Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  ***

  When Lammas comes, the villagers celebrate with fire-leaping and the distribution of loaves made from the first barley, and the consumption of heroic quantities of liquor made from last year’s crop. Gytha pleads with him to join in, but he shakes his head, fiddling his amethyst ring around his finger, and confines himself to remarking that there will be a fine crop of babies presented for baptism come spring. The night is close and she cannot sleep, so wrapping herself in her dressing gown, she goes outside and stands looking across the moat at the shadows leaping up the bleached mud walls of the cottages, dancing to the relentless rhythm of drums and an eerie, high-pitched singing. The fire flares and sinks back in showers of sparks; laughter gusts then dies; voices surge into song and as suddenly fade away.

  Gytha’s heart drums in her chest, her bare feet tingling with remembered steps; she is dizzy with scents of cow parsley and wild garlic and hot earth. The goddess sends her a memory, of Lammas in the last year of King Edward’s reign, of watching Harold and his two younger brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine, leaping the fire, flashing white grins at the women, their long hair alive with lights of tawny and gold and redcurrant. It seems to her now that they were like the comet crossing the night sky, from the dark disgrace of Harold’s journey to Normandy to the dark, damp earth where the remains of all three now lie. A brief, sparkling trajectory of glamour. Not real. She turns her back on the celebrations and returns indoors.

  “Now harvest is over,” he mutters sleepily, turning to put his arms around her as she climbs back into bed, “I think we might plan a trip to Liege, to see John.”

  ***

  Fruit picking begins; in the kitchens, when she is not tending Fulk’s burnt feet, Freya supervises the serving women as they clean bottles and cut fine linen sieves for preserving; in the woods, the lovers feed each other blackberries and lick the rich, dark juices from one another’s lips. They bring home baskets of elderberries and sloes for wine-making, and in every barn the cider press is cleaned down, greased, and set up to await the bitter apples for which, each autumn, Norman farmers do battle with legions of wasps. It is not so different from home, remarks Gytha to Freya as they sit in the last of the afternoon sun, outside the kitchen house, stoning plums. Freya hands a plum to Thecla, who throws it for a passing wolfhound pup, and smiles.

  ***

  In the evenings, unless they have company, she and Odo often dine alone, in what used to be his mother’s solar, while the sun sets beyond the open window shutters, staining the moat silver rose. Gytha fishes the moat when she has the opportunity, sitting on the jetty, thinking of Agatha and her desperate swim. When darkness falls and the lamps have been lit, Odo attempts to teach her to play chess, or they sing part songs to Turold’s accompaniment. Odo is surprised by the quality of her voice, high and true, but fragile, as though it comes from some other source than her speaking voice, which is deep and slightly husky.

  On other evenings, she does her needlework, and he simply watches her, seeing in the angle of her head, the arc of her needle as she pulls it up through the fabric, the woman he first saw in the atelier at Canterbury, in the dark dress and white cap, mimicking Agatha’s monasticism. He is touched and amused that she darns his chausses and patches his shirts, although he does not wear the mended clothes; he gives them to Osbern and tells him to be discreet about where he distributes them. Their talk is domestic, inconsequential. They discuss the life of the estate, the forthcoming visit to John, for whom Gytha is embroidering a set of shirts, and their plans for Winterbourne when they return.

  ***

  Late one afternoon near the Feast of Saint Augustine, they emerge from a woodland ride into a broad water meadow. The sun is low, spilling apricot light across a narrow band of clear sky between the meadow and a mass of cloud the colour of Toledo steel. Rain has fallen, and the standing water in the meadow forms patches of luminous gold from which grass and wild flowers emerge as delicate silhouettes. They stop to admire the view and a family of grazing storks, rising and falling with great, slow flappings of wings and an occasional splash. With their narrow beaks and thin legs trailing, the birds look unfinished, skeletons only half fleshed out. Gytha laughs at their antics.

