by Sarah Bower
“I don’t know what you mean.” Stealthily, Lanfranc draws his hands into his sleeves, slides his frail, lawyer’s wrists away from Odo’s broad hands.
Odo raises his hands and shows Lanfranc his palms in mock surrender. “Ah well, perhaps the messengers all met with accidents. The Channel is a cursed stretch of water even in the middle of summer, and the roads are not that safe, whatever my brother would have us believe. What’s done is done. I just wanted to be sure you knew that I know what has been done. I will leave you now. I have given you a great deal to think about.”
“One last question.”
Odo waits with his fingers on the latch.
“Brother Ealdred?”
“He is safe.”
***
Gytha used to be fascinated by these apartments, enthralled by Odo’s possessions in all their lavish eclecticism and opulence. The dragon’s lair, the cave of the robber baron. But now she knows he has entire houses like this, in Rouen and Caen, London and Rome, as well as his official residence in Bayeux. What is moonstone when you can look at the moon, or gold in comparison with the sun? She picks up books, but puts them down again unopened, put off by bindings of ivory and filigree and gilded leather studded with gems. Letters and pictures do not breathe nor silks serve any better to cover the body than woollens, and idleness passes the time more slowly than work.
Her gaze falls on the flowers left by the girl who brought her breakfast. Broom, dyer’s greenweed, goldenrod, and lady’s bedstraw. Every one yellow. She stares at them. Fleabane, and the daisy called goatsbeard. Yellow. For a moment it seems as though her heart stops beating and the blood stills in her veins. Yellow flowers to ward off witches, golden wands and haloes to protect against the powers of darkness. Is this the fate she decreed for herself when she threatened silly Trudy with the dark arts if she attempted to change Lady Edith’s gown? She picks up the vase, of blue, semi-opaque glass, and flings it and its contents into the empty fireplace. The glass shatters, and water seeps into the ashes, precious water, holy water. Better to go thirsty than leave a witch to flourish. Ash tarnishes the flower petals, only hedgerow flowers, humble and hardy enough to withstand drought, yet she would not touch them. Holy Mother of God protect her, she could not touch them. Cannot stay here where their tawdry eyes stare at her from the empty hearth.
She runs out of the parlour, slamming the door behind her so that people going about their business in the great hall glance up and see her running down the stairs from the private apartments, struggling with the latch on the wicket until someone, hearing the frenetic rattle, opens it from the outside. She flees the castle keep, slipping on the crumbling motte, down through the inner gate, past the guards who stand aside for her in amazement, across the outer ward to the atelier. Where else can she go? They know her in the atelier, that she has a sharp wit and a tongue to match, but she is not a witch. Sister Jean will help her.
Once inside the building, she heaves the door shut behind her and leans against it, heart pounding against her breastbone, breath rasping in her throat. She closes her eyes, then opens them again, letting them gradually adjust to the interior light after the glare outside. She becomes aware of Sister Jean’s drawings, their curled edges touched by dusty sunlight and lifting a little in the draught she has created as she came in.
She starts to walk slowly down the hall toward the dormitory, pausing occasionally to look at the drawings. So many memories. How many yards of grey and indigo wool looped and twined into rings of mail since the first time she saw these pictures, confused and troubled as to how the beautifully executed images could relate to the brutes she had witnessed, with their short cropped hair and their ugly language that made them sound as though they were being strangled, looting, burning, and raping her country?
This sad, supplicant woman, standing outside her burning house, holding a small boy by the hand. What has she to do with the smell of charred flesh or the burning sensation of a Norman prick rammed into a dry, shrinking cunt? Colonising the country with a whole generation of Norman bastards. And what can that possibly have to do with the tides of fire flooding her nights with Odo, melting them together until she no longer knows where he ends and she begins?
