Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  This morning joy is exchanging mitre and crook for a well-balanced bow and a cap with a pheasant feather in it. Joy is pulling the cold, pure air into the back of his throat and feeling it work on the inflammation like a cold compress on a sprain. Joy is this good horse under him, so responsive to the slightest pressure of knee or thigh he thinks it knows what he wants before he knows himself, and the eager panting of his favourite dogs at his heels.

  When they reach the edge of the chase, the party splits into smaller groups, some to try their hawks in stretches of open country, some to pursue boar and venison in the verdure. Odo prefers the latter; hawking in winter is hard sport for little reward. As if in vindication of his choice, he has been following the forester scarcely more than ten minutes before the dogs catch the scent of something, the huntsman unleashes them, and they’re off in pursuit, trusting to the horses to find their footing as they hurtle through the undergrowth. The wind laughs in Odo’s ears and pinches his cheeks with teasing fingers. The drumming of his horse’s hooves on the hard ground vibrates through his body with the rhythm of a dance. He is one with the animal, ducking and weaving around tree roots and low hanging branches, every nerve and sinew alive and alight with the exhilaration of the chase. He opens his mouth and lets out a long whoop, for the sheer pleasure of hearing his voice. It is not only by the recitation of prayer that you praise God.

  “A stag, my lord,” pants the forester, coming abreast of Odo in a clearing. Odo checks his horse to match the other’s pace.

  “Then I shall try a shot at him here, I think.”

  “Very good, my lord.” The forester and Odo’s huntsman ride out of the clearing. Odo and his squire wait among the trees at the edge of it for the hounds to flush the stag into the open. Holding his horse with his left hand, Odo uses his teeth to pull the leather guard over his right. Surveying the territory, he decides to take the shot on foot. His aim will be steadier that way, and the clearing is large enough to give another member of the party plenty of opportunity to bring the animal down should he miss or merely wound it. He kicks his feet clear of the stirrups as his squire charges his bow, and waits, listening to the huntsman’s horn, trying to envisage from the cracking of branches and the hounds giving tongue the pattern of the stag’s flight. Hunting, his father used to tell him, is all a matter of second guessing your quarry and not underestimating its cleverness.

  The snow lying so thickly plays tricks with sound, sometimes muffling, sometimes amplifying it, so that for all his experience and concentration, he is taken completely by surprise when the stag crashes into the clearing not ten yards away from him then stops, panting hard, its delicate legs quivering with exhaustion. It appears unaware of the men. There is no wind, and the cold and snow have deadened their scent. Now, he tells himself, don’t dismount, get the shot in now. He leans to take the bow from the squire. A fragment of sunlight, glancing through the bare branches, strikes one of its iron-reinforced tips. The stag’s attention is caught. To Odo, it seems as though, for the space of a heartbeat, the creature, shivering in its sweat-darkened skin, looks him straight in the eye, then takes flight into the woods on the far side of the clearing. He doesn’t think, doesn’t even take the time to thrust his feet back into his stirrups before galloping in pursuit, across the open ground, in among the trees, the light flashing in his eyes, the blood pounding in his ears like waves on a shore, mind become body as he fights to stay in the saddle, to hold his bow steady, not to lose sight of the prey. He’ll have the stag: he will have it, no matter what it takes.

  Light. Not the winter sun, more than the sun, stronger. The windows. As if a fist of divine light has punched its way through the windows. Shards of glass. Scattered diamonds. Fist across the jaw. Kick in the kidneys. A scream. Then nothing. Not even darkness.

  Though darkness surrounds him by the time he recovers consciousness, and cold stars flicker through the tree canopy, lending an eerie glimmer to the snow covered ground. He is lying on his back. He feels terribly drowsy, but freezing. Must find a warmer place to sleep. He lifts his head. So far so good. Levers himself stiffly upwards until he is resting on his elbows, but when he tries to sit, pain engulfs him, washing from the small of his back into his abdomen. He leans over and vomits, and faints again.

