Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  ***

  When they reach Christ Church, Odo tells Fulk to wait at the gate to the Archbishop’s house. Voices are audible from the chapel adjoining Lanfranc’s apartments, singing a psalm.

  “Afternoon Mass,” says Odo. “If I haven’t sent word to you by the end of the service, you must come after me. Hamo should have arrived with the other men by then.”

  “Yes, my lord. Good luck, my lord.”

  Odo dismounts and knocks on the gate with the butt of his riding whip. The gate swings back with a creak of hinges and a swish of water which has gathered in the hollows worn in the entrance by generations of passing feet. Lanfranc himself is standing in the middle of the courtyard, his cowl pulled over his head, looking, thinks Odo, as lightning flares, like Death’s plump assistant.

  “I heard the knock,” says Lanfranc. “I expected it would be you, though not alone.”

  “Do I need an army, then?”

  “Come inside.”

  “Afraid I might be struck by a thunderbolt?”

  “Simply getting rather wet.”

  They go into Lanfranc’s office where a servant crouches over the hearth, hastily laying a fire in response to the sudden change in the weather. Lanfranc dismisses him; he scuttles past the two men without igniting the fuel. Lanfranc then begins hunting for a tinder box.

  “Should be on the desk, I don’t know.”

  Odo contemplates Lanfranc, acting out the part of a querulous old man. Lanfranc is trying to rattle him, and he is succeeding. He attempts to compose some witticism about fire, never where you want it when you want it, always where you least look for it.

  “Where is she?” he demands, giving up.

  Lanfranc abandons his pantomime and sits down at his desk. “She is here. Safe.”

  Odo shivers slightly. Cold? Relief? Fear? “What possessed you?” he asks.

  “I am directed by my duty. Perhaps it would be best if we kept clear of such words as possessed.”

  “Don’t tell me you really believe she’s a witch. You’ve seen her, she’s just a woman, not even a very remarkable one, unless you know her. Good God, man, she doesn’t even like cats. They make her sneeze.”

  He speaks with such a warmth of affection that Lanfranc falters momentarily. “Let us not speak of witchcraft, Odo, it is a crude concept. Perhaps, though, she is your fatalitas, your…what do you say in French, your fairy?”

  “Fatalitas, fate. Without doubt she is my fate, but fate is not magic or chance, fate is what we choose. Let me see her, let me take her home. The weather’s broken, by tomorrow this will all be forgotten. If, as you say, she has come to no harm, I will not fall out with you over it. We are no more immune to the pressures of hunger and thirst than other men, and such pressures may affect our reason.”

  “Alas, Odo, I do not think this is as straightforward as you imagine.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sit down.”

  “What do you mean?” Odo repeats, ignoring Lanfranc’s invitation. He stands in front of the desk, leaning forward, gripping its edge with both hands. Let the old man get a stiff neck looking up at him.

  “Do you know where we found her?”

  Odo shakes his head.

  Lanfranc sighs. “My men followed her from the house of a cunningwoman in the forest by Saint Augustine’s.”

  “So? Women are always consulting such people. She probably wanted a charm against toothache or…” He stops himself before saying something that might be offensive to the elderly monk, or give Lanfranc too intimate a glimpse into the life he shares with Gytha. “It’s the way their minds work.”

  “This woman has a particular reputation, Odo. She is an abortionist.”

  His mouth goes dry, a fist seems to clench around his bowels, he wants to shut his eyes but he just goes on staring at Lanfranc, at his pious, pitying expression, his self-righteous, simpering mouth behind that wretched beard which is never properly trimmed.

  “You can’t bear it, can you?” His voice is very quiet, almost a whisper. He is surprised it works at all; his mouth is so full of words he thinks they may choke him. Lanfranc leans forward to hear him better. He bends further over the table and Lanfranc sits back again. “You’re eaten up with envy for men like me. You wouldn’t recognise passion if it bit you in the arse; it’s all prayer and self-denial and dry intellectual puzzles for you. Well, fine, I’m glad, I need your prayers, I need everyone’s prayers. But it was your choice to immure yourself in your monastic tomb, your fatalitas. Don’t take your revenge on me.”

