I’d heard that a mother might put herself between a man’s fist and the child she loves, but I didn’t know that any man could have such tender feelings as to put himself between God’s fist and his child. My father wouldn’t. God put the mark of His curse on me while I quickened in my mother’s womb, but if God cursed me for my father’s sins, my father added his own curse to me for bearing it.
“It’s quiet here today, Osmanna. Few souls about.”
Ralph’s words were so calmly spoken that I wondered if I had imagined the horror beneath his shirt. Ella had closed her eyes again and was lying contented in his arms.
For a moment I couldn’t drag my thoughts away to make sense of what he’d said. “Yes… yes, it is quiet. Most of the women have gone to the seashore to rake for razor shells and to gather seaweed to dry for winter fodder for the goats. There won’t be enough hay to see us through this winter.”
“You didn’t want to go with them?” Ralph asked. “I’d have thought you’d be glad of a day by the sea.” He sighed wistfully.
I felt guilty. I was free to go out, but spent my time inside, while he must long to walk by the sea or climb the hills or wander again in all the places he had known as a boy, but he couldn’t step outside the gates.
“It’s my saint’s day,” I said. “I’m supposed to spend it in contemplation.”
“Blessings on you. I wish…” he began. Then suddenly he thrust the half-sleeping child into my arms. “Wait, wait here.”
He rose with a struggle and limped off towards the infirmary.
Ella twisted in my arms. She knew I was not Ralph and the anxiety showed in her face. Her body was lighter even than it looked, like a dried fish, transparent and sharp, but her head was heavy as it lolled against me.
Ralph came limping back across the grass, stumbling often. Soon he would need crutches. He would not be able to carry Ella to the cote next summer, if she lived until then. He laid a package wrapped in oiled cloth on the grass beside me, eased himself back down on the grass, and scooped Ella out of my arms.
He nodded at the bundle. “For you. A gift for your saint’s day.”
I blushed and stammered in surprise, “I can’t take it.”
“Please,” he said. “My Joan brought a bundle of things for me the night she fled. I didn’t see her. I wish she’d asked for me, but I think she was afraid. I don’t blame her. This was hidden inside a blanket. Open it.”
I unwrapped the package more from curiosity than any intention of accepting it. It was a book bound in calf’s leather, with fine tooling and traces of gold leaf upon the cover. The lettering was in a fine hand. I looked up. Ralph was watching me eagerly.
“It’s a pretty book, is it not? Can you read it?”
I nodded. “Merchants would pay good money for this. Why didn’t your wife take it to sell? She must be badly in need of the money.”
“Poor Joan was always afraid of it. A man gave it me in exchange for some work I did for him. He’d no silver, but he said we could sell the book for more than he owed.”
“Then why-”
“I told you-my wife was afraid. The man told me it came from the Jews in France. There were Jews once in this land too, but that was afore you were born. My father said when they were driven out from Norwich they left many things behind they couldn’t carry.” He shrugged. “Some never reached the ships, but died on the march. But I hear tell they’ve been driven out of France now too. So maybe those that died were the lucky ones.”
“But the book, was your wife afraid it was stolen?”
He shook his head. “You can’t steal from a Jew; all they had belonged to the King, for he owned the Jews, but the only books the King’s men were interested in were the moneylenders’ ledgers. Besides, they didn’t always get there first and who’s to know what a Jew had in his house before it was ransacked?
“No, my Joan was afraid because she heard that Jews’ books are full of witchcraft and evil magic. She thought that if any knew we had the book or we tried to sell it, someone might accuse us of sorcery. She said I was a fool for taking it, though the man said it was a holy book.
“I didn’t know what to do with it,” Ralph continued. “She’d not burn it in case it was holy and that brought down a curse from God-or if it was evil and she burnt it, it might conjure a demon.” He studied me anxiously. “It’s not a book of sorcery, is it? My wife blamed my sickness on the book. We can neither of us read and she’d not let me show it to any who could.”
I turned the pages carefully. “This isn’t a Jewish book,” I told Ralph. “It’s not written in their tongue. If it was I wouldn’t be able to read it, but I can read this. It’s in French. It means The Mirror… of Simple Souls. I don’t know why the man said it came from the Jews… unless a Jewish merchant bought it to trade or a moneylender was given it as a pledge. I heard that Jewish moneylenders often took books from Christians as surety. Anyway, this can’t have brought a curse on you; it speaks of God.”
His mouth twisted into a crooked kind of leer, but I was no longer frightened by that. I knew it was his way of smiling.
