january
thirteen-year-old roman martyr, who refused marriage, was put in a lunatic asylum, then sentenced to be burned. when the fire would not light she was killed by the sword. it is thought unlucky to name a child agnes, for she will go mad.
tHEY BROUGHT ME GIFTS-a thin white shift and a tall conical hat, pointed like the horn of a unicorn-offerings for a virgin. Three of them crowded into my tiny cell, locking the door behind them, Father Ulfrid, my cousin Phillip, and a slack-mouthed youth, Phillip’s page. They filled the cell, blocking out the afternoon light. I pressed against the rough wall, sick with fear at what they would do under the cover of the twilight they’d brought with them.
Phillip made a mocking bow. “Oblige me, m’lady, by removing your clothes, all of them, then clad yourself in this.” He held up the loose white shift, but when I reached for it, he snatched it back.
“Don’t be so hasty. You must strip yourself first.”
He leered and moved a step closer as if he hoped I’d refuse so that he could do it for me. They waited. I wanted to turn my back, but that would only make me more vulnerable. Instead, I faced them, trying to slip my clothes off without taking them away from my body. At least Father Ulfrid lowered his eyes. Phillip smirked, cracking his knuckles, and the boy blushed to the roots of his straw-coloured hair as he goggled frog-eyed up and down the length of me. I was naked. I clutched my kirtle against me, trying to keep covered, my back pressed to the cold sharp stones of the wall. Phillip snatched my clothes away. I wrapped my arms across my body, trying to cover my hideous scar with my hand.
“Modesty?” Father Ulfrid stared contemptuously. “There’re no dresses where you’re going. Have you not paid heed to the paintings on the church walls? They’re put there for the instruction of foolish girls like you. Heretics bound together in the eternal fires of Hell, bare and naked for all the devils in Hell to torment.”
He dragged the shift out of Phillip’s hands and thrust it at me. I hurried to drag it over my head, feeling their gaze groping my body as I struggled to cover myself.
“She’ll be bare-arsed long before the Devil comes for her.” Phillip leant over me, laughing, crushing me against the wall, his hand resting on the wall beside my head. I could smell the sweet wine on his breath. He twisted a curl of my hair round his fingers. “As soon as the flames touch you, this pretty little shift will shrivel away and every hair on your body along with it. You’ll be trussed up there on that bonfire as flesh-naked as a scalded pig. The whole village will see what you’re marked for before your flesh melts away to tallow.”
The young boy giggled nervously. “Maybe we’ll put a grease pan under her to catch the drips. Lay the rushes in it and we can burn her all winter.”
“All winter?” Phillip pulled away from me. “It’s precious little light you need then, boy. There’s not enough fat on her to dip a pennyweight of rushes.”
The floor was writhing under me. My face was burning, but I was freezing cold. A wave of bile rose in my throat. I crouched against the wall, vomiting onto the stinking straw, shivering uncontrollably.
“Are you cold, my sweet cousin? Never mind, you’ll be warm enough tomorrow.”
He cuffed the page boy around the head. “Get on with it, boy; there’s a flagon of wine waiting for me at the Bull Oak Inn.”
It was only then I saw that the boy was holding a pair of sheep shears.
I tried to scramble to my feet, but Phillip seized both my wrists, crushing them together. The boy leant over me and grabbed a handful of my hair. There was a grating rasp and he tossed the hank of cropped hair down on the filthy straw. He grabbed another handful and that too fell, then another and another, until all my hair lay among the vomit in the straw. I hadn’t realised I had so much hair until I saw it scattered in front of me. My scalp felt raw and cold, as if someone had tipped ice over my head. Phillip let me go and I crumpled down onto the straw. It was as if this was happening to someone else and I was hovering somewhere overhead, watching it. Perhaps I wasn’t there at all, I am a ghost, I told myself. I am invisible.
Father Ulfrid thrust the tall hat at me. “See there.” He shook me. “Look at it, girl.”
I tried to focus my eyes to read the name written on the hat in red letters-Lilith.
“That’s your rightful name. For as your father said, you were born under her evil star. You cannot be allowed to die with a saint’s name upon you. You need a demon’s name to send you straight to hell.”