  “You’re upset, Odo, of course you are…”

  “Upset?” Shouting now, pushing himself away from the desk and prowling around the room, running one hand repeatedly over his tonsured crown as though trying to brush it away. “Upset? What are you talking about? I’m Our Lord turning over the tables of the moneylenders. I’m Moses breaking the tablets. I am the Wrath of God. Never forget it.” Borrowed words. Whose?

  Lanfranc crosses himself. “Consider what you say, Odo, ask God’s forgiveness.”

  “Oh, God will forgive me, God always forgives me. You know why? Because He loves me, I keep Him entertained. You think God gave us our desires to be triumphed over? That He was setting us some kind of obstacle course? Avarice, gluttony, coveting thy neighbour’s ass. Jump through all the hoops and there you are. Heaven. I’m closer to Heaven than you’ll ever be, Lanfranc. You know how? Fucking and fighting, Lanfranc, fucking and fighting. That’s how a man transcends the earthly and touches the heart of God. The moment you look Death in the face and Death smiles back is the moment you’re truly alive.” Breathing hard, he turns his back on Lanfranc and presses his forehead against the damp window frame, listens to the rain drumming into the ground outside and the roar of the blood in his veins.

  Lanfranc considers him, his broad, powerful silhouette against the liquid grey light, his well-cut clothes and long boots in the slightly rakish, Palestinian style. The man talks dangerous nonsense, yet he is probably right. God probably does love men like Odo, the lost sheep, the prodigal sons, more than He loves those who proceed cautiously along the straight and narrow path. All the more reason they should be silenced. “Your heart is dark, Odo. I shall pray for its enlightenment.”

  “And yours is empty, and I don’t think it’s worth my praying for its fulfilment. Now let me see Gytha.”

  “I do not think it wise.”

  Turning back to face the Archbishop, Odo fixes the older man with his sweetest smile. What now? wonders Lanfranc.

  “Brother Ealdred,” says Odo. “He might not be quite as safe as he believes. One must preserve a healthy scepticism. The margin between a true document and a good forgery is very fine. Perhaps his testimony should be subjected to further scrutiny. If you would like to appoint someone to examine it…”

  Lanfranc shakes his head, though there is an element of regret in his gesture which gives Odo hope. He waits, but Lanfranc says nothing.

  “I could lose it,” he says bluntly, “if you’d let her go. Thomas of York isn’t going to starve for the want of three revenues.”

  “I can’t,” Lanfranc replies.

  Odo is across the room almost more quickly than Lanfranc can think, on the Archbishop’s side of the desk, his right hand resting on the hilt of his dagger, his left lightly but firmly gripping the folds of the older man’s cowl. “And don’t tell me I wouldn’t dare, or that the place is crawling with your soldiers. Mine will be there too by now. I’ll do what I have to, it doesn’t matter to me.”

  “So there is nothing left, not even the respect you once had for the rule of law?”

  “We’re playing by your rules today, my lord Archbishop. The evidence on which you’re holding my mistress is barely circumstantial. Now, I suggest you let me see her and then release her on my parole while you try to scrape together a case against her.”

  “The charges are too serious for any parole, but you may see her, provided you will hold your own men in check. Perhaps i
t will serve to convince you of the heinousness of her crimes. ”

  ***

  The door of the strongroom is thick, solid oak armoured in iron, muffling the sound of approaching footsteps so Gytha has no time to prepare for his arrival. She looks up when she hears the bolt slide back outside the door to see him standing in front of her, head slightly bowed in the low entrance, like a wish come true.

  “Oh, Odo.” She feels as though some external force, some energy compounded of relief, love, fear, and simple physical attraction propels her across the room toward him. Before he has even stepped over the threshold her arms are around his waist, her cheek against his chest, feeling his heart beat through the bones of her skull, steady, calming, the steps to freedom.