“Then it’s a good gift for your saint’s day,” he told me. “Take it; it’s no use to Ella or me and I’ve nothing else to give. I’ll not forget your kindness that day you brought me here. You’ve more courage than any man in the village, though you’re little more than a bairn yourself. I often think on how you gripped my arm and lifted your hand to cover me when they…” He faltered, his arm half raised against his face as if he could still feel the sting of the filth and muck they threw. “If it weren’t for you and Servant Martha, God bless her, I…” He scrambled up as fast as he could, holding Ella fiercely against him. “Take it for a blessing,” he said brusquely and limped away before I could put it back in his hand.
servant martha
i WENT ALONE TO ANDREW’S CELL. I heard her confession, and absolved her of sins which were so far beyond my understanding that I was afraid to hear them. Sins of the desolation of a soul sunk to the depths of humility, a soul that saw its own corruption with such burning clarity that it could accuse itself no more and yet accused itself for that very fault. How could I listen to that? There was no penance I could lay upon her that her own spirit had not already taken upon itself.
Trembling, I placed the Host in her mouth and her spirit shot upwards like a lark. She babbled such sounds of joy that I shivered to hear them. Despite her bloated features there was an expression of ecstasy in her eyes. I crept from the room and summoned Healing Martha to sit with her, for I could not.
Healing Martha glanced at my face and then at the cloak pulled tight around me to conceal what I carried. I dared tell no one what I did. I wanted to share the weight of it with Healing Martha, to seek her reassurance that I was doing the right thing, but I couldn’t. If there was sin in that deed, I had to take it upon myself alone. I’d had a choice. It had been my decision, so I couldn’t then force the knowledge of it upon Healing Martha. For this much I knew for certain-even if what I did was not a sin before God, there was danger in the act, grave danger for me and for anyone who knew what I did.
i WATCHED THE LONG THIN FINGER run down the column of fingers in the tithe ledger and the frown deepen. I couldn’t bear to watch, but leaving him alone was worse. At least if I stayed in the church, I might be able to divert him.
“Would you care for some wine, Commissarius?”
He didn’t look up. “From what I read in these entries, I am surprised you have any wine to spare, Father Ulfrid.”
He pulled his fur-trimmed robe more closely about him. Although the rain had chilled the evening air, it was hardly cold enough to warrant such a heavy robe, but he had the pinched look of a man who was permanently cold, whatever the weather. Several times he tilted the ledger towards the candle on the table, to illuminate an entry, before dipping his quill and making notes on his own parchment. In the hollow empty church, the harsh scratching of his quill seemed to reverberate off the stones, until it was all I could hear.
I’d encountered the Bishop’s Commissarius only once before, the day Bishop Salmon interrogated me about Hilary, an interview I still relive in my nightmares. The Commissarius had been poised on a stool placed just behind the Bishop. Occasionally he had leaned forward from the shadows to murmur something in Bishop Salmon’s ear, but he’d never once addressed me, and those whispers had been far more unnerving than the Bishop’s torrent of angry words.
With his face half obscured in the shadow of the Bishop’s high-backed chair I’d assumed the Commissarius was a man of mature years, but now that he was sitting in my vestry, I could see he was only in his late twenties, though his skin had the waxy unnatural pallor of a prisoner kept for years in a dungeon. He had a long narrow face, as if his mother had squeezed her legs together to try to prevent him coming into the world. His cheekbones were sharp and his eyes sunk deep into dark sleepless hollows, and little wonder for he had such a tension of ambition in his frame that it would rob any man of his sleep.
“I’m… surprised that you were sent to look over the tithe ledgers, Commissarius. I thought perhaps the Bishop’s Reeve-”
“You thought? Or you hoped?” he said, running his finger down another column. “Then my visit must be a great disappointment to you.”
“No, no, it’s a great honour, of course… but I hadn’t realised you concerned yourself with such matters.”
Still he did not raise his eyes from the ledger. “I am concerned with whatever is troubling His Excellency, the Bishop. And he, Father Ulfrid, is troubled about you.” He snapped the ledger shut on this last word and finally lifted his head to look at me. “Your parishioners would appear to be somewhat reluctant to pay their tithes.”
“But they cannot give what they didn’t harvest, Commissarius. You must have seen the fields as you rode here. The grain harvest was ruined and the hay crop was hardly better. Surely it must be the same in all the parishes in these parts?”
“Quite so, Father Ulfrid; as you say, all the parishes in the See are affected.” He smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes.
“Then you understand the difficulties,” I said, much relieved.
“I understand very well, Father Ulfrid. I understand that all the other priests-priests who are diligent in the service of the Church-have collected their tithes as usual and on time, despite the… difficulties.”
I gaped at him. How could they? It was almost on the tip of my tongue to say I didn’t believe him, but I stopped myself in time. “But, Commissarius, how can they bring a tenth of their crops when they have no crops?”
What did he expect me to do, rip the rags from the backs of beggars? God knows I didn’t want to be here, but if a man is suddenly thrown into
