Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  Having no servant to attend her at night, she answers the door herself, half expecting, half dreading to find Margaret standing there, conjured up by the demon of her mistress’ perversion. But it is not Margaret.

  “Gytha? Is all well?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, madam, but Alwys is complaining of her finger, the one she pricked. It’s very swollen and I wanted to get some cold water to bathe it. Can I have the key so I can go to the well?”

  It isn’t difficult to see how she has bewitched Odo, with her bold eyes, her red lips and black brows, and the hair falling as heavy as water below her waist. But it would be disappointing to find she had set out to do it deliberately.

  “Come in,” she says.

  “I just need the key, madam. I needn’t disturb you for long. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

  “Then it can wait a minute or two. Sit. Please.” Her tone is not to be gainsaid.

  Gytha, unfamiliar with the layout of the parlour, looks around in the gloom for somewhere to sit.

  “I wanted a word with you in private. Now is as good a time as any since we’re both wide awake.”

  The chair she finds is severe, its arms carved with open-mouthed, sharp-toothed beasts which bite into Gytha’s palms. But it is outside the circle of light cast by the single candle, which Agatha has put down on a low table in front of her empty hearth, and that makes Gytha feel easier.

  “Yes, Sister,” she says.

  There is a pause. Agatha, like a skinny ghost in her white shift, seems to float across the room as she paces back and forth. Eventually she says, “Be careful.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Odo…the earl…enjoys female company, but he is not…influenced by women. Do not imagine that you have found a way to gain power over him.”

  Power. The very mention of the word makes her wonder what others see in her that she does not see in herself. “I don’t, madam,” she says, the right reply and the true one for once in accord.

  “And do not forget his calling. His love is not his own to give.”

  And the son? John? “Correct me if I’m wrong, madam, but the earl is merely a clerk. He is not in orders, not sworn to celibacy.”

  “No, but it is expected among the higher clergy, as you are well aware.”

  “Nor poverty, it seems,” Gytha continues. “Clearly he is cautious in what he swears to, for fear of being tempted to break his word. He is very strong on the solemnity of oaths.”

  “As you know, Gytha, I’ve a fondness for your clever tongue. But sometimes it tires me.”

  “Then speak plainly, madam, and I can do likewise. Then we can get this over and done with and attend to Alwys. What should I be careful of? What do you think has transpired between the earl and me? Tell me, and I’m sure I can set your mind at rest. I do not think you will find that the balance of power between us has changed.” Oh no, not even if the rebel Hereward, bereft of everything but his sword arm, kills him.

  She has been over it so many times. She has analysed each move, every word spoken, considered every alternative, every meaning both obvious and hidden. She has missed nothing, not the tiniest catch in his voice or the faintest falter in his gaze. She looks at Agatha, now perched on the edge of the table, and Agatha’s face twists beneath her gaze. A starveling smile stretches her lips; her pale eyes strain. She hugs herself close.

  “Perhaps you should tell me,” she says, “as you have no confessor.”

  When Gytha lived in the convent, she was aware of certain friendships more than usually intimate and exclusive. She was neither shocked, nor surprised, nor envious of them. In her experience, love is a scarce enough commodity in this world, and she attaches no blame to those who take it where they find it. She does not feel unlucky, merely unworthy. She is no elegant, high-waisted Edith Swan Neck or sweet-natured Meg. She has wit and common sense, but these do not inspire love, and she could not hold onto her children, no matter how fiercely she loved them. She feels more pity for Agatha, with her self-imposed restraints and her vigilant conscience, than for herself, for whom no such effort of will has ever been necessary. Until now, cautions her heart, until now.

  “There’s nothing much to tell, madam. His lordship kissed me. Just a kiss, the sort of silly impulse men have before they go off and get themselves killed. I’m sure by the time he comes back, God willing, we shall both have forgotten all about it. It meant nothing.” As she says this, she believes it, and suddenly everything seems simple. He might have picked any one of them; he only chose her because of her knowledge of the camel.