  Instinctively he holds her, strokes her hair, murmurs soothing nonsense to her as he might to a child in the throes of a nightmare. Then he remembers what Lanfranc has told him. His body stiffens. He prises her arms from his waist and holds her away from him. She is a pitiful sight, her face streaked with tears and now full of dismay and confusion. She is so small. He knows that, of course; his body knows the precise spot where the top of her head habitually makes contact with it when he hugs her, cushioned by the tendons linking his shoulder and breastbone, the exact soft place at the base of her belly that will yield to his erection. Would. If. But he has never properly considered her vulnerability before, how easy it would be to twist her head that little bit further, bend her body into a slightly deeper arc. And snap her spine.

  She has seen this implacable expression before, on the battlefield at Senlac Ridge, though then it was not directed at her, and his face, younger, less heavyset, seemed to hold more potential for redemption. Then he was her enemy, but now she fears him more. Archbishop Lanfranc has told him, then, how and where she was found.

  “Get out,” he says to the two men accompanying him. They hesitate. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Odo continues wearily, “where am I going to go from here, with you outside the door? Through that little window? I’m a priest, not a miracle worker. Now go. Lock us in if it makes you feel better.” Panic flickers in her eyes. Good.

  “What have you done?” he asks when the men have gone, sliding the bolt back into place behind them. She wonders if it will happen now, if they have sealed her into her tomb. “Don’t deny anything. Lanfranc has told me where his men found you.”

  Even if he could command the guards to unlock the door and she were to walk out of the abbey beside him, she is trapped, enmeshed as surely as a fish in a net by what she knows and cannot tell. She remembers One-Eyed Peg in Winchester, and imagines, with a welling up of nausea, in itself both wonderful and terrifying, Margaret, cowering, bruised, flayed, beaten by the whips and stones and hypocritical tongues of the righteous men who rule the world. She knows she was the only one taken, the only bait of interest to Lanfranc’s men, and she cannot give Margaret away. Already weighed down by her responsibility for the poor, stupid girl’s plight, she cannot bear the burden of exposing her to a punishment she does not deserve.

  Yet she will not lie to Odo so she must simply keep her mouth shut. Yet he, and Lanfranc, will take her silence to be an admission of guilt. The sharp ache of his breaking heart is hers also as she thinks of the cunningwoman’s words. Your child will be. If she is right, she must also be wrong, because the child cannot live without her mother, and she is certain Odo will not let her live if he believes she has aborted his baby. She is stretched between the witchcraft Lanfranc accuses her of, and the witchcraft Agatha knows she has accomplished. The choice is stark: Margaret, or herself and her child, love or duty, self-indulgence, or self-respect.

  She looks at Odo, willing him to read her conflict in her eyes but it is like looking at a stone.

  “Speak,” he says, in a flat, emotionless tone which takes her straight back to the trials following the riot in Winchester after the child was killed by his horse.

  “I have nothing to say.” It is as though the words have come from someone else, though she feels the air vibrate as she pushes them out of her throat. How can this be happening to them, these two whom Sister Jean says have loved each other since before they were born? It’s impossible, but it’s not, because love is not the answer to everything.

  “Then,” he says, almost conversationally, “you may rot here until the Devil sees fit to take you, madam. I only pray, for the ease of my brother, Archbishop Lanfranc, it is not too long.” He knocks on the door and the bolts slide back with fat, well-oiled clicks.

  He wonders how he manages to get back outside without stumbling, so overwhelmed is he by grief and incomprehension. He cannot bear to return to Lanfranc with “‘I told you so’” plastered all over his sanctimonious face, but stands, for how long he has no idea, in the Mint Yard, letting the rain cool the fever in his brain and mask his tears. Tipping his face to heaven, muffled now in impenetrable layers of cloud, he yells at God, “Is it so much to ask? Is it? Just a woman and a child like other men have?”

