And she grabs Rufus again, more than just playfully, and she presses him to her and covers his ears again.
‘And he set fire to the whole place. He said it were cursed, just as everyone knew it were, and everyone within were damned. Well, they were after that, that’s for sure, because the fire took hold and the sisters on their side couldn’t get out because the Prioress had put in locks, hadn’t she, because someone had once absconded, and she’d taken the keys with her, hadn’t she? And before it happened the Prior of All had said there were no need for them to leave the priory anyhow, and that they should try to be like the first sisters of that order, and live in total isolation. And since there were no contact between the sisters and the canons, it was thought they’d not get the pestilence, and so when the fire took hold, they were all burned alive. Every last one of them.’
There is a long silence.
‘Dear God,’ is all Isabella can repeat.
‘Save the Prioress,’ Katherine says.
Liz looks up at her.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Save her.’
They stay that night at the castle in Tattershall. It is a meagre dinner, in low light, during which the priest becomes drunk and after which prayers are said for Baron Willoughby and the men he has taken with him in arms across the country. It is generally assumed within the castle that everyone knows the men have gone west to help the Earl of Warwick remove King Edward’s corrupt councillors from his side, and to restore the Earl to that position, and though Katherine has scarcely registered a word spoken all night, she looks up then, surprised to hear the enterprise spoken of so freely, since she had imagined it would be thought of as treason.
‘Will he succeed?’ she asks the priest.
‘Oh yes,’ he says.
But all she can think about is fire ravaging the priory. She can imagine it taking the sisters, and she remembers the time they gathered in the nave when they thought they were being attacked by the men who turned out to be the Rivens. How they had cowered, snivelling, waiting to be – what? She shudders to think of it, yet cannot clear the images from her mind. She imagines them clawing at the walls, leaving marks in the plaster. She sees them trying to escape those narrow windows. And all that time the flames coming closer. The heat. Dear God. And worse. Afterwards. She can imagine it afterwards. Boiled blood, congealed fat, blackened bones. Their scattered, sooted skulls with bared teeth, and their spines curled in agony.
But not the Prioress.
Afterwards Katherine, Rufus and Liz bed down in the great hall with the other servants, while Isabella, on account of who she tells them she is, is given a room with a strung bed in the southern range of the castle where the stones retain the sun’s warmth, even into the night. Katherine lies awake, too scared to close her eyes for the dreams she knows will come, and when dawn breaks on her at last, and the servants begin their creeping day, she is up with them as they light the fires with faggots of hawthorn, and she gives thanks to God for guiding her through her lonely vigil, for she has in those short hours discovered something about herself that has been a long time in the coming.
On their return from Tattershall the next day, they must once again pass the priory. The iron hoops of the cart’s wheels hiss through the wet Lincolnshire slop and they all sit in silence and stare at it as they go by, even Rufus, who has heard something of the previous night’s conversation, turning their heads to watch it slip behind them, and as they go, Katherine’s fearful memories seem to fly from her, like rags in the wind, and she starts to believe that when it is gone, when she can see it no more, she will be free of it. For in the night what she had come to see was that the priory was not a heaven-sent punishment for a sin she could never remember committing, as she had always believed, but that it was merely a world of the Prioress’s creation, a reflection of her, and of nothing more than that.
This past of hers, so long a source of shame, has become nothing she need hide from the eyes of such as Thomas, or Rufus, or Isabella or, even, Liz. It was a time in which she was under the power of another who mistreated her, and the fault of it was not her own.
And so now she stands with the others on the bed of that cart, and she turns and watches the priory as it dwindles, shrinks and finally subsides behind the horizon, and she feels exultant. She feels like bellowing at the top of her voice that it will be well, all will be well.
‘But now you’ll never find out who you are,’ Liz says.
’I don’t care!’ she tells her. ‘I don’t care.’
