha’s side and not dead in childbirth for twelve years.
And when he awoke neither life nor being nor existence was left him, for the maiden he had seen in his sleep. Not one bone-joint of his was there, not the middle of a single nail, to say nothing of a part that might be greater than that, but was filled with love of the maiden.
She cannot keep the regret out of her voice when she hears the footsteps hesitate on the far side of the curtain covering the open side of her cubicle. Such vivid memories come only rarely.
“I’m alone. You can come in.” She sits up, pulling her laces tighter as she does so, pushing up her breasts which are still full and firm but not set as high as the new fashion dictates, though she is bound to admit, grudgingly, that the close fitting Norman style of dress suits her better than the loose Saxon tunic. “It’s a penny up front, and I shall weigh it, mind. No clipped coins.”
“I am glad you place a proper value on your services. We are all precious in the sight of God.”
Gytha looks up in astonishment to see the nun standing at the foot of her bed, immaculate in black habit and white veil, the plain wooden crucifix lying flat against her chest. She is smiling, which unnerves Gytha further, the powdery, ageless skin around her eyes folded into little, sharp pleats. There is something familiar about the smile, with its ironic, downward turn. Gytha finishes lacing her dress, trying discreetly to pull the neck a little higher, wishing she had roused herself to wash after the last man left. The nun meanwhile appraises her with the candour of a dealer assessing the soundness of a horse, registering, Gytha feels, a great deal more than outward appearances. She then shifts her gaze to take in their surroundings, the narrow space between the rough planks partitioning Gytha’s cubicle from the ones on either side of it, the plaster flaking from the damp rear wall, furnished with nothing but the bed and a stool that doubles as a nightstand.
“Functional,” she comments, “not unlike my own cell really.”
“The comforts I offer are rather less demanding than the consolations of religion, my lady.”
“Good,” says the nun, as though admiring a deft piece of needlework or a subtle parry of the sword, “very good.”
A Norman, a newcomer to judge by her accent, and well born. What does she want here? She is clearly not one of those dispatched from time to time by the burgesses to make sure the women are not diseased, dispensing pious platitudes with their herbal ointments and potions, not expecting miracles.
“You can understand me, then,” the nun continues. “I’m afraid I have not yet mastered your language as well as I should like.”
“I understand you.”
“Good. You are Aelfgytha? From the manor of Colchester?”
“Yes,” she replies cautiously. How does this Norman nun know who she is, and what can she want of her?
“Then I am glad to have found you. It has not been easy. May I sit?”
Gytha jerks her chin in the direction of the stool, at the same time shifting around on the bed to face the nun, leaning against the wall with her knees drawn up in front of her. The nun sits, straight backed, hands folded in her lap as though she were in chapel. Hugging her knees, Gytha waits. In the next door cubicle, cries of passion have been replaced by murmured conversation, rustling clothes, the chink of money changing hands.
“I hope your daughter is well again soon,” she hears her neighbour say as her client leaves.
“I should introduce myself,” resumes the nun. “I expect you are thoroughly confused by now, wondering why a nun from Normandy should be chasing around the south of England looking for you.”
“I wonder very little nowadays, my lady. It serves no purpose. I remember those who thought the comet last spring portended well for King Harold.”
“You are wise, Aelfgytha. Some in Falaise, where I come from, believed it heralded the Second Coming.”
“You’d know more about that than I would, my lady.”
The nun gives her a shrewd look. “I am pressed for time. My lord, the temporal lord, that is, whose business I am on, is not a man who appreciates being kept in suspense. Briefly, my name is Jean-Baptiste, and I am on a commission for the new Earl of Kent, who is my brother and commanded an army in the recent crusade.”
“Crusade? Is that what you people think you were doing? Crusading? Why, it seems to me you’ve done nothing but burn down our churches since you got here. There’s nowhere left for a pious Christian to worship. Even Canterbury Cathedral, so I hear. I suppose that was your earl’s doing?”
“My earl, as you call him, had not yet been invested with his earldom when the cathedral burned down. He had probably never set eyes on Canterbury. You would do well to remember that Archbishop Stigand was under interdict when he crowned Harold of Wessex. Perhaps the fire was sent from God.” The nun’s calm is unassailable. “Opposition is always more effective if you get your facts straight.” Gytha gives a sulky shrug. “The earl rendered the king great service during the…invasion and wishes to keep a record of his achievements. Which is where you come in.”
