Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  “May I?” She smiles, feeling the tension in every muscle. Judith shuffles sideways to make space for her; she sits, cross-legged, smoothing her skirt over her knees, garnet red among the grey, a girdle of plaited silk bound with gold wire whose bright tails coil in her lap. “How was your journey?” Her voice comes to her across a great distance, false, distorted, as though she has spoken through a kerchief or into the neck of a jar. Will they understand her? Will they even hear her?

  “Long,” says one of the women recruited from Saint Augustine’s, who normally, Gytha recalls, goes home at the end of the day.

  “We will be as comfortable as we can here, though you will miss your family.”

  “You’d know all about that,” hisses Judith, a whiff of sour breath making Gytha recoil slightly. She folds her hands over her belly to still the ghosts and tries to feel compassion, to see what Judith must see in this Saxon house whose Norman lord is everywhere, in its furnishings, the wine they are drinking instead of beer, the kite-shaped Norman shield guarding the embroidery from the fire. In the dress she is wearing, cut close to the figure in the latest style from Rouen, and the jewels he has presented to her like milestones to mark the stages of their love. But what does Judith see? What are the colours of spite?

  “Like Israel fleeing Egypt,” says Alwys to Leofwine, cradled in her lap under Turold’s watchful eye. Leofwine, who is teething, gnaws on Alwys’ stump. “What is the dwarf for?”

  “For Lord Odo’s amusement,” says Gytha.

  Judith sits up, tugging her cap straight. “Is he here, then?”

  “He is at court. He left the dwarf to keep me company.” To guard her, the dwarf who is not a man, and Fulk, who notices no woman but Freya.

  Women. There will be women in London, exotic, beautiful, witty and wise as the women who used to grace Lady Edith’s table, where Odo never noticed her. Stupid. That was then, everything is different now. He trusts Fulk because he understands the exclusivity of Fulk’s devotion. Because he feels the same. If he did not, why would he have strung out his departure so, why endure the implacable disapproval of Canon Guy and the undoubted wrath of William? She fingers the ruby pendant hanging from a string of pearls around her neck. She found it after he left, hidden under her pillow with a note and a sprig of dried rue. Rue for remembrance, ruby for the fire in my blood, pearls for my tears, he had written. Pearls for the moon, she thinks, the full, bright, beautiful moon of his name. The dwarf is no consolation; nothing can fill the space he leaves when he goes; it is like the emptiness left inside her by her dead children.

  “What can the dwarf do?” It is the first time Margaret has opened her mouth. From the reactions of the other women, all turning toward her with varying expressions of surprise and relief, it is the first time she has spoken for some while.

  “Oh, he sings and plays and juggles a bit. But mostly he likes to remind Lord Odo that he is only a mortal man.”

  “It’s just that there was a dwarf at a fair once who could tell the future.”

  “Telling the future and telling a great man he will one day come to dust carry quite similar risks,” remarks Turold, refilling his drinking horn. Gytha laughs, but Margaret just looks sad.

  Sister Jean finishes her devotions as Freya and her team of village women come in with trays of food, and Gytha marvels as greatly as her guests at what they have managed to produce out of nothing but a half-finished quince pie. It may be Lent, but this is still a great man’s household, make no mistake. In the general shuffling around that takes place to accommodate the meal, Gytha finds herself seated beside Margaret. Noticing the big girl makes no attempt to help herself to food, Gytha takes a wooden platter, piles it with mackerel in mint sauce and pike with a pudding in its belly. Freya has adapted seamlessly to Odo’s culinary standards, but Margaret, for a girl whose appetite for food was always at least healthy, picks at her plate with as little relish as the sickly Countess of Mortain.

  “Come, Margaret,” orders Sister Jean, “eat up.”

  Margaret picks up a piece of bread and tears at it dutifully with her teeth, but she has to make several anguished attempts to swallow, her throat straining and gagging, eyes watering from the effort.

  Gytha takes the plate from her and puts it down on the hearth. “Never mind.”

