Needle in the Blood (10 page)

Gytha hurries across the clearing to the officer, where he stands beside a young archer crouched on the ground sorting through a quiver full of arrows.

“Is she mad?”

The officer looks close to answering her before he remembers his position and turns away impassively.

“Sister,” pleads Gytha, “this man is unshriven. At least you should fetch him a priest.”

“Is he secure?” asks Sister Jean, approaching the group beside the tree.

“Yes, madam.”

“Then know this,” she says to the prisoner. “This is not the king’s justice but his sister’s. You will thank me for it in heaven.”

The young archer fits his chosen arrow into his bow, takes aim, draws back his firing arm and, on a sign from his officer, releases his shaft. Sister Jean crosses herself and begins a recitation of prayers for the dying, though all Gytha can hear is the whistle of the arrow, ending in an abrupt squelch as it hits its target. It is a good shot; the poacher sags against the tree without uttering any sound other than the sigh of his breath being knocked out of his body. Gytha has never witnessed an execution before. She cannot look away as a thin, dark trickle of blood appears at the corner of his slack mouth, like something he meant to say before it was too late.

“If I’m not mistaken, there’s a priory not far from here. Take him there for burial and the venison for distribution to the poor.”

***

Agatha knows how it looks, but she has no intention of explaining herself, even though she regrets the way Gytha withdraws into hostile silence, refusing any longer to ride at her side but trailing several, sullen yards behind so the escort is forever having to drop back to keep an eye on her. She has acted as common sense and her conscience dictate. What else could she do? If she had released the man, he would have been picked up by a royal patrol in no time. If she had handed him over to the proper authority herself, the result would have been the same. A summary trial. Blinding, possibly the loss of a hand. William, of his piety, forbids the taking of life by any but God and contents himself with humbler punishments. The man is better dead. This way he is not condemned to a life of begging. His wife, if he has one, is free to marry again. His children will not starve. Her reasons are sound, yet she feels they imply criticism of Odo, the architect of William’s laws, so she will keep them to herself.

***

Canterbury castle is a disappointing place, mean in comparison with Winchester, a simple, shabby motte and bailey construction protected to the south east by the remains of the Roman wall and on the town side by a new double palisade. Glancing up at the keep through the blur of rain, Gytha forms the impression that the mound on which it stands is about to dissolve, bringing the tower sliding down into the outer court where it will sink into the mud. The new earl must find it very mean in comparison with Lady Edith’s house, she thinks with satisfaction, wondering how many more of Lady Edith’s possessions apart from herself have ended up here.

The thatch is in need of attention, and the keep itself affects the eye strangely due to the fact that four new windows, about twice as wide as the customary shot windows, have been cut into it half way up its height. Private apartments for the earl, says one of their escort in answer to her query, holding her mule as she dismounts. Private apartments. She has never heard of such a thing. Not even King Harold and Lady Edith had private rooms, though their bed stood on the opposite side of the hearth from where the rest of the household and its guests slept, and the curtains were a double thickness of wool, in winter at least.

***

They leave their mounts at the guard house, and Sister Jean leads her across the outer ward to what appears to be the only stone building in the compound. The keep is of wooden construction, most of the buildings around the outer ward, bakehouse and kitchen, blacksmith, fletcher, mews, stables, sties and byres, of wattle and daub. It is the oddest building Gytha has ever seen, two stories high with a tower at one end of it, like a Norman church with its watchtower. It has no windows overlooking the ward at ground floor level, but the walls of the upper story seem to be made entirely of glass. Even in this water-logged light she can see straight through from one side of the building to the other, to a further square of grey sky divided into patchwork by lancets so fine they are scarcely visible. It is as though the roof, tiled rather than thatched, hovers over the building on a cushion of air.

Sister Jean takes a latchkey from the bundle hanging from her girdle and opens a wicket set in a wide iron-bound door at the opposite end of the building to the tower.

