by Sarah Bower
“I have seen the chasuble that captured Edith Swan Neck’s attention, Aelfgytha. God bestowed a great gift upon you. It is your duty to use your talent wisely.”
“And who’s to say I don’t?”
“Oh, really. Now you are talking like a child. Besides, this is not a work of mere luxury. It is to be a chronicle of sorts, an account of important events to hang in a cathedral. For people to see and learn from.”
“A cathedral? But I thought you said…”
“The earl is also a bishop, in Normandy.”
Gytha feels the blood grow still in her veins. When she opens her mouth to speak, she realises she has been holding her breath for several seconds. Everything has fallen away, the world is suddenly nothing but the nun and herself, the question hanging on her lips, the knowledge the nun has which may be everything or nothing. “Where?” she asks, sounding as casual as she can.
“Bayeux,” replies Sister Jean-Baptiste pleasantly. “He is building a new cathedral there. He envisages this embroidery hanging in the nave.” The nun continues to speak, but her words are nothing but background noise to Gytha, merging with voices and footsteps outside, hurrying to be indoors before dark, or the shuffled rearrangements of bodies in the neighbouring cubicles. Bayeux. The word hammers in her head like the ringing of the curfew bell. Obviously Lady Edith’s hangings were not enough for him then, and his greed has given her her chance. The little room is stuffy and reeks of sweat and semen. She begins to feel faint, separated, as though she is looking in on herself from outside.
“What about this hanging then?” she asks, as soon as she can trust her voice, struggling to keep her tone light, casual, non-committal. “I hope it will be truthful. I refuse to sew lies. Besides, a lot more people will see it than would read a chronicle. Your earl will get caught out quicker than a tale teller when he changes the words.”
“You will come then?”
“Is it up to you?” If he has any say in the matter, then he may already be aware of her identity, which will make her task harder. “I would have thought he would want to make the choice himself, if this hanging is so important to him.”
“He has entrusted the task to me entirely. I am to choose.”
Choice. There has never been any choice for a woman, not since Eve chose the serpent. Of course she will go with Sister Jean-Baptiste, though not for any reason the sister could dream of. She nods.
The nun stands up and holds out her hand. “Good. That’s settled then. I stay tonight at the priory. Come there tomorrow at Prime, and we will set out for Canterbury.” Sister Jean-Baptiste’s grip is sinewy and dry, though her hand feels as delicate as a songbird in Gytha’s.
***
They make slow progress on the first day of their journey. Traffic throngs the narrow road, heavy grain wagons rumbling between fields and mills, forcing their party off the track and into the woods and meadows bordering it, bands of old men and boys with scythes and flails balanced on their shoulders following the harvest, the usual assortment of barefoot friars, peddlers, prostitutes. If she catches a girl’s eye, Gytha smiles her recognition, but rarely receives anything other than a scowl or a blank stare in return. Without the white cockade of her profession pinned to her hood, they do not know her, and eventually she stops trying, riding with eyes cast down like a respectable woman.
Rain has fallen overnight, transforming baked earth into syrupy mud which clings to their clothes and faces and makes the horses slip and lurch uncomfortably. Several times they have to wait while their escorts help to free stuck wagons, laying mats of brush or sheaves of straw beneath the wheels. Nor does it aid their progress that Sister Jean-Baptiste insists on stopping every three hours to say the daily offices, despite the advice of the commander of their escort that they’re sitting ducks for all manner of outlaws on the quieter stretches of road.
“Nonsense,” she retorts. “It is the king’s boast that a man may travel the length and breadth of England with a crock of gold in his breast and remain unmolested, and I believe him.”
She doesn’t, of course, following her travels with Odo the previous year, noting down the account he gave her of the invasion as he toured his new manors, sitting in council, inspecting the rolls, holding courts, tithe bargaining with suspicious abbots, attempting to explain the obligations of frankpledge to bewildered villeins. Everywhere stamping the authority of his new seal, which showed on one side the bishop, his face bathed in saintly benevolence, his hand raised in blessing, and on the other, the earl, armed, mounted, holding an unsheathed sword.
