The Butcher's Daughter

by Victoria Glendinning

  I remembered hearing how Dr Layton said to Dr Leigh, in Bruton, ‘Go and boil your head,’ and understood now the meaning beneath it. The severed heads are boiled so that they do not decompose so fast. Then they fix iron cages around them so that they do not fall to pieces.

  ‘Yes, Madam, it is voluntary,’ said Master Tregonwell, clutching his fur collar closer beneath his double chin. He has no neck to speak of. ‘We are inviting surrender from all the smaller monastic Houses. But in the long run the government will be looking further afield, at the greater Houses. Nothing of course is on the statute book yet.’

  ‘Unthinkable, impossible,’ said the Abbess. ‘Civil society would break down.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The great Abbeys look after the poor. We feed them, clothe them, give them shelter, tend them when they are sick. Many of our Houses give girls the only education available to them. Who would do that if not us?’

  ‘Madam, private charity can do as much. The worst cases of poverty can be looked after in the wider community. Legislation is in process even as we speak to devolve the care of the impotent poor on to the parish.’

  ‘But it is we, the great Abbeys, who have the means. You forget that we are rich.’

  ‘I do not forget that for one single second, Madam. You are rich because you own too much land and property. You have appropriated over centuries great tracts of good land – and mills, and manors, fairs, markets, farms, churches with their tithes – in the form of dowries from your nuns, to be held in perpetuity. It is wealth that is thus stolen from the commonwealth. It is removed from the polity, it is dead to the nation. There is less and less for the King, and less for freemen to buy and to sell. There is no development, no innovation, no enterprise. Only stagnation and decline. Even your donors, perceiving the trap, would like their properties back. I have seen correspondences.’

  ‘These are opportunists, who see the way the wind may be blowing.’

  ‘Opportunity and the ability to profit from it are the drivers of prosperity for all.’

  ‘We care for the land, Master Tregonwell. We pay for the maintenance of bridges and roads on our properties, which all men who travel must use. The great abbeys and monasteries provide employment for thousands of people up and down the whole country.’

  ‘Whoever is lord of a manor provides employment. Ultimately all land belongs to the King. He desires to put the accumulated wealth of the monastic Houses to better use. Not just the land, which will be leased or sold, but the materials of your establishments and the silver and gold and costly items that are locked up in your coffers.’

  ‘Put the wealth to better use? What possible better use?’

  ‘Schools and colleges for the betterment of the general population. The well-being, security and defence of our country.’

  ‘We already educate children who come into our charge. We already contribute to the Crown annually not only cattle and sheep on demand but the accoutrements of a settled number of the King’s soldiers. I think it was six that this Abbey fitted out last year. It is expensive.’

  ‘Six is nothing. I am talking about an army. We are threatened by war with France.’

  ‘You cannot,’ said the Abbess, ‘overturn the great work of six hundred years in an afternoon, as you seem to believe. Shaftesbury Abbey has stood where it stands since the days of our founder King Alfred.’

  ‘That is just the trouble, Madam. Times have changed. Look at your buildings. Leaking and rotten and draughty. The mean, unglazed windows. As for your steps and stairs …’

  ‘What of our steps and stairs?’

  ‘They are hollowed out and worn, the treads are chipped and uneven.’

  ‘Our steps and stairs are hallowed by the pious feet of generations of our sisters.’

  ‘Quite so. They are a hazard.’

  ‘We are continually repairing. We renew the thatches regularly.’

  ‘Thatch is for peasants and villagers. Any building of note now is tiled.’

  ‘We are restoring the damaged parts of the Abbey Church. The lead on the church roof is superb.’

  ‘You are wasting your time. And you may be sure that the quality of the lead on the roof has not escaped my notice.’

  ‘My house, this house in which you are sitting at your ease, Sir, is tiled with stone.’

  ‘You always knew how to look after yourself, Madam.’

  ‘It is not for me but for my sacred office as Abbess of Shaftesbury, and for my successors.’

