Father Michael Duval had thought long and hard about the yin and yang of good and evil, of heaven and hell. Just as capitalism needed the concrete enemy of the Soviet Union and could not survive long without its polar opposite, so too this corrupt world could not explain its own troubles without the existence of another. For two thousand years, the “other” had been heaven or hell. Duval had no truck with contemporary popular variants such as interplanetary aliens. Science fiction was just that-fiction. Duval preferred to read the Catholic fiction of enlightened cynics such as Evelyn Waugh. In Put Out More Flags, the priest had underlined the following: “It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilised taste.”
From an early age Duval had been fascinated by the mechanics of religion-the liturgy, hymns and sacred accoutrements-without personally embracing the supposed final moral purpose: a heavenly calling. No matter how much he tried, his spirituality was rooted on earth and in the past, not in some heavenly future. That is why he hated the Vatican’s tampering with the traditional Latin Mass.
Perhaps Duval’s vision of the future had been corrupted by his own past. He was a scion of an old landed family. At sixteen he had converted from sullen High Anglicanism to ardent Catholicism, shifting his head and his heart from Canterbury to Rome. In doing so, he left behind a family already riven by his sister’s miserable death in an asylum. Long before she died, he had prayed to his Anglican God to alleviate her suffering, but his unanswered prayers drove him to what he considered was a fervent, more serious religion, with a far more resplendent heritage, far greater mystical reach and, most importantly, a proven connection to the Almighty.
A little surprisingly, he had chosen to live in Shere, which had a long Anglican tradition. In the past the well-to-do local families had favoured the dissolution of the monasteries and had shared in King Henry’s spoils. Later, many had sided with the Parliamentarians in the civil war. The area secured influence because Shere had once possessed an important water-mill, one of eight along a waterway which had supported five industries-corn milling, gunpowder manufacture, iron furnaces, weaving and tanning, an impressive array for what was just a large stream rather than a river, and only eleven miles long. The Tillingbourne also gained a reputation for its famous watercress, but generally the poor, sandy soil preserved the poverty of the small farmers. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had been kinder to the neighbouring industrialists, and to the large and wealthy landowners who landscaped much of a valley which the English traveller William Cobbett called “one of the choicest retreats of man.” Shere marked the halfway point of the Tillingbourne, which rose from springs on the southern flank of Leith Hill, the highest point in southern England, and flowed past the beautiful villages of Gomshall and Albury to its confluence with the River Wey near Guildford.
By the mid-nineteenth century, much of the manufacturing base had been eroded, and the rural population, often untouched by the commercial wealth of the river, had stubbornly maintained their almost feudal traditions. As the mills closed, many in upland wooded areas might have agreed with Cobbett’s claim that the valley had produced “two of the most damnable inventions that ever sprang from minds of man…the making of gunpowder and banknotes.”
When the railways arrived, Shere flowered as a retreat for bohemian Londoners, especially artists, and by the beginning of the twentieth century the woodlands of the once remote Surrey hills had been discovered by a rich London merchant class. They came in search of seclusion, but felt close enough to the diversions of the city; and so the grey roofs of grand new houses began to disturb, here and there, the flow of forest green. When Duval arrived in 1962, the largely unspoiled medieval character of the village was attracting motorists and day-trippers and even the occasional foreign tourist. The outside tables of the White Horse Inn, in the centre of Shere, were always full in the summers when the first “yeah, yeah, yeahs” of the Beatles could be heard, sometimes too obtrusively, from the portable radios of young people sitting by the river.
Duval lived in an old secluded rectory near Tyler’s Cross, about half a mile outside the village centre. Catholic priests nearly always lived in a church house, close or directly adjacent to their parish churches. If it were a large and important church, especially in an urban area, the clerical accommodation would involve a group of priests tended by a full-time housekeeper. Unusually, the bishop had granted Duval special permission to live in Shere, on the basis that Duval had inherited the house from his aunt and no Church money had been involved in any purchase; perhaps even at this stage, the priest’s eccentricity warranted special indulgence or perhaps an isolation which would permit the ambitious bishop some room for manoeuvre when it came to denying responsibility, a chance to distance himself from his awkward subordinate.