  “D’you know,” says Odo, “when I was little, my mother told me that new babies were left by storks in the well, ready for us to fish out. So whenever we knew she was expecting another child, I’d spend ages peering down the well to see if I could see it. Hoping it’d be a boy. As I could never see the babies, I started to believe they must be transparent, and only take on the colour of flesh when exposed to the air. Like those stones that are translucent under water but turn opaque when they’re dry.

  “Then I got to worrying about families who didn’t have their own well. If the babies were left in a communal well, how did they know which ones belonged to who? I expect she wished she’d told me the truth in the end; she must have got so fed up with my questions.”

  “Did she have a lot of children?”

  “The five of us living, and two others, two boys. One died at birth, but Richard I just remember. He came between Muriel and Mathilde. He died when he was about two. He fell into the kitchen fire.”

  She reaches for his hand, prising his fingers from the pommel of his saddle. “I was an only child. I had some cousins, boys, fishermen, but most of the time I used to talk to my doll, till I dropped her in the fire. She was straw, with her eyes and mouth stitched in wool and a blue dress. She burned so fast I couldn’t even think to put my hand in to pull her out. I can remember it so clearly, the way her mouth curled up and shrivelled, as if she was smiling, then crying, one after the other. It’s an odd sort of coincidence, isn’t it? Do you think it has any meaning?”

  “Gytha,” he says, ignoring her question, as the storks finish feeding and flap idly away into the setting sun whose fiery face is streaked with wisps of dark cloud, “please tell me about your children. Before we go to Liege. I do so want the visit to go well.”

  She looks at him for a long time without replying, moved by his pleading, his concern for his son, feeling as though she has never seen him properly before. As though, in all the time they have been together, her eyes have been out of focus, seeing double, seeing a blur. She studies his face, committing to her heart’s memory all the features she thought she knew but did not, his sanguine complexion, his wide mouth and short nose and curly hair which make her think of a Roman bust, the disconcerting softness of his eyes with their curling lashes. She finds herself wondering how much John resembles him by now.

  She notes the tiny, unconscious adjustments his body makes in response to the movements of his horse, and the fact that the nail on the little finger of the hand she is holding is broken. She considers the damaged bone in his left wrist, the way he attempts to disguise it by wearing bracelets, whose opulence usually only serves to draw closer attention to it. Today’s is silver, studded with great lozenges of polished amber. She disentangles her fingers from his. It has been so long since she spoke any of their names aloud, she is not sure her voice will be able to form the right sounds.

  “Matthew, Mark, Luke and Johanna,” she begins, “not very original. We didn’t have a lot of time to think of names. Mark was the most poorly. The midwife had to baptise him, though that was one good thing. I couldn’t see the others baptised because I hadn’t been churched.”

  Odo has never considered this before, the feelings of mothers when their infants are borne away for baptism. How had Adeliza felt, in the solitude made all the more absolute by the knowledge that, as her son was to receive his baptism during the Mass to give thanks for the city’s deliverance from the French, almost everyone in Bayeux would witness it except she herself?

  “He lived less than an hour,” Gytha continues. “He was so tiny. His skin and bones were so thin you could see his heart beating. Fluttering, like a little bird in his rib cage.

  “Johanna lived the longest. Four days. She had this determined look. I used to watch her while
she was feeding. She never blinked, hardly moved, except for those little jaws working away. I thought I was willing her to live, but afterwards, I wondered. You see, I was never…happy with Adam, the way I am with you. I couldn’t…in bed…it didn’t work. So I wonder if it was my fault they were all so weak. Johanna died very quietly. I woke up in the night to feed her and there she was, cold beside me, a little stiff bundle between me and Adam.” And how my breasts ached, and how quietly I wept for her, so as not to disturb my husband.

  Odo, who had deliberately looked away while she was speaking, as he would when hearing confession, turns back to her. She is staring at her hands, fiddling with the reins of her horse. Her head is uncovered, but her hair, fastened in two loose braids, shields her face from him. He looks for evidence that she is weeping, for sniffs or shaking shoulders, and finds none. He wishes she were crying, then he would know what to do.

