by Ann Swinfen
With some caution I climbed this, expecting at any moment to put my foot through rotten wood, but to my surprise I reached the upper floor unharmed. There were two rooms here, one facing the street, one overlooking the garden, both empty but showing stains on the floorboards where rain had leaked through the thatch of the roof. That was one repair the college must complete before anyone could live here.
From the room at the back I was able to look out over the rest of the messuage. There appeared to be a generous garden, but Durant’s description of it as ‘overgrown’ seemed an understatement. Nettles as tall as a man’s chest, interlaced with bindweed and sprinkled with thistles, flourished in the hot summer sun. It would be no simple task to bring that under control. No wonder the Warden had been in haste to declare that he could not spare servants for the garden. What was needed was a herd of very hungry goats to work their way through it all.
Downstairs again, I managed to push open the outside door from the kitchen, only to be met by this solid wall of vegetation. Well, that was not the first concern, which was, as Olney had said, to make the place weatherproof. The house did not feel damp at the moment, no doubt due to the summer heat, but as soon as it rained, or the season turned to autumn, it would be like living half outdoors.
There was not a scrap of furniture, nor even a dented cookpot or a broken cup, anywhere in the house. The former inhabitants, dead in the plague, must have owned possessions, however poor. Once the fear of contagion had passed, people had come here looting and taken every movable object, apart from that verminous bedding, which I suspected must be a fairly new addition or the fleas would have migrated to a more promising home. I was tempted to carry it into the garden and set fire to it, but that was a task for Merton.
Out in St Mildred Street again I stood and surveyed the house. No doubt it had once been a pleasant enough home, though small, but a great deal needed to be done before the Farringdons could move in. I wondered whether they had any furniture, something which had not occurred to me before.
‘Partial success,’ I said to Jordain, who was supervising the work of his somewhat reluctant students. ‘Warden Durant has agreed to let the Farringdons have a house in St Mildred Street, rent free.’
He jumped up. ‘Excellent news! I was sure that you could persuade him, Nicholas.’
‘He did not take a great deal of persuading,’ I said dryly. ‘It is half derelict and they have been unable to find a tenant for it, since there is no shop. Some flea-infested beggar has been sleeping there. Behind the building there is not so much a garden as an impenetrable forest. There are holes in the roof, no shutters downstairs, and I think if Margaret were to see what I assume is meant to be a kitchen, she would faint clean away.’
‘Oh.’ He sat down again.
‘However.’ I did not want to discourage him too much. ‘I think the college can be prevailed upon to mend the roof and shutters. There is, of course, neither glass nor horn in the windows. The building is far too humble. Warden Durant did not mention the poor state of the plaster on the outside walls, but I think we might insist that it should be restored. Otherwise the building will fall into greater ruin, which surely they cannot want. As for the rest, I think we might muster a few friends to clean the place and apply some lime wash to the inside walls.’
I looked at the two students, who were listening with interest to this distraction from their studies.
‘Perhaps if these lads apply themselves diligently to their work, you might allow them time away from their books to help.’
They both looked hopefully at Jordain, who could read the intention behind my words as clearly as if I had spoken it.
‘I might consider it,’ he said solemnly, ‘but only if you do indeed work hard.’ He gave them a severe look. ‘We shall see. When will the college carry out the repairs, do you think?’
‘I intend to send a note round to the Warden today, describing what I have observed, particularly of the plaster work. My impression was that he had not seen the house himself, but merely been given a description of it by the bursar or their master of works. Merton is well supplied with skilled craftsmen, they are forever building. If they will but turn their minds to the work I am sure that it could be completed within a week.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Do you write to the Warden urging his first attention to this, and I will write to Mistress Farringdon, to explain that there will be a house for them, once certain repairs are carried out.’
‘Do you know whether they possess any furniture and household goods?’ I asked. ‘The house is empty. Not so much as a cookpot.’
‘Surely they must. They have been driven from their home, but their goods cannot have been seized, unless there was money owing to their lord.’ He frowned. ‘They will require a carter to fetch all to Oxford. Do you think I should–?’
‘I am sure Mistress Farringdon is more than capable of managing that,’ I said hastily, envisaging Jordain rushing about distractedly, trying to supervise the move. ‘And if she is not, that daughter of hers is a fine manager, I am sure. Leave them to arrange their move. We shall be busy enough here, making the house fit to be lived in.’
‘You will help?’
‘Of course. And I have as good as recruited Philip Olney.’
‘Philip Olney?’ He gaped at me. ‘Are you mad?’
‘Not at all. Do you not recall that trim little house where he keeps his mistress and his son, out beyond the East Gate?’ I laughed. ‘I am sure he will be more than willing to lend a hand, with a little persuasion.’
* * *
Emma lay face down on her hard bed in the dortoir. Left alone except for Jocosa, she had wept, but her tears were dry now. She was exhausted and numb with pain. On leaving the Chapter House she had come straight here and no one had followed her. Dimly through her misery she had heard the bells to summon all to the services in the abbey church, but she had not stirred. She had eaten no dinner and had not attended her lessons with Sister Mercy. Instead she seemed to exist in a world cut off from the abbey and all its people. Perhaps she would stay here and never move again.