When William appointed him regent, she remained unobtrusive among the crowd of sycophants and fortune hunters, watching the king embark for Normandy with his train of Saxon hostages. She saw how, when the brothers kissed, rivalry vied with love in the gesture. Odo, standing alone, ankle deep in the cold, grey sea, the hem of his cloak floating out behind him as the Mora diminished to the size of a great insect crawling across the water, was engaged in something much more complicated than a public display of fraternal affection and feudal obligation. Looking toward home, his dream of a cathedral, his library, his school, his son, with the great, wet weight of England at his back, he wrestled with the question, what if. What if William never returned? None of them, not his brother, Robert of Mortain, not Fitzosbern, with whom Odo was to share his regency, must see it on his face.
Sketching out her designs in makeshift accommodation in the half built castles at Dover and Rochester, she too fell prey to what if, after Odo had ridden in pursuit of the turncoat Eustace of Boulogne, whose vanity in his descent from Charlemagne had made him easy prey for whatever flotsam the tide of William’s success had left in its wake. What if Odo were killed? Would his hanging too, like that of Earl Byrhtnoth, become simply the doting memorial to a fallen hero sewn by the women he left behind? But he came back, and Eustace fled to France, and after her experience of the aftermath of that revolt, she will not be deflected from her religious duty by the prospect of a gang of half starved villeins on the run from their overlords.
Gytha never prays with her, even at the main daily office of Vespers, but Agatha, not wishing to antagonise her latest recruit, makes no comment. She is grateful for Gytha’s change of heart; she had feared she would be unable to persuade her to join in the fabrication of Odo’s memorial, and though she had the means of coercion at her disposal, she was loathe to use them. Gytha’s skill must be freely given if she is to bring to Odo’s hanging the same lovely spontaneity Agatha noted in the chasuble stitched at the Convent of Saint Mary.
As they converse along the road, she finds herself growing to like her companion, though not with the disquieting affection that leapt into her heart when she first saw Margaret in her father’s house, eyes cast down and blushing as she held out an embroidered shift for Sister Jean’s inspection. Margaret smells of fresh baking and orange blossom, and her plump, freckled forearms covered with fine red blond down make you want to stroke them. Gytha, with her awkward cleverness, her words like cats fighting in a sack, does not inspire such gentleness, more a sense of common identity. In other circumstances, Agatha wonders if she might have ended up living as Gytha has been living, in the margins of society, like a spark thrown off a Catherine wheel. She feels at ease with Gytha and senses that Gytha too is beginning to relax in her company, albeit cautiously, every friendly remark framed by some reminder that they are enemies, more divided than united by their common purpose. But who is she reminding, Agatha wonders. Agatha, or herself?
***
Toward None on the fourth day, Sister Jean calls a halt at a point where the road passes through a woodland clearing, the track temporarily losing itself in close bitten grass where the horses have to tread carefully to avoid rabbit burrows. Rabbits, like stunted hares without grace or magic or silver in their fur, forever escaping their warrens and ruining vegetable plots, another unwanted Norman invader. Gytha walks into the woods to stretch her cramped muscles, enjoying the cool, green light filtering throug
h the trees, the silence hardly touched by the soft scurrying of unseen creatures in the undergrowth. She takes off her shoes, burrowing her toes into the forest floor, sensing through her worn hose the different textures of grass spikes, damp leaves, pine needles, beech mast, inhaling the sharp earth scent released by the disturbed vegetation.
Suddenly, to their mutual astonishment, a man erupts from the bushes only yards away from her. He has a bow slung across his chest and around his neck the carcass of a deer, tongue lolling, feet neatly hobbled. He is breathless and at the sight of Gytha goes very pale, his face reflecting the green light of the sun through leaves. Gytha flushes. How foolish she must look, wandering aimlessly in the woods with her shoes in her hand and her hose damp. Then turns cold at the thought of what will happen to him if he is caught.
