your face. Plainly. A father can ask this of his own blood.”
The curtain was opened and William stared for a moment, looking for signs that her health might be fading. Gently he spoke: “Pale you are, my girl. Take this, some meat, seasoned by your mother. Father Peter has told me you are in need of this.”
“Thank ’ee, my father. Under your instruction will I eat of it, though the smell is overripe for me. How goes it in our house?”
“Your brother is strong as the miller’s ox, naught touched by cold,” William said proudly. “Your sister is intended for domestic service in the manor next spring when she reaches her sixteenth year…”
Christine felt the very worst profanities rise in her throat, but she swallowed hard. “Father, no.” Christine put her face-her eyes wide in terror-as close to her father’s as she could. She wanted to tear down the grille and shake him. “Margaret must never labour in Sir Richard’s house!”
William was bewildered by her fury. “Why, my child? It is the only means of climbing from her station. She is to work at day and come to us at nights. Not inside service-that I do not like. Else she must go out of our village to another demesne. Better she is in my sight.”
“Father, please heed me close.” Christine was near panic. “Sir Richard is wicked…I have prayed for him to repent in all my prayers…but do not tempt him with my sister.”
William regarded her quizzically. “Christine, will you or will you not tell me more of that night, at the very least to safeguard your sister?”
Christine could not stop shaking, but she forced herself to speak calmly. “Father, that is my life before I was enclosed. I will not speak, even to dearest thee, on this count. God knows all, but do not willingly let a lamb go to the wolf. Keep Margaret away from Vachery Manor!”
“I will think on your words, Christine,” sighed William. “I promise. And I will speak again to you, but Margaret is willin’ strong to learn from better folk. Be not agitated. I am concerned for you, not Margaret. Are you warm enough? Shall I beg to Father Peter for a third coverlet for your bed?”
Some of Christine’s equanimity returned. “No, father, I am content. If I am too pleasured in my cell, I cannot share Christ’s sufferin’. The comfort of worldly goods shall drive away my contemplation and lax will I become in my devotions.” She paused and rubbed eyes unaccustomed to direct light.
“I still pray for Christ to show Himself to me,” she confided. “As in the showing when I was sufferin’ at home. I hold my eyes on the crucifix above the altar and He does not weep, as once I did behold. Perchance my vision was but once, for ever. I confess to you that I await a sign from Him to say that my anchorhold is blessed. That I have taken His path, not one of vanity, chosen by my own pride.”
William was much moved. “I cry for you, my child, but I do not doubt now that God has touched you. Pure you are and deservin’ of His love. And of life,” he added. “So partake well of the meat. Do not destroy the earthly temple of your eternal soul.”
The carpenter stopped speaking and looked at his gnarled hands. “But forgive my clumsy words; I am but an unlearned craftsman. Of wood I can advise, but God’s mysteries are not for me to divine. I love you, child, and wish only for your best, in this life and that which is to come.”
Christine looked fondly at the simple carpenter she loved almost as much as her vocation. “It is a Wednesday, is it not?” Her eyes sparkled. “So, father, I shall with my rosary say the five glorious mysteries for you, to guide you in what I have asked.”
“Pray for me, then, Christine,” said William rising stiffly. “I need your prayers, as all God’s children do. Be well. I shall visit you on the morrow…with more meat.” She watched him walk away, head bowed, and realised how much he had aged.
Christine survived that first winter in spite of the intense cold, and became stronger in mind and body as the days grew longer towards the spring. Once she had lived the seasons as the iron laws of nature dictated every mood and method of her village. She had been enclosed at the height of the harvest, just after the Feast of St. Peter ad Vincula, or Lammas Day as the villagers called it, when loaves made from the new wheat had been brought for blessing at the church. She had heard them feasting at Michaelmas, on the twenty-ninth of September, when-given luck and good weather-the harvest was finally all collected. Scot-ale, the brew sanctioned by the Church, had been imbibed liberally, while the noble guests drank wine or convent ale, not the “third-ale” which was given almost free to the rustics.
