Needle in the Blood (27 page)

“Is he the father of your child?” she says to the girl. Doubt flickers across her face as she looks at the nun, but her voice does not waver when she replies. “Yes, Mother.”

“And you are homeless?”

“I hadn’t much to begin with, and they’ve shooed off my chickens and broken my loom…”

“Very well, you may come with us.” She glares at Hamo. “I will find you work and lodging in the castle. On my own responsibility. But we must make haste.”

As they make the return journey, Agatha explains to Fulk what will be required of him. He is horrified; he’s a soldier not a butcher of women. But he makes no protest, feeling his Freya’s arm through his and her full, milky breast bouncing against him as they walk.

***

Little work is being done in the atelier. A few of the Saint Augustine’s women who do not know Alwys well are seated at their frames, but most have joined the other group and are standing around, bent together like saplings tied to form the ribs of a bower, consoling themselves with gossip. They know Sister Jean has gone out looking for Lord Hamo, and they are certain they know why. Margaret is with her sister. Gytha, who is only distracted by the sudden silence which greets Sister Jean’s return, is still reading Aesop.

“How is she?” asks Judith, unable to anticipate anything from Sister Jean’s expression. Sister Jean shakes her head.

“Gytha,” she says, “may I speak with you a moment?”

Gytha closes the book and follows Sister Jean out of the workshop, feeling all eyes on her back. Again.

“Why me?”

“She knows you. You won’t panic. I can’t send Leofgeat, not in her condition, and I can’t do it myself because someone has to keep an eye on Margaret.”

After what Margaret has told her, Gytha is forced to acknowledge the wisdom of this, whatever Sister Jean’s true motive. “What will happen to Alwys?”

“That depends.”

“I suppose it does.”

The silence is unbearable as they walk down the stairs to the door, past the drawings, the terrified faces of conquered and conquerors, the palaces and ships, the burning houses and horses with broken necks.

“You seemed very absorbed in Aesop,” says Agatha suddenly. “I wasn’t aware you could read so well.”

“I can’t really. I was never taught, just picked it up as I went along.”

“You have quick mind. Your curse, I think. My brother made that translation, you know.”

“Lord Odo?” Gytha asks, for the sake of feeling his name on her lips, its moon shape in her mouth.

“Of course. Literature couldn’t be said to be one of Robert’s talents.” She smiles and pauses, then says, “I’m sorry, Gytha. They’re in the Great Hall. They needed a large table.”

***

The bell is ringing for Vespers as Gytha enters the hall through the wicket in the main door, and Brother Thorold and his lay brother are saying their prayers. He will be praying somewhere, she thinks, if he’s still alive, kneeling on the wet earth among tents and cooking pots, or the cold floor of a woodland church, or a cushion in the chapel of a great house thrown into turmoil by his arrival. Praying for victory, for courage, that lances will not splinter nor bowstrings snap, for safe deliverance from the coming night. For her? She would like to hope so, would like to be able to pray for him.

She waits for them to finish beside the great double doors, locked now in case anyone in the household has not heard the news and comes to hall expecting dinner. Torches flare in all the wall sconces and a good fire burns in the hearth at the center of the hall. The long handle of a cautering iron protrudes from the fire and rests on a trivet on the hearthstone. Smoke dawdles in the ceiling space, winds among the posts and beams supporting the earl’s apartments, before drifting out around the leather curtains that have been hung at the windows to thwart the curious.

The figures in the hangings, the hunting scenes, illustrations of scenes from the Chanson de Roland, the great painting of King William investing his brother with the arms of his earldom on the wall behind Odo’s place at high table, seem galvanised by fire. The hart leaps, the dogs race, heroes do battle against the Infidel, the king’s hands fumble with buckles. The furniture is laid out as if for dinner, the high table on its dais forming one side of a square of long trestles, with spaces at the corners for kitchen and buttery staff to serve. Such a pretty scene, such extravagance of light and warmth for the woman lying on the table opposite the doors, like a joint of meat ready for carving, oblivious to it all.

