Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  “The Archbishop’s English may be wanting. Between you and me his French leaves something to be desired as well, but being Italian, he is a great Latinist. Have you considered that he may already know what you did and has chosen to disregard it?”

  “It is possible, I suppose, though unlikely, I think. I am a scribe. I copy manuscripts for our library. God has granted me great skill in calligraphy. The Archbishop is a fine writer, in the intellectual sense, but he is no calligrapher.”

  “Also, he is an honest man, a scrupulously honest man.” No, there could be no doubting Lanfranc’s sincere belief in Canterbury’s right to the three bishoprics and the other disputed properties; he would be incapable of supporting what he knew to be a lie with such conviction.

  “Well, Ealdred. And you are prepared to give evidence before a council of your trickery?”

  “I have brought a written deposition with me, Your Reverence.” Ealdred withdrew a folded parchment from his satchel and handed it to Odo, who scanned it briefly, then placed it on a low table beside his chair.

  “Good, although you may still be required to give evidence in person.”

  “I had hoped for your protection, Your Reverence.”

  “The only way I could protect you, Ealdred, would be if I punished you myself for your transgression. I cannot give anyone grounds to believe that I connived in your crime.”

  “I understand that, Your Reverence, but I do not think I can return to Christ Church.”

  “Very well. You know I could have your eyes put out for this?”

  Ealdred swallowed hard.

  “But you have done me a service, so I shall be lenient. Instead, you will lose only your right hand, the instrument of your sin, as Saint Matthew tells us, and then I will arrange for you to be taken into the community of Saint Vigor outside Bayeux, where you will be cared for and suitable work found for you.”

  “But Your Reverence,” said Ealdred, sounding ashamed, “I am left-handed.”

  “Ealdred, Ealdred.” Odo stood up and clapped his hands on Ealdred’s narrow shoulders, feeling the young monk flinch at his touch. Had Ealdred dared to look, he would have seen that Odo was grinning broadly. “Your honesty does you great credit. Besides, I have a special affection for left-handed people. You may go with my blessing. Take my greeting to Abbot Robert at Saint Vigor and ask him, has he had any more thoughts about the Queen of Sheba’s legs.”

  “Your Reverence?”

  “He will know what I mean. Now, get out of my sight before I change my mind.”

  ***

  Gytha does not wait for the household at Conteville to be packed up ready for the return to England, but goes immediately, with Odo and a small military escort headed by Fulk. Having, as she explains it to herself, found him at last, she cannot bear to be parted from him, even for a few days. What if he were to meet with some accident on the road or be shipwrecked? He could be hurt, or killed, and she would not know, would not be there to nurse him or say good-bye, or accompany him into the afterlife. As he has become so precious to her, he has also come to seem endangered, the earthly space he occupies precarious and rare.

  There is a dreamlike quality to the progress of their journey, in the way in which nothing impedes them. Great men such as Odo can cut swathes through the world like Moses cleaving the Red Sea. Changes of horses appear as if by magic. A ship is found which can carry them to Rochester within an hour of their arrival in Bayeux, catching the evening tide which might have timed itself expressly for the bishop’s convenience, and the wind, though it carries a cold breath of autumn, is brisk and southwesterly, blowing straight onto the Kent coast.

  The Devil, as always, is in the detail. The ship, a cog carrying Flemish wool and wine from Burgundy, and a white bull tethered in the hull, is shallow-keeled and overloaded, so despite the tail wind, their progress is slow and accompanied by a yaw sickening even to Gytha. She dozes fitfully, in a palpable nightmare of seaspray gluing her clothes to her chilled and aching limbs, the feeling that even her stomach, her veins, and her head are full of salt water, sloshing and swaying around her body. The mournful lowing of the bull is like a bass note to the delirious music in her head, and the smell of its shit is everywhere.