“I haven’t seen you,” she says quickly. He gives a curt nod, and a grimace that might have been a smile, and runs on before Gytha can warn him that he is heading straight for Sister Jean and the earl’s men. She wants to run after him, but she will never be able to keep up in her bare feet, and by the time she has put her shoes back on it will be too late. She watches him disappear again among the trees. How can she help him anyway? The road is in the king’s peace and the woods on either side the king’s also. He will be shown no mercy where the king’s deer are concerned: the road is crawling with royal patrols; he is bound to be caught sooner or later.
By the time she emerges from the wood, the poacher has been taken, two men holding him by the arms while another secures the deer carcass to one of the packhorses. The man stands passively, as though submitting to the inevitable, but between Sister Jean and the escort commander it seems to be a different story. They are arguing, in low voices but with obvious ferocity, the commander’s face and neck flushed, Sister Jean drawn bolt upright in front of him, quivering with anger the way birch trees do in the lightest of breezes. As Gytha watches, she reaches into the flat leather wallet suspended from her girdle and withdraws a folded parchment with a showy seal appended to it. The officer makes a stiff bow and, crossing to his men, gives them their orders.
The two soldiers holding the poacher drag him toward the edge of the clearing, his legs buckling under him, his feet scuffing the grass. Another unclips his horse’s reins and uses the length of leather to bind the poacher by his wrists to a tree. He then takes his knife to the hem of the prisoner’s shirt, hacking away a sufficient length of it to act as a blindfold. Gytha cannot believe what she is seeing. The Normans are usually so particular about sticking to the rules, yet here is the Bastard’s own sister openly flouting his law. Or perhaps the law has no currency where poaching the Bastard’s own deer is concerned. She tries to catch Sister Jean’s eye, but the nun never for a moment looks away from her victim.
Gytha hurries across the clearing to the officer, where he stands beside a young archer crouched on the ground sorting through a quiver full of arrows.
“Is she mad?”
The officer looks close to answering her before he remembers his position and turns away impassively.
“Sister,” pleads Gytha, “this man is unshriven. At least you should fetch him a priest.”
“Is he secure?” asks Sister Jean, approaching the group beside the tree.
“Yes, madam.”
“Then know this,” she says to the prisoner. “This is not the king’s justice but his sister’s. You will thank me for it in heaven.”
The young archer fits his chosen arrow into his bow, takes aim, draws back his firing arm and, on a sign from his officer, releases his shaft. Sister Jean crosses herself and begins a recitation of prayers for the dying, though all Gytha can hear is the whistle of the arrow, ending in an abrupt squelch as it hits its target. It is a good shot; the poacher sags against the tree without uttering any sound other than the sigh of his breath being knocked out of his body. Gytha has never witnessed an execution before. She cannot look away as a thin, dark trickle of blood appears at the corner of his slack mouth, like something he meant to say before it was too late.
“If I’m not mistaken, there’s a priory not far from here. Take him there for burial and the venison for distribution to the poor.”
***
Agatha knows how it looks, but she has no intention of explaining herself, even though she regrets the way Gytha withdraws into hostile silence, refusing any longer to ride at her side but trailing several, sullen yards behind so the escort is forever having to drop back to keep an eye on her. She has acted as common sense and her conscience dictate. What else could she do? If she had released the man, he would have been picked up by a royal patrol in no time. If she had handed him over to the proper authority herself, the result would have been the same. A summary trial. Blinding, possibly the loss of a hand. William, of his piety, forbids the taking of life by any but God and contents himself with humbler punishments. The man is better dead. This way he is not condemned to a life of begging. His wife, if he has one, is free to marry again. His children will not starve. Her reasons are sound, yet she feels they imply criticism of Odo, the architect of William’s laws, so she will keep them to herself.
***
Canterbury castle is a disappointing place, mean in comparison with Winchester, a simple, shabby motte and bailey construction protected to the south east by the remains of the Roman wall and on the town side by a new double palisade. Glancing up at the keep through the blur of rain, Gytha forms the impression that the mound on which it stands is about to dissolve, bringing the tower sliding down into the outer court where it will sink into the mud. The new earl must find it very mean in comparison with Lady Edith’s house, she thinks with satisfaction, wondering how many more of Lady Edith’s possessions apart from herself have ended up here.