But Liz looks sceptical, as if she ought to care, and so they all lapse into silence, lost in their separate thoughts, and by the time they reach Lincoln the sun is out, shining on their backs, and by the time they are in sight of the hall at Marton, their shadows lie long on the right-hand verge of the track and Isabella has nodded off, her head drooping like a fritillary.
That is when they see the men and horses, up by the hall, five or six of them.
‘Are you expecting anyone, my lady?’ Liz asks.
Isabella wakes up, and looks panicked. She is not.
Katherine feels a welling of delight.
‘It is Thomas!’ she says.
‘Ah, good,’ Liz says, satisfied, and she flicks the horse on.
But it is not Thomas. It is Isabella’s sons, William and Robert, and they even have Borthwick with them, though no new hounds, and the falconer is there with his charges. Isabella has not been expecting them, but is happy they are back despite what they have done. They greet their mother with tense restraint. They want to know why she was abroad, and where she went. Isabella tells them. There is a slight quaver when Lord Willoughby is mentioned.
‘He was not there?’
She tells them he has gone to Warwick’s banner.
‘He said he would summon us,’ one of them whines. ‘Were he to go to Warwick’s colours, he said he would. We – are his indentured retainers!’
‘He promised he would send for us!’ the other one says.
‘Well, I am grateful he did not,’ Isabella says. ‘I have seen too many men I love go off and be – become lost in these stupid, stupid wars.’
The boys are angry and ashamed of themselves, and turn on Isabella.
‘He did not call us because he knew we could only provide a handful of men, that is why.’
‘A handful of poorly armed men at that.’
‘We need more money.’
Isabella tells them she has none to spare.
And that, for the moment, is that.
From then on, though, the cords of the three women’s triumvirate are broken, as Katherine and Liz become servants again, banished from the fire’s side while the sons sit idle and Isabella sighs and twists her rosary into knots in her lap, too frightened to bring up the subject of her breviary, trying to think what else she can do to make them happy.
‘They’re a couple of shits,’ Liz says, having watched them at it for a few days. ‘And she’s so blind she can’t see them for what they are!’
She is carrying a broad wooden bucket filled with bowls and mugs back towards the yard. Katherine tells her to beware Borthwick.
‘The fatty who smells of dogs? I’ve already dealt with that one.’
Katherine envies Liz her facility. If she had had it, rather than recourse to that blunt eating knife, then – then how different would things be?
‘What do you think they want?’ Liz asks. ‘Not much more they can take, is there?’
Katherine agrees. But there is a tension in the air. The boys are definitely angling for something.
Quite what it is they are after comes slowly: in the week after the Feast of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus at the very end of July, the day until which the stationer had agreed to hold Isabella’s breviary. Candles have been called for and rush lamps bought. The bearded boy suggests that Isabella is living like a peasant and should not be. Isabella agrees. There is a fine edge to her voice that carries a weight of meaning, but not with the boys. Katherine listens from behind the scre
en as they ask her why she has taken Katherine back in. Isabella tells them Katherine is more help to her than anyone has ever been. Again the implicit meaning is missed.
‘We think it is time you sold this place,’ one of the boys says.
‘Sold it?’
‘While it is still worth something.’
‘Where am I to live?’
‘You could move into a convent. A priory.’
‘I don’t want to do that.’
‘You can’t afford to live here!’
‘I can. It is you I cannot afford.’
‘But we live on nothing! You give us nothing.’
‘I have given you all I can.’
‘Tcha!’
Liz is about to storm into the room and unleash her tongue on the men, and perhaps they deserve it, but Katherine grabs her wrist and forbids it and for once Liz takes her advice. The next morning Robert and William take their birds hunting and Isabella is left exhausted by her efforts at defence, and preoccupied.
‘Perhaps they are right,’ she tells Katherine.
‘Do you want to go to a nunnery?’
‘Of course not, but this place is too big for me alone now. I cannot manage it. Not with my eyes. And if Robert and William need the money . . .’
‘Do they not have any offices themselves? Positions and the like?’ Liz asks.
Isabella purses her lips.
‘There was talk of something,’ she says. ‘But that went to another man, who was favoured by the Queen.’