He stood the hat opposite me, the name turned towards me, like a judge. The door crashed open and shut again, the key grated in the lock. I was alone again.
I sat where I was dropped, as cold as a drowned man. My scalp prickled, but I didn’t want to touch it. Even if I did, I couldn’t have lifted my arms. My body didn’t obey me anymore. I stared at the long brown curls lying among the straw. Heretics, harlots, and nuns-all shorn. Why do men fear our hair so much? The dank stones dug into my back, but I felt no pain. I floated somewhere beyond it. I knew what they said they would do tomorrow, but it couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t. It was only a bad dream. I would wake up soon.
servant martha
tHE INFIRMARY WAS SILENT. The shutters were closed against the cold and only a few tapers burned, barely penetrating the twilight. Most of the patients had gone, those who still had families to collect them. Maybe Merchant Martha was right. Maybe the villagers knew the Owl Masters were planning to attack the beguinage, so they’d rescued their own relatives while there was still time to get them out.
Beatrice was gone too. We knew something was wrong when we saw the door of the pigeon cote flung wide open and the birds wheeling round its roof. At first I feared she might have harmed herself in there, but she’d not done that. The cote was empty, save for the candles. She must have collected up every wax candle in the beguinage and set them all burning. It was a wonder they hadn’t set fire to the straw.
Pega and some of the others had looked for her, but she was not in the fields or barns. I knew we wouldn’t find her. Guilt over Osmanna doubtless weighed heavy on her mind and perhaps she thought the other beguines blamed her, so she had simply slipped away. I should pray for her. I had let her down as I had the others, but how could I pray for her when I couldn’t even pray for myself?
A soft hand stroked mine. From her pallet, Healing Martha lay watching me. I could see the embers of the fire reflected in that one open eye. “I am tired, Healing Martha, so very tired. Tomorrow they will burn Osmanna and all my thoughts should be with her and there is nothing I can do.”
Healing Martha’s hand squeezed mine gently as if encouraging me to continue.
“Merchant Martha thinks we should return to Bruges. All the women are packed and ready, waiting for me to give them the word, but I can’t give it. I have failed so many people-you, Osmanna, that poor child Gudrun. I cannot fail again. The decision I make, I must make for the whole beguinage, not just for the beguines here now, but for all the women who will join us in the years, even centuries to come. And for the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do. If the pagan hordes were massed against us, then our duty would be clear, but when it is the Holy Church herself that seeks to destroy us, on what do we stand? Pater misericordiam, why will God not answer me?”
“Gar.”
Not that noise again. Why was that sound the only one left to her, a mockery of a word, so utterly meaningless?
“What do you want, Healing Martha, a drink perhaps, is that it?”
“Sa… gar.”
“Yes, I heard you. Are you cold? Shall I stoke up the fire?”
What was I doing in the infirmary? My duty was to be in the chapel, praying, but my prayers vanished into a void. I didn’t even know if Healing Martha could hear me, but at least her one sound, senseless though it was, was better than cold silence.
“Sau… garde.”
I stared at her. “What? What did you say?”
“Sauve… garde.”
This time there was no mistaking it. Sauvegarde-the inscription written above the gateway to the Vineyard in Bruges.
“Is that what you’ve been trying to say all these weeks? No, Healing Martha, no! You cannot ask me to go back to Bruges. We might as well be nuns sheltering from the world, hiding behind thick walls. But we are not called to be safe. I thought you of all people understood that.”
She winced and I cursed my own tongue. Hadn’t I hurt her enough?
“Forgive me, Healing Martha. I’ve been selfish. You’re old and sick and it’s right that you should return to spend your last days in the Vineyard with people to care for you properly. I should have listened to you with more patience and realised you were asking to be sent home.”
There was a surprisingly sharp slap on my hand. I rubbed my skin more to acknowledge the rebuke than because it stung.
“Sauvegarde!” She tapped the side of my head and then her own.
“I believe she’s asking you what Sauvegarde means, Servant Martha.” I jumped at the sound of Merchant Martha’s voice behind us.
“We all know what it means, Merchant Martha,” I snapped. “Refuge-the place of refuge.”
“Refuge for what, though?” Merchant Martha asked mildly. “I think she’s saying you have not understood it.” Merchant Martha sat down on the