Duval appreciated this freedom, because he found it very difficult to live cheek by jowl with others, especially other priests. And he was fond of his home in the former Anglican rectory; a Catholic inhabitant was a redemptive act in itself. The house, which Duval had renamed Hillside, had been built in the 1840s and enlarged in 1859 to include a spacious wine cellar and a large attic. Externally, the house was a hotchpotch of styles: part of it was robust Victorian red-brick although the stables, incorporated into the main structure, suffered from a mock Tudor timber-frame exterior, while the out-of-place Doric porch affixed to the main door was thankfully hidden in ivy. Hollyhocks and nettles as tall as a man filled the garden.
Neglecting the outside, Duval had busied himself with extensive rebuilding of the interior, particularly the unusual cellar which he had spent over a year modifying with his own hands. It was entered from a heavy wooden trapdoor in the kitchen. Twelve steps led down to a narrow corridor. On each side of the corridor, forty-three inches apart, stood three doors with small grilles. At the far end of the passage Duval had secured to the stone wall a six-foot-high crucifix, lit by two lamps at its base.
To his few acquaintances, Duval’s life was very staid, his interests appearing to revolve around his part-time work at a run-down Catholic church in Guildford, a good six or seven miles from Shere, and his writing in his spare moments. He was recognised as an Oxbridge scholar, but was considered somewhat lax in his pastoral duties, partly because he refused to live in the parish he served. That, at least, was the gossip in his dwindling congregation. They knew he was not a favourite of the bishop. Some thought the problem stemmed from an arcane theological dispute, although nobody in his congregation had been able to pinpoint anything too unorthodox in Duval’s often passionate and occasionally obscure sermons. None of his flock had ever got close to their priest, but some of the younger female members of the congregation had suggested that they found his sporadic house visits uncomfortable, a touch too familiar; nevertheless, no formal complaint had been taken to the bishop. Still, Duval’s superiors suspected that he was an odd fish, so allowing him to live out of the parish had some advantages.
Duval had no actual pastoral duties in Shere itself. Apart from the normal pleasantries in the village shops, few villagers knew much about him. At just over six feet, Duval stood erect and athletic, and his mildly pock-marked face made him appear, to some females, as attractively world-weary and interesting. An actress manque in the village had commented on his deep, cultured voice.
“He sounds like Richard Burton,” she had insisted.
“Speaks like heaven,” replied her companion in a mock Welsh accent.
When Duval had first appeared in the village, one or two of the bridge-playing, charity-organising elite had thought to invite him to their soirees, and some of the bored local housewives had turned their heads at the early-middle-aged, good-looking man with the distinguished grey at his temples. He seemed rather mysterious, but when it was rumoured he was a Catholic priest, perhaps even a defrocked one, the matchmakers forgot him. That was the way Duval wanted it, because he did not deliberately court attention. He had Surrey family connections, twice removed, but they were all prominent Anglicans, and those who shared his Norman surname were strangers. He had no friends, only acquaintances.
Duval always made a point of changing out of his clerical clothing before he returned from Guildford to Shere; he preferred to adopt the uniform of a country squire-buff corduroy trousers, highly polished brown brogues and a tweed jacket. For a while, when he first arrived, old Mrs. Malthus who lived in Pilgrim’s Way had worked for him as a part-time housekeeper, but when she died Duval had not looked for a replacement.
He was on nodding terms with the landlord of the White Horse. Once or twice a week, the priest would enjoy a solitary pint of beer in the back bar. The landlord would sometimes ask about Bobby, Duval’s border collie, who would curl up under the table in the corner of the low-ceilinged snug. Occasionally Duval would visit the other village pub, the Prince of Wales, but he shied away from the good-hearted friendliness of the drinkers there.
Duval walked Bobby for at least an hour every evening. Starting from Hillside, which stood at the end of a narrow dirt track, he would usually follow the bridle-path to Church Hill. From there he would take the footpath, crossing the Tillingbourne on the tiny bridge, and then traverse Upper Street, making his way towards the steep North Downs.
Other times he would wander around Shere interpreting the history of the village’s timber-framed houses. To the practised eye, Shere exhibited scores of architectural treasures: the seventeenth century had been preserved well enough, but Duval enjoyed the occasional Regency flourishes and the pomposity of late Victoriana. The historian in him always smiled at the replica timber-framed shop in Middle Street, designed by the young Edwin Lutyens to fit in with the adjacent houses, hundreds of years older. The quaint fire station, the fragile wooden footbridge across Upper Street, the gentle meanderings of the stream along Lower Street and the ducks near the stone bridge by the Square; for Duval, Shere was an England which the so-called “swinging sixties” were threatening to engulf.