  The next time he awakes it is still dark, but the moon is up and it feels much warmer, although the snow still lies and crunches loudly beneath him as he climbs cautiously to his feet. His horse is nowhere to be seen, and he has no idea where he is, but he is no longer in pain so nothing else matters. He starts to walk, quickly falling into a rhythm, covering the ground in long, even strides. The snow does not impede him; he does not slip or catch his footing in brambles or rabbit burrows. It’s like floating. I’m walking on water, he thinks madly, and laughs aloud, his laughter ringing around the silent, frozen forest.

  He has no idea how long he has been walking when he finds himself in an assart, at the center of which is a rough hut whose thatch pokes up untidily against the oval of a three quarter moon. Approaching the hut, he looks for a doorway but cannot find one, only a small, heavily shuttered window. At the rear, he discovers the hut has a short extension, so that the overall shape of the building is a stunted L. He finds a door at the end of the L and, pushing it open, steps into a chapel. A tiny chapel containing nothing but a rough hewn stone altar bearing three wooden crosses and some stalks of honesty in a pewter jug, and before the altar a wooden footrest curiously worn at the center into two wide, shallow indentations. It is only when he kneels that he realizes it is worn into the shape of knees and how it receives the supplicant as a cushioned chair might receive a man who has been all day in the saddle.

  All this he sees by the light of the moon shining through the chapel door.

  “Forgive me. I do not wish to interrupt your prayers, but you might close the door behind you. The night is extremely cold.”

  The voice of an old man, a little querulous, but strong, and speaking good Norman French.

  “Where are you?” Odo demands, looking around the bare little room.

  “Close the door and you will see.”

  Odo rises from his knees, bows to the altar, and goes to close the door. When he turns back into the chapel, a thin beam of yellow lamplight pierces the darkness from somewhere behind the altar. Of course.

  “You are an anchorite,” he says, approaching the small window, identical to the one in the front wall of the hut except that this one opens onto the chapel rather than the outside world. From here the anchorite, sealed into his cell, is able to listen to divine office and receive communion. Although it looks to be a long time since any services were held here.

  “In a manner of speaking, though I tired of dispensing advice to lovesick youths and ointments for bunions and the like. So I moved out from the town to this spot. Now those who find me are only those who have real need of me.”

  “How do you live?”

  “By gifts, as always. Those whom I help bring me gifts of food and wine. Some give their time to cultivation.”

  “I bring you nothing, Father.”

  “You have no need. I live in your forest. This assart is your gift.”

  “How do you know me?”

  “How could I not know you, kneeling there in your armour like a young knight keeping his first vigil?”

  “But Father, I am unarmed. I have been hunting merely. And I am not a knight but a man of God like yourself.”

  “Well, well. My eyes must be worse than I thought. It seemed to me that you were quite the knight, all glinting mail and gold spurs and a sword belt full of rubies.”

  Odo presses his hands cautiously to his midriff. “Perhaps it is my blood you see, old man. I fell from my horse. I lost consciousness for a time, I think. I was trying to find my way back to my companions when I came across this place. I don’t know what happened to my horse.”

  “God aid, you boys are all the same.”

  God aid? God aid is William’s motto. “Who are you
, old man?”

  “My name does not matter, and nor does yours. I am the king’s man as you are. You are one of the sons of Herleve de Conteville. You have her face.”

  “She had blue eyes.”

  “Nevertheless, you have her face. She is dead then?”

  “For several years. And my father also. May God have mercy on them.”

  “I will pray for their souls. But first we must concern ourselves with more practical matters. It is late, and very cold, and you have no horse. You may sleep here, in the chapel, and be on your way in the morning. You will find the prayer stool makes a serviceable pillow.”

  “Thank you, Father. Though I should warn you, I am given to nightmares. My servant complains that I often wake him, crying out in my sleep.”

  “Dreams should not be ignored. Consider Pilate’s wife.”

  “If Pilate had not ignored his wife, Christ would not have died for our salvation.”