  ‘Quite so. Reflect upon the peculiar temptations to which an Abbess like yourself is prone – independent, comfortable, autocratic, and too many luxurious entertainment of those whom you are wooing as donors.’

  ‘Entertainment is expected. Just as the entertainment of distinguished visitors and government servants like yourself is expected, sir. Will you take another cup of my good Rhenish wine?’

  ‘Thank you, I will.’

  There was on the table a pewter platter containing the Abbess’s favourite dish, mushrooms dressed in cream, well-peppered, with a thick scattering of chopped parsley. Two silver spoons lay beside the platter. Dame Elizabeth raised a mushroom to her lips with one of the spoons and gestured to Tregonwell to take the other.

  ‘This is royal fare,’ he said, his mouth full of mushroom and cream, ‘but distinguished visitors will in years to come be entertained equally royally by the gentlemen who build their mansions on land previously hogged – excuse the term – by the monastic houses.’

  ‘I do not excuse the term. It is inexcusable.’

  There was a pause. Tregonwell slurped his wine and burped. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His face was becoming red.

  ‘It is not just the material conditions, it is your ways of thought. You are incapable of thinking new thoughts.’

  ‘I see no need to think new thoughts.’

  ‘That again is the trouble, Madam. Europe is alive with new thoughts – not all of which the King agrees with, he is a good Catholic, but you cannot send time running backwards. The Church of England belongs to the people, as does the Word of God, to be heard and read in their own language. It does not belong to clerks and clerics muttering in a tongue which neither they nor their congregations understand. Nor to nuns and monks chanting psalms and prayers into the empty air seven times a day, nor to chantry priests under the illusion that they are saving the dead some years in Purgatory. Years have no meaning in the eye of eternity. Nor is intercession needed between the soul of a Christian and his God. Nor does the Church of England believe in monks and nuns taking money from credulous pilgrims in return for the chance to venerate painted effigies and a few old bones. Salvation cannot be bought and sold. Superstition, barbarism. I am sorry, Madam, but it is so.’

  ‘You are mistaken, sir. All the art, craft, architecture, sculpture, music, the works of holy charity itself and everything in the known world that is not barbaric, came through religion and is upheld by religion, by the Church.’

  ‘It did. And the Church has held on to its sole possession of these things long quite enough. The human spirit is on the move. Time has teeth, Madam, and the new men are inspired by holy zeal. Nothing is for ever. Nothing remains the same. Not even the same remains the same.’

  At breakfast next morning Sister Onora said that during the night she had seen from a window an enormous white cat on the roof of the Abbey Church when she was on her way to the reredorter. She was not normally compelled to visit the reredorter between Matins and Prime, but there had been something in the soup which did not agree with her.

  There was a whispered discussion about the soup. There had been shreds of pig meat in it which were perhaps tainted. We had all felt queasy. Sitting next to Sister Onora as I was, I asked her in a low voice to say more about the enormous cat. Just how big was it?

  ‘As big as a dog,’ she said.

  I said that if it was the same size as the dog which the Prioress carried in her sleeve it was a normal cat.

&nbs
p; ‘It was as big as a big dog. As tall as a goat. It was a white goat with the head of a cat. It is an omen. I believe it was the Devil trying to find a way in.’

  We wanted to know from which window she had seen the Devil, and she said it was from the last one before the archway into the reredorter.

  ‘But you cannot see the roof of the Abbey Church from that window.’

  ‘It does not signify. Sometimes it is possible to see something that cannot normally be seen.’

  We could not gainsay that. Sister Onora was calm, as she always is when she tells what she has seen.

  ‘Will you tell the Abbess?’

  ‘The Abbess will already know, if the Devil is let loose in the Abbey.’

  ‘We are not praying hard enough,’ said Sister Eleanor Wilmer.

  Under the circumstances, knowing what I knew, all this talk of omens left me uneasy.

  Master Tregonwell came to us again, this time about money. The Abbess sought to impress him by reminding him yet again of the wealth of the Abbey, thinking to intimidate him. Money is power. She still could not see that the Abbey’s wealth was precisely what most inflamed Master Tregonwell against us.