This man hiding in the vine, looking as though he has seen a vision of eternity nevertheless knows nothing of the mundane, messy, pain-ridden way he will get there. This comet, more like a toppled weathervane than the falling, feathered star whose awful loveliness set King Harold’s chaplain rifling through the Revelation of Saint John by its fractured light. And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood: and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. She shudders, acknowledging the truth there may be in signs.
“So, here you are.”
“Sister Jean.” Turning aside from the wall, Gytha makes a little curtsy which Agatha acknowledges with a bow of her head.
“I wondered when you might come to see us. I heard the door and then, silence.”
“I…was on my way up. I got distracted. Reminiscing.”
“I felt it was the first time I’d heard your own true voice, when you exclaimed over these. I felt it vindicated my decision to bring you here, though I always knew you’d cause me trouble.”
“Never as much as I intended, I assure you.”
“Then I must be thankful that my brother disarmed you.”
She acknowledges Agatha’s wordplay with a brief laugh.
“And now you’ve come to see how we’re getting on without you? How much we have sacrificed for my lord’s peace of mind?”
“The tapestry is his, Sister, so I suppose the sacrifice is his also.”
“Listen to you, calling it a tapestry. You haven’t been able to prevail upon him to give it its proper designation, then?”
“When he talks about it, he clearly has in his mind’s eye something quite other than the wool and linen that are its component parts. He makes a magical transformation.”
“And expects that we are doing the same. Do you think he’ll be disappointed?”
Gytha smiles, only realising as she does so how tense the muscles of her face have become in their effort to keep the mask of unconcern in place. “I know he won’t. How is it going? Are you close to finishing? Odo expects the roof to be over the cathedral nave before winter, and then the work will go much quicker.”
“Whenever I think the end is in sight there is a new development. Because life goes on, I suppose, and finds its way into the embroidery. Meg, for example…”
“Meg?”
“Have you not heard? I cannot believe my brother said nothing.”
“Nothing. Why? What has happened?”
Agatha tells her everything, from the discovery of Tom in the Christ Church infirmary to the discoveries since made by Guerin and the rest, in the guard posts on the wall, the woodstore behind the bakehouse, even, according to one rumour, the sacristy of the chapel with one of the sub-deacons.
“And all of it finding its way into the embroidery. Piles of dismembered corpses and…other bodies. When I tried to chide her about one particularly lewd image, she just stared at me and said, ‘It’s true, like Judith’s plough horse. How could I argue? How would I know?” she finishes with an uncharacteristically silly, sheepish laugh.
Gytha lays a hand on her arm. “When we were at Conteville, Odo told me…he showed me the room that used to overlook the brew house. This must be very hard for you.”
Agatha stares unseeing at the comet, willing her eyes to remain dry, her mouth working as though she is trying to choose between many possible, but inadequate, words.
“Gytha, will you talk to her? She always took notice of you.”
“If you think I can do any good, but there is something I must speak to you about first.”
Agatha looks at her in surprise. “Of course. Shall we go into my parlour?”
Agatha shows her into the room where, by the remorseless light of the afternoon sun pouring
through the window, she sees how pale Gytha looks. Her dark eyes shift restlessly around the familiar room. Her face has lost its characteristic hardness, which makes her both more beautiful but more troubling to look at.
“Are you truly glad in my brother’s company?”
“Now, yes. I have nothing to reproach him with. He treats me with every courtesy and generosity.”
“So I see.” Agatha takes in the richness of her dress, the garnets and pearls around her neck. “But you have a tear in your skirt.”
“I took a fall from my horse yesterday, and everything else is still on its way from Normandy. I hoped maybe you could find me a needle and thread.”
“I think that might be possible.” Agatha gives an ironic smile. Gytha, twisting her fingers together, seems unaware of her attempt at humour. “Was it a bad fall? Did you hurt yourself?” Agatha persists.