The daylight was beginning to fade when she became aware of a soft step on the night stairs, leading up from the church, not because she was listening but because Jocosa, under her embracing arm, suddenly sat up, tense.
‘Sister Benedicta?’
It was no more than a whisper, but she knew the voice. Madlen Sewtry, the oldest of the schoolgirls, near in age to Emma and due to be married in the autumn to some friend of the family.
Emma turned her face toward the door, but did not lift her head from the thin pillow, which had been sodden earlier but had now nearly dried.
‘Madlen,’ she said dully.
‘I’ve stolen some salve from the infirmary,’ Madlen said. ‘Will you let me treat your back?’
‘If you wish.’ Then, thinking that sounded ungracious, ‘Thank you. That would be kind of you. You will face trouble, if they discover you have stolen it.’
Madlen shrugged. ‘’Tis no matter. Me they cannot beat.’
She spoke no more than the truth. Coming from one of the great families in the shire, she was always treated with nervous respect on the part of the nuns. The schoolgirls, although handled firmly, were not subject to the same discipline as the novices.
Madlen knelt down beside the bed and drew a small pot out of the breast of her gown. Peering at Emma’s naked back in the dim light she let out a soft cry. ‘Oh, this is cruel, Sister Benedicta. How could they treat you so? It was not so terrible, what you did. You had completed the work Sister Mercy had set us.’
‘My name is Emma,’ she said, and clamped her teeth together.
Madlen had no answer for that. ‘I will be as careful as I can, but I fear this will hurt.’
At the first touch, Emma let out her breath in a hiss, but managed to hold back the cry which rose to her lips. Madlen worked carefully, spreading the salve generously over Emma’s whole back, and after a few minutes it br
ought some relief from the fiery pain. When she had finished, Madlen perched on the end of the bed and wiped her fingers carelessly on her skirt.
‘Will you take your final vows next month, when Sister Ursula does?’
‘Nay,’ Emma said shortly.
‘But how can you avoid? You have been a novice more than a year now.’
‘They cannot force me.’
‘Can they not? I do not know what powers the abbess has, but if your family placed you here, with the wish that you should become a nun–’
‘It was not my family,’ Emma said grimly. ‘It was my stepfather, after my mother died. He is no kin of mine.’
‘But he is a man, so he must have the right.’
Emma shook her head, as best she could, lying flat on her stomach.
‘I do not know the details of the law, but I am certain that no one can be forced into vows they refuse to take.’
Madlen sighed. ‘I wish you could come home with me, but I shall be married almost at once, and I do not know my husband’s mind well enough.’
‘You are kind, Madlen, but I must find my own way out of this tangle.’
‘You cannot stay a novice forever. You do not want to become a nun. Could you move into the guest hall, where the visitors live, and the great ladies who retire here?’
Emma shuddered, then laughed. ‘That is not the life I seek, Madlen. Besides, I have no money to buy myself a place as a guest. I must leave.’
‘But how? Where will you go? What will you do? Have you no other kin?’
‘I have an aunt, my mother’s sister. William’s mother. Do you remember my cousin William, who used to visit me here?’
‘I remember. That was terrible, what happened to him. It was an evil thing. But could you not go to his mother? Surely she would be glad of you, now she has lost her son.’
‘Nay, she is penniless. I should be a burden to her. But I cannot stay here. Somehow I will escape. What I shall do thereafter, I do not know.’
From the church came the sound of the bell ringing for Vespers.
‘Will you come to service?’ Madlen said. ‘I can help you with your habit.’
‘Nay. Hold me excused. I thank you for your care, Madlen.’
‘Do not do anything rash.’ She reached out and touched Emma’s hand.
‘I promise that I shall do nothing without careful thought. Now you must hurry or you will be late for Vespers.’
As Madlen’s steps died away, Emma struggled to sit up, although she was stiff from lying in one position for so long, and movement tugged the skin at the raw weals on her back. The other girl had descended by the outside stairs, for if she had entered the church from the night stairs it would have been clear that she came from the dortoir, where she had no business to be at this time of day. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Emma felt weak and dizzy. She had eaten nothing since the piece of bread and beaker of small ale permitted in the morning, and the beating had left her as feeble as a kitten. Jocosa jumped off the bed and whined.
Emma leaned down to stroke her, and gasped as the skin on her back broke from the half dried scabs. ‘I’m sorry, little one. You have had nothing to eat, have you? There is no need for you to suffer. While they are all at Vespers, we will see what we can find for you.’
With infinite care, she eased her arms into her habit and tied the strings at the neck. The rough cloth chafed her back, but Madlen’s salve gave her some ease. She slipped her feet into her sandals and quietly descended the outside stairs, closely followed by a hopeful Jocosa.
In the kitchen the abbey servants would be preparing the supper, to be eaten after Vespers. With luck it might be possible to beg something for herself and the dog and retreat to the dortoir again before the service in church was ended.
Emma was known to the kitchen servants, for she regularly fetched food for Jocosa, and today it seemed that word of her beating had spread even to here, for the senior cook, a stout and matronly woman called Edith, greeted her with cries of sympathy.