In his walks, Duval always included a visit to St. James’s, an anchor in a disturbing world. The church stood a mere hundred yards from the White Horse via the lych-gate, another piece of Lutyens, but it had to come before alcohol in his perambulations; that was his observance of a daily piety-duty before pleasure. Although St. James’s church dated from the twelfth century, the Domesday record demonstrated the existence of a previous Saxon church in what was then known as Essira. It was “held” by Queen Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor, so the dutiful Norman accountants had recorded in 1087. The basic structure of the present building was completed about 1190, in the initial Early English style. Duval had researched the church in detail, believing St. James’s to be the finest example of this rare Transitional church architecture. The fundamentals of the exterior had changed little, although the internal arrangements had been altered during the Reformation. Duval, of course, disdained these refurbishments as defamatory. Like all medieval churches, St. James’s had not contained seats, only a stone bench set into the walls for the old and lame. The great Lady Chapel, with its twelfth-century arch, deep mouldings and clustered shafts of Purbeck marble, had been filled with common pews. The centre of worship in the Reformation had been shifted from the altar to the pulpit-from God to man-but, with the Catholic revival of the 1830s, the focus moved back to the altar.
Duval also disliked the West Gallery, erected by public subscriptions in the 1740s for the poor of the parish. What did they know of architecture? It had completely skewed the proportions of the church. In 1848 the rood window had been renewed, but it was a poor reproduction of an Early English original. The Victorians, however, did deserve credit for restoring the brasses. And they had introduced a barrel organ, which Duval thought was an amusing touch. New bells had been added as well as a robed choir, very High Church and very revolutionary for the late Victorian period.
The church had survived the Second World War untouched although flying bombs fell near Shere. The real enemy had not been the Luftwaffe but the deathwatch beetle: many of the oak beams and rafters had needed to be replaced. After the war the spire had been reshingled with Canadian red cedar and, to renew much of the stonework, Ewhurst sandstone had been taken from local quarries in the surrounding Hurtwood. Duval approved of the recent refurbishment of the oak altar and the flamboyant design of the three frontals, and was pleased that, for the first time since the Reformation, the church boasted a carved figure of its patron saint.
Duval knew on exactly which day in 1871 the clock had been installed in the steeple, and that it had an eight-day, dead-beat escapement, gun-metal gear wheels and a copper dial measuring four feet six inches. It now read precisely 7:10 p.m. The date, which of course the clock did not display, was 17th August 1967.
The clock was still going well, but Duval knew he could not say the same of his writing. Standing attentively a foot from the north wall of the chancel, he peered into the quatrefoil of Christine Carpenter’s cell. He never prayed formally for inspiration, but every visit to this place renewed his dedication to his study and encouraged him to continue with the revisionist history of his anchoress. The black holes in the wall were a window into the past. Her past. It was almost as if it were not his invention, his imagination, his creativity, but her will and her energy that spurred him on. But now he was suffering from writer’s block: his soul had not sensed Christine’s presence for a long time. Was her purgatory over, he wondered. Had she ascended to blessedness in the heavens? This spiritual block had happened before, Duval reminded himself. His muse had slipped from her prison in the wall. Just for a while.
Duval’s sigh in the hushed church was audible. I would rather not do again what I had to do before, he thought. But this contact with living females was the only way he could reinvigorate his writing and his research. And after every experience the voice of Christine had returned. It was a worthy sacrifice to his anchoress. It had worked before, but, he asked himself, what if Christine’s soul had left the wall for ever?
He touched the cold stone, seeking to sense her presence. He ran his fingers around the mouth of the quatrefoil, sensually, like a man caressing a woman’s body. Duval had tried to understand himself, to probe his true motivation. He knew that he was in the grip of an obsession, almost Dantesque in the absolute purity of its near-impossibility-like the search for the Holy Grail. Dante’s beloved Beatrice had been alive at the same time as Christine, but a modern equivalent of Beatrice, a tangible Christine, would add flesh to his literary chimera. And the quest was noble in itself.