  “If she had not dreamed, Pilate would never have known that he was God’s chosen instrument.”

  “An interesting view.”

  “A heretical one, you mean, yet no less deserving of consideration. But you are in no state for philosophy. I see your eyelids drooping, and you are as pale as a saint. Tell me your dream. It will help you sleep.”

  “Very well, then. This is my dream. I am riding through a battlefield. It is the hour of Compline near enough, and the field is bathed in red. The grass is stained with the blood of the fallen, their white faces and their armour reflect the setting sun. The sky above the horizon, where the sun rests, is white as bone, as though it too has bled to death. No birds sing, no one breathes, the planets are silent. My horse and I are the only living things in the universe. My horse is black. There is a low hill away to my right, and this too is black, and on top of it the black silhouette of a leafless tree, the branches all twisted in one direction by the labour of the wind.

  “As I draw closer to the hill, I see four women standing beneath the tree, two tall and fair, one dark, one with her head covered. As I draw abreast of the hill, the younger of the two fair women detaches herself from the rest and comes down the hill toward me. She is dressed in white samite. Her hair flows over her shoulders and down her back to her waist. Her eyes are as blue as summer, and her lips have the texture of rose petals. She moves among the corpses as though she is wading in the sea, her skirt floating around her ankles. She comes toward me smiling, holding out her arms to me, so I reach down and lift her into the saddle in front of me. She lays her head against my breast. I hold her tenderly about her waist, and a phrase comes to me: you are more precious to me than my own son.

  “Overwhelmed by love for her, I take her to my bed. I carry her in my arms. She weighs no more than a child. I lay her gently down on furs and sheets as fine and white as the membrane of an egg, and when I lie beside her and feel the length of her body against mine, cool and smooth, I believe I am in paradise. I kiss her with all the fondness and fervour my heart is capable of. I run my hands along her flanks and…and then nothing.

  “In a panic I pull back the sheets. The bed is drenched dark red with blood. The woman’s body is severed, torn apart at the very top of the legs. I see the ragged ends of veins still pulsing and pale marrow oozing from the great bones of her thighs. Her sexual organs are gone, nothing left but the little triangle of hair, tight, sticky curls. I am eaten up with horror, not at what I am looking at, but because, despite her mutilation, I still want her, and I feel cheated. This makes me mortally afraid. I scream out in my fear, and I think this is what wakes me. I wake soaked in sweat, feeling as though a furnace is burning inside me. Even on a night such as this, I have to get up and stand naked at the window to cool myself. Then I do not sleep again.”

  For a long time the anchorite remains silent. Odo peers anxiously through the little window, but the hermit’s lamp is shining in his eyes and he can see nothing but a vague impression of an unkempt beard and a gleam of moist lips. The window is too small to reveal the whole of the man’s face.

  “Help me,” he pleads, tears beginning to prick his eyes.

  “You have helped yourself, boy, though it would be unwise to be complacent. Who knows what the Devil may have in store for us?”

  “I can resist the Devil if I can sleep.”

  The anchorite gives a short, knowing laugh. “Ah, the arrogance of those in the prime of life. In the end, you know, we are all like Saint Peter. We betray what is dearest to us and to God. But sleep now, my lord, and I will watch and keep the Devil at bay for tonight at least.”

  Blood Letting

  After Epiphany 1071

  Come,” calls Lanfranc. A young monk pokes his head around the door to the Archbishop’s parlour.

  “My lord Archbishop, Brother Infirmarer says you should come quickly. The patient is waking up.”

  “Good news indeed, brother.” The Archbishop smiles, which makes him look less like an Old Testament prophet. “Thank you for your pains in coming to me. Shouldn’t you be in the refectory at this hour?”

  The young man looks at his superior with affection. The Archbishop has been tugging at his beard again, a habit he has when thinking. Grey hairs scatter the papers on his desk.

  “Return to your meal, boy. I can find my own way to my own bed chamber, I think. Has the physician been sent for?”