‘Come and sit you down here, my pet,’ she said. ‘Here’s a good pottage you may eat this minute, if you do not mind our rough ways here in the kitchen. And little Jocosa shall have her share too.’
Edith worked under the kitcheness, Sister Theresa, but fortunately she would now be attending Vespers with the other nuns. The heat in the abbey kitchen was overpowering, for the two great hearths were heaped high with logs for the cooking, and all the servants were as scarlet in the face as a full-blown rose. From time to time one would rush to the water barrel and dip up a ladleful to drink. Emma wondered how they could endure to work in this heat, but was glad of the chance to eat here, away from the company of the nuns who had watched her humiliation in the morning.. Edith placed a steaming bowl of pottage in front of her, and put a shallow saucer of the same to cool for Jocosa.
‘Fresh bread here,’ she said, pushing it across the table, and cutting a slice as though she thought that Emma was too fragile to do it for herself.
‘I thank you,’ Emma said quietly, suddenly feeling a desire to weep. The company of these simple men and women seemed to her far kinder and more Christian than the assembly gathered in the Chapter House, where no single voice had been raised in objection to her beating. Sister Mercy was not liked, yet none had shown the courage to oppose her.
Although she had come mainly to find food for her dog, she realised that she was hungry herself, spooning up the pottage gratefully, and soaking up the last of it with a crust of bread. Although the strict Rule banned meat for all but those in the infirmary, this clause in the Rule was barely observed, though meat was never served on fish days. Today the evening pottage was thick and substantial, mutton with onions from last autumn’s harvest, and the cabbage and carrots newly gathered from the vegetable garden. When Edith ladled a further portion into her bowl, Emma did not object.
Amid all her misery and shame, she had begun to think coldly what she must do. If she was to escape from the abbey before she was forced to make her final vows, she must plan carefully. It would be foolish to attract attention and punishment again, so she must be quiet, obedient, and submissive. Having nowhere to go, she knew that life in the world outside would be difficult, even dangerous, until she could find herself a position, perhaps as a servant.
It would be easier to lose herself amongst the populace of a town, rather than stay here in the country. Oxford was nearest. Perhaps there would be work there. Her ideas were vague, for she had never before needed to fend for herself, but women worked in towns, did they not? They were alewives and bakers, they wove cloth, made cheese. If her year at Godstow had benefitted her in no other way, it had at least taught her some of these domestic skills, for Benedictine nuns were expected to lead a practical as well as a prayerful life. So if she were to undertake a future of physical labour, she must now eat well and grow strong, although it would take some time to recover from the beating.
Time was passing. The service of Vespers would end shortly. Already the servants were carrying the large serving bowls through to the frater for the nuns’ supper. Emma thanked Edith, gave Jocosa another slice of bread and tucked one into the breast of her habit. As it was nearing mid summer, the sky was still light as she hurried across the courtyard to the dortoir stairs.
Clothing, she thought. I cannot leave the abbey and make my way to Oxford wearing a Benedictine habit. I must obtain secular clothing. That would be almost as difficult as passing out through the walls, walls which had enclosed her ever since she had been brought here early the previous summer, escorted by her stepfather’s men. The steward, handing her over to Abbess de Streteley, had claimed the need for an armed escort in case of outlaws living wild in the wooded lands through which they had travelled, but Emma knew otherwise.
Back in the dortoir she hid the slice of bread under her pillow to share with Jocosa later, slipped her feet out of her sandals, and lay on her bed again face down. It would be days before she dared to lie on her back.
When her stepfather, Falkes Malaliver, had announced that he was sending her to a nunnery, she had pleaded to be allowed instead to join her aunt’s family. Their circumstances had been very different then. Her uncle was still alive and in possession of his pension, which not only supported his family but paid the wages of a manager to do the work he could not do himself, and which had formerly been done by his elder son. William had been about to come home for the summer then, before starting his final year as a student. Even last year there had been the prospect of a college Fellowship for him. Her aunt’s family would have welcomed her, so why – she demanded – banish her to a nunnery? She had no vocation for the monastic life. She would, she declared, refuse to take the vows. At that, her stepfather had struck her in the face and warned her that she must do his bidding. Her lip had bled, where her teeth had been driven into it.
‘I will make certain,’ he said, ‘that Godstow keeps you in fast hold. You will not so easily slip through their fingers.’
It had made no sense to her then, and although her aunt’s life had changed drastically during the last year, at the time it had seemed a solution beneficial to all. Her stepfather would be rid of her (which he clearly desired), she would be happy living with her aunt’s family, and they would welcome her, as they had always welcomed her, from the time she was a small child. Perhaps William might have been stopped from agreeing to copy Merton’s Psalter.
She felt the tears well up again in her eyes, remembering how things might have been. Ever since the beating she seemed to weep uncontrollably at the slightest provocation. She must not let the other novices, who slept at this end of the dortoir, see her weeping. Angrily, she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her habit. She must retain her pride. By the time novices, schoolgirls, and nuns came to the dortoir, she was asleep. When the bell rang at midnight for Matins, Emma did not stir, even when Sister Ursula poked her, none too gently, in the ribs.