Despite its original apostasy against Rome, this church in Shere was Duval’s conduit to the true spiritual world, a conduit in some mysterious way to both his inner and outer vision. And the stern but persuasive voices inside his head explained that he could serve God directly, just as his anchoress had. It was Christine who held the key, and it did not merely provide access to his muse. No, his writing, he knew, was just a part of his mission. His fundamental calling was to prove that even in the decadent 1960s a woman could be brought to God, just as Christine had been. She could be helped, but in the end she would have to make a free choice.
Duval prayed for the strength of Christine’s presence. He did not need a Church that had blockaded the highways to heaven with obfuscation, dogma and hypocrisy. “I have suffered, I have sinned,” he said to himself, “yet it is I who will bring female sinners to God.” Not just those who display their new hats on Sundays in a Catholic church, but those who will offer everything up to Him-completely.
“I am merely a tool of God. O Lord, your willing manservant,” he said aloud.
Duval walked out of the church, untied his dog’s leash from a tree and marched up the hill at a rapid pace. When he reached Hillside, he did not make his customary cup of herbal tea, nor take his habitual bath. He perched on the seat in front of his great desk, eager to see if it were possible to write without Christine’s presence whispering in his ear.
September 1327
A curtain had been erected in the bay of the bedroom to afford Christine privacy. She had not spoken for days, but stirred a little when the priest entered with the oils. Christine’s brother peeped briefly around the curtain before the priest shooed him away.
Father Peter raised the cross above Christine’s head. With due solemnity, he said, “My dear daughter in God, it seems that you are fast leaving this life and ascending Godwards. Sister, are you glad that you shall die in the Christian faith? Do you in all good faith repent of your sins? If you cannot speak to confess, nod if you can, and I will grant you absolution. Then I will say the Viaticum.”
Without opening her eyes, Christine managed to move her head slightly. “I have brought to you the likeness of our Maker and Saviour. Look upon it, if you can, and draw comfort from the Holy Cross.”
Christine managed to open her eyes and unclench the jaws that had been clamped shut. Her whole body was coursing with pain, and death beckoned as a magnificent release. She was impatient for her life’s last hours, even these last minutes, to be over.
Yet, as she peered into the gloom, a light-dim at first-seemed to emanate from the cross, which glowed ever more strongly, and the light, so strong now, flowed in waves from its holy form into her body. Warmth engulfed her feet and her lower body, easing and then dissolving her pain. Gradually, the relief spread to her chest, her neck and finally her head. Above all, the rays pierced her heart, purifying it of all her past ways, making her new. She felt light, as though she could float from her bed and dance with angels.
And then she saw a vision.
A small but breathing Christ appeared on the cross, and then it seemed to grow to full size. The wounds were real, and the blood a vivid scarlet. The pain on His face suddenly disappeared and, looking up, He drew her eyes to the ceiling, which had opened up to present the bluest sky on earth. It seemed an opening to eternity, endless years of bliss, of oneness with the Almighty. She was transfixed by the radiance. An intense ball of light swooped down and beckoned her to fly away into a tunnel of the sweetest and most soothing whiteness…but then a figure dressed in purple, a woman with the most peaceful smile she had ever seen, appeared in the tunnel. The figure, floating on a cloud of blue flashing light, summoned her, and yet, at the same time, raised her hand as if to say, “Go back.”
Then, announced by the sound of a trumpet, the holy woman spoke: “Return, and all will be well. Follow me in everything, for all your life.” The words were repeated, slowly and very deliberately.
And in this vision Christine saw herself turning back, eager to obey the woman, who was, she knew, the Mother of Christ, and yet she was reluctant to leave the incandescent presence.
Then she seemed to be flying over the earth, seeing below many prosperous villages and towns, with golden turrets and marble spires, and also a large white castle, which she knew was made of parchment. All creation was like a ball in her hand, for understanding had replaced the pain and she could see with different eyes. All her sins had been turned into blessings by God’s love, a love sanctified by the vision of Mary, the Holy Mother. Love and understanding had been given to her.
All this she saw so clearly, but then darkness fell upon her, and the vision was replaced by the cruel earthliness of her room. Her vision appeared to have lasted but a second of time, long ago. The memory of the light and the peace, she feared, would fade as well.
Christine felt she was strong enough to raise herself a little. The priest quickened his prayers. As he raised the still-glowing crucifix, higher and higher, Christine was drawn up, too, as though sucked by some irresistible force.