  “Well, perhaps not,” says Agatha.

  You’re wrong, says Gytha’s heart, you know you are. It changed everything.

  ***

  She takes the key to the wicket and goes to fetch the water. It is a beautiful night, cold and clear, the stars seeming close enough to touch in a moonless sky. Most nights, the stars are small and distant, indifferent to Earth as they sing their songs to heaven, but tonight they are gathered round, peering down at humanity, expecting something. She leans against the well parapet and looks up. Somewhere a dog howls, answered by whickering from the stables. Footsteps crunch along the Roman walls as the soldiers on watch change position. Are the stars out wherever he is, looking at him with the same close scrutiny? Does he feel it? Or maybe it’s raining, cold rain angling under tent flaps, needling him awake. What does he do when he can’t sleep? Talk to that sinister servant of his? She wonders if his nightmare has returned, what is a day’s journey from here for an army. She is so small and ignorant. She shivers, shaking off all the useless questions, and starts to wind up the bucket from the well, the splash of water in the shaft echoing loudly in the quiet ward. Steadying the bucket against the parapet, she fills the jar she has brought with her for the purpose, then lets the bucket go, the winch handle spinning as the rope unwinds, the crash as it hits the surface of the water far below, the water leading its own life, hardly disturbed, hardly depleted. Nevertheless, she apologises to the well sprite for disturbing its rest before going back inside.

  ***

  In the dormitory, everything is in uproar. Everyone is awake, lamps are lit, Sister Jean has been summoned and is kneeling over Alwys who lies shivering beneath her bedclothes, her face drawn in tight with pain, sweating dark patches into the pillow. Margaret, so pale her freckles look blue in the half-light at the edge of the candle’s glow, stands behind Sister Jean, holding a shallow bowl, a towel over her arm, the way the servants in hall offer the diners above the hearth water for washing. Judith grips Emma by the shoulder in an attempt to keep her still; she has already knocked over one candle, the tallow now drying in fatty lumps among the singed floor rushes. How long has she been gone, Gytha chides herself, dreaming of stars and water like a lovelorn maid?

  She sets the jar down beside Sister Jean, who nods her acknowledgement but does not take her eyes off Alwys.

  “Margaret,” she says, and Margaret stoops so Sister Jean can dip a cloth in the bowl, wring it out, and dab at Alwys’ forehead and temples with it. Gytha smells roses, summer sweet. Then Alwys begins to heave, her throat arched, the muscles around her mouth working.

  “She’s going to be sick.” Gytha grabs the bowl from Margaret as Sister Jean turns Alwys onto her side. A thin stream of greenish bile pollutes the rosewater. Margaret turns away abruptly.

  “Are you all right, dear?” asks Sister Jean, darting Margaret a quick look, behind the prevailing drama the perpetual awareness of the other, like the bass note in music, that feeling of being tugged by invisible strings whenever the other moves or speaks, or even breathes in a changed rhythm.

  “I’ll deal with this,” says Gytha, taking the bowl to empty onto the garden.

  “What hour is it, d’you think?” Sister Jean asks her when she returns.

  “Around Matins I should guess, madam. Still pitch dark anyway.”

  “I shall send to Christ Church for
their infirmarer. I don’t think this should wait till daylight.”

  Gytha takes her place beside the sick woman as Agatha goes to order the officer of the watch to send one of his men to fetch Brother Thorold.

  “What’s wrong with her? Why does she need the infirmarer? I’m frightened.”

  “I’m sure Sister Jean is just being careful, Meg; she wouldn’t want you to be upset.”

  “You see, if one of us gets hurt, sometimes the other one feels it too.”

  Gytha pulls Alwys’ blanket up to cover her injured hand and muffle its smell. Alwys moans. The swelling has spread, the little tear made by the needle split and gaping like an idiot’s grin, oozing blood and pus onto the bedclothes. “Go back to bed,” she says to others. “There’s nothing more to be done until Brother Thorold gets here. We should just try to keep her cool.”