  When she opens her eyes it is to the baleful, yellow gaze of a remote, three quarter moon and Odo, incessantly, irritatingly energetic, oblivious to seasickness as he dictates letters to a scribe who shields his tablet with his cloak, or rehearses the arguments he is going to put to Lanfranc and considers from which garrisons he can most efficiently move troops into the disputed areas to back them up, or plans uses for the land and income which will be restored to him as a result of Brother Ealdred’s conscience.

  They make landfall around dawn. Gytha sits her horse in an exhausted stupor while Odo dispatches messengers to Thomas of York, and the bishops of Worcester, Lichfield, and Dorchester, and to the castellan at Rochester Castle explaining his haste to set out for Canterbury. In the cold, clear morning she dreams of soft mattresses and the enveloping warmth of her lover’s arms. One of the soldiers brings her a mug of small beer and some rye bread.

  “Has my lord breakfasted?” she asks, staring at the food and drink as though she is not quite sure what they are for.

  “He tends to forget such matters when this mood is on him,” the man replies, not unkindly, though Gytha hears his words as a reproach. You don’t know him, the soldier seems to say, not as we do, in this man’s world of action and politicking.

  “I am not hungry.”

  “He won’t stop again before Canterbury.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  The soldier shrugs and, grumbling under his breath, takes the food away. Gytha looks up the beach to where Odo stands at the center of a flurry of activity, scribes squatting in the wet sand with their tablets balanced on their knees, messengers already mounted, their horses dancing and flicking their ears nervously after the confinement of the sea crossing. He himself is uncharacteristically still, reading something, his attention concentrated regardless of all that is going on around him.

  She looks away, thoroughly awake again now, at the men unloading the ship, rolling barrels up the beach under the watchful eye of the harbour master and the white bull, at a small shoal of fishing boats putting out into a sea like a sheet of pale yellow silk. The wind has dropped, and the sun just below the horizon floods the cloudless sky with the same luminous primrose. A fine day, thank God, her clothes will soon be dry and her bones warmed. She slips her feet out of her stirrups and flexes them, trying to get their circulation going.

  “Witch!”

  So close she feels, rather than hears, the accusation, how the shout makes the air vibrate seconds before her startled horse rears, staggers backward and loses its balance as its hind legs crash into a stack of barrels. She is thrown clear and lands, winded but unharmed, on her back on the beach. As she lies trying to catch her breath she sees, out of the corner of her eye, a shadow, all bony, etiolated limbs, a dark skeleton, flit away up the beach and disappear among the alleys between the warehouses lining the shore.

  Then Odo is kneeling beside her, cradling her head in his arm.

  “Deep, steady breaths, that’s it. Does it hurt when you breathe? Did you hit your head?”

  “The mare is done for,” says another voice. “Must’ve broken its leg when it fell.” And she becomes aware of an unearthly screaming and the sun breasting the horizon, its beams seeming to fracture against her eyeballs, then silence, blue darkness, a sighing sleep.

  “She’s fainted. Fulk, stay with her. I’ll see to the horse myself.”

  He hates this, but he feels responsible for the little mare; he broke her in himself for Gytha; it is as though he is her godfather. She is lying where she fell, on her side, wine from the shattered barrel spreading a purple stain out from under her flank. She lifts her head as Odo kneels beside her, but the effort forces a groan from her which goes right through him. He wonders if, as well as the broken leg, the splintered t
imber has pierced her body somewhere. All the time, as he removes his short cape and blindfolds the horse with it, as he draws his dagger and strokes the animal’s neck to find the vein, he tells her what a good, brave, wonderful horse she is. He thanks her for not falling on Gytha and tells her how much God loves her for sparing her mistress, and what a fool he is to be talking this way. He makes the cut quickly, with certainty, and holds the mare’s head in his lap until her legs stop twitching and her blood has flowed to join the wine soaking into the dull gold sand.

  His men watch him silently as he goes down to the shore, washes his hands in the lazy tongues of water, then addresses the harbour master.