The priest knelt and put his hand behind her head to support it and enable her to drink a little ale. She coughed as the pungent liquid stung her throat.
“Gently, my child,” he whispered, cradling her head as her eyes closed and she slept. Father Peter sat by her bed, waiting and praying.
An hour or so later she awoke, and managed to eat a little wheaten bread, her first food for many days. Her eyes were large as she stared at Father Peter and they looked at each other in fear and hope. The priest had shared her pain and her shame, the proof of his weakness. Guilt showed on his face, yet her face was bright for the first time since Sir Richard’s abomination.
Minutes passed before she spoke, although serenity still suffused her face. Then, forcefully, she said, “I have suffered, as you can attest, but I believe I have done worse to my family and my once-betrothed. I was so confused…I hated my earthly body…I wanted death, even prayed for it…that is my greatest sin…But now our God has spoken to me…”
The priest smiled and said, “Our Saviour almost granted your wish, but He must have wanted you to live on this earth to do His will. My child, I brought with me the unction of the final sacrament…our prayers, though, and your pain…and His will…have brought God’s blessing. So I must hope…”
Christine interrupted him, her voice urgent and hoarse with suffering: “I must now confess what I saw. God’s power has come here, to Ashe Cottage. When you raised the Cross, I saw blood, real blood, seep down from beneath the thorns…” She coughed and sipped a few more drops of ale, then retched.
Alarmed, Father Peter tried to calm her: “Sleep, Christine, sleep. And strengthen yourself some more…”
“Nay, Father, speak I must.” Christine was sitting up now, the words tumbling out. “Truly, I saw blood flow from the crown of thorns. It was hot and fresh and in full flow, just as in His Passion when the crown of thorns was by evil men pressed on His blessed head. The blood flooded down like the drops of water that fall off the eaves of a house after a great rain. He who was both God and man and suffered for our sins. I saw all this.”
The priest was overwhelmed with joy at her recovery. It was only natural she would turn to our Lord in such a mortal crisis, he thought. “Christine,” he said softly, brushing back the damp hair on her forehead. “You saw God perchance, and He works miracles still. Or perchance it was your sickness. But, thank God, whatsoever it be, you are stronger. Much stronger. Now sleep a little more and then eat. I will tell all to William and then I will pray at Mass for the deliverance of your body and your soul.”
After three more days in bed, Christine was able to rise and break bread with her family at table. She still shivered a little, even though she wore her father’s cloak and sat near the open fire to ease the autumn chill.
They talked of minor family matters: Helene’s new chickens, the way Margaret had plaited her hair into looped braids, how young William caught a hare. Christine loved her family and all its squabbling intimacy, but she felt herself removed. She knew in her heart that she had been reborn in Christ, but she nodded and smiled inside at all the little family mishaps and adventures that she had missed during her fever.
After a few days spent regaining some of her strength, her father turned to a subject she dreaded. William spoke of marriage: “Sweet Christine, will you now see your intended to speak of nuptials?”
Christine did not speak until William repeated his question. “Father, I tell you plainly. I cannot marry. I have told you of my showing, the showing of the Cross. My life is marked for God so I cannot marry a man. I am now betrothed to Him.” She joined her hands in prayer and looked up to the heavens.
William sensed his daughter’s own Calvary, even though it was far beyond his imagination and understanding. He had gently and privately asked her to explain her vision, to tell him what had prompted her fit, but Christine would talk only of the power and glory shining from the cross and the words of the Blessed Mary. Christine would shed no light on what had befallen her in the manor house.
A week after her recovery, as if from death, Christine ambled along the path that led from her cottage to St. James’s church for her first confession with Father Peter. Stepping lightly through the leaves that carpeted the graveyard, she stopped to gaze at the church. She had worked and played beside it since she could walk, but she had never really looked at it as she looked at it now. She had lived, and almost died, in its shadow; now she knew she had to be reborn to her church.
Father Peter was waiting at the great west door, smiling despite the guilt that gnawed at him now whenever he saw Christine. “Are you ready for your confession, child? If so, I would confess to you, outside this church. Come, let us walk to the Queen’s glebe meadow, and ponder on God’s will.”
Christine felt the security that comes with knowing one’s path. “Father, I comprehend your hurtin’. There is no need. Instruct me rather in the makin’ and meanin’ of this church, for I know you are learned in its long story.”
