by Sarah Bower
He is not ill. Hovering just beneath the canopy, he looks down on himself lying in bed and knows he must rouse himself. He has to hold courts, hear petitions, take action to minimise the damage done by these storms just as he dealt with the drought before. He must inspect the atelier, make certain there are no leaks in the workshop roof and that the women have not lit braziers or candles against the descent of this permanent seeming dusk. He must give orders for the mares in suck to be brought into the hall before their foals drown, if Hamo has not already done so.
But before all that, he must decide what he is going to do about Gytha, and he cannot. Every scrap of physical and mental energy he possesses has been sucked into the vortex of his indecision, where possible solutions whirl past too quickly for him to grasp or even see clearly. Often he dozes and in the seconds after waking, before he knows he is awake, the answer will be clear to him, only to dissipate as dreams do, as all the other things he has to think about crowd back in on him. Simple, says the man’s body in the bed, soaked in cold piss and dog saliva: you love her, forgive her, get her out of there, and start again. Simple, answers the sprite swinging from the cobwebs stretched between blue satin pleats: she betrayed you, she did the worst thing a woman can do to a man, let Lanfranc condemn her. Forget her.
Forget her? Don’t be absurd, says his body. Think about something else, his mind pleads, like a choirmaster trying to bring discipline to a disorderly set of responses and antiphons.
***
Before long, Gytha loses track of the time they have kept her in this room, with its sodden floor and sweating walls, and sudden, magical glitters of gold dust when people come in with candles, which they do sporadically, throwing food at her from the door as if she is a dangerous beast. The days and nights leak into one another, the compartments formed by bells or meals, light and dark, breaking down as she drifts in and out of a torpid, dream-like inertia. Sometimes people speak to her: her guards, the novice who throws the food. The Archbishop, she thinks, his prophet’s beard wagging, his scalp pink as a baby’s bottom under his sparse hair. She doesn’t listen to any of them.
All she does is ask for Odo; all she hears is the silence which follows her pleas. If her mouth so much as forms the full moon shape of his name, if she even thinks of him, it seems, they shake their heads and turn away. So she gives up speaking, which only exacerbates the cracks forming in her lips, and tries to give up thinking, but her mind will not stay empty. He fills it, and Meg, and the baby. The baby. What did the cunningwoman say? What did she really say? What is her body telling her when there is nothing else to listen to but the scrabbling of rats and the soggy rustle of soiled straw? Your child will be.
The Miracle
Saint Germanus to All Souls 1072
Odo awakens from a sleep that has descended like a gauze over his brain, fuzzing but not quite cutting out the remorseless round of arguments between the sprite in the cobwebs and the body on the bed, to find himself looking, not at the bed canopy but up into the face of his sister. Her features appear strangely pulled forward, cheeks, brows, lips all bunched around her sharp nose like a curious configuration of sails about a mast. He starts to laugh, though Agatha shows no sign of wishing to join him.
“You are awake? Aren’t you?” she demands. “Because I need to speak to you.” Juno growls. Agatha looks as though she may growl back. “This can’t go on, Odo. What with nursing Margaret, and Judith suddenly worse than useless…the workshop isn’t functioning, and I need you to do something about it.” She has tried to be patient with him, but if he is not ill, what is the meaning of this extraordinary lassitude, with Gytha imprisoned, the little of what remains of the livestock drowning in mudslides, the grain brought in from Normandy at such expense rotting in sodden granaries, and his workshop full of idle hands and poisonous gossip? Determined to bring him round, she will tip him out of bed and scrub him head to toe with cold water herself if need be. Watching a sullen frown settle between his eyes, she realises he is just a small boy in a sulk.
“Nursing Margaret?” he queries, prompted by what he will think of for the rest of his life as some kind of guardian angel. “What’s wrong with her?”
Agatha’s strangely distorted face recedes, then reappears looking more like Agatha as she perches on the edge of the bed and stares at her hands, wrangling in her lap. “Freya says it’s…a miscarriage. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, considering…”
“A miscarriage?”