It is always someone else’s fault, Katherine thinks.
‘So you would do it?’
There is a long moment. Isabella screws up her face, and her chin wobbles.
‘Perhaps it is for the best,’ she says.
So that is that, Katherine thinks. She has lost her home before, of course, and should never have allowed herself to hope. She thinks of those boys with their scarlet cloth and their falcons, and she thinks of herself and Thomas and little Rufus, and she could weep. She thinks of Senning, so perfect, and of Watkins, the man who found Sir William Tailboys and all his money hiding in a cave. Why do some men catch Fortune’s Wheel as it is on the rise, while others only when it has already gone over the top and is on its descent?
After that it is hard to pass the days with Isabella, even though Katherine can see she is caught in the gap between a mother’s love for her sons and her judgement of them as men. Isabella weeps constantly and becomes so helpless she cannot do the simplest of things, so Katherine resorts to spending more time alone in the little house she and Thomas built. It is empty: all such furniture as Thomas ever managed to make, and every bowl, jug, blanket and board has been taken for use elsewhere, perhaps by Borthwick; so she sits on the floor and she thinks – about the priory and the Prioress, about Jack and Nettie and John Stump under lock and key in some dismal tower, and she tries to think of anything else they might have done differently, and she sees there are many things they could have done, had they but known.
Her gaze flits over the little cottage, the repository of so many small memories of the good years between their return from Bamburgh and Sir John’s death, but it returns, as always, to the hearth, made of stone set sideways so it forms a series of ridges in the clay and sour milk from which Thomas made the floor.
Under it, wrapped in linen and oiled cloth, is the ledger.
She sits in silence and she thinks about it, and as she does so, it seems to loom larger in her mind’s eye, so that she can see it there, wrapped up, and it seems to be in communication with her, as it is said some saints’ bones communicate with initiates by rattling, or by letting slip blood when they are nearby. The ledger is crying out to her, she thinks, and then she understands that the way to save Jack and John and Nettie is not through having Thomas try to bring about the Earl of Warwick’s destruction, and through him Edmund Riven, but through giving them what they want: the ledger. She must take it to Edmund Riven, wherever he may be, and let him discover it for himself.
She vaults to her feet. That is it! That is it! She will do it. She hugs herself, wrapping her arms right around herself, and she does a sort of shoe shuffle of leather sole on earthen floor. By God, she misses Thomas in moments like this.
But then she thinks: What then?
After she has done that, and after Thomas has returned to her, what then? Where will they all go? If Isabella sells this place that has been their home, and Hastings no longer needs Thomas’s services – because, after all, what will happen to him if King Edward is declared illegitimate? – then . . . then what happens to her, and to Thomas, and to Rufus?
It is back to the same damned thing: money.
Still, they can worry about that when the time comes. They must first think about Jack and Nettie and poor old John Stump, for whom no one really cares. They must be got free from their imprisonment first. The loss of the ledger is merely the price worth paying, a price she will gladly pay.
She finds a mattock and starts to work on the floor. The clay makes a fine floor for everyday use, but it is easy enough to break it up and soon she has the hole by the side of the hearth deep enough to find the edges of the black wodge of oiled linen, plastered in clumps of dried clay, that’s been buried there perhaps three years. She tugs it out and finds that their precautions have worked. It feels light within its packaging, as if it is still dry. She holds it a long moment, just staring at it.
Christ, the trouble it has brought them.
She is about to cut these wrappings open, to slice through her carefully placed stitches, to inspect it, when Liz’s shadow fills the doorway.
‘What’re you doing all covered in—What are you doing, Kate?’
Katherine is caught. Her options flit through her mind, but she is holding the parcel like a thief caught in the act.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ Liz goes on.
Katherine decides to tell her.
‘It is – it is what all this trouble is about. It is what Edmund Riven has been looking for. Don’t ask what it is, because I’ll not tell you, and it is best you do not know.’
‘That? Is it gold and stuff?’