  Margaret’s grateful expression is pitiful. Gytha longs to retreat to her bower, to lie in Odo’s bed behind the silk curtains, love’s soft footprints all around her in dented pillows and creased quilts. But she will have to give up the bed to Sister Jean, or at least offer to share it with her and Judith, who is also of noble blood, and the thought of sharing that bed with anyone but Odo is unbearable. No, she will sleep here in the hall with the rest of the women.

  She rises, which acts as a signal to silence Turold, who has been telling a long, complicated story about a wizard, a magically embroidered robe, and an adventurous girl who becomes a pirate. Emma looks disappointed.

  “It’s late, and you must all be very tired. Sister Jean, Judith, I will put my bower at your disposal.” She takes a torch from a basket on the hearth, ignites it, and escorts the two women to the bower by its smoky, tarry light. Judith’s resentment bores into her back; Judith would be happier if Gytha left her something to complain about.

  “This is good of you,” says Sister Jean, contemplating the great fur-covered bed while Gytha fastens the bower door against a sharp wind now prowling around the courtyard.

  “I hope you sleep soundly.”

  “After four nights of priory hospices or bare earth, I shall at least,” says Judith.

  “Then I will leave you.” Lighting a couple of candles from her torch, Gytha collects a cloak from a hook beside the door.

  “Gytha,” says Sister Jean.

  “Yes, Sister?”

  “I have never replaced you, you know. There is a space for you at one of the frames if you want it.”

  “I…there is a woman in Winterbourne village whose daughter is very sick with a catarrh of the lungs. I intend to visit her tomorrow, to take some medicine my lord’s physician recommended.”

  “Send Freya.”

  “Goodnight, Sister. I hope you find the bed…comfortable.”

  ***

  Gytha cannot sleep. The wind rises during the night, snapping and snarling around the house, pushing under the door and through gaps in the shutters. Rain batters the walls and hisses onto the hearth through the smoke vent in the roof. Her straw pallet crackles and prickles as she turns from side to side, trying to make herself comfortable. She frets, feeling lonely and responsible, flinching at every creak or crash, every bark or whinny or flurry of cackling from the yard. When Odo is with her, she loves stormy nights, secure in his arms, curtained and cosseted, knowing the ghouls and demons that come with darkness are powerless against the steady beat of his heart. Even when he gets up, to check for broken shutters and fallen branches or calm his horses, the feeling of safety stays with her. Her father used to do the same; several times a night on rough nights she would hear through the plank floor of the loft where she slept, her head inches from salt winds and the rattle of hailstones, her parents whispering together, clothes rustling and the creak of hinges as he went out to make sure of the stacks of salt pans and barrels in his yard. Then she would burrow contentedly beneath her blanket, as though, in his going, he left his watchfulness with her.

  But tonight, she is the watcher, her senses strained to encompass the snores and mutters and shufflings of the sleepers around her, the patter of mice, dust sifting through the wind-buffeted thatch. A sudden blast of air sends sparks showering out of the hearth; wrapping herself in her cloak, Gytha pads around to the other side to move Fulk’s makeshift guard back out of harm’s way.

  “The Lord has looked on you, Sister, and found you wanting. Praise the name of the Lord.”

  Alwys.

  “Shhh,” says someone, and though nothing more is said, a pale figure detaches itself from the mound of bedding Alwys shares with her sister
and glides toward Gytha among the shadowy angles of frames and stools and stands of wool. It’s only Meg, Gytha tells herself firmly, though her hands on the broken shield begin to shake and her bowels feel as though they are being tightened around a winch. Only Meg in her shift.

  “Can’t you sleep either?” she whispers, gripping the shield tight, but the pale figure makes no response. Weaving its way among the frames, it sits on a stool, where it seems to crumple, to melt and pool like the final extinction of a candle. Sniffs and hiccoughs, then sobs, rise and die away into dark corners.

  Resting the shield on the floor, Gytha sits down opposite her old sewing partner, marvelling how her body adapts itself to the low stool, her wrists balanced on the edge of the frame as though she is about to take up her needle and plunge it into the taut linen; she had believed her skin so crammed with new sensations there would be no room inside it for impressions of the old.

  “Meg? What is it?”

