We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (39 page)

Dried peas, black and brittle, filled a cask to the brim. Carlings, Joan called them; before coming to Yorkshire I had never heard the name, but in Lent, on Care Sunday, each nun received a little sack of them to eat in token of remembrance. This year, I foresaw difficulty in tackling the hard food myself. I had something wrong with my gums, they wept blood and all my teeth were loose; in fact I had pulled one with ease and saw myself getting as gat-faced as Joan. I had not looked in a glass for nearly three years, and all the fishpond told me was that I was very pale. There was only one mirror in the convent, and even that had lately disappeared, for it had hung in the Prioress’s room, which in itself had undergone the startling change to complete austerity. Holy symbols hung everywhere; the walls were draped in black. Her lutes and hunting whips had vanished, and she herself preserved a silent withdrawal. It was the week before Valentine.

Edyth sat beside me, sorting the carlings, while Katherine, at my right hand, rolled the peas about. I was making the little bags, a task in which my mind could wander. Most of my thoughts were of a grim thankfulness that Kate was better, for Joan’s inhalations had worked a miracle of sorts, a mixed blessing, for now Edyth had the cough, just as if Joan by alchemy had transferred it. And Edyth’s cough was worse ever than Kate’s had been. She was coughing now; the poison rattled in her chest like the carlings in their tub. In the corner, Dame Joan swilled ale, while James Mustarde, protesting mildly, filled with peas the bags I had made.

‘Pack them hard, boy,’ I heard her say. ‘Madame shall take some with her into banishment. I warrant she’ll have care aplenty!’ She laughed at her own jest.

‘I must feed my swine,’ muttered James. Then, anxiously:

‘Reverend Dame, if the Mother is sent away, shall I lose my employment?’

‘Nay, never!’ she cried. ‘When my cousin from Cîteaux is installed, you’ll wear a silk smock. You’ll wait on us both, and I’ll share my lady’s chamber!’

‘I’d liefer tend the hogs,’ ‘said James wistfully.

So Joan will be another Juliana, I thought. And, should her cousin offend against Holy Church, would she, in turn, betray her as Juliana did the Prioress? For the hundredth time, I wondered what the Mother at Leicester would think. If I saw her again, if I told her that to my mind, three-quarters of the world were wholly bad, would she sigh agreement? Yet she was ever merciful. When, in my childhood, troubled by unknown fears and hate against those who had slain my father, I was suffering an infant Wanhope, she would say: ‘Look around, child. See that flower, that bird, that tree. The Master wrought them all, in their beauty. Who shall fear to fall into the hands of Him that made these things? It is the pattern. And the pattern is God’s mercy, reflected in man.’

Does she still live, I wondered. Holy in a true sense, I remembered also her warm worldliness. She loved to laugh. There was never spite in her laughter. She liked a tale, and if it were bawdy, she was never outraged. She did not judge. Long ago, there was a plague at Leicester, and one house that none would enter save her. She soaked her habit in asafoetida and garlic and nursed one man back to health. The other members of the household she tended before they died. She had never had plague herself, yet she nursed that man until the boil beneath his arm burst and the evil humours ran out black and stinking. He kissed her feet. And the people of Leicester stoned her when she came into the street, for bringing a risk to their noses, so that her right eyebrow was scarred where a flint had left its mark. And what did she? She laughed, a whit proudly, and said: ‘Poor creatures! Lack of faith has made them afraid.’ There was much trouble afterwards, I remember, and many came to beg her pardon, but the rest is lost. I remember her beating me soundly, and that I deserved it. I know she loved me.

Sitting thus, with my arms about Edyth and Katherine, and the carling-bags slipping unheeded off my lap, I thought on Leicester and the Mother, wondering again if she were still alive.

The sun, good and hot for February, made patterns on the broken floor. Edyth whispered that she must ring for Terce, and coughed long and shatteringly. I bade her let another do it, so she sat on, until presently we heard the bell’s swooning clamour, and Joan got up.

‘Come,’ she said. ‘I would watch Madame praying for a miracle.’

Madame was in church, but not praying; she looked angry. Her little white dog sat happily in the stall, tongue lolling. Near by, Juliana’s long face was like a block of yellow stone. Between these two women flew a snapping whisper which grew in strength and passion until it outdid the priest’s gabble. Again and again I heard the Prioress mutter: ‘You lie! You lie!’