  “But I loved them, Odo,” she says with sudden vehemence. “I do love them. I can still feel them. Here.” She lays a hand over her belly. “They kick me sometimes. And I’ve kept locks of their hair. They all had dark hair like mine. So I can stay in contact with them. I worry. I mean, how do they manage without me? Heaven must be such a busy place. So many souls. Who knows they’re special?”

  Odo dismounts. “Come here,” he says, lifting her from her saddle and folding her in his arms. He holds her for a long time, until the sun has dropped below a starless horizon and the water underfoot has soaked through their shoes. A fierce anguish grips him, yet he holds her tenderly, as though he is in danger of crushing her.

  Then he lifts her onto his own horse and rides home with her cradled in the crook of his arm, her head against his shoulder, her breath warm against his throat, the mare’s reins tied to his pommel. She does not cry; she is so still and quiet he thinks she may have fallen asleep. Though when they arrive back at Conteville she dismounts without assistance and stands, smiling up at him as he unties her horse. In answer to his anxious enquiry, she assures him she is perfectly well and will go, if he will excuse her, to dress for dinner.

  “You’ll need to hurry, madam,” says Freya, who is in the bedchamber laying out Gytha’s clothes. “You’re late back this evening. Had his lordship forgotten there are guests?”

  “Probably. Freya, I need your help.” At first she had felt simply relieved to have told him, anyone, about her children, wondering how she could have been so afraid to do it sooner. It is an ordinary story; all women lose children, as his mother had done, and hers, and no doubt Adeliza and the old nurse, and perhaps Freya. Think of Leofgeat, and the others who die. At least the winding sheet, neatly folded in her linen chest at the beginning of each pregnancy, had remained there, to do service for Adam, in the end. What arrogance had possessed her, that she imagined her experience to be any more painful than any other woman’s? Now she is almost delirious with joy. Her happiness fizzes and ferments inside her, she is drunk with it, with him, alight with the revelation that she loves him. She really loves him; whatever life brings, she is in it with him, for good or ill. “Quickly, before his lordship comes in from the stables.”

  He likes to see the horses bedded down for the night. Fulk complains of it endlessly. Does his lordship think him incompetent? He has been around horses all his life. Fulk prefers it when his lordship has less time on his hands to play the peasant. “What am I to do, madam?”

  “I want you to help me lift the mattress. I want to get rid of the knotted hairs.”

  “What’s happened? Has the charm not worked?”

  “As far as I know it has,” says Gytha, taking hold of the bottom corner of the mattress. “I’ve changed my mind, that’s all.”

  “About time.” Freya grasps the top corner and together they lift the mattress clear of the bed frame, though it is heavy and ungainly, flopping back down every time they attempt to wedge it on its side. Eventually, Gytha holds up her corner while Freya brushes her sleeve in wide arcs across the base of the bed, then Freya lifts her corner and Gytha sweeps, raising clouds of dust and feathers and knotted strands of black hair which float to the floor, unnoticed among the rushes and lavender sprigs.

  As they pummel the mattress back into the box frame and smooth the bed clothes, Freya remarks, “I have a tincture of rose petals, with a few other bits and pieces mixed in. Ask him to anoint you with it, breasts and women’s parts. It brings a most intense pleasure.”

  “What else is in it?”

  “A little laurel and galingale, cloves, nutmeg.”

  “It sounds more like something to eat.”

  “It sharpens the appetite, madam.” The women exchange conspiratorial smiles.

  “His lordship will be up to dress shortly.” Osbern, who makes no secret of his opinion that the living conditions at Conteville are not up to the standard he and Lord Odo are accustomed to, bustles into the room with a velvet surcoat draped over his arms and lays it on the bed. His hard eyes dart suspiciously between the laughing women.

  “You may leave us, Osbern, I will attend his lordship,” says Gytha, taking pains to make herself understood. Osbern tuts softly as he withdraws, followed by Freya.

  “I’ll bring you the tincture, madam.”

  “Thank you, Freya.”

  ***

  The master of the house comes late to table, but his mood is so charming and expansive, and his hospitality so generous, that he is quickly forgiven by his guests.