  Margaret lifts her head to find her hot, sore eyes staring at Gytha. Gytha in the flesh, with dark strands of hair escaping from her plait and the laughter lines which bracket her red lips more pronounced than Margaret remembers them. Gytha, whose eyes are deep enough to understand anything. So she isn’t dreaming, and the hasty departure from Canterbury, the days of bumping about in the base of a cart followed by silk cushions and mackerel in mint sauce are real. And what Alwys said is real.

  “Tell me,” says Gytha, in her worn, husky voice that will brook no nonsense. She reaches across the frame for Margaret’s hands, and they sit in silence for a little while, their interlinked fingers suspended in the space which tomorrow will once again be crowded with Odo’s stories. The wind rattles the shutters and flings raindrops hissing onto the hearth. This is her chance, this lull before the embroidery’s clamour begins again.

  “Alwys is right. I am wanting,” she starts.

  She tells Gytha everything. How her brother, her favourite brother, lies in the infirmary at Christ Church, his mind in torment, his soul a battleground for good and evil, his body abused and neglected, and what has she done to help him? Nothing. She has carried on stitching her trees and shorelines as if nothing had changed, as if he were indeed dead. She will as surely burn in hell as Tom with his blasphemies if she does not try to help him. She must see him again, and soon, before he is fully recovered and ready to leave Christ Church. But how? How long does Sister Jean intend to keep them here? Even if Sister Jean would let her go, how could she find her way back to Canterbury alone? What Gytha said all those years ago is as true as it ever was. The women are not free.

  Now Gytha says, squeezing her hands, “Tell her. Tell her the truth. She’ll be happy for you. Consider how she is with Lord Odo. She knows what can lie between a brother and sister.”

  “But what if she told the king he was still alive?” She has convinced herself completely that Tom had played some role so vital for King Harold that his survival must be kept secret from the Normans at all costs.

  “The king?” laughs Gytha. “I do not think the king would worry one way or the other.”

  “No,” says Margaret in a small voice. It is as though the restless night has been playing tricks with her all this time, transforming tables into dragons or hanging cloaks into ghosts, and Tom into a looming presence of such massive importance she could not see to the edges of it. Now Gytha has lit a lamp, a magic circle of light on whose edges the storm snaps and snarls, and there he is, just Tom, with his laughing eyes and his hair like plaited fire.

  Suddenly she hears her father speaking. She and Harry and Aelfred had been caught, during the Lenten fast, stealing preserved medlars from the store cupboard where their stepmother and Hawise, their servant, were stocking food for Easter. The boys had been given a beating and sent to bed supperless, but in Margaret’s case, her father had succumbed as usual to the irrefutable logic of the twins; if he punished one, he punished the other, and Alwys had been nowhere near the stolen fruit. Very well, if Margaret would own up, he compromised, she would escape the rod and be permitted a small glass of buttermilk before bed. If all else fails, he had said to her, tell the truth. Gytha is right. She will tell Sister Jean about Tom. Good news is made better by sharing. She gives Gytha a weak smile, rapidly followed by a yawn.

  “Go to sleep, now,” says Gytha. “I’ll come with you to talk to Sister Jean if you like. She should be in a good humour tomorrow after a night’s sleep on Lord Odo’s featherbed.”

  The wind and rain have begun to die down, and Gytha herself does not return to her pallet but, pulling her cloak close and slipping her feet into her shoes, goes outside to inspect what damage there may have been. She is tired, but her mind races, scrabbling like a hungry rat at half buried scraps of thoughts. She hopes the cold, and the featureless vastness of the cloudy night sky, will act as a balm upon the anger Margaret’s story has roused in her.

  All these women, their lives, their families, small hopes and ordinary aspirations, wrecked in one way or another by the Normans. But that is not at the root of her anger; at its root is confusion, because she believes Sister Jean is also damaged, in some way she cannot fathom; and the queen, who, they say, loves her husband but is compelled by him to spend most of her time alone, in Normandy, mediating between him and their sons; and the little Countess of Mortain with her cheekbones like slivers of glass, her vomit sticks, and the way the English cold makes her shiver like a whipped dog. And what of herself, stepping clear of the wreckage on the arm of the man some say is the worst Norman of them all, the architect of the Bastard’s ambition, the power behind his throne?