‘That I do not,’ said Juliana with steady heat. Amazed, I saw Dame Johanna fall on her knees, arms outstretched not to the altar where the priest, open-mouthed, waited halfway through a Homily, but to Juliana, who turned away, haughty and grave.

‘I beg you, Dame,’ cried the Prioress. ‘It’s my whole life!’

Juliana shook her head. ‘I will not be your compurgatress,’ she said, and began her beads. The priest rang the Sanctus bell, but none heeded it. Like great black birds the nuns encroached in a circle upon the two women. The priest waited, and the chaplain, for he too was there, twined his hands, looking anxious for the first time.

‘But you helped me before,’ said the Prioress, very low.

‘Yea, I perjured myself,’ replied Juliana. ‘Till my soul was nigh as dark as yours. I denied your misdoings, covered your sins. On the last visitation I did it. Yet you still treat me like’—her glance slid downward—‘nay, not like a dog! Like a slave, a craven beast. I shall tell my lords—’

The Prioress rose, no longer a suppliant, eyes arched menacingly.

‘Well, Dame,’ she said, still quiet. ‘What will you tell them?’

‘All,’ said Juliana. Unerringly her finger pointed to the chaplain. ‘Including the tale of our poor sister. How she died, and why.’

The Prioress let out a shriek. As if signalled to the chase, the dog flew from her side and launched itself at Juliana, nipping and worrying the hem of her robe. Its hind-quarters writhed under a flurry of black cloth. Juliana raised her sandalled foot and gave the animal a kick, and its yelp was drowned by the Prioress’s second furious scream. In a trice, she had Juliana by the neck. Tall and strong, she tore off the other’s wimple with a rending crack, revealing Juliana’s head, stubbled with grey hair. She had Juliana in a stranglehold, caught round the neck in her own garment; and holding her thus, she dragged the nun up and down the nave, striking her in the face with her free hand.

‘Beggar! Harlot!’ she cried. The dog bawled limping at her side.

I felt Edyth press close to me in fear. I felt the crispness of Katherine’s little headdress under my hand. Gently I turned her, and held her face against my thigh. I closed my eyes.

That same day she sent for me. I had known it would be soon, for she had so little time. Even so, this preparedness did not stop my bowels from turning to jelly when the summons came. Edyth held on to my gown all the way through the frater. ‘Sweet mistress,’ she said. She always called me that.

‘Madame will not strike me,’ I said, laughing. An awful laugh it must have been. But she will not harm me, I told myself; there is a boon, a favour she would beg, a request that may become an order. I must therefore be as steel, as adamantine; I must not lose what wits are left to me, nay, I must be cleverer than ever I was. For I knew the Prioress’s mind, as surely as if the interview was already begun, and the knowledge brought fear. Dame Johanna’s door looked big and black.

‘I’ll wait,’ said Edyth.

When I went in, the Prioress was standing by the fire, shivering gently as if she were cold. This set up an even deeper dread in me, like entering a tomb. Then she faced me and smiled with pretty teeth. So like Elysande was she at that moment that I felt the hair lift on my scalp. Her dog was there, growling sulkily, with a bandaged paw.

‘Hush!’ she told it crisply, like one anxious to set a cordial mood. Then she murmured: ‘’Tis cold for February, think you?’

So she would sharpen her blade upon the weather. Very well.

‘I am always cold, Madame.’

She was solicitous. It suited her ill.

‘Winter does strike hard,’ she remarked.

‘Summer or winter,’ I pursued. I tried to catch her sliding gaze. She said calmly:

‘You shall have more bedcovers. Dame Joan can give you some lengths of stuff. I hear you are passing skilled at thread-work.’

Dread from her unnatural kindliness grew in me, and, paradoxically, courage.

‘Even damask wouldn’t mend a rotten wall, Madame. My cell’s like a marsh.’

Silent, she took two paces right, two left, the hem of her coarse, poor habit, newly donned, rasping on the stone.

‘We are a penurious household,’ she said suddenly, looking somewhere above my head. ‘Would I could have the place repaired, fitting and seemly. To please my lords. I am embarrassed, ashamed.’

She takes me for a fool, I thought wildly. Does she think me ignorant of her simony?

‘You are happy here?’ she asked, eyes on the ceiling.

‘Nay, Madame.’

The heavy-lidded gaze swept down. ‘But you have no cares,’ she said softly. ‘You have food and shelter. You have your daughter, have you not?’