  “Can you take care of it?” he asks. “I am anxious to get on my way.”

  “My lord.”

  “Good.” Odo fishes in the purse he carries attached to his belt and offers the harbour master a gold coin which, to his surprise, the man declines.

  “With respect, my lord, the horse itself will be more use to us here than your gold. We’ve had no rain since heaven knows when and the harvest has failed. People have very little to eat.”

  “What?”

  “I think you have been abroad for some time, my lord.”

  That should make no difference. Why has he heard nothing of this until now? He rubs his hands over his face, trying to remember the last time he had any word from Hamo or any of his other lieutenants in Kent, but he cannot. Time spent with Gytha is a slow, endless river of bliss, the days flowing into weeks, into seasons. He might have received their despatches the day before yesterday or three months ago. “Do as you see fit with the horse,” he says, feeling suddenly weary and foolish.

  He is sceptical, to begin with, of Gytha’s account of the accident, thinking she must have imagined her accuser. She has gone a day and a night without sleep: it is more than a woman’s constitution can be expected to bear. It is his fault; he should have insisted she remain behind and travel later, with Osbern, Freya, and the rest. She accompanied him at her own insistence, she reminds him, and she is as sure as she can be that she has imagined nothing. What could possibly spark such an incident in her imagination? Many prelates keep mistresses, and none she can think of has ever been condemned as a witch. No, she is certain everything happened as she described, but doubtless the perpetrator was some lunatic or simpleton, harmless, deluded, probably mistaking her for someone else. They should think no more of it but make haste for Canterbury where she, for one, will be glad of a good night’s rest.

  As they ride on, however, Odo starts to believe her. Everywhere it is the same. The dust from the roads parches their lips and sticks in their throats, but the streams are dry, and the wells they stop at contain little more than brackish sludge. At one, he fancies he sees wolves, slinking like wraiths back among the trees bordering the road, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Slowing their pace as they pass through villages, they are greeted by sullen, lethargic people lounging in doorways or sitting listlessly on bare commons, men and women who should be harvesting at this time of year, children whose skin is grey and wrinkled from malnutrition, making them look like ancient midgets. They pass dead cattle by the roadside, hides draped stiffly over bones picked clean by carrion crows, and living cattle in a little better state, bags of bones with shrunken udders. In the orchards, the trees are shrouded with a grey, friable mould, the fruit rotted and wizened.

  In one village, only three or four miles from Canterbury, part of Odo’s personal fief, in which he is well known, their progress is halted by a funeral procession. They wait uncomfortably as the mourning party, which seems to consist of almost the entire population, crosses their path on its way to the church. No one takes any notice of them; they cannot conjure rain out of clear skies or bring the dead to life. The body bound in the white winding sheet is small, a child. Gytha averts her gaze and, in doing so, meets Odo’s, full of concern and something else, a hesitancy she reads as guilt. He reaches for her hand. A woman among the mourners, distracted by his movement as he leans from his saddle, stops and looks at them.

  “It’s her!” she shrieks, stooping to pick up a stone and hurling it in Gytha’s direction. Her arm is weak, and the stone falls harmlessly, several feet in front of Gytha’s horse, which is too tired from the journey to do more than stamp its feet a little. Within seconds, their escort has surrounded Odo and herself, swords drawn. The villagers whirl and break against the tight box of cavalrymen like a sea of dusty ghosts.

  “Whore!” says the woman who threw the stone, her mouth a bright, moist gash, an oasis in the desert of her face, and again, “Witch!”

  Odo orders his men to put up their swords and rides out in front of the escort.

  “Who is in charge here?”

  “Not you, I reckon, my lord,” comes a man’s voice from the crowd. There is a ripple of laughter, quickly silenced as Odo raises his riding whip and walks his horse forward.

  “Where is your priest?” He addresses the pall bearers, standing helplessly with their burden sagging between them, the winding sheet becoming smeared with dust. “For pity’s sake, men, carry the body into the church and fetch me your priest.”

