Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  She banishes all considerations but practical ones. Her heart is hardened against Freya’s complaints and Thecla’s misery; it will not even listen to Fulk’s silence. She knows they struggle to understand her behaviour, but how could they? They have each other. They may have wet feet and frozen hands, but not the chill she feels, in her spirit, in the marrow of her bones, the cold of pennies on her eyes and soil in her mouth. Her only concern is to stay alive for the child, his child, the ember glowing in her belly. Curled around that nugget of hope, looking always inward, she becomes oblivious to everything outside her own body, its needs and changes.

  It is no longer possible to doubt the cunningwoman’s prediction. Her breasts are swollen and tender, and she is sick almost every morning, craving certain foods yet, when they are put in front of her, her stomach revolts. But cruellest of all is her almost permanent state of arousal, which gives her no peace, and makes her believe Odo was right when he said God had a sense of humour, though it disturbs her that it seems to be such a bitter one. Sometimes she touches herself for relief, but the respite is brief and hollow, and carries the danger of memories she dare not admit to consciousness. Sometimes, to her shame, she finds herself eying up men they pass on the road, or even Fulk, speculating, wondering, dismissing, spurring her horse ahead with a flush scalding her neck and cheeks.

  Before she fell in love, she could lose herself in bed in the consolatory power of her imagination; if she kept her eyes closed and her head averted from panting breaths that stank of onions, or tooth rot, or other women’s kisses, any man might be a prince in one of her mother’s tales. Now, however, there is no substitute for her real prince, even though, or perhaps because, he is a Norman, a bishop and tends to heaviness. Often, when she does succeed in deceiving her body into a brief and troubled sleep, enfolded in Odo’s sable cloak, she dreams of being at sea and wakes with her eyes full of tears and the scent of rosemary and sandalwood, and salt and iron, in her nostrils. She will sell the cloak, she tells herself firmly.

  She feels better when she crawls out of a barn one morning to be sick and finds the cloud has lifted to reveal the first day of sunshine she can remember since riding away from the hunting lodge, however long ago that was. The simple beauty of the scene before her, rolling pasture dotted with trees and, in a fold in the hills half submerged in white mist, a village huddled around a long hall and a church, its cultivated strips fringing it like a striped skirt, has the effect of settling her stomach and giving her a sense of hope. But the wind has risen and veered to the east, bringing the temperature down sharply, and it is not long before Freya has followed her outside with straw stuck to the back of her shawl and a mulish look on her face.

  “Thecla has a cough,” she announces. She squats down beside Gytha, who is sitting on a grass hummock, taking deep breaths of the clean air to scour out the residue of nausea and the terrible nostalgia of her dreams. “Madam, we can’t go on like this. Whatever you decide, I must think of my daughter.”

  “And I of mine.”

  “Then you should be taking better care of yourself. What do you think his lordship would say if he could see us now? He would be horrified.”

  “But he can’t. It’s up to me to do what I think best. If I am found by some man anxious to do William Bastard a good turn, I shall most likely be killed.”

  “And this way you’re likely to die of cold or hunger.”

  “Watch your tone with me, girl.” Part of her knows Freya is right, but another part asks, if you are warm and comfortable and well fed, what then is to distract you from thinking about the past? She is too worn out arguing with herself to argue with Freya as well. She glares at Freya, and Freya, who has never pretended her relationship with Gytha was anything so straightforward as that between servant and mistress, glares back.

  “You’ll find out what it is to be a mother soon enough,” she hisses, and in the ensuing silence they hear Thecla racked by coughs and the low, rumbling tones of Fulk attempting to soothe her.

  “All right,” says Gytha. “We’ll go down to that village.” She points to where the mist is thinning around the jumble of walls and thatch and the squat stone tower of a Norman church. “We’ll ask for lodging in the manor for tonight. But just tonight, mind. We haven’t gone nearly far enough yet.”

  ***

  The master of the house is away, explains his wife, on a trip to sell their surplus sheep at the market at Horsham, before the winter sets in properly and there is no more grazing. But she would be heartily glad of company, as her two sons have gone with their father, and her youngest daughter is recently married and moved to live with her husband’s people, and her daughters-in-law, well, you know daughters-in-law, always criticising, aloof…And more of the same, as she ushers the women into her hall, then breaks off to tell Fulk where to put the horses and to recommend a tincture of liquorice root pounded with common horehound, taken before bed, for the little girl’s cough.

  “A couple of nights back I had a troupe of acrobats here, would you believe,” she tells them as she settles them beside the fire, orders them to take off their wet shoes and plunges a hot poker into a jug of ale. “I can’t imagine what my Eric would have said, but the place feels so empty with all the men away except old Joseph and those two sour-faced girls occupying themselves with their children. They never let me near them, you know, as if I hadn’t raised six of my own, though poor Eadric died of the smallpox two winters back. Terrible, it was; we’re lucky we didn’t lose more. Joseph’s daughter lost all three of hers, not one over five years.”