The vortex stops spinning, the sprite clambers nimbly down the carved bedpost, and slips back into his body, smooth as a knife. He sits up, elbowing the dog out of the way. “Margaret,” he says, smiling at Agatha, a gleam in his eyes which comes as a relief to her after the eerie sensation that he had somehow gone missing from himself, though she cannot imagine what it presages. “Thank you.” He squeezes her hands, quickly and fiercely, then everything is a whirl of activity. Flinging back the bedclothes, he almost tips his sister off the edge of the bed. As he shouts for Osbern to have the bath filled, bring shaving things, find him a clean shirt, he is already stripping off his nightclothes regardless of her presence in his bed chamber.
“Christ, I stink!”
“The workshop, Odo.”
He gives her a blank look then waves her irritably away. “Yes, yes, later. Go and find Freya for me. Send her to me, and tell them to saddle me a horse.”
“And three bags full, sir,” says Agatha with a bow, but her teasing is lost on him so she shrugs and goes to relieve Freya at Margaret’s bedside.
Freya looks momentarily panic-stricken when Agatha delivers Odo’s summons, but recovers her usual, glacial composure almost immediately, handing over care of the invalid with calm efficiency.
“I’ve just changed her cloth, but she’s still bleeding quite heavily, and you should give her another spoonful of the syrup when they ring the bell for Sext. I’ll be happier when her fever goes down.”
Taking up a bowl of rosewater and a linen rag, Agatha begins patiently to mop the girl’s brow, dipping, ringing out, dabbing at her broad, pale forehead and freckled temples, tidying the damp coils of hair which have escaped from her coif. Soothed by the rhythm of her actions, she begins to hum the tunes of old rhymes remembered from her childhood, until Margaret’s eyelids flutter down over her gooseberry green eyes and she seems to sleep. How strange, reflects Agatha, as her fingertips make contact with the girl’s clammy skin, that dreams may come true, but only when you have stopped wanting them to, as though only by ceasing to be dreams can they become realities. How fitting that her career, founded on her revulsion from the violence of the sexual act between men and women, should come to this, to tending its casualties.
***
When Freya is shown into Odo’s parlour, he is rummaging in a jewel case, clad only in shirt and chausses, Osbern standing behind him with a long tunic of dark brown velvet draped over his arms. She tries to convince herself that he has sent for her merely to ask her to take something to Mistress Gytha, but she cannot deceive herself so easily. Why not go himself? And what could her mistress want with jewellery in the abbey prison?
“Freya.” As soon as he becomes aware of her presence, he closes the jewel case and fixes his attention on her, drawing her gaze to his despite Osbern helping him on with the tunic, tying its gold laces, fastening a belt set with turquoises and some green stones she cannot identify about his hips, fussing with a clothes brush and several pairs of shoes. “You must tell me all you know about your mistress’ visit to the cunningwoman Gunhild.”
He is impressed that her gaze does not falter; she does not blush, or fidget, or even pause before replying. Almost as though she has anticipated his question and has been rehearsing her reply.
“The truth,” he impresses upon her, “not whatever story you may have concocted between you should I ask.”
“She should have told you herself,” responds Freya bluntly. “What on earth has she said to you?”
“Nothing. Literally. S
he would not open her mouth.”
Freya pushes an exasperated blast of air down her nose. “So proud, that one,” she mutters.
“I beg your pardon?”
“She came to me for help, sir, knowing I have some…expertise.” She darts Odo a cautious glance, but he bids her continue with a gesture of his hand. “Told me some long, involved tale about Margaret and a hedge preacher who had raped her but was really her brother, so…”
“Her brother? Good God.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know it, apparently. He’s quite mad and believes he’s Saint Sebastian.”
Odo turns very pale and sits down suddenly.
“Are you ill, sir?”
“No. Go on.”