“No, but the horse…” She remembers recovering from her faint to see Odo, a splash of blood on his sleeve, cleaning his dagger on the maram grass bordering the beach, and bursts into tears. The poor horse, the poor, dumb horse. Agatha sits her down in a chair beside the empty hearth and stands in front of her, hands folded under her scapular, the novice mistress, all brisk compassion and common sense.
Gytha composes herself quickly. She sniffs. “Sister Jean, they’re calling me a witch. They say I’m responsible for the drought. That was why I fell, someone shouting at me and startling my horse. And there was another incident just before we arrived here, and then, this morning, the girl who brought my breakfast brought me a posy of yellow flowers.”
“Yellow flowers?”
“Yes. We believe yellow flowers ward off witches.”
“I see. I haven’t come across that belief before.”
“We don’t believe storks leave new babies at the bottom of wells, though,” adds Gytha with an attempt at a smile. The two women’s eyes meet in an exchange of understanding.
“Perhaps our mother told us that tale to comfort her daughters, but only the boys were taken in by it.”
“What am I to do, Sister? What if it’s true?”
“That you bewitched him? Of course it’s true.”
Gytha gives a little gasp, almost a sob, and starts for the door. To her utter chagrin and disbelief, Agatha merely laughs.
“As women are always bewitching men, and babies their mothers.” As Meg bewitched me. “In the convent from time to time we have had Sisters who fall into ecstasies. They have dreams, speak in tongues. They are bewitched by the love of Jesus. It seems to me that witchcraft has acquired the reputation it has because it is the means whereby we ensure that someone stronger than us will protect us. People have been turned against you by simple envy, Gytha. Because you were not born to the life you are living now, you show them the possibility of dreams or aspirations coming true. That’s what makes you dangerous, and if you are to remain with my brother, believe me, you must get used to it.”
“I couldn’t leave him. I love him.” There, she has said them, the simple words.
“I know you do. I have known since his name was first mentioned between us in Winchester. Some fate has been drawing you two together as surely as a needle draws thread since you were specks in your mothers’ wombs. I feel it.”
Gytha peers at her curiously; this is an aspect of Sister Jean she has not seen before, this aptitude for sentimental clairvoyance.
“Now dry your eyes and come and see how we’re getting on. We miss you, you know. No one laughs as much, and Aesop is gathering dust.”
“No, I couldn’t. What if they all think the same? I can’t face anyone. I wish we could have stayed at Conteville.”
Oh yes, amen to that, thinks Agatha. Forever, drawing and dancing, fishing and farming, hawks in the air, game in the forest, babies in wells, a world away from William and his ruinous ambition. Gytha looks out of the window. “I wonder if it will rain soon?”
“It must eventually. And in the meantime, will you stay walled up in your tower like Saint Barbara? Beware of looking as though you have something to hide, either of you.”
“Thank you, Sister.” Gytha stands and holds out her hand. Agatha, grasping it firmly in her own, dry and delicately bony, kisses Gytha’s cheek as though they are kin. “We are fallen beings, my dear, and we experiment with all kinds of methods of redemption, but love is the only one. It is worth the pain to achieve it. And remember, true love is not always recognised, even in the Church. Consider all the heretics and schismatics who lay claim to the truth.” And Odo, with his idiosyncratic theology? “I wonder if it exists at all outside the heart of God.”
“Who, being pure spirit, has no heart.”
“Then how does He love us?”
“With extreme difficulty sometimes, I should imagine.”
Only as she is crossing the outer court on her way back to the keep, head lowered to avoid the curious looks of the castle community, does she remember the tear in her skirt.
***
As soon as Odo has gone, leaving behind that perfume of his like a snickering, triumphant wraith, Lanfranc tries to put his thoughts in order; their meeting scratches at his conscience as though his conscience skulks inside him like a scrofulous beggar. He must remember his duty. His duty is to God and the king. He must concentrate on the good of Odo’s soul. Odo has spoken and acted throughout at the prompting of the Devil. Lucifer was once God’s favourite angel; he can perform righteous anger and steadfast love with infinite conviction. Lanfranc must pray.
