Covenant With Hell (Medieval Mysteries)

by Priscilla Royal

  In the hazy light of this morning, he shook away the memory and patted his restless horse on the neck, letting the creature trot back to the pilgrims who had not traveled far down the road.

  Promising that this would be his last look back, he gazed over his shoulder at Walsingham. His heart felt as if someone was carving bits of flesh from it with a dull knife, but his pain had nothing to do with what he had done last night. The cause was Brother Thomas.

  Pressing a hand against his chest, he groaned and rode on, forcing his thoughts to think about what must be done on his return to Norwich and his wife who was waiting for him.

  In truth, he loved her. Early in their marriage, they had agreed to lie together only to beget children, as the most pious often did. When their only babe died, his wife suffered more than he, and he had grieved deeply enough. Her dark moods seemed to descend when she was deemed most fertile, and she confessed she could not bear to couple with him for the pain it caused. Unlike most husbands, he had taken this news with gentle concern and never complained about her failure to pay the marriage debt. Over time they grew closer, except for the sadness of having no laughing children. That was a grief they shared.

  Then she heard about the reputation of Tyndal Priory for healing. At her urging, they traveled there where she received herbs and a balm that eased her moods and numbed the pain of intercourse. Now she was eager for him to give her a child.

  In part he shared her joy, relieved that she no longer suffered and that she might bear children. She was a good woman, competent in the house and business, faithful and dutiful, but he did not yearn to couple with her like other men did beloved wives. He had been happiest when they shared affection but not passion.

  He sighed. In the past, he had found it easy enough to return to those necessary deceptions after his missions for the king had ended and he had his night of relief. This time, he dreaded it, in particular the joyful expression on his wife’s face. It would not be easy to lie with her, even to beget the child they both wanted. He would do so, but there was a difference now. Durant of Norwich, wine merchant and spy, had fallen in love with a monk.

  He was also terrified. It was one thing to seek the occasional encounter with men he did not know, and even refuse to confess it until he must, but his soul howled at the blasphemy of wanting to lie with a man vowed to God. Yet he also knew that he might be willing to suffer an eternity of hellfire for one night in the arms of that auburn-haired monk. It was that truth which frightened him most.

  Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he sobbed quietly, bowing his head to hide his agony. One night? He would prefer it be a lifetime.

  A mother in the band of pilgrims heard his sobs and asked what comfort was needed.

  He shook his head and tried to smile.

  Now assuming his tears were joyous, she bent to her young son and pointed out that man who wept because he found God’s forgiveness and was cleansed of his sins.

  Durant wiped his cheeks dry. If that explanation made her son hesitate before committing some cruelty, then let the boy believe it.

  Whatever his heart wanted, his longing for Brother Thomas was doomed. Even if the monk shared his lust, if not his love, he would never lie with Durant. He had taken vows, oaths he honored, and had made it clear that he found solace in the priory. After all Thomas had suffered for the one time he had lain with a man named Giles, Durant also knew he would never try to seduce him. That would be an even graver sacrilege.

  The merchant urged his horse to a faster pace. When he returned home, he would try to bury his sorrow with the reward from the king in that cracked vessel near the privy. Then he would lie with his wife, as they must do to bring forth the child they longed for.

  But when I do, he thought, I shall imagine I am in the arms of an auburn-haired man, with no tonsure, who happens to go by the name of Thomas.

  ***

  Thomas hurried down the street to meet Prioress Eleanor at Ryehill Priory. Although her arm would be long in healing, she had insisted they plan their return to Tyndal Priory as soon as possible. A cart must be found to carry her and the child, she said. Adam, her donkey, would be spared the burden of her weight on the journey back. As they imagined the beast’s expression of contentment when told the news, they had both laughed.

  When he passed the inn, he hesitated, and then walked on. The merchant would not be there. He had told him that he was joining a large group of pilgrims returning to Norwich very early that morning. The thought that he would never see Durant again grieved him.

  He looked back at the inn. Complex and troubling though Durant was, Thomas liked him. Were he to be honest, he felt something more, an emotion he could not quite define. Surely not love, he thought. He had felt that only once, a devotion for which he had suffered in prison and then endured mockery by that very person who had been as eager as he in the coupling.

  But the pleasure he had found in Durant’s company was more than the simple enjoyment of working with him to save the king’s life, although that was part of it.

  Did he long for a more secular life? He had not always liked spying for the Church, rooting out those who worked against the best interests of the proclaimed faith, but he did enjoy solving mysteries when he and his prioress were called to do so.

  Although he still did not own a deep faith, he no longer regretted taking vows. Tyndal was his home, and he had friends who brought him joy, both inside the priory and without. Before this pilgrimage to Walsingham, he had married Crowner Ralf and Mistress Gytha, two people he loved far above himself, and he looked forward to baptizing their children. Whatever his initial reluctance in joining the Order, he had found some peace. He no longer looked at any woman with lust. In Prioress Eleanor, he had a worthy liege lord, and she was pleased with his service. Sister Anne gave him the love only an elder sister of the flesh could and had taught him much that helped in healing bodies.