  Margaret dutifully dips a clean napkin in the water jar, folds it, and lays it across her sister’s brow. Gytha watches her, touched by her tearful conscientiousness. To distract her, she asks, “Who’s the eldest?”

  “I am, by half the width of a fingernail, our father says.” Seeing Gytha’s puzzlement, she explains. “The time it takes for a candle to burn down half the width of a nail.”

  “Ah, I see.” Gytha smiles. “It must be confusing, having that special closeness and having to be ashamed of it at the same time.”

  “We used to try to pretend we weren’t.”

  Looking from one to the other broad, freckled face, each for its own reason pale as the bed caps from which their irrepressible hair springs, Gytha’s smile broadens.

  “I know,” says Margaret, “but the bishop granted our father permission to put our mother away on grounds of adultery and marry again, and we were afraid we’d be sent to a convent too.”

  “None of the girls in Winchester had twins that I can remember.” Gytha’s tone is reflective, as if she has forgotten she has an audience, but though she and Margaret have been speaking in whispers, the dormitory is quiet and their voices carry.

  “Girls?” queries Margaret, and at the same time Judith says, “I knew it. I saw the cockade among your things when Sister Jean brought you here.”

  “Cockade? Gytha, you weren’t, you didn’t…?” Margaret starts to giggle, Alwys forgotten as she delves into the lurid possibilities of Gytha’s past. Judith has loosened her grip on Emma, but Emma remains quite still.

  Gytha takes the cloth from Margaret, dips it in the water jug, and bathes Alwys’ temples. The girl mutters, then screams as some involuntary movement of her arm brings her blanket in contact with the poisoned wound. Gytha calms her with soft shushing noises, then removes her bed cap and, sliding her hand beneath Alwys’ head, lifts her hair clear of her sweating neck. “They say war is full of surprises. But in my experience it isn’t. We do what we can to survive, the same things people always do to survive. It seems we can’t help ourselves.”

  Judith emits a sceptical snort.

  “Anyway, Meg,” she continues, with an air of putting an end to the conversation, “there was a time when I knew a lot of women who slept with a lot of different men, and none of them had twins, so where does that leave the notion that two babies means two fathers? Probably thought up by some husband too mean to provide for them.”

  Judith returns to her bed, her head at a precariously haughty angle on her long, scrawny neck. Emma sits down on Margaret’s bed, a grimace which might be a smile or simply the effect of guttering lamplight crossing her pockmarked face. How strange it is, thinks Gytha, the relationship between body and soul, like that between a man and his house. Just as he successfully repairs a hole in the roof, a window shutter breaks loose or a wall begins to bulge. Unpredictably, sometimes keeping the elements at bay, sometimes broken and reformed by them.

  “Gytha?”

  “Yes, Meg?”

  “Does the earl know?”

  Does he? Has he wondered how she bridged the gap between Lady Edith’s house and his atelier? Of course he knows. Sister Jean must have told him. And she has been so foolish, so naïve, as to believe he might have some genuine feeling for her. She is no more to him than a horse or a parcel of land. Probably less than a horse, in fact, certainly less than a field of good barley or a well-defended manor. Just a little Saxon whore. Worth her board and lodging, though, since she can embroider as well, cosset his pride as well as his cock.

  “I hope whatever the earl knows has gone to his grave with him by now.”

  ***

  Agatha knows what is in store for Alwys, and that nothing she can do with rosewater or poultices or herbal teas for fever will make any difference. She learned a great deal about the pathology of wounds during her travels with Odo in the summer after the Conquest. She goes from the guardhouse to the chapel, where the priest and his deacons are saying the night office. Only a miracle can save Alwys’ hand, and Agatha’s one hope for a miracle is to confess. She will confess everything, everything she has thought and felt since first setting eyes on Alwys and Margaret in the mourning gloom of their father’s house, the self pity and salacious curiosity in which she wallowed while the poison worked its rotten magic in Alwys’ finger and Saint Agatha laughed.

