by Sarah Bower
“My daughter was called Aelfgytha, sir.”
“Then I will not forget it. Pray for me too, Aelfgytha’s mother.”
Witchcraft
Our Lady of Sorrows 1072
Dried peas again.” Margaret pushes the yellow, glutinous mass around her plate with a small piece of bread. “As if taking our land wasn’t bad enough, they have to grow peas on it.” She still surprises herself by talking this way, although the others seem to have become used to it. It is almost as though she has grown to fill the space left by Gytha’s departure, the way everything in nature shapes itself to the place God has allotted it. She wonders, with an apprehensive tightening in her stomach, what will happen now that Gytha has come back.
Margaret has not seen her yet, at least, not to speak to, though she saw the earl’s party arrive from the workshop windows, and Gytha, elegantly dressed in a plum-coloured gown with gold embroidery, leaning heavily on Odo’s arm as they made their way toward the inner court and the private apartments. She never so much as glanced in the direction of the atelier. No one has seen them since, and there have been rumours that Gytha is under some kind of house arrest, as she was, apparently, in Normandy. Margaret is somehow afraid it all relates back to the garden at Winterbourne, and the plan Gytha hatched to help her get away to look for Tom; everything has been so hazy since then, like fighting her way through lines of wet sheets hung out to dry, the clear view glimpsed then snatched away by heavy slaps of linen.
“They say she was deceiving him all along, getting close then plotting against him,” said one of the Saint Augustine’s women as they peered down from the great windows.
“Nonsense,” replied Judith. “He’s just doing what great men do when they tire of mistresses who know too much about them.”
“ ‘And the kings of the earth who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her shall bewail her and lament for her when they shall see the smoke of her burning,’ ” chanted Alwys, drawing a sharp look from Sister Jean as she summoned them back to their frames. Sister Jean did not hear what Margaret heard, Judith whispering to Alwys,
“The Whore of Babylon. Good girl. Quite right.”
Looking at the peas, pus coloured and lumpy, suddenly makes Margaret feel sick. She pushes her bowl away.
“That girl’s looking peaky,” comments Hamo, glancing down the hall. “Are you sure all is well in your workshop, Sister? There’s a lot of sickness about.”
Agatha has been much occupied with sick visiting in recent weeks, though there has been little she can do to help those suffering from bad air, brackish water, and failing crops, and nothing she can say in response to the mumbled imprecations against Odo and his woman.
The hall is gloomy, lights being kept to a minimum because of the risk of fire. Agatha envies Hamo his eyesight, though she is relieved to be spared too clear a picture of the women seated below the empty hearth. The atmosphere in the atelier has become scarcely bearable. In the early days, there was grief and anger, but they laughed more as well. All of them, not just Agatha, were infected by the excitement of the project, its novelty, its enormous scale and ambition. Perhaps it was because, even if as individuals they did not grasp the overall plan and purpose of the work, they knew that Sister Jean did. Sister Jean gave them all a sense that they were making history, that they were important in the new Norman scheme of things, more than heads to be counted in Lord Odo’s assessment of his holdings, more than pawns in whatever game Harold of Wessex and William of Normandy had played with the English crown.
But four years have passed. The miraculous windows are dusty; the cat has died, entangled in the spokes of a cartwheel; the linen is grimy and overworked; and the conquest of England, the history of which they fancied themselves a part, is all but finished. Typical of Margaret to discover resistance just as everybody else has given it up. And that is not all Margaret has discovered since she was brought back from Dover. Discovered, Agatha says to herself, how appropriate. There is Guerin, of course, and Gird, the widowed baker, and who knows how many more in this castle full of soldiers. She has heard the whispered jokes about bed and bawd, and what’s sauce for the goose.
“We are all well, God be thanked,” she replies to Hamo’s enquiry, “but the heat is oppressive. It does tend to sap the appetite.” At high table, the peas have been leavened by the addition of a large eel, but the flesh is dry and chalky. Probably it would have been thrown back if the need were not so pressing, and Agatha, chiding herself for her ingratitude for God’s bounty, wonders if everyone might not be better off if it had been. If it does not call down more bad luck upon them, it may well poison them.