  “My lord has his own physician with him, Your Grace.”

  ***

  Leaning against the sickroom door, Lanfranc lets the warmth seep into his bones. He has another cold. No matter that he has lived nearly half his life in the northern damp; he still spends every winter feeling as though his head is stuffed with wool and his nose has no skin left on it. Although he has subdued his will to the Rule of Saint Benedict, he has never been able to persuade his body it belongs anywhere but in the sweet, pure air of the Alps. Even now, if he shuts his eyes, he can almost believe the scents of the herbs burnt to purify the air around the sick man are really the perfumes of mountain pastures, new grass, rock rose, melt water. His surrender is brief, unnoticed by the infirmarer or the doctor, the one holding the patient’s head as he tries to coax him into a sip of borage tea, the other stooped intently over a chamber pot.

  “The urine is much improved, Your Grace.” The doctor stretches his arms with a self-satisfied air.

  “Then we must thank Saint Artemios for his intercession. Brother Thorold, how is our patient? I’m told he’s regained consciousness.”

  “You may speak with him yourself, Your Grace, but go carefully, a step at a time. He is still somewhat confused.”

  “Thank you, Brother. You are most considerate. Now, perhaps it would be best if you left us. My lord bishop shouldn’t be taxed with too many visitors all at once. You too, doctor, if you please.”

  When they have gone, Lanfranc draws up a stool to the bedside. Odo’s eyes are closed, and the left side of his face remains badly swollen and discoloured, but when Lanfranc takes his hand, the pressure is returned.

  “Well, brother, you gave us all quite a fright.”

  Frowning with the effort, Odo opens his eyes. The whites are startlingly yellow. Wolf eyes, thinks Lanfranc, rather pleased with the analogy. The wolf is Odo’s emblem, a gold wolf on a green ground, predatory, cunning, a creature of the ancient dark.

  “Where’s the anchorite?” He turns his head in Lanfranc’s direction, wincing as his jaw makes contact with the pillow. “Where am I?” He has spoken in French. Lanfranc, who is more comfortable in Latin, nevertheless replies in his own execrable vernacular.

  “You are in my house. You have been here almost two weeks, unconscious or raving. Though I hesitate to appear disloyal to my infirmarer, or critical of your doctor, I think it is only God’s providence and the strength of your own constitution that have pulled you through. You took a terrible fall.”

  “Two weeks?” His voice is weak and hoarse; the stiff jaw makes him slur his words like a drunkard. He tries to swallow but has no saliva. Lanfranc dips a sponge i
n the bowl of tea cooling on the nightstand and uses it to moisten Odo’s parched lips; Odo pulls a face. “The king…?”

  “The king has been informed of your accident and that you are in my care. It’s the dead of winter; nothing will spoil while you recover. I will send a messenger to His Grace today to tell him you have regained consciousness. I’ve no doubt he’ll be very relieved. As am I.”

  In this Lanfranc is in earnest, the more so because, when he had first laid eyes on the injured man lying on a litter in the great court of Christ Church Abbey, his lips and fingernails blue with cold, his swollen face encrusted with dried blood and vomit, his first thought had been that Odo’s death would make his job easier. It would set him free to concentrate on the subjugation of the English church to the king’s authority without always having to look over his shoulder to see what Odo was up to along the shared borders of their secular power.

  And his second was this, that a world without Odo would somehow show less of the wonder of God’s creation and more of its order and predictability. Odo has always had this effect on him, since he was a boy of eleven, forever disrupting classes at Bec. It might be a toad tactically released from his sleeve just as Brother Damian, who taught rhetoric and was of a nervous disposition, walked past his desk. Or an unorthodox, but irrefutable, response to a question of doctrine. Nothing has changed, except in degree; it remains unwise to turn one’s back on Odo, though now you are more likely to feel a sword between your shoulder blades than a toad around your ankles, and lose the contents of your treasury rather than an argument. And, absurdly, end up admiring the charm with which he defeated you.