The two monks rise from prayer and Gytha crosses the hall to join them. Fulk is also there, solemn and tense, testing his sword blade against his thumb; she had not been able to see him before, with the bright hearth between them.

“What would you like me to do, brother?” she asks.

***

The chapel bell has fallen silent and the service of Vespers begins with the psalms. There is a large congregation, people drawn to church by a pervasive sense of foreboding. Lord Hamo and his wife and daughters are present, as are Judith and Emma, Agatha and Margaret. Margaret seems close to fainting, swaying from time to time against Agatha’s shoulder. Agatha struggles with her burden, but it is hers to bear and she does not look for help. Freya is there, with her sleeping baby swaddled against her chest in strips of clean linen, and several of the Saint Augustine’s women prepared to risk returning home after dark to pray for Alwys. One of Hamo’s little girls, sensitive to the cold smoke drifting over the wards from the site of the clearances, has a coughing fit, causing the priest to lose his place and Marie to dart a sharp, anxious glance at her daughter. For each of these daughters she has already lost a son.

***

Brother Thorold folds clean napkins and wedges them beneath Alwys’ injured hand. He works methodically but gently, and Alwys, who seems to be unconscious, does not react as he lifts her arm at the wrist and packs the napkins underneath. The lay brother, who must maintain the pressure on the veins, consults quietly with Fulk about how close to the wrist he can grasp them without endangering his own fingers. Gytha sits on a bench opposite the men, close to Alwys’ head. She has a bowl of rosewater next to her, and a barber’s strop, the thick leather oiled and gleaming. From time to time, she strokes Alwys’ fine, tight curls back from her forehead. The smell of the wound is unmistakable in its almost familiarity, its wrong side of the blanket relationship to the smells of sex and childbirth. Brother Thorold has made the right decision.

***

“We remember in our prayers our sister, Alwys. Christ who triumphed over the torments of the Cross, have mercy upon her. Pour the balm of Your healing upon her and restore her to health. Amen.”

“Amen.”

***

Brother Thorold gives the strap around Alwys’ upper arm a last tug, as though tightening a girth. He pours wine from a small flask over Alwys’ wrist, skin, and the napkins under her hand, which are stained purple. The lay brother braces himself, then bears down with all his weight on a point two or three inches above her wrist, his thumbs feeling expertly beneath the tendons for the blood vessels to be blocked off. Fulk, his face glistening with sweat, gives his hands a last wipe down his tunic and picks up his sword.

***

The priest pronounces the dismissal, then looks up at his congregation and says, “Any who wish to are welcome to stay and keep vigil.” Nobody stirs.

***

Fulk squares his balance on the balls of his feet, adjusts his grip and raises the sword above his head. Gytha tries the strop again, but Alwys will not bite on it. Her mouth is slack, eyes closed; surely, God be praised, she is completely unaware of what is about to happen to her. Brother Thorold nods. Fulk brings the sword down, blade flashing through torchlight. Gytha keeps her eyes on Alwys’ impassive face, which she dabs from time to time with rosewater. There is a muffled thud and the rosewater shivers in its bowl as the sword, slicing through sinew and bone and bloody napkins, makes contact with the table.

It could be Odo’s body, a Saxon sword hacking through Odo’s arm. Oh God, dear God, please…

***

In the chapel Margaret screams and falls to the floor where she lies on her back, eyes staring, legs twitching under her grey skirt, her left hand clutched in her right as though if she does not hang onto it, it will float off up into the vaults, with the cherubs and gargoyles carved on the roof bosses. The priest turns from the altar, two small acolytes who have come in to light the lamps stop what they are doing, open-mouthed, the elder of Hamo’s daughters starts to jump up and down in an effort to see over the heads of the adults.

***

Fulk drops his sword and vomits over his shoes. Gytha, wrapping her hand in a cloth soaked with rosewater, pulls the cautering iron out of the fire. Brother Thorold takes it and applies the disc of red hot metal to Alwys’ stump. A loud hissing and the smell of charred flesh set Fulk retching again. A dog, overlooked in a dark corner, venturing out to investigate the smell of cooking, sniffs at the severed hand lying among the floor rushes then, wrinkling its nose at the stench of putrefaction, retires into the shadows.