“All the same, we can’t afford to waste food. She’ll live to regret it, a bonny girl like that one.”
Bonny once, perhaps, but now she has begun to dress carelessly; she has pimples on her chin as though even her skin is reflecting some wantonness in her attitude. Her flesh is slack and blowsy, arrayed about her big bones like an ill-fitting gown imperfectly pressed. The girl is a slut; glancing sidelong at Hamo, she wonders if even he has been dipping his wick in that particular cresset of oil. And who is to blame him for taking what is offered? After all, he would merely be following his overlord’s example.
***
Odo is solicitous, but preoccupied. He has not told her what the priest said about Lanfranc’s directions to his clergy on preaching the causes of the drought, or worse still, the cure implied in those causes. No point in upsetting her further with such obvious nonsense, but he is rattled by it in spite of himself. He will not rest easy until he knows what he is up against, whether Lanfranc has lost his wits or has launched a serious campaign against Gytha.
“Rub my back for me,” she pleads. “I am stiff as a corpse from my fall.”
“I thought I might try and get to see Lanfranc this evening. You don’t mind, do you?”
Yes, yes, I mind. Today I have been twice accused of witchcraft and nearly killed falling from my horse for you. “No, but I think you’re being hasty. You haven’t slept for nearly two days. Even your powers of persuasion must be at a low ebb by now. Go in the morning.”
Contemplating her face, pinched with anxiety, her eyes huge with pleas she will not utter because she doesn’t want him to know how afraid she is, he yields to her advice. Though he does not expect to sleep; he is apprehensive himself, if not afraid. He does rub her back, and her round buttocks, and the arches of her feet whose sinews make him think of the roof vaults of his cathedral, slender and strong. He kisses a bruise emerging like a stain on the creamy skin of her thigh and makes love to her with great tenderness, but a distraction which makes her certain he is hiding something from her.
She lies beside him pretending to sleep, while he sits with his long legs stretched out on top of the white fur coverlet, ankles crossed in a parody of relaxation, turned a little away from her toward the light of the cresset on his night stand, pretending to re-read Ealdred’s deposition. Listening to the too perfect regularity of her breathing, he knows she is awake. When she steals a glance at him under her lashes, she sees he is not looking at the parchment in his hand but into the dark beyond the tallowlight, his eyes red with the reflection of whatever he sees there.
Eventually she puts a hand out from under the covers and touches his arm lightly.
“Come to bed, Odo. It’ll all look better in the morning, whatever it is.”
Giving her a wan smile and a nod, he stands, placing the deposition on the nightstand and shrugging off his fur-lined gown. The deep, simple joy of watching the gown slip away from his fair skin, the play of muscle and bone in the smoky light as he unties the bed hangings before climbing into bed beside her, consoles her like drinking mulled wine on a winter day. Her love sparkles in her fingers and the tips of her toes. With a contented sigh she surrenders to the curve of his body around hers, the damp heat of his breath on the back of her neck, the perfect seclusion of the world bounded by the bed curtains.
He remembers the
first time he lay with her this way, her small frame curled inside his like the sweet kernel of a nut, and how she had been talking about Aristophanes and his theory of wholes. That’s it, says a voice which may be inside him or may be the voice of God, the power of the perfect whole. Whoever, or whatever, is trying to prise them apart cannot succeed; they are fused together by love, tempered and shaped by it into a single, indissoluble being. Lanfranc’s hints at witchcraft and divine retribution are powerless against them as long as they are together. Besides, if the people have been so easily swayed by words, how much more easily can he persuade them by deeds, by importing grain to feed them and engaging dowsers to find them water? The bishoprics and Brother Ealdred’s intriguing revelations, those are what set him on this course, and he will not be deflected.