As they walked slowly through the heavy autumn leaves in misty sunshine, they talked of St. James’s history since the Norman days. The priest interspersed his simple lecture with apologies: that he understood how cruel Sir Richard had been; that no authority would accept her word against their lord’s; that he had not witnessed anything except her distress, but could imagine a little of what she must have endured; and that he felt ashamed. It was left unsaid, but understood, that he was too cowardly to give up his living, sacrifice his stipend, for the truth.
“The rector, Mathew de Redemayne, cares naught but for the money from this parish.” Father Peter’s words were agitated. “The Abbot of Netley, what cares he? The Dean of Guldenford cares only for power, not for souls. I am half-wicked, perhaps all wicked, but were I to protest on your behalf, I would be removed. Then I would grieve for myself, but also for you, Christine, your people…my people. For all my faults I do try to follow the righteous path when I am permitted.”
Christine cut short his pleas: “What is, is. I am new. Without my sufferin’ I would not have seen the Cross in my vision. I had thought to kill myself when I escaped from Sir Richard. God punished me for the contemplation of this mortal sin with fever and, on edge of death, he has shriven me to be reborn, but I will talk of more in my confession. Let it please you to tell me more of our St. James’s.”
They strolled back to the church, the priest explaining how Sir Richard had granted monies for the recent restoration. He detailed how the church had frugally used old Roman tiles, but nonetheless had sorely needed further renewal. Sir Richard had paid for the latest Chiddingfold glass in the south aisle, and contributed to the repair of the grisaille ornamentation in the east window. Around the spire a wooden scaffold lashed with ropes still remained, after twelve years or more of intermittent building.
“That is now the finest spire in England, for the size of it,” Father Peter said, proud of his church and also calm in the knowledge that, at least, very little of the building funds had gone into his own pocket.
“Should be the fairest in the land, the time that has passed with the buildin’ of it,” Christine said with a smile, the first outward smile since that awful night. She felt at peace and knew her mind-the vision of the Cross had strengthened her will as well as her faith.
At the south porch, Father Peter explained the finer points of the late Norman decoration, bolstered with marble shafts from Petworth. After pushing open the heavy oak door, studded with brass, they passed the treasury coffer donated by Sir Richard, after Pope Innocent III had ordered each church in Christendom to place a chest for coin and gifts to support the Crusades. Near the confessional bench and screen stood the font. Christine stared at the marble with its stern central stem, angle shafts and foliated capitals. She knew no child of hers would be blessed there, and yet felt no regret.
Sitting upon a very low bench on one side of a simple carved wooden screen, her long glistening hair dangled nearly to the floor; half-nervously, with both hands, she flicked up the hair on the crown of her head, pushing aside the fringe over her forehead. Composing herself before declaring her sins to her priest, Christine fluently confessed to vanity and pride. And she expressed contrition at having hurt her innocent and loving husband-to-be. Above all, she confessed to rage and to a desire for revenge against the cruel and hypocritical Sir Richard.
“For all the wrongs he has done to you, I cannot say how Sir Richard has confessed to me,” the priest said with heavy resignation in his voice. “But he will atone or face the hounds of Hell and the fires of eternity. And spending his money on adorning our church is no atonement to me; no, it is almost blasphemy…but the church needs his help, for all that I say.”
“Father, I know that God will judge his evil, but I know also that Sir Richard’s foul impurity has taught me to be pure…for all time. I have told you something of my showing of the Cross, our Lord and our Holy Mother, such rich blessings for one as lowly as me; there is so much more…but I cannot, dare not, use my blundering tongue to speak of what belongs solely to God. But I can say, as God is my witness, that I wish to be closer to Him, perhaps-if He thinks me befittin’-in holy orders, but I do not wish to be sent away from here. In this church I am safe from Sir Richard, and others like him-if there be such other monsters in our shire. I want to be with God alone, not with other penitents seeking His guidance.” With a last spurt of emotion, she ended her utterly heartfelt speech with a plea: “Although I am unlettered, Father, I beg you to teach me.”
Father Peter was moved almost to tears. “Truly, I will aid you in all I can,” he said, his voice thick with remorse. “It is but a portion of the penance I owe to you and to God. To be God’s daughter in full vows is a purchase of paradise.”