***

The congregation crowds around Margaret. Agatha, kneeling, cradles her head in her lap.

“It’s the falling sickness,” says Judith. “We need something to stop her swallowing her tongue.”

Agatha says nothing, but darts the priest an accusing glance, as though it is his fault. Yet if his absolution was not perfect, it can only be because her confession was not heartfelt.

“Here.” Marie withdraws a stout wooden pin from her hair and offers it to Judith. Her husband watches her as she walks toward the altar, the black hair escaping from her couvre chef and snaking down her back toward the strong buttocks beneath her Flemish wool gown. Judith depresses Margaret’s tongue with the pin, wedging it firmly between her teeth, then holds her legs as the priest starts to intone prayers for the casting out of devils. Hamo’s wife returns to his side, bundling her hair back beneath her veil. Unnoticed, Freya slips away as the baby begins to stir, starfish hands curling and uncurling, nuzzling her tiny, suckling mouth toward her mother’s breast.

***

Alwys lies peacefully asleep in Sister Jean’s bed. Brother Thorold has given her poppyseed for the pain, and she is unlikely to wake now before morning. Her fever is down and the bandages around her stump still clean and fresh smelling. Brother Thorold, satisfied with her progress, has returned to Christ Church. Margaret also sleeps, dreamless and exhausted, while Agatha lies awake in Alwys’ bed next to her sister’s, listening to the light snores, the rustlings and sudden mutterings of the sleeping women around her, trying to distinguish the sounds Margaret makes from the rest. She thought this would come to her, like learning to walk or speak, and now her throat aches with grief that it did not, reminding her that her love is not natural, like learning to walk or speak.

***

Fulk and Freya lie among the sleepers in the hall. Alwys’ blood has been scrubbed from the table and Fulk’s vomit from the floor. They lie facing one another, with their daughter between them, Freya’s knees drawn up against Fulk’s thighs. Dogs nose softly among the remains of a late dinner.

***

When the priest rises for Matins, as usual on his way to chapel, he sticks his head round the door to the bakery to wake the baker’s boy and tell him it’s time to light the oven. The boy, sluggish and yawning in the cold and dark, throws the bloody package onto the fire with the rest of the fuel, without noticing it.

***

Marie is restless. Hamo would not let her go to sleep with the women after making love to her, and she finds his presence constricting, sprawled over three quarters of their bed at least, it seems. She lies on her back, arms tucked stiffly into her sides, listening to the sporadic coughing of her younger daughter in the adjoining room.
It’s the smoke
, she thinks,
just the smoke
. But unease seeps into her heart the way the English cold soaks her Gascon bones. Unable to settle, she shakes Hamo awake.

“I want to have the chapel washed.”

“Mmmm,” he replies sleepily, “on Palm Sunday. We always do.”

“Before. Tomorrow. What happened in there at Vespers, it was the Devil’s work. I think it must be exorcised also.”

“Go to sleep, woman. Things’ll look different in the morning.”

***

In the workshop Gytha shivers and chafes her hands to stop them stiffening. She sets her candle carefully beside the frame where Harold’s embassy to Normandy is depicted, smiling again at the farsighted soldier and the dogs that must be kept dry. She then carries Aesop across from the lectern and balances it on the edge of the frame, though when she opens it, part of it rests on the linen itself and obscures Harold’s entry into the church at Bosham. She takes a stub of charcoal from Sister Jean’s worktable and begins to draw on the linen in the empty bottom border.

Beneath the scene where Harold holds a banquet before embarking for Normandy, she draws a pair of hounds licking their paws. Or a pair of wolves perhaps. Then, as the diners begin to board the ships, a crow sitting in a tree, dropping a morsel of cheese from its beak into the waiting jaws of a fox. Although the fox has a thin, whippy tail, more like a wolf. The predator, the law breaker. Usurper of the golden lion king.