***
Lanfranc, approached by one of the abbey servants as he makes his way from chapter to Terce the following morning, knows before the man opens his mouth that he has come to tell him the Earl of Kent is here in person and is asking for an audience. The only surprise is that he did not come last night, although he will admit to having been caught off-guard by the abruptness of Odo’s departure from Normandy. He is as certain as he can be that no word could have reached him about the drought, and positive that, had he received reports of sermons being preached against Gytha, he would not have brought her to Canterbury but would have kept her out of harm’s way in some more peripheral corner of his empire.
The man looks bewitched, he thinks, as Odo is shown into his office, or at least like a man in whom the humours are catastrophically out of balance. A fire burns in his eyes which Lanfranc has not seen since the meetings in Rouen at which the conquest was planned. His embrace, as they exchange the kiss of peace, is brief and wary; even Odo’s skin feels as hot and dry as the parched fields beyond the city walls where the corn lies stunted and shrivelled, taunting the hungry. Yet his smile is as it always is, broad, ironic, self-deprecating as only the smile of a supremely confident man can be, and his grip on Lanfranc’s shoulders is firm, perhaps a little too firm. And when he opens his mouth, what he says is mundane enough.
“I’ve come to set your mind at rest about some lost property.”
***
Gytha wakes to find him gone. Closeted with Lord Hamo for a good hour before Terce, explains the serving girl who brings her breakfast, complete with flowers, and now departed for Christ Church. Drawing back the bed curtains, Gytha looks out of the window. The sun, whose heat here seems malevolent, is already high, approaching its late summer zenith she estimates, squinting up into the dense blue of the sky. He must return soon. Dismissing the girl, she settles back among the pillows to wait. She nibbles at the white rolls, picks at the preserved damsons and almonds toasted with honey, leaves the wine because there is insufficient water in it for breakfast. She is not very hungry, but her meal helps to pass a little time while she plans how else to occupy herself.
Sext is rung and still he does not return. She rises and dresses herself, deciding against summoning Countess Marie’s maid, who has been lent to her until Freya arrives, because, without assistance, she can spin out the process for as long as she wishes. Having left Normandy so precipitately, she has only the gown she travelled in. She brushes it carefully, with an ebony brush inlaid with mother-of-pearl, then spits on her shoes and rubs them with a corner of the bedsheet. She arranges her hair in a fantastic elaboration of twists and plaits, then takes it all down again because, she thinks, it looks more like a fancy loaf than hair. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she notices a small tear in her skirt, a result, no doubt, of being thrown from her horse yesterday.
And realises there are no sewing materials in Odo’s apartments. She will have to find the maid and have her bring some up. Very well. She leaves the bedroom and crosses the parlour to the door giving onto the head of the stairs, and stops with her hand on the latch. She cannot do it, cannot go out into the household, knowing what is being said, knowing what they think of her. She should have stayed in Normandy, come back with Freya as any sensible woman would. Any decent woman.
She is being stupid. She has Odo’s protection; whatever they are thinking, they will not dare say it to her face. But they did yesterday, the starving, the grief stricken, the ones whom he could not protect. Here, though, in the castle, it is different. No one is starving here, and everyone knows her. They will not accuse her of bewitching him. But perhaps she has. I believe God made me to love you, he told her. Perhaps even he believes himself to have been bewitched, and that is why he has become so cool. She stares at her hand on the latch, her left hand. She snatches it back as though the latch has burned her. The tear will have to wait; it doesn’t matter, no one is going to see her.
***
This is the place to begin, with Brother Ealdred and his revelations, catch the old man off-balance and only then make mention of the sermons against Gytha.
“And I wonder what I can have lost that has come to you?” asks Lanfranc, his tone warmed by relief.
Odo snaps his fingers at the clerk he has brought with him. The clerk steps forward and hands his master a document. “A few days ago,” says Odo, “I received a visit from a Brother Ealdred of Malden.”
Lanfranc starts tugging at his beard.
“It’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” Odo goes on pleasantly. “What do we do with troublemakers? Get them out of the way? Or keep them close.”
“Brother Ealdred was at Worcester on my proper business.”