  The altar candles gutter as she opens the chapel door and slips inside on a draught of night air, then strengthen again when she closes it, splashing waves of buttery light up the whitewashed walls to catch in the gilded ceiling vaults. Although it is unusual for anyone else to attend Matins when the earl is away, it is not unheard of, and the priest continues to sing the office without faltering. Agatha identifies immediately, with affection, the lines from Saint John for the Feast of Saint Joseph. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. And almost as quickly is seized by a pang of exclusion, knowing herself to be utterly unworthy of the name she chose when she made her profession, unworthy then, as now. She cannot give testimony of the light as John was sent to do.

  She approaches the altar and prostrates herself, arms outstretched so her body forms the sign of the Cross on the beaten earth floor. The priest glances sidelong at her and falls silent. He is a timid man, this priest, a man well suited to be left in charge of the spiritual needs of a household whose lord is absent. His timidity confuses him as to who has a prior claim upon him, God or Saint Benedict. Lack of sleep and the effects of the Lenten fast do not help matters. Saint Benedict seeming somehow closer at hand than God, he elects to see the long office of Matins through to its conclusion. Perhaps the words will give comfort to the earl’s sister, or at least offer him some guidance as to how to approach her, so exalted a person in such a position.

  “I implore you, Sister,” he interrupts when, the office completed, she begins her confession, her forehead patterned red and white by the uneven floor, dust clinging to her habit. He raises his hands to his face as though trying to ward off an attack. “Go no further. Remember who you are. We are not alone here.” He glances round at his two deacons, who continue to prepare for Lauds, studiously ignoring his plight.

  “Of course we are not alone, Father,” snaps Agatha. “We are in God’s house, and God is with us. As for me, I am simply a daughter of Christ who wishes to make confession. You have a duty to hear me and absolve me. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have entertained lustful thoughts of a girl in my charge. I have abused not only her trust but the teachings of the Church in matters of procreation. And now the rottenness in my heart has found a way to manifest itself in the flesh, not my flesh but the flesh of the innocent…”

  The priest lets out a whimper of panic. “Only thoughts, Sister?” he enquires, clinging to a vestige of hope. One of the deacons is trimming a candle, releasing an oily scent of cold beeswax.

  “Thoughts, Father, of a specific nature.”

  “Providing you are clear in your mind as to the sinfulness of these thoughts, Sister, I do not think it will be necessary to elaborate on them.”

  “But I feel that it is, Father, if I am to be truly absolved.” Odo kissing Gytha, herself ki
ssing Margaret. How do they work, the kisses of lovers? How do their tongues intertwine? Do their teeth collide? What connections do their bodies make while their mouths are fused?

  “There is a danger in detail, Sister. The female imagination is too easily inflamed, lacking in intellectual discipline. I fear that by recounting your thoughts you will revive the feelings they engendered and thus fall deeper into sin. I will absolve you of whatever is in your heart. That would be best.”

  “It would be a shoddy compromise, Father. And at the risk of adding the sin of pride to my burden, to condemn me for a lack of intellectual discipline is complete nonsense.”

  “It is my bishop’s directive in matters of this sort.”

  “Who is your bishop? Is it not Lord Odo?”

  “No, Sister, it is Archbishop Lanfranc.”

  “Ah, Lanfranc, who spent his youth in the law schools before making his profession. A lot Lanfranc knows about women. But still, I cannot expect you to disobey your bishop. I will make my confession in general terms, and I will recommend that you set me the hardest penance permissible, and that you report me to the proper authorities if you believe, when I have finished, that I have committed any crime.”

  The relief on the priest’s face drains away at the prospect of having to report Lord Odo’s sister for any crime, let alone one so heinous and unnatural as she is hinting at, and he is unable to do more than nod his agreement, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Agatha’s conscience is pinched by remorse. She has been harsh; the fast is taking its toll on her temper also. But she cannot afford to treat the priest sympathetically. Unless her concentration remains focused on her sins, she has no chance of saving Alwys. What is this decent man’s discomfort compared to Alwys’ life? Or Odo’s great work of art?