  Gytha feels her eyes beginning to droop under the influence of the fire and the warm, spiced ale, the breathless chatter of their hostess, like a single, winding, endless word, vowels and consonants rising and falling, strident or confidential, proving a surprisingly effective lullaby. So she awakes with a jolt, her chin jerking up from her chest, when she hears the woman say Canterbury. Drawing a mask of polite attentiveness over her features, nodding from time to time as she listens, she feels every nerve strained toward the opening and shutting of the woman’s mouth, the wobble of her jowls, the quick, emphatic gestures of her square hands, the barely perceptible breathing spaces that make sense of what she is saying.

  “…all that way at this time of year to perform at the earl’s birthday feast, only to find everything shut up and his lordship gone to Normandy with the king. They say,” dropping her voice to a whisper, “he’s gone travelling to heal a broken heart. Apparently some woman he kept with him was taken by the spirits at All Souls.” The goodwife gives a theatrical shudder. “Nothing left of her but a bloodstained cloak. Such goings on among the high and mighty. Makes you glad not to be one of them, doesn’t it?”

  “Doesn’t what?” asks Fulk, coming in from turning out the horses, his face ruddy and beaming with health beneath the shock of tow-coloured hair. Nothing touches him, thinks Gytha with a sudden glow of affection. Freya looks at Gytha, waiting for her to speak, but she cannot trust her voice.

  “We were just hearing how the Earl of Kent’s mistress was spirited away by ghosts at All Souls. Apparently some travellers who passed by here a few days ago had been in Canterbury and heard it,” says Freya. Fulk’s good-natured face broadens in a smile. “My husband is a down to earth sort of man,” explains Freya hurriedly. “He says he never believes such things. I expect you’d say she’d just run off with a handsome woodsman, dear, wouldn’t you?”

  Fulk goes to the hearth and helps himself to ale, aware that this is another occasion on which it would be best to keep quiet.

  “He’s a bishop, isn’t he?” enquires the goodwife of no one in particular. “I suppose some might say he should never have kept a mistress in the first place. Mind you, the priest here has a wife and fifteen children. Everyone complains of it, us because the tithes are so high, and the abbot of Saint Leonard’s because he never gets his due because the children need breeches or shoes or some such, so perhaps it would be best if he’d never married. Then aga
in, I like a priest who understands what worries ordinary folk with mouths to feed.”

  Gytha smiles, the slow smile of a lazy cat, then stretches and yawns.

  “My mistress is with child,” says Freya, “not three months gone yet. The difficult stage.” She and the goodwife exchange looks of knowing sympathy. “If she might lie down for a while…”

  “Certainly. You may take my bed, my dear, for God knows I have little use for it while my man is away. So tell me,” she continues, leading Gytha toward a platform at the far end of the hall where there is a box bed with a wool mattress and a sheepskin thrown over a feather quilt, “why are you travelling in your condition?”

  “My husband is a knight in the Count of Mortain’s service. I am going to stay with my mother while he is away fighting rebels in Yorkshire.”

  Freya’s approving look turns steely at Gytha’s final embellishment.

  “Sensible girl. Your mother’ll be far more use to you than your husband when your time comes. I’ll tell you something for free; by the time that baby’s born, you’ll never want a man near you again.”

  I hope you’re right, oh, I so hope you’re right, thinks Gytha as she stretches out on the bed and her hostess tucks the quilt around her. She falls into a deep, dreamless sleep, the sleep of the dead, she says to Freya later, with a strange laugh.

  ***

  Odo counts. He counts the days and nights since she left, how many psalms he has sung and prayers he has recited to mark the passing of the hours; how many candles he has burned when he cannot sleep. How many breaths he has drawn of air which is empty of her. How long does it take to draw a breath? He tries to calculate that also. Still, when he awakes in the middle of the night, or in the morning, he reaches for her. His body expects her, like some dumb, domestic animal waiting to be fed. He counts the months they have spent together and marvels, considering them as a proportion of his life, a tiny fraction of the months he has spent on Earth, how behaviour so recently learned can have become so habitual, so fundamental, so necessary.

  Sometimes he stands in the empty workshop, counting the motes of dust dancing in the light from the great windows. He listens to the sift of ash in the cold fireplace and wonders how many stitches her little left hand executed during how many hours of working there, head bowed over her embroidery frame. How many roof tiles, links of mail, hawks, saddles, bridles, and bits? How many fables, how many broken promises? How many yards of wool, how many needles? He tries to measure the distance between the man who commissioned this work and the creature he has become.

  His heart hibernates, his soul as cold and dark as the winter around him, an empty grate full of mourning ash. In one of his libraries, he cannot remember which, is a book of hours containing an illustration of the fall of Lucifer in which the archangel and all the rebel angels are shown in blue robes, with golden wings, twisting and tumbling into the fiery mouth of hell. Their wings look like leaves caught in an eddy. He feels the same, sere, insubstantial, falling, burning, ash.

  Although he continues to function, administering his estates, conducting the business of his diocese, and overseeing the coastal defences, it is plain to everyone that he is, quite literally, out of his mind, absent from himself. His brain and body work as they always did, but his spirit, they believe, must have been taken by the hobgoblins along with his mistress. It quickly becomes clear to William, who plans to spend Christmas in Normandy quelling signs of revolt among his two elder sons, both of whom are more interested in becoming king of England than duke of Normandy, and neither of whom seems to consider the fact that their father is still living, and in fair health, an obstacle to his ambition, that leaving Odo as regent is unthinkable. He orders his brother to accompany him. Perhaps it will give them an opportunity to mend fences. Perhaps home will have a healing influence on Odo.