Like the trumpet call before a tourney, a warning sounded in me. Beasts are sensitive to such a mood-change; the little dog yapped suddenly, then began to whine. I looked at it.

‘The Archbishop detests dogs,’ I heard myself say. I was quoting the emissary, and she knew it. I was sounding the attack. I waited.

‘But he loves children.’ Her full lips closed round each word as if it were a plum. ‘I’ve heard it said that a little holy maid touches him like naught else.’

I waited.

‘Where is Mistress Katherine? she asked gently. ‘Bring her here.’

Edyth brought her, while I stood calm and chill and wishing I were a man, a powerful man with a keen weapon in my hand, and an army behind me. Edyth must in some uncanny way have shared my thought. She had robed Katherine royally, like a gay banner, in the orange satin gown which I had cut down to fit, the neck and sleeves slashed and hemmed with fine linen bleached to cream. She wore a short hennin and veil made of the same fiery cloth. Her hair hung down, as befits a maid. No jewels, save for her eyes. She looked brave. There was no other word, and, as she came sedately, holding up her gown, I knew that here was army and sword, drawn and cast from my own heart’s blood.

She walked well until she reached the Prioress, when she sat down hard and suddenly on the floor, a gold bloom sprung from the stone. Johanna stretched out the arms that had beaten Edyth so cruelly, and a restrained madness took me so that I bit my tongue and sought silence in the pain. The Prioress’s hands raised Katherine; I fancied Kate was soiled by the touch, and wildly, irrelevantly, thought: Fool, fool! not to have sent that letter! But to have sent it would have been like presenting myself at the gates of Middleham, and the Lady Anne doubtless enjoying her honeymoon... ah, God! not to think on that! the Lady Anne, proud Warwick’s daughter, would surely look askance, but would her lord? I knew not, I only conjured his spirit into the room to shield Katherine, thinking how well he would abash the Prioress with his icy chivalry, his stern will... I saw the Prioress’s hands on Katherine, heard her chanting a blessing, as if in conspiracy with the child.

‘What say we at the ending, Kate?’ the soft voice asked.

Katherine turned to give me a smile. ‘
Te rogamus
,’ she said obligingly. Then she went pell-mell through her brief repertoire,
Jube, Domine, benedicere
and all, and
Bye, Baby Bunting
crept in somewhere too, which had certainly no part in the office, but as good as any of the fat priest’s gibberish.

The Prioress rose. ‘She has a marvellous keen wit,’ she said. ‘I vow her advent was a blessing to this House.’

I had dreaded the guess, and guessed right. She was bending again, holding Kate by the shoulders.

‘Shall you like to be a nun, Mistress Katherine?’

I had planned to be calm, but one cry burst from me, I could not help it. Across the floor in an instant, I snatched Katherine up into my arms.

‘She will not be professed,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘Not in this evil house. Nor any house. She will grow strong and fair and marry a good man. By Jesu!’ I said, starting to laugh and cry. ‘She’s scarcely two years old!’

Dame Johanna came very close. She took a snippet of Katherine’s orange gown, my gown, the Duchess of Bedford’s gown, in thumb and finger. Holding it, she said quietly: ‘You refused to be professed. The corrody pays only for one. This child is the property of Holy Church.’

I did not know all of the law, but I knew a lie when I heard it, and said so, screamed it into her face.

‘Then there will be food only for one,’ said Johanna, kindly.

I abused her, weeping. I said her day would soon be done, and that the new Prioress would look after us both. Anger bleached her face.

‘You are a fool,’ she said. ‘Your dower was small enough, God knows. (In all my frenzy, I knew this to be another lie; I recalled her saying: ‘I would not have priced her so high,’ to the men who brought me.)

‘Well then, dame,’ she said, hard yet cunning. ‘What do you propose? There are walls and roofs to be repaired, as you say. Has your knightly father more money? Or am I to please the Archbishop with a new postulant?’

‘My father is dead,’ I said, trembling. ‘Sir Richard Woodville is dead also. There is no more money.’

In my frantic grasp, Katherine stirred fretfully. Dame Johanna’s long white finger stole out to touch her cheek.

‘Kate, you’ll make a fine nun,’ she said, and smiled like a serpent. ‘I shall write to my lady of Bedford, asking her blessing—it is only courteous.’

But that’s impossible! I thought stupidly. Then realization, a great bolt of it, struck me. Immured here in the north, the Prioress was far more ignorant than I.
She
had no Patch, to bring her grief and joy and news. Accursed and blessed Patch!