Katherine hesitates.
‘Yes,’ she lies. ‘Gold.’
‘It don’t look very heavy.’
‘It is very well-worked gold. A book. A manuscript. Illuminated. In Bruges. By the best, most skilful monk that ever did live.’
Liz knows she is lying.
‘So what are you going to do with it, now you’ve found it?’
‘I am going to take it to Edmund Riven. I am going to give it to him, so that he no longer has a reason to keep Jack and Nettie and John.’
Liz looks at her thoughtfully.
‘So you had it all along? While he were scouring the north for the thing, it were just lying here, buried under your hearth? How did you come by it?’
Katherine tells her it is a long story.
‘We’ve plenty of time,’ Liz says.
‘No,’ Katherine tells her. ‘That is the thing. We do not. Think about Nettie. She will be childing any day now.’
Liz is surprised.
‘So you – you mean to take to the road again, to ride up to Middleham in time of war to give that Edmund Riven this book, and then what? Deliver Nettie’s baby?’
‘I don’t know,’ Katherine says. ‘But Nettie cannot have the child in some – some stinking dungeon. We – I – could at least get her out of there. Take her to a nunnery, or a hospital if there is one. An inn, perhaps. Your father’s?’
Liz nods.
‘Though what of Isabella?’ Katherine asks. ‘We cannot leave her like this, can we? Alone with those sons of hers. They will find her some priory.’ She looks at Liz. ‘Would you stay? To look after her? If I were to go?’
Liz is uncomfortable.
‘It’d be odd,’ she says. ‘Me here, you there.’
‘So you would come with me?’
‘Aye,’ Liz supposes.
‘But what ab
out Thomas?’ Katherine wonders. ‘We must wait for him.’
Now Liz looks thoughtful.
‘But maybe . . .’ she begins hesitantly. ‘Maybe if we did it quickly? We should, with Nettie about to child, and then you could be back here for when Thomas comes?’
It is a good idea.
‘But there is still Isabella,’ Katherine says.
‘Well,’ Liz says. ‘Think on it. But in the meantime, you’d best hide that bloody thing.’ She points to the ledger. ‘If it’s as valuable as you say it is,’ she goes on, ‘them two boys’ll have it off you and be hawking it around town before you can bless the blood and bones of Our Sacred Lord Jesus Christ.’
Katherine feels chastened. She’s about to slide the package of the ledger back into its clay groove under the hearth with her own few odds and ends, including, she sees, the papers the stationer sold her, when she has an idea.
She takes the papers out again, sets them aside while she repairs the damage to the floor as best she can, and then she takes them up and follows Liz outside into the late-afternoon sunshine. She sits on a log Thomas sawed for this purpose and picks her way through the tight lettering of the bundle. Soon she comes to the section wherein the writer – unnamed – deals with couching cataracts. He – it is certainly a he – suggests a surgeon cut the lens of the eye with a thorn, from bottom to top, and push the disc blocking the eye down towards the cheek, and out of the way. He does not say what the disc is made of, or why it has formed, only that it can be moved. But a thorn though? And how would you wash the eye? Rose oil, she supposes, rather than urine.
‘By Our Lady,’ Liz says when she sees the papers. ‘Is that a goat or a man?’
Katherine is not sure. She wonders if it matters. Do goats have the same sorts of eyes as men? They are differently conformed; but they do the same job, don’t they? Liz is scandalised and reminds her that mankind is made in God’s image, not some bloody goat’s.
And how would you make it so that the cutting did not hurt? No one would be able to stand having anything – let alone a thorn – thrust into their eyeball without a fight. If she were to do this, she’d need to render Isabella insensible. How? Goodwife Popham had a dwale that once knocked Sir John almost dead for three days. How did she do that? Something to do with poppy seeds and henbane. Such things are not unobtainable locally, but you would need money, which, of course, she does not have. She is pondering this when she hears Isabella bleating for her from the yard; she sighs, and goes to find her.
Divided Souls Page 21