  The priest is thrust forward through the crowd from his place beside the church door. Odo notes with distaste that he looks a lot less hungry than his parishioners, though the same dust as shrouds the rest of them clings to the hem of his somewhat grubby alb.

  Odo, without dismounting, proffers his ring to be kissed.

  “Explain to me the meaning of what I have just witnessed,” he says.

  “The woman is mad, Your Reverence, out of her head with grief. It is her child we have come to bury.”

  “But the child did not die of witchcraft, I think.”

  “No, Your Reverence, of a flux, from eating berries before they were ripe.”

  “Which she wouldn’t have been eating if we weren’t all starving,” interjects the mother.

  Odo ignores her. “And these people believe that the drought has come about through witchcraft, do they? Good God, man, what do you preach? ‘The Lord thy God is a jealous God.’ Beware you do not set up rivals to Him in determining the weather.”

  “I preach as instructed by my lord Archbishop, Your Reverence,” announces the priest in a clear voice.

  My lord Archbishop? So Lanfranc has directed his clergy to preach witchcraft against Gytha? Odo is unsure whether to laugh or despair. If he is so far out of his senses then retirement to Caen in favour of a more capable man cannot be long. But if he is not out of his mind, if he believes such a tactic can be of use to him, then Odo has overestimated his own strength and Gytha may be in real danger.

  Sidling closer to Odo’s horse, emboldened by his silence, the priest goes on in a more confidential, obsequious tone. “Your Reverence, the people are simple. They see your lordship acting against the ordinances of Holy Mother Church, and then their crops fail, and guided by their prayers, they make a simple connection…”

  The priest is abruptly silenced by Odo’s whip coming down with great force across his cheek. He looks at Odo in disbelief, putting a plump hand up to the blow, a gash of white through the pink flesh, rapidly assuming various shades of purple and red as the blood flows back into it. There is a gasp from the mourning party, a backward stepping and stumbling. Odo leans down close to the priest’s ear.

  “Listen to me,” he says quietly. “Mistress Aelfgytha is more to me than my life, and certainly more to me than yours, or any of your halfwit congregation. If you value your hide, you will never even think such things as you have implied to me, let alone say them. I am your lord after the king’s grace, and I will have you out on the road like a mendicant in the time it takes to match that stripe on your cheek with another if I ever, ever hear such talk from you again.”

  “But Canterbury is my bishop,” retorts the priest.

  “Aye, and you may repeat all I have said word for word in his ear, as I will make sure to tell him all you have told me, you fat bastard travesty of a ma
n of God.” He digs the point of his whip into the man’s paunch, up under his ribs. The priest chokes and splutters.

  “Fulk.”

  “My lord?”

  “Take a couple of men into the priest’s house. Whatever food and drink you find there, give to the people. Now, priest.” Odo removes his foot from his stirrup and gives the priest’s arse a sound boot. “Go and bury your dead. But first,” he continues, raising his voice as the priest stumbles away, “let the mother come forward.”

  She emerges from the crowd and stands trembling in front of him, her head bowed almost as though she can already feel his whip across her shoulders.

  “Here,” he says gently, holding out a coin. “Take it. For Masses for your daughter’s soul.”

  The woman shakes her head. “We can’t eat your money, my lord.”

  “Woman, we must nourish the soul as well as the body. Would you deny your child the sustenance of prayer?”

  She looks up. She has hard, pale, implacable eyes. “I never denied her anything, my lord. Perhaps if I had she might still be alive.”

  Odo sighs and returns his money to his purse. “Very well. Tell me your daughter’s name, and I will have the Mass said for her myself, on this day, every year, by the brothers at Saint Augustine’s. And I promise you this, I will do everything in my power to alleviate the situation in which Kent finds itself. And you know that, saving the king’s grace, no one in this land has more power than I do.”