  No, he said to himself, I would not leave the priory to serve the king as Durant does, even if I were promised a rare forgiveness for abandoning my vows.

  Meeting Durant, however, had changed something within him. He had lusted after other men, a few had even evoked tenderness in him, but he would never forget the kiss he had willingly shared with the merchant that night in the inn. The difference, undefined and insistent, between Durant and all those other men gnawed at him.

  Suddenly Thomas stopped, frozen in amazement at what had just occurred to him.

  With a sharp intake of breath, he realized that he no longer grieved for Giles.

  Were he to meet him on this street, this man he had loved since boyhood, he would not weep, nor would he suffer. He might offer him a blessing, praying that he had found contentment and that his remaining years on Earth would be joyful, but he would not long for a kiss or an embrace. If Giles offered either, he would comply without grief or desire. Giles had become a memory, both pleasant and sad, but the festering wound was healed.

  Gazing upward, Thomas asked God why this had happened. As usual, He remained silent, and yet the monk sensed, more than heard, a soft whisper in the light breeze caressing his face.

  “It matters not if I fully understand,” he murmured. Although he had denied that he had found peace when Durant asked, he felt it now. With an inexplicable conviction, he also believed that his meeting with this merchant was the cause of it. Perhaps, he thought, he and I will meet again.

  Then he hurried on to Ryehill Priory, as eager as his prioress to return home.

  Author’s Notes

  Walsingham was a famous East Anglian pilgrimage site during the Middle Ages, on a par with Canterbury and even Santiago de Compostela on the continent. There is some debate over when the Holy House was first built under the direction of a local widow, Richelde de Fervaques. Some claim it was 1061, but J. C. Dickinson gives a compelling argument for the earlier part of the twelfth century. In any case, the Church and faithful believed it was the only site in England where the Virgin Mary had visited; thus the wells and t
he Holy House of the Annunciation on the grounds of Walsingham Priory would have been a suitable pilgrimage destination for Prioress Eleanor had she been real herself.

  The tale of the Holy House being moved is part of the legend. When the house could not be successfully finished by the local carpenters, Richelde undertook a nightlong vigil, hoping to receive an inspired solution. Early the next morning, she looked outside to see five angels leaving the finally completed house which had also been moved to a spot deemed more suitable by the Queen of Heaven.

  When Richelde’s son, Geoffrey, returned from crusade in the mid-1100s, he founded Walsingham Priory to enclose and protect the Holy House. From descriptions left, the two-story structure (approximately 23 feet, 6 inches by 12 feet, 10 inches) looked more like an English dwelling than anything from Nazareth, but, despite the rich gifts left around it, the house was as simple as Prioress Eleanor described. All was destroyed during the reign of Henry VIII, who had been a devotee in his earlier life, but the shrine has been recreated in modern times and remains a popular pilgrimage site today.

  While Canterbury badges were considered superior in quality; Walsingham produced many more badges, according to archaeological evidence. The badges were contracted out to craftsmen, and most were the cheapest blend of tin and lead. Stone molds were used to form them, a craft that required much skill. Sadly, not much is known about the men who made these molds in the late thirteenth century.

  Among the other relics in Walsingham was a vial allegedly containing dried breast milk from the Virgin Mary, although she was not supposed to have left any part of her earthly existence behind when she ascended to heaven. One other relic of note was St. Peter’s knuckle bone, although Erasmus, in the early sixteenth century, concluded that the saint must have had been a giant if such a huge bone belonged to him. I have been unable to confirm that these specific items were in Walsingham in 1277. There is evidence of relics, but the only documentary proof of these two specific ones is from the 1290s. I opted to assume that Geoffrey probably brought these two objects back from crusade.

  The famous Slipper Chapel, where pilgrims left their shoes to walk the rest of the Pilgrim’s Mile to the Holy House, did not exist until the mid-1300s, but there was a tradition of removing shoes and walking some distance long before the chapel was built. Prioress Eleanor followed the custom.

  Ryehill Priory, Prioress Ursell, Father Vincent, and the box containing strands of Mary’s hair never existed. But Ryehill with its financial problems was typical of many religious houses in the era. Since priories and abbeys had to be self-supporting, and the smaller ones often lacked rich patrons, the leaders of places like Ryehill usually struggled to feed and clothe their monks or nuns. Some monastics actually starved, their bodies discovered dressed in tatters.

  Edward I did go on pilgrimage to the Walsingham shrines at the time mentioned in this story. He visited on Palm Sunday of 1277 while on a journey to acquire 200,000 crossbow bolts from St. Briavel’s Castle for his men invading Wales. The story behind his attachment to the Lady of Walsingham, whom he believed had inspired him to move from his chess game before a large piece of masonry fell where he had been sitting, is true. How she got the message to him is unknown, but he became even more devoted to her shrine than his deeply religious father, Henry III.

  As for threats to King Edward’s life, he may have become one of England’s more highly regarded monarchs after his death, but he had plenty of enemies in his lifetime. The idea of a plot to kill him is not unreasonable.