  ***

  Odo is out when the monk from Christ Church arrives, and Gytha spends a difficult hour with him, watching him sit, then stand and pace about, all the time giving her sidelong glances which make no attempt to hide his embarrassment or disapproval. Eventually she excuses herself and takes refuge in the kitchen with Freya and the children. Odo finds her there, sitting at the long table in the center of the room with Thecla in her lap. Thecla is pummelling small rounds of pastry with her fat fists; both of them are covered in flour, and Gytha has a smudge of some dark purple fruit juice on her cheek. The scene makes him laugh, but there is more to his good humour than delight in domestic harmony.

  “Freya,” he says, “I want you to pack for your mistress. We are returning to England as soon as we can find a ship. I want to set out for Bayeux before nightfall. You will all follow.”

  “What’s happened? What about our visit to John? Is it that monk? Did he bring news?” asks Gytha.

  “He most certainly did. Excellent news. But I’m afraid it means John will have to wait.”

  Odo has just seen the man on his way, unable to persuade him to accept any refreshment in that house, only by appealing to his compassion for God’s lesser creatures able to press a fresh mule upon him. Nor had it been easy to get the man to talk at first, though once he started, what he had to say came out in a torrent.

  “I cannot keep silent any longer, Your Reverence,” he finally began, standing before Odo in the small room adjoining the great hall to which men with private business to discuss are in the habit of withdrawing after dinner. His hands trembled and his right eye was afflicted with a tic, improbably resembling a conspiratorial wink. “I have come straight to you from Worcester where I was cataloguing the library for my lord Archbishop. I made up my mind and took ship from Gloucester.”

  “Sit, man, and tell me what led you to make such a journey.” Odo leaned back in his chair, arms folded, a mild, smiling expression on his face.

  “It is the Winchester Council, Your Reverence.” Looking about him for somewhere suitable to sit, the monk drew up a stool and perched on the edge of it, his knees pressed together like a girl’s, a slim leather satchel clutched in his lap.

  “Go on.”

  “The papal letters the Archbishop produced to support his claim to the three bishoprics. They were…they were forgeries, Your Reverence.”

  Odo’s smile intensified. “God bless my soul. And how do you know this, brother…?”

  “Ealdred, Your Reverence, Ealdred of Malden.”

  “Malden? That is near to
Colchester, is it not?”

  “It is, Your Reverence, though I was given to Christ Church as a small boy, in the year Archbishop Robert fled to Rome.”

  “Then you have seen many changes there. But we stray from the point, Brother Ealdred. You were telling me about these forged documents.”

  “Yes, Your Reverence. I forged them.”

  Odo laughed, slapping his thigh. “By heaven, that’s good. That’s very good. And did Archbishop Lanfranc know what you had done?”

  “No, Your Reverence, he would not have countenanced it, but I felt, in all humility, Your Reverence, that the dignity of my house was under threat and that…”

  “Naturally. I understand. Christ Church has been your home all your life. You are loyal, you love your community, your family of brothers. You did not wish to see it impoverished by some nouveau riche such as myself.”

  The shutters were closed and the room stuffy. Ealdred’s sweating face paled to the exact sheen of the underbelly of a trout, the watery white beneath the flash of silver as you pull it from a stream. “That’s not for me to say, Your Reverence,” he muttered.

  “There is no need. I have said it myself, more than once. But tell me, if your conscience troubled you, why not go to Archbishop Lanfranc and tell him what you had done? Why come to me?”

  “Because I do not like what the Archbishop is doing at Christ Church, Your Reverence. His reforms are too stringent. Many of the older members of the community are upset by them. He is trying to make us…uniform. In the scriptorium, for example, we are obliged to conform to Norman practice in calligraphy and illumination. We are losing our own ways. You, on the other hand, employ English embroiderers and are known to be a benefactor of Saint Augustine’s, where the old ways are allowed to continue. And I am told you can speak our vernacular. His Grace the Archbishop has no English to speak of. And besides, you are the wronged party. And also, such letters may well have existed before we lost all our records in the fire during the second Advent of King William’s reign.”