“It seems improbable to me that your mighty earl should need to send all the way to Winchester for a whore. Are there no brothels in Canterbury? Does he not draw a shoal of concubines in his wake as most great men do?”
“But you were not always a whore, were you, Aelfgytha?”
“Your people made me one. What I was before can be of no interest to you.”
“Many have suffered to put King William on his throne, and not all Saxons. There is no point in pitying ourselves.” A sudden bitterness in her tone makes Gytha look up. Briefly, their eyes meet in a flicker of mutual understanding. But the moment passes and, stung by the nun’s patronising words, Gytha gropes for some clearer way to explain her feelings.
The Normans are like the men she does business with. They do not see her as a woman, as a daughter, a mother, a wife, a whole person to be cherished or punished for her uniqueness. To them she is just a hole in which they bury themselves, the price of a few seconds of oblivion. When the Bastard looked out to sea and envisaged the island he aimed to conquer, what did he see? Land, that was all. Farm land, building land, forests for hunting. Not people, not the Anglo Saxons or the Celts or the Danes or any of the rest who made up their ancient, intricate communities where Christ and Thor and even Jupiter supped from the same dish. Stone he saw, but not churches or moot halls, or the mysterious ruins of Roman temples and villas crumbling on empty hillsides like petrified echoes. Gold he saw, but not the way the master jewellers wrought it to frame dark sapphires or milky moonstones, or needlewomen like herself could transform gold thread into the rising sun, or the halo of a saint, or the glint in the eye of a lover contemplating his lady. What he saw, the Bastard with his Judas hair, was simply the reflection of his greed. But she cannot say this to the Norman nun, the Earl of Kent’s sister, so she keeps silent.
“You have nothing more to say?” queries Sister Jean-Baptiste. “Then let me explain what I want of you. As I said, the earl seeks a memorial of the invasion, and please, for now, let us not debate the wisdom of his desire. The desires of great men are facts, are they not, like the weather or the hours of light and dark? There is nothing we can do to change them. His idea is that this should take the form of an embroidered hanging depicting all the events leading to the coronation of King William. I have drawn up the design for the work, and now I am looking for the best needlewomen I can find to execute it.” She pauses.
Is she waiting for some acknowledgment of her compliment, Gytha wonders. Well, let her wait; she plied her needle in Saxon houses, for Saxon noblemen and their churches; the Normans made her the whore she is now, who does not even trouble to darn her hose.
“The abbess at the Convent of Saint Mary of Egypt in Colchester told me how the late Earl of Wessex’s concubine singled out your work for special praise on a visit to the convent,” Sister Jean continues, “
and how she then took you into her household. So I came here to Winchester to find you. Though it has not been easy. You have hidden your tracks well. Most people I made enquiries of told me all Edith Swan Neck’s women went into exile with her.”
Exile. Thank God, oh, thank God she is still alive. “She is not dead then?” She cannot keep her relief out of her voice. Hearing it, the nun gives her a quick, warm smile, which makes her look younger, less severe. “Where is she? Do you know? Is she in the charge of your earl?”
“Alas, I know nothing more than my enquiries after you have turned up. But there is generally a kernel of truth in rumour so it seems likely she is not dead.”
Gytha slumps back against the wall. “Rumour, never anything but rumour.”
“Well, you may be sure of one thing, and that is, she is not in Winchester. Perhaps if you will come to Canterbury with me, you may learn more outside these walls.”
“My lady, I’m sure I should be flattered by your attention and yes, I was a good embroiderer, but that is all in the past. Nowadays I’m just a whore. I’ll tickle your earl’s cock for him, for a price, but not his vanity. I have little enough to be proud of; let me at least take pride in being a Saxon.” Sister Jean-Baptiste raises her eyebrows at this. Gytha, with her small stature and dark colouring, looks nothing like a Saxon. “Now I must ask you to leave. I have work to do.”
“I think not. It’s late and I can’t hear anyone outside. I am offering you respectable, reliable employment for years to come. You will have a sound roof over your head, regular meals, and the protection of one of the most powerful men in England, who has even stood regent for the king.”
“The work I have now is reliable, Sister, if not respectable. A good deal more reliable than embroidery, if I may say so, the one being merely a luxury, the other—as men would have it—a necessity of life.”