And so it was. Her father eventually came to understand the girl’s desire to become a nun; it was a high calling, especially for someone from a simple family, but only Father Peter could comprehend her gradual insistence on becoming an anchoress, a solitary, rather than a member of an established holy order. William did, however, persuade Father Peter to counsel Simon, her once-betrothed, and Christine, both together. The priest, although he felt it to be a thankless task, summoned them to his humble cottage.
Simon arrived very early and, since there was only one chair in the room, he sat on his haunches, fidgeting, and blinking in the thick smoke of the wood fire. The priest tried to comfort him, but the conversation faltered in the face of Simon’s truculent silence. An hour later, Christine walked very slowly into the priest’s home. At once the lover jumped up and pleaded with all his heart: “A nun, perhaps, I can believe, but a recluse entombed, all that beauty, that energy, encased in cold grey stone!” Normally Simon was a man of few and simple words, but passion empowered his speech. “Delay your plans for a year or so…please think of me-us, then, the little ones we oft talked about.”
Christine’s face grew red and tears welled up in her eyes, but she took command of her emotions from the past. Her voice was firm: “Simon, I do still love you…but I must beseech you to find another woman. Many others there be far more suited for the unborn children I see in your eyes. I beg you to avoid my sight; please spare me the hurt. You shall be for ever my only earthly love.” Her voice started to break. “I ask Father Peter to request you to go in God’s peace. Please, please…I cannot bear the pain…” And she banished him from her presence, though never from her thoughts.
In contrast, Christine’s mother and her sister Margaret soon perceived the power of her vision. Although Margaret affected to be the most worldly of the family, she loved her sister and accepted with her whole heart that Christine had a different calling. Finally, so did her father, but her decision cut deep into his belief of what his family should be. He cared not what the village said of the strange honour bestowed upon the home, and he despaired of the lonely years his first-born would endure.
Christine spent more and more time with her priest, who himself struggled to read, comprehend, learn and then explain the Ancrene Riwle, the guidance for a solitary life of contemplation. Initially, he described her future life as climbing four rungs of a ladder. The first involved lessons on the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the holy fathers, beginning with the lives of the saints. Then she would be taught to meditate on these lessons. Prayer would be enhanced by this lengthy meditation. And the final rung was contemplation, a state to which the priest had never himself aspired. He felt acutely that he lacked what St. Gregory called the “art of arts”-that of guiding souls. He knew he could barely guide himself; Christine would eventually need to be instructed by a much higher authority than his own.
They discussed the means by which one enters a state of true contemplation, the highest form of union with God that the soul on earth can attain, the wondrous and mysterious act that involved the total occupation of the mind and the will with the thought of God. Christine had to substitute the love of self with the love of God, only then was union between God and her soul possible in this mortal life. Father Peter explained all this as he tried earnestly to grapple with the most powerful but enigmatic tenet of Catholic theology.
An anchoress, he insisted, must return Godwards truly to fulfil the purpose of her creation. She might achieve mystical ecstasy only by contemplating the three levels of the knowledge of God, via His creation of nature, by reading His scriptures, and by understanding God as Himself, in His manhood and Godhead.
The priest warned Christine that the path would be very hard and that Christ was a jealous master. And there would be many difficulties and temptations beyond her studies and the conflicts of her inner life. A woman searching for the truth on her own was anathema to the Church hierarchy, because men ruled the Church, men decided on the paths to salvation. Individual pursuit of God undermined the very foundations of Christendom, the centralised control of Rome. Female saints there were, he said, but usually they had been canonised long after their martyrdom. Respected nuns, usually of noble birth, there were also, but Christine refused to consider a communal route to God.
In the beginning the priest tried to overcome the girl’s self-abasement about her lack of schooling, but soon her quick mind outpaced her tutor’s. A little defensively, he parried her more penetrating questions by asserting the authority of more learned men over her intuitive insights.
Christine asked, “Is it not possible to learn from the Holy Ghost, and to confirm, in dedication, prayer and good works, a knowledge which the layman might know and yet the priest does not-what the fishermen of Galilee did know and the doctor of theology in Oxford today might not? Is it not possible that lovers of eternity can be taught by the doctor within? I have been taught that St. Francis mistrusted learning as a source of pride; is that not so, Father?”
“Is that not your own pride speaking, Christine?” he replied rather hastily.