  She hears him through the grate, below which water leaks down the wall, his hoarse, fretful shouting above the steady thunder of the rain, the heavy splash as he falls to his knees in the mud. Curled up in a corner, trying to make herself the smallest possible target for sorrow, she moans to herself, the same phrase over and over until she falls into a merciful trance, “I’m sorry, Odo, I’m so sorry.”

  ***

  Somewhere in the deep, dark time between Compline and Matins, Odo awakes in need of a piss. Shivering in the cold air the rain has brought in its wake, a memory overwhelms him, of climbing back into bed beside her some night, somewhere, and how she had hooked her knee over his thigh, and the warm, wet kiss of her secret mouth against his flesh. Such a simple thing, deep, direct, and true. Desire hits him like the flat of a sword in his midriff, forcing the breath out of him in a great sob, which brings Osbern in from the next room. He thinks of making Osbern share his bed, for warmth, but the prospect of a body other than hers beside him is too painful to contemplate. You cannot lie to yourself in the darkest, loneliest hours of the night.

  “It’s nothing, Osbern, go back to sleep.”

  It is his fault. He has not loved her well enough to make her trust him. If she had truly believed their child might live she would never have done such a heinous, cruel thing. He should have realised, should have understood the strength of her conviction that she could not bear a healthy child. If only they had gone to see John, and she had been able to weigh him in the balance against her dead babies, if only he were not so hungry for power, if only, if only…

  Believing they had a lifetime in front of them, nothing he has said or done has been sufficient. He has not asked the right questions, nor given the right answers. Not a single gift he has given her, of jewels or horses, of words or land, or his own body, has adequately expressed his need, his hunger, his adoration. He has not possessed her; she has slipped away from him to a place he cannot follow. If his heart were to be removed from his chest and held up to the light, her image would be plainly visible, not written with a pen of iron or the point of a diamond but tattooed with woad, the way of the elusive Britons. He will never possess her, there will be no children, no heirs. It is a love destined to die in infancy, never to be more than a memory, a romance, a morality tale.

  ***

  Gytha does not sleep, yet nor does she believe she is really awake. Her consciousness seems to have slipped sideways. Hugging herself to ward off the cold, her hands are no longer her own. She feels her skin, its down of fine hair, the way it stretches over her bones and slackens in the hollows of her body, as though touching some substance other than herself. Her hands, cupping her breasts, registering the erect points of her cold hardened nipples against their palms, running up the insides of her thighs, are Odo’s. His curls she strokes, his lips parting under the pressure of her fingers, his name in her mouth.

  Then, as she speaks his name aloud in the darkness, suddenly she sees him again as he was when she first laid eyes on him, i
n the company of Harold and Lady Edith, in that house which no longer exists. All of them, herself included, are like the illuminations in one of Odo’s books, tiny, bright, intricately lovely, yet unreal, stylised representations of themselves which no longer belong in this world of flesh, blood, and bone. Turning onto her back, she stretches herself flat against the straw they have tossed her to lie on, sensing the cold, damp earth of the floor beneath, smoothing her clothes over skin that feels as cold and dead and empty as clean vellum.

  ***

  The storms continue unabated. From the window of Odo’s bedchamber it looks as though the motte is afloat in a sea of yellow mud, a precarious web of planks spread over the deepest puddles. Thunder grumbles in the distance, and from time to time, lightning throws a sudden wash of silver and blue over the grey and brown and the unearthly stillness of Odo’s features. He has not moved from his bed since the night after Gytha’s arrest; indeed, he has scarcely moved at all but lies, on his back, unshaven, in his night gown, which is beginning to stink, staring up into the indigo depths of the bed canopy. The last time he spoke was to let fly a string of invective against his physician, sent for by Osbern several days ago. Osbern does not think he has even seen his master blink, though he moves one hand from time to time, languidly stroking Juno, who cowers beside him with only her snout and terrified eyes visible under the bedclothes. The dog has thwarted all Osbern’s attempts to rouse Lord Odo, even to wash or shave him, baring her teeth and snapping as though only she can comprehend what is going on in his mind. If anything.