  With the messenger who carries his summons across London to Odo’s palace beside Saint Giles’ Gate, where he is busy consulting his lawyers about Brother Ealdred’s forgeries, William sends a brief note in his own hand. We grieve for you, brother, Odo reads, in William’s ponderous, smudged script, though we are certain in our heart that our servant Canterbury acted wisely and lawfully in apprehending the woman, we would have wished the outcome otherwise. Be assured of our prayers.

  From your lord and loving brother

  William Rex

  Odo crumples the parchment in his fist and tosses it into the fire. William’s pious platitudes make him feel mutinous, but he will go. One day, he will find his love, and his daughter, and he is not so foolish as to risk his estate for the short-term release of lancing his resentment against William. What use can he be to his daughter if he has no dowry to confer on her, no influence to wield in finding her a husband? How could a man who would throw away everything for pride be worthy of Gytha’s love?

  Before answering William’s summons to meet him at Tilbury on the commemoration of Saint Spatius, martyr of Bayeux, Odo returns to Canterbury. He does not expect to be in England again for some time. He has his own interests to pursue regarding William’s sons and their ambitions, interests in which, perhaps, John may have a part to play also. The boy is growing up; the time is coming when he should take his place in his father’s world. He is also mindful of his promise to undertake a penitential pilgrimage and has decided he will go to Jerusalem. It is not that Compostela would be insufficiently arduous to expiate his sin, but that in Jerusalem he is more likely to find camels. It might be a year or more before Kent sees him again, and he has loose ends to tie up before he leaves.

  The greatest of these, if he is not to fatally endanger everything he has won for himself since the Conquest, is Lanfranc. Having thought of little else on the journey from London, two days of mud-stuck tedium in the rain which never seems to have ceased since the drought broke, he concludes that a straightforward request for an audience is not the answer. Better to seize the moral high ground from the Archbishop before he even realises it is under attack.

  The same day he arrives back in Canterbury, he enters the Archbishop’s chapel during Vespers, clad in nothing but a shirt of plain linen, his feet bare and his head scattered with ash. Prostrating himself before the cathedra, his forehead pressed to the stone floor, he begs Lanfranc’s forgiveness in a loud, clear voice, just as the candles are being lit and the choir is preparing to sing the Lucernal psalms. Lanfranc will not be able to resist him.

  As if at his direction, the Archbishop stands, then stoops to raise Odo to his feet and embraces him in the kiss of peace, all to the accompaniment of a somewhat ragged rendition of the psalms. He then insists Odo remain beside him for the rest of the service, which he does, keeping his teeth clamped and his fists clenched to prevent himself shivering in the November cold, all of which seems to be condensed in the space of the chapel, despite the warmth of the congregation’s packed bodies and the steam of their breath, gilded by the evening candles.

  When the service ends, Lanfranc instructs one of his novices to find Bishop Odo a habit to wear and then conduct him to the Archbishop’s private office.

  “You look in need of this,” he says, pouring mulled wine as Odo enters, wrapped in a habit which is too wide and too short for him, leaving his ankles exposed above a pair of sandals with a strap missing, the skin of his face still grey with ash over the grey of loneliness.

  “Thank you.” He takes a deep draught of the wine, feeling its effect like a colour, like the flaring of the Vespers candles, the light growing and intensifying as each one is lit, warming the cobwebbed recesses of churches in every corner of the world at this hour.

  “That was a gracious gesture, Odo. In the circumstances, I would not have expected it.”

  “I treated you dishonourably, Your Grace. That is neither in my nature nor my training. Such things are designed to withstand the death of love, I think. They have more weight, more substance.” The lunatic lover inside Odo’s skull watches the man of affairs make his pretty speech: he sees the curl of his lips around the
words, the articulation of his jaw; he even appreciates the well-moderated melodiousness of his tone, but what he says makes no more sense than if he were speaking Greek. He feels as though someone has taken a sword and cut his brain in two, and somehow, by some black miracle, he has stayed alive.

  “I am very sorry things ended as they did for Mistress Gytha. It was far beyond my intention that she should die. I mourn the loss of any opportunity to bring her to repentance.”

  “That responsibility is in the hands of a higher authority than you or I now, Lanfranc.”

  “I pray for her soul.”

  “As do I.”

  “And for yours.”

  “As do I.”

  “So,” continues Lanfranc, turning away from the gaunt intensity of Odo’s stare, “you are going abroad.”

  “To Normandy and then…I don’t know. I should like to see something more of the world. I have never travelled further than Rome.”

  “A man does not need to.” Lanfranc affects the air of a sophisticate, but succeeds only in appearing foolish and vulnerable, like a child dressed up in his father’s clothes.

  “All the same. I intend to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and I think I shall go to Alexandria. The Patriarch once sent me a very fine stallion. I should like to see if he has more of the same.”