  He had angered many during the second Barons’ War under Simon de Montfort, selling out friends and bonding with former enemies to survive. Nor was he beloved by those in the Holy Land against whom he fought. Before Edward returned to England after the death of his father, Sultan Baybars (most likely) sent an assassin to kill him in Acre. Although the king never went back to the Holy Land, he frequently said he wanted to do so. Those who hoped he might never travel again to Outremer surely considered ways to keep him from fulfilling that dream. As for the Welsh and the Scots, they did not love this warrior with a penchant for invasions.

  Many learned quickly that Edward was far more dangerous than his less bellicose and more easily manipulated father. It should not surprise if they spent much time praying that Edward I would not have a long reign, while seeking some way of making sure he didn’t

  Throughout history, there have always been spies. Although the system in thirteenth century England may not have been as sophisticated as the one in place during the reign of Elizabeth I, every side had eyes and ears in every other camp. As for women acting as spies, they existed. During the de Montfort rebellion, a woman named Margoth, disguised as a man, alerted Prince Edward that the troops at Kenilworth under de Montfort’s son, Simon, had taken few precautions to protect themselves. Thanks to her good information, Edward attacked the young Simon’s army with devastating effects, and the battle at Evesham became a victory for the royalist cause. How she was compensated, why she did this, and what happened to her afterward are unknown. Once she performed her task, like the most successful of spies, she disappeared from view.

  It is difficult to prove the sexuality of those historical characters from the Middle Ages whose behavior might lie outside the socially approved. We do not have Facebook for daily confessions. We lack secreted videotapes of what really happened in those medieval haylofts, and we can’t interview the people themselves. So we make assumptions, perhaps correct, maybe not, but we do the best we can with the often imprecise but surviving evidence. The same problem exists in creating fictional characters who are intended to represent credible behavior and people in an era.

  From tales, poems, riddles, histories, and legal records, we know that the average medieval heterosexual had sex at times and in ways forbidden by the Church, got abortions, acquired divorces and committed bigamy, formed long and often acknowledged relationships unsanctioned by the requisite officials, and even used contraceptive methods known at the time. We also know, from many sources, that society has always justified forbidden practices, ignored them, or simply redefined them into socially acceptable ones when there was a compelling reason to do so. The Victorians may have been masters at ignoring the obvious or skillfully reinventing the meaning, but they did not invent the art. We humans have always been flexible when it suited us.

  So what about gay people? Unfortunately, we do not have a lot of indisputable information about the practices of medieval gay men and women, especially those who successfully survived, and even formed longtime relationships, without suffering religious or secular punishments.

  Criminal records are always problematic. They say a great deal about one person or an individual event but less about what was going on in the broader world. Church punishments and admonitions are also flawed. The term sodomy, for instance, has many definitions, most of which do not refer to homosexual practices at all. As for common social practices, such as sharing a bed or even forming a bond of brotherhood, none are evidence of homosexual behavior, but to say that sexual relations did not take place within them is equally inaccurate.

  In order to create a portrait of a medieval gay man or woman, we should start with the nature of certain social expectations and consider implications. The most important one is medieval marriage and the fact that it was rarely a love match. In the middle to high social ranks, it was primarily a contract intended to bond families for political and economic reasons as well as to stabilize society and produce the children expected for all the above reasons. Although love was not the initial impetus, there was a general hope that it would develop or that the partnership would at least become tolerable. Marriage, for the secular society, was also a way to define when a boy became a man.

  Durant of Norwich, no matter what he felt about other men, would probably have married unless he chose the religious life. Quite likely he wanted children. In his case, he was fortunate enough to marry a woman with whom he formed a compatible relationship, and they were both eager to
have a family. But marriage left him unsettled and vulnerable to seeking elsewhere for the deep bonding he lacked with his wife, a situation also common with heterosexuals in less than satisfactory marriages. Like many medieval men in his situation, he had recourse to male prostitutes as well as other men who also found solace in secret.

  For those who argue that Durant could not be gay because he slept with his wife, cared about her, and was eager to have a family, I point to the extensive documentary evidence from other eras during which homosexuals hid to avoid persecution and were as ignorant as their heterosexual counterparts about their equal part in the human condition. The story of Oscar Wilde may be the most famous, but one of the richest sources comes from the post-World War II era.

  According to much individual testimony of that time, gay men and women often did marry but never lost the sense that something was wrong, a very common phrase. Of these, some divorced and later formed a permanent bond with a partner of the same gender. Others continued the approved form of marriage for too many reasons to list and either had secret lovers or cruised the night streets much as Durant did over seven hundred years ago. Despite our greater knowledge of sexuality and improved, but hardly complete, tolerance, some continue to fall into this pattern today, a potential cause of profound anguish for both spouses.

  Bibliography

  Historical fiction, like most human endeavors, may contain factual errors, but the writers of the best works are passionate about accuracy. Their books serve an important function within the broader study of history by bringing our ancestors alive to a wide audience of fiction readers and making historical events feel immediate. If we see ourselves in those characters and understand how their times resonate with ours, we might be more inclined to avoid some of the errors they wish they had.

  To the scholars who inspire me, I am grateful and, in thanks, always mention a few books that might intrigue other readers as well. This time, I offer the following with the understanding that far more are available to tempt the reader: