by Alis Hawkins
‘Ever thereafter, Saint Cynryth was known as the White Maiden and her well as the White Maiden’s Well. It lies in woods on a hill outside the city of Salster and there are miracles done there to this very day.’
My father had said nothing when the peddler fell silent and the man had soon been gone. But, it seemed, he had been storing up the tale of the White Maiden and her well in his heart and thinking on it — perhaps he had already begun offering prayers to Saint Cynryth — for, not many days later, he had a vision of the saint one moonlit night.
‘Saw her at the well, I did,’ he told me. ‘She was there, standing in the rock beneath the moonlight when I went there last night. Shinin’ white like the stars. Spoke to me, she did. Said this was her place. That the well was hers to care for.’
Back in Lysington, my father had told nobody but Master William of Saint Cynryth’s appearance to him, nor would he allow my mother and me to tell anyone.
‘Folks’d come traipsing through the woods to see where she come to me,’ he said. ‘Come pawing at the well, they would, touching it. I won’t have it.’
He wished to keep the saint to himself. And his care for the well where she had appeared to him could not have been greater had Cynryth been a living woman, dependent upon the sweetness of its water.
On the very day of his vision, he began to create a shrine at the side of the well, pulling aside ferns and moss from a shallow niche in the rock, scraping it clean of soil and roots, scrubbing the little alcove until the stone was as clean as the altar in church. Then, being a competent, whittling kind of woodcarver, he made a small statue of the White Maiden, to match the one that the peddler had tried to sell him from his pack. He even took it to an image-carver in Gloucester to paint at his direction.
‘I’ll have you make a proper figure of her one day,’ he told the carver in Gloucester when he took his little whittled image to be painted. ‘One day, when I have the means, I will commission you.’ He spoke the word as another man might have produced a rare find. Commission.
From that day on, her whittled little image watched over the well, a candle burning at her side on Sundays and offerings of flowers or green leaves laid on the shrine every other day. And that same little figure came to Lysington with us, that last time. It lay on my plague-ridden chest as I sank towards death.
But now, in its place by the well, stands an image so life-like that it seems almost to breathe; a wood-carved woman who is warm to the touch.
Sitting on the side of the cistern, with the topstones numbing my arse, I stare at the saint as she reaches towards me. My father’s reason for bringing us to the forest is clear to me, now. Without a word to my mother or me, he must have given the image maker his commission when word of the pestilence in France had come to us. He trusted the saint to keep us safe and the outlay of a tidy sum would have showed her his devotion.
The carrier surely came to our house two days ago. A Gloucester man would be glad of any excuse to leave his plague-struck city, especially to deliver the likeness of a saint who looks fit to bless anybody who lays eyes on her.
If the saint’s image arrived while I lay dying, my father would surely have seen it as a clear command from her. Come to my holy place, come into my care and protection.
Later, when I have eaten my burned pottage, I stand at my father’s bedside, studying his self-sewn shroud to see how I may finish the task he started. The shroud’s seam — competent enough around his legs, the stitches large and uneven but firm — stops, unfinished, just below his breastbone. Here, the stitches are looser, as if strength or will failed him, and the rest of the sheet lies, ungathered, beneath his head and shoulders.
As he leaned back that last time, drained by the unaccustomed demands of women’s work, did he look across and see me breathing still? Did he see the crude little Saint Cynryth — for so she seems, now that I have seen the beauty of the other — rising and falling on my chest with each breath?
For the first time, I consider the fact that the little statue lay on my chest, not on his. He was devoted to the saint, yet he lay down in his shroud and left her with me. And he is dead, while I am alive.
His death has left me free from collyering, free from his disapproval. Free to go with Master William to Gloucester, let him intercede with the bishop to allow me to study and become a priest.
If there are any left alive in Gloucester.
I turn my mind away from such a dreadful thought and cast my eyes around the hut at the last things my father saw. It is little enough for a lonely deathbed: the pallet bed where I lay, two stools, that church candle.
In all our years of coaling in the forest, there has never been a candle of any kind in the hut — rushlights always answered our needs. But a rushlight will not burn above half an hour. It seems that, at the end, my father wanted light about him. And not just light but something consecrated. Did he know he would die here, unshriven, with no priest in sight?
Perhaps, my angel whispers, the candle was not for him but for you. To speed you on your way if you should die, or, if you should live, so that you should not wake to utter darkness and be afraid.
Is that how it was? Did my father recall the times when I woke in the night as a tiny boy, screaming and terrified, though of what I could never say; times when only a candle’s light would calm me?
His clothes lie, folded small, on the hut’s second stool. And, on top, to keep them from vermin, he has put his good boots, his knife and his money-bag. My mother would have been surprised at this unwonted orderliness. Every night she used to pick up his overtunic and his boots, smoothing the wool flat, hanging his boots on a beam out of the way. His tools he always kept tidy but never his clothes.
After hooking the doorway’s sacking back to let the light in, I cross myself and reach beneath his dead fingers for the still-threaded needle. I take a deep breath, grasp the two sides of the sheet, marry the torn edge to my mother’s delicate hem-stitching, and fold the shroud over his face.
Before I can falter, I quickly pierce fold with needle and begin to sew. My stitches are as large and clumsy as his own but they are the best I can manage. The last stitch knotted, I bend to bite the thread, only to jerk away as my cheekbone bumps the top of his head.
My heart suddenly thudding, I sit back on my haunches and gaze at the shrouded shape of him. If I walk to Lysington, tomorrow, and come back with the mare the day after, he will have been dead and above ground three days at least. And, all the while, his soul has been in danger for he died unconfessed.
Another two days if I am to take him back and bury him. And, even then, he would not be buried in the churchyard. Nobody is buried in the churchyard any more. Not since the pestilence.
With a stab of pain to my belly, I recall the moment when the funeral cart bearing my mother and little Elinor trundled past the lychgate.
‘Where are we going?’ I shouted at Master William. ‘Where are you taking them?’
‘Martin, I’m sorry. But you’ve seen the churchyard — old graves are falling into the new! We’ve opened another burial ground in Newman’s Field.’ He put a hand on my shoulder and shook it a little. ‘Be thankful, Martin, that your mother and sister will lie in consecrated ground. There are tales from Bristol of folk laid in pits, covered in lime and buried without rites!’ He crossed himself.
Newman’s Field. How can folk lie easy in a field which, last year, grew beans and corn, where crows pecked after gleaning, where sheep dropped their shit all over the stubble?
I look down at my father’s shroud. What are the words Master William always used at a vigil? I strain my wits but the words will not come. Perhaps the pestilence has sucked them from my mind as it has sucked the strength from my limbs.
Desperate for some godly words to say, I stammer my way into the night canticle. But, even as I speak the words, I am afraid for my father. For, in coming to the forest, he has preferred Saint Cynryth, the White Maiden, to Our Lord.
He has not made a good dea
th and I am in terror for his soul.
CHAPTER 3
The day after I put my father in the ground, the mare turns up. And with her, my brother, Richard. It is a mark of my loneliness that I am almost glad to see him.
‘Martin! Is it you? Or a ghost?’
Half-falling off my stool, half-rising, I sway to my feet and face my brother as he comes towards me across the clearing.
‘Mare wandered home,’ he says. ‘Now snow’s melted, I reckoned I better come and see what was what.’ He looks me up and down. ‘So. Alive, then.’
I lift my chin. I have never been a favourite with either of my older half-brothers but I have always had more trouble from Richard than Adam. ‘Yes. Alive and well. Thanks to Saint Cynryth.’
Richard snorts and wipes the snot which came down his nose on the back of his hand. ‘What — Dadda’s little saint no priest ever heard of? Reckon she saved you?’
‘Alive, aren’t I, like you said?’
He looks at me as if I were a hog and he was judging how many days to wait till he slaughtered me. ‘Most likely weren’t taken with plague in the first place,’ he says. ‘Be like you, Martin, to reckon you was sick just so’s people’d take notice.’
Everybody says that Richard and Adam take after their mother. Plainly, the woman was big and knuckle-boned with little laughter in her.
‘Well, I’m grateful to you for returning the mare,’ I tell him, risking a cuff for what he will think ‘priest talk’, ‘and for coming to see that all is well but I expect you’ll be wanting to get back —’
‘Hold hard! What about the old man?’
‘Dadda?’ I wait a moment or two to vex him then drop back into our village speech. ‘Dead. Died afore I woke up.’
‘That so?’ It is not a question that requires an answer. ‘Where is he, then?’
‘Buried.’
‘Buried!’ He glares at me. ‘Where?’
‘Over by the well.’
‘What? Buried him like a dog? Dug a hole and put him in?’
‘No —’ I stop myself. I know what will happen if I tell him that I made our father as safe as I could, that I said as much of the funeral mass as I could remember when I put him in the earth. Richard will start complaining that I think myself better than everybody else, good enough for a priest. Weak as I am from the pestilence and from half a day’s grave digging, I cannot stomach a fight.
‘No what?’ he wants to know.
‘Didn’t bury him like a dog. Buried him in front of the shrine with his saint.’
He shakes his head. ‘Should’a brought him home. Buried him proper, not yere.’
‘Buried him afore the saint’s shrine,’ I tell him a second time. ‘Like he’d’ve wanted.’
Richard half-turns his head away, as if my words disgust him. ‘Don’t be foolish, Martin. Not simple, are you? You know ’s well as me no parson never dedicated that well to no saint. If Dadda’s little Maiden even were a saint.’
He is working up to something. Richard never lets slip a chance to advance his own cause.
‘What d’you say?’ he wants to know. ‘Believe the wilful maid in Dadda’s story to be a true saint, do you?’
Whatever I might have believed before, the beautiful White Maiden stands at the well, now. And I can feel her reaching towards me.
‘Don’t see no reason to doubt her.’
‘No? Thought parson William would’ve talked more sense into you.’ Richard hooks his thumbs in his belt. ‘Where’s the spot where they honour her, then? Her true shrine? For, as sure as shit runs out of a cow in spring, that over there —’ he jerks his head in the direction of the well — ‘isn’ it.’
‘Salster,’ I tell him. ‘White Well’s near to Salster.’
‘Salster? That’s a rare long way. How’re you going to make your way there, then?’
My heart suddenly thuds with fear. This was a trap, for sure. ‘Who says I’m going there?’
‘What? You think you’re goin’ to bide here after burying our father in unholy earth? Beneath a saint of unproved power?’
A trickle of chill disquiet runs down the nape of my neck. ‘She’s not unproved!’
Richard takes a step towards me. I back away.
‘That’s so, is it? Master William gave the church’s nod to Dadda’s shrine, did he?’ His eyes, not brown like my father’s and Adam’s but rat-grey, are sharp on me. ‘Didn’t, did he? Master William never heard of Saint White Maiden Cynryth.’
I swallow. ‘Doesn’t know every saint in the world, does he? Only the Pope knows every one.’
Richard sneers and sucks his teeth. ‘Well, saint or not, you’ve buried him out of sight as you saw fit.’ His eyes are cold. ‘And him being dead serves your purpose nicely, I’ll say that.’
‘Serves my purpose? How?’
‘Wanted to go studying in Gloucester, di’n’t you?’ Before I can reply, he shakes his head. ‘Folks in Lysington won’t like it when I tell ’em he’s dead and buried out yere.’ He stares at me, eyes narrow. Then, for no good reason that I can see, he seems to tire of the subject. ‘Where’s he lie then? Show me.’
We walk without speaking, the forest silent about us but for the rooks rasping to each other in the naked trees.
As we come around the hill and the narrow path widens out in front of the spring, fear stabs my gut. How will I explain the new statue to him? Somehow, I know, Richard will find a way of making the saint’s image my fault. He will make out that I encouraged our father in his devotion, encouraged this waste of good money.