“What is this?” Gytha shivers. She’s soaked through and her bones ache from the journey. She is a poor horsewoman, more accustomed to walking.

Agatha does not reply. She is happy to let the building speak for itself. It is, to her mind, beautiful and purposeful, not a stone laid but in the service of the embroidery, which she intends also to be beautiful and purposeful. She shows Gytha into the entrance hall. Tall windows, their arches decorated with chevrons, carved and brightly painted in the earl’s livery of green and gold, give a cloistered effect. The shutters are battened against the rain, but the hall is brightly lit by flares in wrought iron wall brackets. The stone of the walls, where visible, is smooth and so pale that it seems to take on completely the smoky orange glow from the flares. The walls, however, are almost entirely covered with pictures.

Some are charcoal sketches on vellum, mostly palimpsests showing blurred ghosts of their previous uses beneath the fresh drawings, others are painted on linen but unframed, their raw edges curled and fraying. So striking are they, so alive in the warm, flickering, uncertain light, that Gytha is indignant at the careless way they have been pinned up, a prey to dust and light, or the first gust of wind strong enough to rip them from the walls. They make little sense to her, showing scenes as varied as ploughing and ship building, the preparation of a banquet, a hunting party, a farmer among his vines, but it scarcely matters. They have, not beauty exactly, but a sense of authenticity that makes many works she has seen, meticulously painted, lavishly gilded, seem dead in comparison. Peering at the images as they shimmer into view, she can smell the turned earth, hear the sucking and sighing of waves and the hammering of shipwrights, taste the grapes, the way the sweet juice bursts into the back of your mouth when you press the fruit between tongue and teeth until the skins split.

“These are extraordinary. I wonder they aren’t taken better care of.”

“So you are a connoisseur of pictures, are you?” Sister Jean-Baptiste is leading her down the hall, but slowly, sensing her absorption.

“You don’t need to know anything about art to know these are special. I’ve never seen anything to resemble them.”

“Thank you. Although I must confess the style isn’t completely original. My brother showed me a hanging in Ely Abbey that uses similar motifs for buildings, trees and the like. I think it is typical of the work of your countrymen. And there’s a Pentateuch in the library at St. Augustine’s Abbey here that I found most inspiring.”

“These are yours then? For the hanging? They’re very good.” What a pity they will go to waste when Bishop Odo dies. As he will, as soon as Gytha can find the means. When God gives you a talent, an opportunity, you must use it. You have no choice.

Sister Jean-Baptiste halts before a door which she opens and stands aside for Gytha to enter. She finds herself in a dormitory containing a row of narrow box beds, each with a linen chest at its foot. The room is dark, with no natural light other than what trickles into it from the hall through a series of narrow apertures close to the ceiling. A fire burns in a brick hearth at the far end of the room, smoking a little from rain finding its way down the chimney. So that is what the tower is. Gytha has heard of chimneys, but she has never seen one before. She is sceptical of their usefulness. Surely the heat of the fire must all be sucked up the great stone chute without ever warming the room it stands in.

A deep half barrel stands before the hearth.
A bath
, thinks Gytha, feeling the longing in every cold, battered bone of her body, like the ones Adam used to make as a sideline to his coopering business, copper lined for waterproofing and insulation. They had sold quite a few of them, to the monasteries, merchants’ households and the like. She turns back toward Sister Jean-Baptiste.

“But there don’t seem to be any fighting scenes.”

“Oh there are, I assure you. But battles are like the tip of a pyramid. One has to consider all the negotiations, misunderstandings, and fallings out that lead to them, and the practical preparations. And remember that ordinary life continues to flow on around them. You are not the only one to be concerned with the truth, Gytha. Now, look at you, you’re wet through. Here is a bed for you, a straw pallet only, I’m afraid, but clean. I will send in the servant to help you bathe, but don’t undress yet. The men will be on their way from the bakehouse with hot water. You will find fresh clothes in the chest.”