  The only man who has ever roused her to passion.

  “Mistress Gytha.” Fulk appears in front of her. He has a dishevelled, apprehensive expression on his face and a shrivelled, silent piglet tucked into his jerkin.

  “What is it, Fulk? Have we had a lot of damage? No one is injured, I hope?”

  “No, madam. It’s just that…I’m sorry, madam, what with having to move all the furniture earlier and then Marigold farrowing…” Glancing down at the piglet, he adds, “Runt. Might be able to revive it.”

  Gytha smiles. The revival of runts is becoming something of a competitive sport between Fulk and Odo. Odo has had great success with a piglet, now two or three weeks old and named Melusine, which seems to believe Juno is its mother. “And has it got a name yet?” she asks. “What did you forget?”

  “A message, ma’am, from Abbess Biota at Saint Eufrosyna’s. She asked if you would wait on her tomorrow…today. After Terce.”

  “Well. And I thought her holiness was content to accept our charity as long as she never had to contemplate us in our sinful flesh.”

  “The piglet, ma’am, I’d best get it indoors.”

  “Goodnight, Fulk.”

  “Goodnight, madam.”

  Clouds roll back from the smiling face of the moon, revealing a litter of broken branches among the cart ruts in the yard, and an empty chicken coop rocking gently on its side in the remnants of the gale. She sets the coop to rights then stands for a moment, smiling back, letting the tension drain from the muscles in her back. Then, realising her feet are soaked, picks her way through puddles back to the house. The men are right to cosset the piglets; they seem to have some healing power.

  ***

  “You may ask,” replies Sister Jean cautiously next morning, when Margaret approaches her, saying she has a request to put to her. Sister Jean is supervising the restoration of the embroidery panels to their frames, checking that none has been damaged on the journey, that they are stretched at the correct tension and display the right points in the narrative. Alwys is busy sorting needles; Freya and the women not engaged at the frames are winding and hanging wool. Gytha is nowhere to be seen, but now Margaret has made up her mind; she needs only the recollection of Tom’s blank eyes and suppurating wounds to give her the courage to proceed.

  “I wondered how long we might be staying here, Sister?”

  “We’ve hardly arrived,
girl. I don’t intend returning until I’m sure it’s safe to do so.”

  “Yes, but how long will that be?” Margaret persists.

  Sister Jean gives her a searching look. “What’s your hurry? Surely you are happy to see Gytha?”

  “Of course I am, Sister, it’s just that…it’s Brother Thorold’s patient. I would like to visit him again.”

  Ice water trickles in Agatha’s veins. “He will either have recovered or died by the time we leave here. You should put him out of your mind.”

  “But Brother Thorold told me he would keep him by until he was back in his own mind. That might take some time, I expect.”

  Scarcely able to bring herself to look at Margaret’s hopeful, childlike expression, Agatha asks, “What is this man to you?”

  As Margaret tells her, she feels a tingling in her feet the way she does when she hears a good dance tune. Her brother. Her brother. Only her brother. The phrase has the rhythm of a jig.

  “Of course you must go,” she says, “as soon as we return.”

  “Could I not go back straight away? Just in case?”

  “I’m afraid not.” She is kind, but emphatic. “I have no one to accompany you and no one to take your place if you go. But if Brother Thorold says he will keep your brother, then you may rely upon it that he will.” Patting Margaret’s freckled hands, feeling the ridges of bone beneath her skin, she adds, “Trust in God, Meg, He is merciful.”

  “If you say so, Sister.” Glancing down at the frame closest to her, she recognizes Emma’s hand in the face of King Edward on his deathbed, all haggard concentration, his bed hangings like furled sails, waiting to catch the wind for Valhalla. Around him are arrayed a number of unfinished figures, and at the foot of the bed his weeping queen, dabbing her eyes on a fold of her headcloth. Though what she is weeping for, thinks Margaret, Heaven only knows, for he had, they say, never touched her. How can you feel the loss of what you have never had?