For over a year Christine waited at her home. The bishop’s court did not summon her, but Father Peter informed her that the bishop, true to his word, had petitioned the Pope for her re-enclosure. These months she spent in caring for her nephew, the child she had helped bring into the world. She watched tenderly as the wet nurse suckled him. It was, she knew, the last intimacy she would share.
Although the rhythms of the village embraced his household, William was subdued, despite the fact that the justification of his word and the restoration of his self-respect had been important to him. His wife Helene was sad, but pleased to have her family around her. Christine’s brother was a support, too. But, above all, Christine loved the baby, and William hoped deep in his heart that she would stay. He did not want further change in his life. True, the new lord displayed due respect by ordering furniture to be made for a bedchamber at Vachery Manor, but the outside world had intervened too much in his once well-ordered life.
It was raining hard when Father Peter came to the door. The priest seemed to be full of his own self- importance because he was bearing a very important letter, although the essence of its content had been unofficially sent from Guldenford a few days before.
William welcomed him warmly. “Come in, Father Peter, and dry yourself by our hearth.”
“Thank ’ee, Will,” said the priest, letting his sodden hood fall on to his shoulders. Sitting on a stool by the open fire, despite his excited state he could not resist casting a covetous eye over the pork roasting on the spit.
William did not ignore the silent request. “Will you honour this home and join us in our meal?”
“I will most gladly, but pray let me read to you all this letter.”
The whole family assembled within the minute to hear the first letter William had ever seen.
The priest looked with concern and affection at Christine, while playing to the gallery in his hour of triumph. “Aye, Christine. Good it be to see you in a womanly robe, but I can tell you that your habit should be readied.”
The family members all stood while the priest raised the document in the air.
“I have here a copy of the response to the bishop’s petition on your behalf. It is in best Church Latin.”
“Tell us in our speech,” said William impatiently.
The priest assumed a self-important stance, holding the letter with both hands, his arms fully extended. Allowing a few seconds for a dramatic pause, he said, “It begins thus: ‘John, by divine permission Bishop of Winchester, to the Dean of Guldenford; we greet ye with grace and blessing.’”
He explained in detail rather than translated the intercession of the Bishop of Winchester with the Pope.
“This part of the letter speaks of our Christine. This is from our Holy Father. Heavens be praised, a letter from the Lord Pope about a humble villager here in Shere.”
The priest was clearly relishing his role as papal emissary.
“Read it, Father,” said Helene, almost unable to contain herself.
The priest nodded with exaggerated dignity. “‘Our sister Christine, an anchoress of Shere, in your diocese, has by humble confession shown us that whereas at one time, as is known to ye, choosing enclosure in the life of an anchoress, she made a solemn vow of continence, promising to remain in that place. Now forswearing’-that is ‘leaving,’ William,” he said with a gentle smile as he looked up at the frown on the carpenter’s face-“‘forswearing this life and conduct that she assumed, she has left her cell inconstantly and returned to the world. Now, with God’s help, she has humbly petitioned us that she may be treated mercifully by the Apostolic See.’”
The overawed family looked at each other and, in turn, Father Peter glanced individually at each person in the room before continuing. “Her transgressions have been forgiven, William. Aye, Christine, the Pope himself has given you absolution.”
Helene started to cry, while young William clapped his hands.
“Now, let me try again-by your leave, Christine,” said the priest, a little less portentously, “but this is learned Latin. I have laboured in the church an hour or more to comprehend the words before I came to this house.
“‘Therefore, we who strive for the salvation of the souls of her and all mankind with fervent longing, wishing to take care of her soul send ye, according to the rules of the Church, absolution for her, by authority of the Lord Pope, from the excommunication usually promul…promul…’” Father Peter coughed nervously and tried again: “‘Promulgated against such persons. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the manner of a good father of a family rejoicing in the finding of a lost sheep, the said anchoress shall come humbly to ye within the space of four months from this our order that she shall re-enclose herself in the same place, lest by wandering any longer about the world she be exposed to the hunger of the rapacious wolf and, which Heaven forbid, her blood be required at your hands.’”
Christine sat down, and covered her face with her hands. The priest cast a quick glance at her before returning to the complexities of the document: “‘After she has been re-enclosed there and has for some time conducted herself in worthy manner, and after she has made salutary penance in proportion to her sin, she will be accepted wholly into the Church. If these requirements be not met then she will lapse into the sentence of excommunication, and this present dispensation shall be absolutely of no moment.
“‘Given at Avignon, the sixth day of the Kalends of August, in the sixteenth year of the Pontificate of the Lord Pope.’”
The priest’s chest swelled with pride: “This is the Lord Pope speaking to us. Well, speaking to us through the Bishop of Winchester and then the Dean of Guldenford, but it is about our Christine-our sister again in the Church.”
Father Peter then translated the attached letter by the Bishop of Winchester, enjoining the Dean of Guldenford to guard against Christine being torn apart again by the attacks of the Tempter.
“This was given at Farnham, the tenth day of the Kalends of November in the year of Our Lord 1332.”
The family and the priest sat in silence for a full minute.
William was the first to speak: “We all thank our bishops for their pleas to the Lord Pope. I thank ’ee Father Peter. We will talk of this during perhaps one of our last family meals together with Christine. Father, will you take food with us now? Will you sit with us for our humble meal? And will you say a prayer?”
“Aye, with pleasure, but I will ask Christine to say a prayer over the bread. The Lord Pope has honoured her, not me.”
Christine looked at the priest in horror. “It is not right, Father,” she said. “I cannot lead a prayer in front of a priest, and fully ordained at that.”
“Do what the Father says, Christine. He is honouring our house. I have lost one daughter, but I have regained another.”
The priest laid both his hands on William’s shoulders, and said solemnly: “No, Will, the Church has regained your daughter. She will return to her cell, and, with the Pope’s blessing, for her natural life. Thanks be to God. Amen.”
Christine now felt elated, justified and proud, but also a tinge of fear crept into her heart. The Pope himself had granted her absolution, but Hell’s torments would be doubled were she to leave her cell again. For his part, William thought of the coldness of her stone cell, not the fires of damnation.
John, Bishop of Winchester, was reluctant to officiate at the re-enclosure. Only three or so years earlier he had conducted the first such ceremony in the whole of the Suthrige, the district later known as Surrey. These were strange times indeed, he thought, as he made the arduous journey to Shere. Winchester ruled the richest diocese in all England, and he was a busy man, with much to do in his own palace. He did not like to travel far at his age, and, with only four armed escorts, he fretted about the wild robbers who roamed in the woods. The Pope, however, had sanctioned the re-enclosure, and so it had to be done.
Father Peter had readied St. James’s church and himself for the visit of the sternest of bishops. In deference to the superior status of Winchester, the senior clerics of Guldenford had been invited to witness the re-enclosure, but not all were expected to attend, although Abbess Euphemia had declared her intention to see the re-sealing of the godly woman.
Christine’s family and all of the village were preparing, too, for an act ordained by the Holy Father himself. Simon could not attend; he would break out in tears, just like Mistress Anna, he told William, and the carpenter understood well the lover’s pain.
The night before the ceremony, Father Peter organised a small feast to honour the bishop’s visit. John of