The thatch is in need of attention, and the keep itself affects the eye strangely due to the fact that four new windows, about twice as wide as the customary shot windows, have been cut into it half way up its height. Private apartments for the earl, says one of their escort in answer to her query, holding her mule as she dismounts. Private apartments. She has never heard of such a thing. Not even King Harold and Lady Edith had private rooms, though their bed stood on the opposite side of the hearth from where the rest of the household and its guests slept, and the curtains were a double thickness of wool, in winter at least.
***
They leave their mounts at the guard house, and Sister Jean leads her across the outer ward to what appears to be the only stone building in the compound. The keep is of wooden construction, most of the buildings around the outer ward, bakehouse and kitchen, blacksmith, fletcher, mews, stables, sties and byres, of wattle and daub. It is the oddest building Gytha has ever seen, two stories high with a tower at one end of it, like a Norman church with its watchtower. It has no windows overlooking the ward at ground floor level, but the walls of the upper story seem to be made entirely of glass. Even in this water-logged light she can see straight through from one side of the building to the other, to a further square of grey sky divided into patchwork by lancets so fine they are scarcely visible. It is as though the roof, tiled rather than thatched, hovers over the building on a cushion of air.
Sister Jean takes a latchkey from the bundle hanging from her girdle and opens a wicket set in a wide iron-bound door at the opposite end of the building to the tower.
“What is this?” Gytha shivers. She’s soaked through and her bones ache from the journey. She is a poor horsewoman, more accustomed to walking.
Agatha does not reply. She is happy to let the building speak for itself. It is, to her mind, beautiful and purposeful, not a stone laid but in the service of the embroidery, which she intends also to be beautiful and purposeful. She shows Gytha into the entrance hall. Tall windows, their arches decorated with chevrons, carved and brightly painted in the earl’s livery of green and gold, give a cloistered effect. The shutters are battened against the rain, but the hall is brightly lit by flares in wrought iron wall brackets. The stone of the walls,
where visible, is smooth and so pale that it seems to take on completely the smoky orange glow from the flares. The walls, however, are almost entirely covered with pictures.
Some are charcoal sketches on vellum, mostly palimpsests showing blurred ghosts of their previous uses beneath the fresh drawings, others are painted on linen but unframed, their raw edges curled and fraying. So striking are they, so alive in the warm, flickering, uncertain light, that Gytha is indignant at the careless way they have been pinned up, a prey to dust and light, or the first gust of wind strong enough to rip them from the walls. They make little sense to her, showing scenes as varied as ploughing and ship building, the preparation of a banquet, a hunting party, a farmer among his vines, but it scarcely matters. They have, not beauty exactly, but a sense of authenticity that makes many works she has seen, meticulously painted, lavishly gilded, seem dead in comparison. Peering at the images as they shimmer into view, she can smell the turned earth, hear the sucking and sighing of waves and the hammering of shipwrights, taste the grapes, the way the sweet juice bursts into the back of your mouth when you press the fruit between tongue and teeth until the skins split.
“These are extraordinary. I wonder they aren’t taken better care of.”
“So you are a connoisseur of pictures, are you?” Sister Jean-Baptiste is leading her down the hall, but slowly, sensing her absorption.
“You don’t need to know anything about art to know these are special. I’ve never seen anything to resemble them.”
“Thank you. Although I must confess the style isn’t completely original. My brother showed me a hanging in Ely Abbey that uses similar motifs for buildings, trees and the like. I think it is typical of the work of your countrymen. And there’s a Pentateuch in the library at St. Augustine’s Abbey here that I found most inspiring.”
“These are yours then? For the hanging? They’re very good.” What a pity they will go to waste when Bishop Odo dies. As he will, as soon as Gytha can find the means. When God gives you a talent, an opportunity, you must use it. You have no choice.