“A straw pallet only,” she mutters to herself, mimicking Sister Jean’s strong Norman accent as she gives the pallet a cautious prod. As if she was used to sleeping on anything else. And this at least is covered with a clean blanket, the wool fulled for warmth, a welcome luxury as the beds are clearly only intended for a single sleeper. Bishop Odo must either shit gold or not have the sense he was born with where spending it is concerned.

She peers inside the linen chest and sees, but does not touch, a starched linen cap, carefully folded undergarments and a dress of some dark, demure stuff beneath them. She crosses to the fireside and looks into the barrel, and it is indeed a bath, with a little crossbench, waiting to be filled.

As if on cue, the door opens and a girl enters, followed by a man carrying two iron cauldrons of hot water suspended from a yoke.

“You must be Gytha.” She is perhaps sixteen or seventeen, a tall, big boned girl with pale, freckled skin and a mass of red-gold curls pushing against the cap, identical to the one in the linen chest, balanced on top of them.
Like a dove sitting on a bush
, thinks Gytha.

“Are you the servant?”

“Me? No, I’m Margaret. My sister Alwys and I are embroiderers here. Sister Jean said to make sure you were all right. She always sends us packing when she comes back from a journey, so she can look at what we’ve been doing in peace, she says.”

The man empties the water into the bath and takes his leave, lingering fractionally too long in the doorway. Gytha turns away, folding her arms tight across her breasts. She hates being trapped in this body that speaks a language at odds with that of her rational mind, a language so rich and complex she shrinks from the effort of translation.

“No need to wait for Leofgeat,” Margaret is saying, “I’ll help you. She’s got a sweetheart in the bakehouse. I imagine they’re dallying over the next batch of hot water. You might freeze while true love burns on the other side of the ward.”

“Is it love bakes the bread and warms the water here then?” Gytha unpins her cloak and sits on the edge of her bed to remove her shoes and hose. Her feet, the skin mud-stained and puckered from the wet, look like something that has been hidden under a stone.

“Hardly,” says Margaret, testing the temperature of the water with her elbow. “Art,” she says, straightening up and smoothing her skirt over her broad hips and round child’s belly. Her dress is of the same dark grey stuff Gytha has seen in her own linen chest, a shapeless tunic like a nun’s habit, with a girdle to match from which Margaret has a thread box hanging. “Sister Jean never tires of telling us that art is the master here. Apparently it’s not our skills as needlewomen, nor hers as designer, nor even the earl’s as…whatever he’s good at.”

Looting
, thinks Gytha,
killing, imposing curfews, inflicting floggings, bundling defenceless, grief-stricken widows into carts and packing them off into oblivion. Not art, not the beautiful images pinned to the walls outside.

“It’s all art,” continues Margaret. “Come on now, before the water gets cold. The others will be here in a minute.”

“Others?” Gytha has pulled off her dress and, her clothes being so wet, her shift has come with it, leaving her naked. She bows her head, shaking her hair forward so it covers her breasts, notices her garters, stiff with water, have left livid wheals in the pads of flesh just above her knees. “What others?”

“Oh, some of the others who stay here. There are some local women who embroider vestments and things for Saint Augustine’s, but the rest live here, in the castle. Alwys is coming, and Emma who’s…well, you’ll see, and Judith. She’s a thegn’s widow and never lets us forget it. We sleep in this dormitory.”

“Like nuns yourselves.”

“Sister Jean seems to have very particular views about us sharing beds, but we do when it gets so cold you’d rather be kicked all night than freeze. Would you like me to wash your hair for you?”

The water is hot enough to make her gasp as she slides into it, sitting a little gingerly on the crossbench, and to bring out goosebumps on the parts of her back and shoulders that remain exposed. Steam envelops her, warm tongues of water lap her aching backside, and the tender skin on the backs of her thighs chafed by the saddle. Her toes tingle as the blood begins to flow back into them.