Rising from his desk to go to the prie dieu in the adjoining bed chamber, his sleeve catches on a pile of papers, scattering them on the floor. As he stoops to pick them up, his gaze happens to focus on one of them. And immediately he knows it is not chance, but the hand of God which has directed his vision. The document contains his response to a question put to him some months ago by Odo, concerning his plans for the marriage of one Judith of Harbourne to a vassal of his, an older man with several sons looking, not for more heirs but for more land to share between the ones he has. Odo had been afraid, however, that an issue of consanguinity might arise through some shared cousins in the female line, and wanted a second opinion before sanctioning the match.
Their discussion comes back to him with perfect clarity, as though he is watching it happen again, at Winchester it had been, before Odo’s sudden departure precipitated everything which has happened since. The woman was one of his embroiderers, Odo had explained, the widow of a Saxon thegn with substantial holdings in Kent. She had no sons, but a couple of grandsons living in Denmark, and it would be necessary to scotch any hopes they had of inheriting well before either came of age. He could wait for the woman to die, of course, for she was far from young, but in his experience, a lot of women who came safely through their childbearing years had a tendency to want to live forever. So marriage to one of his own people seemed the ideal solution, and this man, in whom the desires of the flesh were diluted by his years and a brood of strong, hungry sons, was as keen to make the match as his lord.
As soon as he can do so without Odo getting wind of it, he will have a little conversation with Judith of Harbourne, and he will have Gytha watched as close as he can. He wants to know everything about her, when she sleeps or wakes or beds her lover, when she eats, drinks, and visits the privy, where she goes when she leaves the castle and how well she is guarded. He will have her monthly cycle monitored. That especially, for you can never be sure in situations of this sort when a pregnancy might intervene to alter the balance of everything.
***
“Margaret.” Agatha looks at the girl with something close to despair. Her skin is sallow, and the hair escaping from her creased cap is dull, like cheap gilt or copper left out in the rain. She sits motionless on her stool, her spine curved, a mark of interrogation. Her needle lies on the rump of a dun-coloured horse, its tail of wool disappearing into the tail of the animal.
“That’s Gytha’s work,” she says, pointing listlessly at an improbable tableau i
n the lower margin of her work piece, a man, stark naked, impressively endowed and visibly aroused, reaching for an equally naked woman who holds one hand over her pudenda and covers her face with the other. Agatha knows she is lying; several of these suggestive images have appeared recently in the borders. They are Margaret’s work, and it angers Agatha that she should so clumsily try to pass them off as anyone else’s, particularly Gytha’s. She knows she should have the girl thrown out of the castle, but some rebellious ghost of her former affection prevents her. Besides, the girl can sew, and the embroidery must be completed.
“Judith says it’s right, what everyone’s saying. She says that’s a charm, a spell she cast on Lord Odo. She says when he came to her house, he was seemly and modest and he’d never…”
“That’s enough, girl. I want you to do something for me.”
“Yes, Sister. Sorry, Sister.”
“Mistress Gytha was here, not an hour since, looking for needle and thread, but forgot to take them with her. Can you go up to Lord Odo’s apartments with them for her?”
“Me, Sister? Oh no, I couldn’t, I’d be too afraid.”
“Afraid, girl? What on earth of? Lord Odo? Gytha, who you worked with for four years? Listen to your own heart, Margaret, not malicious gossip.” Not, she calculates, that Margaret’s heart will have anything much to say. “Now do as I ask without any more fuss.”
***
When Gytha returns to their apartments, Odo is there, in the wide solar window seat. He turns as she enters, but cannot erase the anxious expression from his face quite quickly enough to conceal it from her. And why is he there, gazing out of the window when he has so much to do he was out of bed and gone from her almost at dawn? She sits beside him and takes his hands.
“So,” she begins, determinedly cheerful, “I expect the Archbishop was put nicely out of countenance by your news?”