  ‘Shaftesbury Abbey is rich – on paper – in rents, dues, taxes, tithes, and the ample produce your lands and farms afford you. But you are merely turning money over. Why are you so frequently in difficulties? Why is there never ready cash for emergencies such as a failed harvest? I have uncovered mismanagement, wastage and fraud. Your investment is so diffuse that even you cannot oversee it all.’

  ‘I visit all our estates annually and go through the accounts everywhere and give instructions to my managers for any improvement necessary.’

  ‘I have made a study of all the accounts. Your systems are antique and unreliable. There are too many middlemen and a tolerated vagueness that would be considered culpable in any other commercial enterprise.’

  ‘Shaftesbury Abbey is not principally a commercial enterprise. It is a place of prayer and holiness.’

  ‘It is indeed a veritable prayer factory. The question is, of what use are these incontinent prayers, sprayed into the air by night and by day?’

  ‘If you do not recognise the power of prayer then I despair of your immortal soul. What you call the new thinking disregards the foundations of our holy faith. It is a pity that I gave you the position you now hold. I had looked to find in you a wise friend and an advisor.’

  ‘That is what I seek to be. The position I now hold places me well to make an assessment, which happens also to be my duty as a Commissioner. I have noticed that many of the sisters here do not obey your Rule. I have seen and heard such things as would cause scandal to any decent Christian.’

  ‘There are among us some young women who affect the modern manners. You accused us before of being mired in the old world. You cannot have it both ways, Master Tregonwell.’

  ‘His Majesty the King can have it any way he wills. But let us return to the question of money. No one wishes monks and nuns to starve when their houses close. There will be pensions.’

  I could tell that the Abbess was now paying him a keen attention.

  ‘In the most unlikely event of this becoming necessary, how would the pensions be calculated?’

  ‘By negotiation with the Head of each House, to be confirmed by the signature of Master Cromwell. A great Abbess such as yourself could naturally expect a generous allowance, and her nuns something less, by agreement. This of course would depend on compliance. Refusal to comply would result in nothing, and – as has already happened up north – something far, far worse than nothing.’

  ‘You are threatening me.’

  ‘I am setting out the facts.’

  ‘And what do you get out of it all, Master Tregonwell?’

  ‘Opportunity.’

  He grinned his wolfish grin.

  *

  The King has given Gillingham and its castle to Queen Jane, who is expecting a child. Anne Cathcart tells me that Queen Jane has a mean little mouth. She also tells me that the late Queen Anne’s sister Mary was much the prettier of the two, and that the King had her, as well. Anne knows from hearsay many things but few of them are important. Meanwhile Dame Elizabeth Zouche has been concerned that the Abbey’s vital arrangements concerning wood-collecting in Gillingham Forest might be affected. Fortunately the Queen’s agents seem to take no interest in the matter.

  The next thing that Dame Elizabeth hears from London is that Queen Jane has died in childbirth. It is a boy, at last, and he lives. The King has a son. He is named Edward. He will be the next King of England. It is said that he looks just like his father. But I do not know what King Henry looks like.

  During the autumn of 1538 we had a Visitation from the Bishop. There is meant to be such a Visitation every three years, and the present Bishop of Salisbury – we belong to the diocese of Salisbury – had not visited since his election.

  The Cellaress had to bustle about getting in stocks of provisions for the entertainment of the Bishop and his retinue. Geese, carp, flour for the white bread, salads, fruits. The cost, she warned us in Chapter, was formidable. Next year we would be on short commons.

  Carts loaded with produce rolled in from the Abbey’s farms. Normal routine was overturned. The Bishop’s clerks would be examining the books and accounts of every department of the Abbey, both temporalities and spiritualities. Everything had to be in good order, ready to be presented, as would an up-to-date inventory of all the House’s material goods. The financial position must be made clear. Even the foundation’s Charter, and the certificate confirming the election of the present Abbess, would have to be produced for inspection. The Bishop would also be examining every nun individually from the Abbess to the newest novice, who was myself.