Michael’s feast ended, and yet began, the farming year. At All Saints, on the first of November, the cattle were brought to shelter. But, before this, the evil spirits abroad on All Hallow’s Eve had to be banished. Villagers whispered of the Green Man, a human sacrifice, perhaps some poor vagrant, dressed and painted after death, then, deep in the woods, burnt to propitiate the ancestral gods. What mattered the life of one outsider compared with a good harvest upon which all the locals depended? Many in the valley indulged in minor pagan rites and fashioned ancient symbols, away from Father Peter’s disapproving gaze. Indeed, Christine’s brother had brought her a corn- dolly to keep away the spirits of the dead because he fretted that she was alone next to the graveyard. She cared naught for pagan trinkets, but took the gift for her brother’s sake.
Then came the autumn ploughing and the sowing of the winter grain. The high point was the celebration of the Nativity: Christine had rejoiced in the Christmas Mass and the twelve days of festivities, and she felt a part of her village as they crowded into the church. Throughout that week she knew that the villeins would collect their best fowls to present to the manor house. Candlemas followed inexorably, and then Plough Monday, when the spring ploughing began. In the cold of her cell, it had seemed an eternity from Christmas to Easter, but finally the candles were lit and the Exultet was sung to celebrate the night when Christ broke the chains of death and rose triumphant from the grave. The praises soared to the rafters: “O felix culpa,” “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a redeemer.” During Easter week, the reeve collected eggs from the villagers as obligations to the lord. Hocktide came on the first Monday or Tuesday in the second week after Easter, when some parishes celebrated the destruction of the Danes by Ethelred, but the nobility frowned on such Saxon legacies. Fallow ploughing, weeding the corn, coppicing and sheep-rearing filled the time to mid-summer, the feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, the beginning of hay-time…and the cycle was repeated.
Christine could see and feel the seasons change, and added the snippets of news from her siblings to her instinctive sense of the rhythms of rural life. Poets and bards did not sing of autumnal splendour, for the winter often spelled death for man and animal alike. Rarely was there enough fodder to keep all the livestock through the winter and most beasts were slaughtered at Martinmas. Meat, she knew, was always in short supply, so peasants risked the shame of the stocks and far worse to poach a rabbit or the lord’s game. The villagers and the surviving beasts became gaunt until the grass began to grow again. Fasting at Lent was often a necessity, not simply a religious observance. Most families had exhausted their smoked bacon and salted beef, dried peas and beans, and the remains of the previous year’s wheat and rye and the few winter greens. The lack of milk, butter and cheese, especially during the depths of winter, lowered resistance to the constant epidemics. Christine’s kin ate little fruit because they thought it was dangerous to their health, and vegetables were deployed mainly as seasonings for soup and meat. Scurvy afflicted nearly every villager by the end of winter.
So the spring meant life. After a winter of cold deprivation, passed in their dark, draughty, smoky shelters, the light, warmth and vitality of spring prompted great joy for the survivors of winter. Fresh food was received with thanks to the heavens and the songs to the merry month of May were truly heartfelt.
On the first day of May Christine listened to the festivities around the churchyard. She could hear the men shouting over their games-outside the church wall, because Father Peter would not allow wrestling nor dice nor ale within his precinct, but the sounds of bull-baiting and cock-fighting reached Christine from the glebe meadow. She knew that her young brother would watch the shove-halfpenny with fascination, and the new game, new at least to Shere, that was backgammon.
Christine was sure her father would compete at bowls and win, as he did every year, the first ale drawn from the May barrel. And this year William was also elected the “king of the village”; it was his job to act as judge of the sports and morris-dancing competitions. His second daughter, Margaret, would join the village girls in searching in the woods for flowers and shrubs to decorate their houses for the May Day celebrations. The young men would go gathering with them, a courtship ritual since pagan times, and Margaret, almost as comely as her sister, would be covered in garlands bestowed by the bachelors of the valley. The young men would also look forward to their “roping,” when women were caught like horses with a rope, and forced to give a forfeit-perhaps a kiss or a love token-to be freed. Sometimes the girls, often led by Margaret, would be allowed-for one day in the year-to rope a youth of their choice, and also demand small gifts before he was released.