“Well, Mistress Gytha felt responsible, because she had helped Meg get away to try and find her brother and persuade him to go home to his wife and child, but then this happened, and Meg came to my mistress saying she was sure she was pregnant and sure her brother was the father.”
“How could she be so sure? By all accounts she’s since acquired a taste for barnyard behaviour, however nasty her initiation.”
Freya shrugs. “Women just know these things, my lord. We feel it. I can’t say more.”
“So you and Gytha took the wretched girl to this Gunhild, and I suppose Gytha wouldn’t talk because she was afraid of getting either of you into trouble. Of all the women I should fall in love with, why must it be one with such a contrary head on her shoulders?” And there, he thinks, is a question with its own answer hidden inside it.
“There’s more,” says Freya. God knows, the earl must be as grieved and anxious as any man about his mistress, but Gytha’s misplaced heroics have spoilt things for her and Fulk also. By telling his lordship everything, Freya sees her chance to strengthen Gytha in his favour and restore her own position at Winterbourne.
“Yes?”
“The wise woman said Mistress Gytha was with child also. She asked which of them had come for her help, for she thought they were both expecting. She said…” But before she can finish he has bounded across the room like an affectionate puppy and, seizing her face between his hands, plants a resounding kiss on her forehead.
“After the Holy Virgin and my beloved Gytha,” he says, “you are the most wonderful woman that ever lived,” and is gone, running down the stairs to the hall with Osbern in pursuit.
“Your cloak, sir; it’s still raining.”
“Is it, Osbern?” he shouts back over his shoulder. “It feels like the first day of spring to me.”
He will have their bed made with clean linen, scattered with bunches of mint and lavender, ready for her return, he thinks as he gallops through the narrow streets, a couple of guardsmen clearing a path for him through the shopkeepers and their customers, herdsmen with small flocks of soaked sheep and mud-caked pigs, an enterprising fellow hawking squares of oilcloth with head holes cut in them to make rain capes. She will have every care and consideration. She will be kept away from dogs and needles. She will not eat pork nor ride, especially not ride, after her terrible fall at Rochester, when she must already have been carrying the child. He crosses himself at the memory of it. She must not stoop or bathe or sit to the left of a monk.
He will kiss her eyes and hold her in his arms, but he will not make love to her, and he will sprinkle her with holy water and pray for her daily. He will make her presents of jewels set with jasper, moonstone, and chrysolite, all known to have special virtues for pregnant women. Six grains of pearl powder ingested daily will ensure the quality of her milk. The child will be born and will live, and there will be more, a dynasty, a whole string of brothers for John.
The abbey community is at None when he arrives, his horse skidding through the cautious crack in the gate with which the surprised porterer responds to his torrent of knocking and shouting. Flinging himself out of the saddle and tossing the reins to one of his guards, he makes straight for the chapel, where the singing of the psalm falters, then recovers as he slams the north door open and strides the short distance to the middle of the transept where the Archbishop’s throne stands, the monks’ voices mirroring the guttering of the candles in the sudden blast of damp air.
With the briefest of bows to the altar, he confronts Lanfranc.
“I need to see her,” he says in an urgent, careless whisper heard by all.
Let not mine enemies triumph over me, chants the congregation. Lanfranc signs him to be patient, patting down the air with the flat of his hand.
“Now,” he hisses. One of the novices at the front of the congregation steals a quick glance in his direction and receives a withering stare from the novice master for his pains.
Thou art the God of my salvation, the monks sing.
With a sigh, Lanfranc rises from his throne and leads the way back out of the north door. Odo’s spurs clank behind him, an incongruous accompaniment to the psalm. As Odo closes the door, Lanfranc rounds on him, the lappets of his mitre whipping furiously in the wind which has risen as the rain abates to a needling drizzle.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demands, as though Odo had been summoned before him at Bec to answer some charge of stealing books or raiding the kitchens during the Great Silence. But Odo is no longer a boy in his charge, and it is his mistake to keep forgetting it.
“You must let her go.” His handsome face is disfigured by a triumphant sneer.