I keep my gaze away from the fold in the rock and gesture to the mound of red forest earth on the right side of the well. ‘There.’
Then, while Richard’s eyes are on the grave, I glance up at Saint Cynryth.
She is not there.
My eyes dart around the well. Has she fallen? Has somebody moved her?
Richard sees me looking about. ‘What you afraid of, Martin? Reckon he’s fit to haunt you?’
I turn to face him. Could he have taken the saint and hidden her? No, his way to the hearth would not have brought him past the well.
I thrust my chin at him. ‘Not afraid of anything. Done my duty by Dadda, haven’t I? Came here to be near his saint, he did, whether living or dying, and I’ve done as he wished.’
‘Done what suited yourself, you have, Martin. As ever.’ He looks at me without blinking. ‘Why d’you live and not him, then? If you was both plagued, why’d his little maiden let you live and see him die?’
I asked myself the same question during my vigil over my father’s body and the only answer I could find was that my father had spent all the power of his years of devotion on me. All the prayers he made, daily, at the little saint’s shrine had saved my life.
‘Gave me the shrine statue,’ I tell Richard. ‘Put it in my hands when I was dying, back ’ome. Woke up in the hut still holding her. Healed me, she did.’
His eyes narrow once more. ‘Where’s it now, then? Such a thing has power.’
I swallow. ‘Buried it with him.’
He shakes his head, eyes cold. ‘Should’ve kept it by you, Martin. To protect you on your way to Salster.’ Then, without another word, he starts back along the path.
When I catch him up, on the hearth, Richard gestures at the cart. ‘Whatever Dadda wanted, he brought every stick and stitch he possessed yere with you. Must’ve meant you to have his chattels so they’re yours. And Hillfield’s mine. The house, too.’ He stares at me, then — long and hard — as if I might be out of his sight for a long time and he wants to know me when he claps eyes on me again.
He is banishing me. Denying me a home in Lysington.
Why does a lump grow in my throat at the thought? Of all my dreams, all my dearest visions of the future, none have ever included our village. And yet, here I am, fighting tears like a whipped brat.
‘I must see Master William,’ I tell Richard, ‘seek his advice.’
He looks at me without a shr
ed of pity. ‘Parson’s dead. Died yesterday.’
Master William, dead? Good as he was, I was sure that God would spare him.
‘Richard, you got no right to send me away! Lysington’s my manor, same as it is yours —’
He steps forward, stabs a finger at my chest. ‘And he was my father, same as he was yours. But he’s dead and buried out yere and nobody the wiser. And you’re hale and well. Aren’t you?’ He glares at me. ‘You better set your face for Salster and any shrine his little saint’s s’posed to have. Pray that she makes peace for him. Sees his soul safe.’ He takes a step towards me. ‘And if you don’t find no white well and no saint, then you better get to Dernstan of Salster’s shrine and wear out your knees for our mistaken father’s soul.’
CHAPTER 4
Two days later, I stand, mare and cart beside me, before the Foreign Bridge outside Gloucester. For minutes, now, I have been rooted to this spot, staring at the river, unable to put foot to the bridge. I have never travelled further than this. I have never seen Bristol, nor even Monmouth, which lies to the west of the forest, on the banks of Dene’s other river, the Wye. Gloucester, with its great abbey of Saint Peter, has always been our city, an easy half-day’s walk from home.
I glance at the city walls, away to my left. Within, the pestilence moves from house to house, street to street; but here all is quiet. The tide is on the ebb and the silty Severn mud lies flat and waterlogged beneath the heavy sky.
The wind pushes and buffets at me, flattening my hood against the back of my head. It is like a mighty hand pushing me on but I will not be bullied.
What lies between here and Salster? I do not know and my mind is full of fears. I fear cities peopled only by the dead, where unquiet souls quit their hasty graves to walk the streets. Manors overrun by weeds and the animals of the wood come to scavenge the unburied dead. Roads made perilous by those who have fled their homes in fear of their lives and now must prey on others to live.