“If you cast your eye over this,” Odo puts down the document on Lanfranc’s desk, smoothing it out over the grey hairs scattered there by the old man’s nervous tugging, “I think you’ll find he wasn’t. He was at least premature in pricing up Worcester’s library on your behalf.”
The silence tightens between them as Lanfranc reads. “You must give me time to consider my reply to this, Odo. You understand I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, of it. Are you sure it’s genuine?”
Odo shrugs. “Why should it not be? Ealdred’s motives seem plausible enough to me. He is a man of strong convictions.”
“Oh yes,” says Lanfranc ruefully. “May I keep this?” He waves the parchment at Odo.
“Be my guest. It is a copy, of course, but exact in every particular, save Brother Ealdred’s hand, which is uniquely fine, I think.”
“Uniquely, it seems.”
“I have written to His Holiness, of course.”
“Of course.” Oh, of course. “I will write to him myself immediately, to remind him of what other authority exists for Canterbury’s claims, Bede and so forth.”
“I also referred His Holiness to the transcripts of witness testimony in Cardinal Hubert’s possession, though I do not think it was conclusive on either side, do you?”
“Perhaps not so far as you heard it. I imagine I do not have to remind you that you left Winchester before the council ended.”
“I have since seen all the papers.”
“And signed the agreement.”
“Hardly binding if a major part of its legal foundation turns out to be fraudulent.”
“I will speak to you again on this matter in a week, Odo.”
“Take as long as you like, Archbishop. But a word of warning. In case you thought to take comfort from the fact that Thomas can do little from as far afield as York, be sure I already have troops on the borders of all three dioceses. I have only to tighten the noose a little and my ‘hangmen’ are already on their way.”
“A week,” repeats Lanfranc, in a tone designed to bring an end to their interview, but Odo seems to have other ideas. Drawing up a stool, he sits down opposite Lanfranc.
“You may go,” he says to his clerk. “Wait for me outside. Well, Lanfranc,” he continues once the clerk has gone, “whatever have you been up to in my absence to bring down the wrath of God on us so with this drought?” Acutely aware, although he cannot see it, of the squat outline of the new cathedral rising confidently beyond the cloisters, he adds, “Is it
what Saint Anthony condemns as the lust of building, do you suppose?”
“Not my lust, brother.” Lanfranc watches him for his response, his black eyes beady as a magpie’s when it has some glittery thing in sight.
“Who can know the mind of God? I simply suggest it as a possibility, an example I might use in my own preaching. The shepherd who became so absorbed in building the finest fold ever seen that his back was turned when the wolf came and took his sheep. Rather fine, don’t you think?”
“I have done what I could.”
“You have done nothing,” Odo shouts, rising from the stool and slamming his hands down flat on the desk. “Absolutely nothing. How many lives do you think you have sacrificed just to give my mistress a bad name? Hamo says you have blocked him at every turn. You may believe I am destined for hell, Lanfranc, but I’ll wager you’ll be there to greet me.”
“My concern is all for the good of your soul, Odo. Your welfare is of particular interest to the king, your brother, and therefore to me.”
William. Suddenly he finds the thought of William’s solicitude cold comfort. Turning from the thought of it, he takes a deep, calming breath and smoothes the frown from his face. “I’m arranging to have grain brought in from my estates elsewhere, Normandy if necessary, and I’m lifting the hunting restrictions till Saint Andrew’s day. My verderer is overseeing the cutting of firebreaks round the town, and by this time tomorrow I’ll have guards on the wells and dowsers out all over the county hunting for underground water courses. Seeing as a rule it hardly ever stops raining here, there must be whole seas under our feet. I’ll be the apple of their eye again in no time, you’ll see.” He pauses, then adds as if it is an afterthought, “Extraordinary how I knew nothing of all this until I returned to England.” He gives a light, chilly laugh which does not fool Lanfranc for a moment. “I’m obviously not paying my spies well enough. Tell me, what is the going rate now? Clearly it has risen since my departure.”