“I must do nothing of the sort,” Lanfranc replies testily. It is cold out here, the wind beginning to snarl around the corners of the buildings and slap the face of the abbey fish pond on the far side of the monks’ burial ground where they are standing among hummocks and headstones. He sniffs.
“She is innocent,” crows Odo. “She never intended to procure herself an abortion. You got the wrong end of the stick, old man, and I have witnesses to prove it.”
“Do you have the cunningwoman then? I could not find her anywhere.”
“No, of course I don’t. Neither of us will find her; she’ll be too well hidden. People value such women. They take care of them. They believe in Christ, but they like some insurance.”
“Nevertheless, I shall continue to look.” But not too hard, he adds to himself, because if she doesn’t reappear, I can take back her assart which clutters up my forest.
“As you please. She is of no interest to me. I have other news which changes everything. Mistress Gytha is pregnant, so even if you try her, you cannot carry out any sentence until after my child is born.” My child. His collarbones ache with joy and impatience.
Lanfranc tugs at his beard. Perhaps it would be wisest to let Odo see the woman. Obviously he has not had this information from her directly, or even from the cunningwoman, who is no doubt prone, like most of her sort, to making such predictions, so it is always possible he is wrong and she will tell him so, and it must be her who tells him; he will not believe anyone else. If he is right, though, if he is right…He looks at the younger man’s flushed cheeks and shining eyes and shudders. He is as certain as he can be, since seeing the locket, that the woman is engaged in some diabolical practices involving the killing of infants. The thought of what she might do to a child of Odo’s shrinks his vitals, if, indeed, the child is his and not the spawn of the Devil himself. “Come, then, I will take you to her.”
***
A rage like a whirlwind descends on him as the guard unlocks the door to the strongroom and stands aside for he and Lanfranc to enter, sucking everything out of him but a boiling fury whose heat stings his eyes and dries his mouth and leaves his body trembling like the last, desiccated leaf on a winter tree. He turns to Lanfranc to protest, but his voice has shrivelled to no more than a dry whisper and his words are jumbled, meaningless. Not that he needs them; as Lanfranc’s gaze shifts from him to the figure cowering in the corner and back again, he sees that he is understood by the shame and mortification in the Archbishop’s face.
“How could you?” he manages finally, “How could you treat her this way? I thought you we
re a Christian.”
But she is not, Lanfranc wants to reply, though considering the confined space they are in and the knife in Odo’s belt, he thinks better of it and says nothing, merely bows his head beneath Odo’s contempt. A frightened whimper comes from the corner, tugging Odo around to face his mistress. His anger dissipates as quickly as it came, dissolved in pity as he drops to his knees in the filthy straw and gathers her into his arms, burying his face in her hair, breathing in its loved, familiar musk through all the other smells of her imprisonment. Wet cloth, piss, shit, sweat; loneliness, starvation, fear of the dark. He raises her face and kisses her, feels with his tongue that she has lost a tooth in her upper jaw, near the back. Tracing the lines of her small bones with his fingertips, he conjures warmth back into her skin, desire as he touches her breasts and she squirms against him with a little sigh, then falls still as he cups his hand over her belly and contemplates his child, their child, their miracle.
“Freya told me,” he whispers.
It is just another dream. Her dreams have become almost unbearably vivid since her imprisonment, as though her mind is trying to fight the solitude and boredom by filling her cell with visions. Sometimes its workings are too rich for her so she awakens retching and vomits up the little they give her to eat. She feels her lover so deeply and intensely inside her she fears her heart may tear; she hears the singsong lilt of her mother’s stories with such clarity the words flay her like tiny knives. When Adam comes to her, she believes she is one of his barrels, strapped tight in iron bands, stuffed full of salt fish, her father’s raw red hands reaching in to turn and sort and weigh and value. The best dreams are of her children, because they have the same calm reality she feels now, and she only knows she is dreaming when she realises the children are no longer babies but grown, playing, squabbling, helping with the chores. And that there are five of them.