  Monasteries of men are also subject to scrutiny from their Bishops, but there is a subtle difference when it comes to nunneries. Dame Monica used the phrase ‘the frailty of women’ to explain why nuns are subjected to particularly rigorous Visitations. Women require supervision.

  ‘It is unthinkable that women could be ordained in Holy Orders or administer the sacraments, let alone celebrate the Mass.’

  I know that. These are matters that lie outside a woman’s sphere.

  ‘It is understood by the Church,’ said Dame Monica, ‘that women are constitutionally and morally the weaker sex and that women’s communities are therefore more prone to irregularities and laxity. As all priests are our fathers in God, and the Bishop is God’s representative, it behoves us to bow our heads, emulate Our Lady, and submit to the Church’s rulings.’

  We bowed our heads as she spoke. I was thinking of Father Pomfret, and of Father Robert Parker – and of John Tregonwell. For all these I do agree that ‘frailty’ is the wrong word. Yet I know many women both here and at home who are strong and self-disciplined, as men are meant to be, and some are. And many men who are moody and weak, as women are believed to be – and as some women indeed are also.

  Authority belongs to men. Their authority cannot be denied because it is not an idea. It is fact. Yet I do not wish I were a man. So many men are like children, they cannot think beyond their own concerns and desires, and they tailor their opinions and allegiances to serve the same.

  *

  It was arranged that I should be professed as a nun during the Visitation of the Bishop. I would be exchanging my white veil for a black one. I would prostrate myself before the Bishop and the Abbess in the chancel and confirm my lifetime’s vows on obedience, stability and humility. The Bishop would give a homily to mark the occasion. Mother Monica impressed upon me that it was an honour to be professed in the presence of the Bishop. I was looking forward to this. I wanted to be a full member of the family at this difficult time – for our community is a family, of a strange kind.

  The Abbess announced the Visitation in Chapter. The Bishop’s name was Nicholas Shaxton. He was, she said, one of the best known bishops in the realm, a distinguished man who had preached before the King h
imself.

  ‘The elder of you among my daughters will have experienced a Visitation before. Many of you have not.’

  So she told us what would happen. The Bishop and his entourage would arrive at the door of the Abbey Church, robe themselves in the vestry, and proceed to the altar of the Abbey Church for a High Mass. Then we all would go into the Chapter House to hear a sermon given by one of his chaplains, mercifully in English. After that would come a sequence of formalities which we would, said the Abbess, find tedious. So far as we were concerned, the important part came afterwards.

  The Chapter House will be cleared, and each one of us will enter in turn, alone, to be cross-examined by the Bishop, our answers and comments noted down by his clerks. He will ask us not only about ourselves but about our sisters – what breaches in discipline we have observed, what departures from the Rule. We are obliged to give the name of any sister against whom we make an accusation. We will also be asked whether we had any complaints about the conditions under which we lived.

  ‘Each of you,’ said the Abbess, ‘will speak according to your understanding of the truth. You may or may not consider that the trivialities which normally occupy us in Chapter may be overlooked – the quality of your food, the occasional breaking of the Great Silence, some particular weakness of one of your sisters.

  ‘Or you may feel it your sacred duty to deliver yourself of such complaints. That is your right. There is no reason why even personal animosities should not be recorded. When it comes to any serious irregularities that you may have observed, only private prayer and meditation will enable you to reconcile charity, and the good of the community, with the duty of disclosure.’

  Grave complaints about the behaviour of a sister, she said, would have grave repercussions. The sister in question would be recalled by the Bishop to hear the charge against her. If she denied the charge, she would be allowed two hours to bring forward four sisters able and willing to confirm her innocence.

  ‘In my experience,’ said the Abbess, ‘it can be hard to find so quickly four sisters willing to involve themselves in such procedures. Grave accusations against a sister or sisters therefore should only be made under the strongest prickings of the individual conscience.’