There were mummers, too. One of the troupe had kindly lifted Christine’s interior curtain, and she did not demur. So the anchoress watched through the quatrefoil as the actors dressed in their gaudy costumes in the nave. She saw one put on the red mask of a dragon, while another donned the rough replica of a bull’s head with enormous horns. The mummers would act out stories from the Bible, but from the laughter and the costumes she guessed they had improvised in their mystery plays some more modern themes to entertain her people.
She thought, “My people. How are they mine? I feel the blood with my kin, but I am spiritual. I feel as though I have lost my bodily form.”
Yet for all her spiritual yearnings, Christine relished the laughter and general merriment. Towards the end of the day, she could hear the men arguing about how big their teams of kickers should be. After all had drunk too much of brewstress Denton’s barley ale, they would kick a big solid leather ball, with as many as thirty or forty in each team. The men were supposed to compete at archery, as the by-laws for festive days and fairs dictated, but, if a lord or bishop did not attend, other sports that went better with wagers and ale were indulged in.
As the sun set, young William and Margaret went to pray with their sister at her grille and, despite her rules, Christine spoke of homely matters with her brother. She learned who had excelled at every sport and how a goose, unplucked and undrawn, was rolled in special clay and then put into the embers of a fire.
“Cooked it was in the fire, Chrissie,” he enthused. “And when they split it open with a gentle blow of an axe it was so easy to thrust off all the feathers! It was ripe then for the feast!”
“The menfolk did drink the ale to quell the quacking of the goose,” interrupted Margaret.
“Aye, almost a battle there was-over the goose,” said young William.
“No manners there, even for the men in holy orders. So many there were. You know what is said: ‘a fly or a friar in every dish,’” Margaret said with infectious laughter in her voice. “Do you know what they said about Ranulf the Miller?” she asked mischievously.
“No, I do not know,” said Christine, suppressing a smile, “but you will surely tell me.”
“What is the boldest thing in this world of ours?” declaimed Margaret solemnly. She paused for effect. “A miller’s shirt, for daily it clasps a thief by the throat,” she finished triumphantly. Christine smiled and young William yawned.
When their brother went home tired to Ashe Cottage, Christine spoke privately to Margaret for the first time since she had heard of her wish to work in the manor house. She could not tell her sister of the crime against herself, and so chose her words carefully: “I do not think it wise to enter into Sir Richard’s service, but if you must, never be alone with him. He is evil and dangerous; he is a wolf. I counsel you from my heart. Do not think they are our betters. In soul, he is below the meanest pauper of this parish. I tell you true.”
Margaret knew she was more familiar with the ways of the world than her sister. “Christine. I thank you,” she said patiently, “but you are enclosed. You know little of the world outside your walls. I love you, for you are pure, but I do not have a call from God. I will see a little of the world, and where else can I go but Sir Richard’s abode? To go out of this demesne is the same for me as a pilgrimage to Rome or Jerusalem. I have no choice but to work, for myself and for our family. Long days for little monies will I work, but I shall come home eventide to our father’s home. A pilgrimage is more a danger or, were I to go a mile or so away into the Hurtwood, brigands could my life or honour steal away. You have forsaken our worldly life; I must venture more to live a little as our betters do.”
Christine realised that she could not prevail, and tried to accept God’s will. “Do as you must, my sister. I will pray for you through this long night. I shall not sleep. Good night to you.” She closed the grille, leaving Margaret to skip home, dreaming of the new world she would soon encounter.
Christine prayed fervently not for one night but for a year for the soul and body of her sister. Her fears for Margaret…her fears for Margaret…Margaret’s fate gnawed at her being… gnawed???
He trailed off into more question marks. Duval struggled with himself, praying for guidance, but there was no answer. In his heart he knew there was no other way. He left his desk to run a cold bath, the second of the day. Although sometimes he would reward himself with heated water, tonight he needed to be severe, to force himself to think how he would recreate in a contemporary woman the purity of vision so absent in the present, how to alchemise the base metal of the 1960s into the gold of 1330. He had tried before and he had not succeeded, because they had been too weak. They had all failed him, although the very process had helped to redefine his purpose, a project charged with all the grandeur of Jehovah. This time it had to work. And he had a young woman in mind, the “chosen one.”
IV. The Chosen One
Duval liked the smells of night, savouring the evening scent of summer rain after days of dry heat, when the soil gave up a fecund perfume, the sexual aroma of Mother Earth. The rains dampened sounds from far away, but intensified the night calls of nearby woods and gardens. At night in rain or mist he would stroll with his collie along the Lime Walk and through the fields and copses, or over the southern hills to the King William IV, summoned by the low wooden beams in the bar and the winter fire. Tonight, however, there was no fire in the large stone fireplace. It was late September, and the nights were drawing in, but one or two whole days of sunshine had induced the landlord to hope that an Indian summer would still announce itself next day. A log fire would have been too ready a concession to autumn’s arrival.
Walking with a dog allowed special dispensations from the strict laws of English social conventions. True, in the countryside, locals said “good morning” and “good evening,” even to a stranger, if they passed on quieter lanes or paths. But walking with a small child or friendly dog permitted actual conversations, brief at first, and still within very firm conventions.
Duval normally didn’t encourage such flouting of the English code of silence and reserve, and he had a special distaste for the endless variations of comments on the weather. Foreigners often found the custom bizarre, although it was quite simple. The actual weather conditions did not matter at all: the comment and response were an elementary voice test, a means of gauging vocabulary, grammar and, above all, accent; the first barrier in the rigid class system. If this test was failed, then passing conversations, even over the course of decades, might not get beyond the weather. They might even regress to a plain “hello” or, in extreme cases of mangled elocution, to a mere nod. Because it was socially embarrassing to regress to silence, the well-defined steps up and down the conversational ladder were taken very cautiously: hence the English reserve. But dogs were filed under the “extenuating circumstances” section of the social code.
Marda Stewart had probably never thought about the code, which had for generations been bred into the genes of middle-class English women, especially in the south. She simply liked dogs. Bobby, Duval’s dog, with his mournful eyes and wagging tail, sauntered up to her three or four times during that late summer on the secluded walk down Rectory Lane from the bus stop on Upper Street. Marda had been living in Shere for nearly two months and she often took the short cut across the ford and through the small wood to gain access to Lower Street, where she had a two-roomed flat in a cottage near the Old Prison. The Tillingbourne river ran opposite, alongside the well-tended allotments.
On their first encounter, near the ford, Duval exchanged a nod with the young woman. On the second occasion, a week later, Bobby ran up to Marda as she was walking down Rectory Lane and dropped at her feet the stick he was carrying while looking up expectantly. She smiled, picked it up and threw it down the lane.
That gesture was sufficient for Duval to say “hello.”
“What a lovely dog. What’s its name?” responded Marda.
“His name is Bobby. Are you a dog lover?”
“I used to have a dog, when I was a child…it broke my heart when he died.” She patted the dog on the head, and they said their goodbyes.
On the third meeting, three days later, they talked for a minute or two about the weather, while Bobby happily let Marda scratch him behind his ears.
Duval made it his business to walk along the same route at the same time nearly every day, but two weeks passed before they encountered each other again. This time Marda mentioned that she worked for a wine importer and had just returned from a ten-day business trip to France. And, crucially for English social conventions, they exchanged first names. Marda was an outgoing, friendly young woman with the confidence of the naive and a belief