Christine pressed her tutor on the central Christian principle of free will. She understood that man could choose between good and evil. God allowed evil, so that mankind could be tested, the priest explained. But was there really free will, if so much was predetermined, so many prophecies to fulfil, she asked. “What if Joshua had chosen to ignore the trumpets at the walls of Jericho?” she asked again. “Or if Abraham and Isaac had raised holy arguments against human sacrifice? Could the Holy Mother have refused to go to Bethlehem?”
Father Peter struggled to refute her logic. Sometimes, though, he laughed at her innocent humour. Once he explained that man was a little lower than the angels. Immediately she said, “Then the angels should reform themselves, and quickly too.”
At other times he realised that Christine was deliberately teasing him. When they were discussing abstinence, she asked, “Why did God believe the only humans worthy of salvation in the Flood were a family of winemakers?”
Yet the priest was shaken, nonetheless, by her rapid advances in both vocabulary and perception. They confirmed the power of her vision, perhaps, but he knew that if such changes were discussed in the parish she could be accused of witchcraft, and so might he. Occasionally she claimed to hear voices, and once or twice he reprimanded her, gently to be sure, for referring to herself in the third person. Sometimes he was not sure whether her fervour bordered on madness, but her calmness of spirit sometimes calmed his, too. Frequently he fretted about her, realising that much of what she said to him was arguably heretical. He thus encouraged her enclosure in a place where he could protect her from herself and, more importantly, from her Church.
“Remember how often do shrews find themselves on the ungodly end of the ducking stools,” he warned. “Remember how Mistress Le Walshe from Gomshall was taken by the bailiff and her tongue cut from her mouth for speaking out against the Church. She was fortunate. Think on them who have burned in the pit for saying that the Holy Scriptures should be put into our vulgar speech, not Latin.”
Christine always listened attentively to the priest’s strictures, but knew without doubt that she was embarked on a righteous path.
For nearly two years Christine prepared for her seclusion, assisted by the advice and prayers of Father Peter. As before, she continued to help in the fields and around her father’s house, but she laughed no more with other maidens, nor did she dance with the young men on feast days. Every day she attended church to learn scripture, at first by rote. Slowly she learned her letters in English, and even more slowly began to read a little Latin. Father Peter was not himself a scholar and had to work diligently to school himself for his lessons with Christine.
Her education was augmented by occasional retreats at a Dominican friary at Guldenford. It had been founded by Eleanor of Provence, widow of Henry III, in memory of her young grandson, who had died in the royal castle by the bridge across the golden sands which gave the town its name. Because there were no self-governing nunneries in any of the Hundreds of Surrey, Queen Eleanor had requested that the friary offer guidance to pious women, and so a small convent was established nearby. Father Peter was acquainted with the Abbess Euphemia and introduced Christine to her. It did not take long for the abbess to recognise the piety and intelligence of the humble village girl and Christine was offered a place in the convent, where the sisters soon came to accept that her vocation was that of a solitary.
Christine learned dutifully the offices and devotions of the Church and Father Peter explained in detail the long and careful sequence of prayers. He rehearsed her nearly every day in the timetable of the devotions she would have to perform when she entered her cell: “When you rise at dawn, make the sign of the Cross, saying the Paternoster, then begin at once the Veni Creator Spiritus, kneeling at your bench and bowing forward. Stay thus throughout this hymn and for the versicle ‘Send Forth Thy Spirit.’ Next, repeat the Paternoster and a Credo while you are dressing…”
And so her daily programme of devotions was planned, interspersed by observation of the Mass and occasionally the sacrament of communion.
Father Peter explained to Christine how lenient and at the same time how strict an anchoress’s observations could be. Certain high-born women had built elaborate shelters, almost tiny houses, adjoining their churches. They might have one or two maid-servants and could entertain visitors. Some even kept pet cats, he said. Others gossiped with their friends through a grille which faced the street.
Christine, however, resolutely chose one of the most austere rules that Christendom had concocted: no meat or fat unless gravely ill; no visitation through her grille except on strictly spiritual matters, although she was permitted to speak to family members on mundane issues of daily sustenance; but no other contact except for food, water, change of vestment or participation in communion. The priest would shave her head four times a year. But she foreswore the hedgehog skins, spiked belts and thorn adornments to wear next to her flesh or sleep on, as some zealots chose. She refused to scourge herself with nettles or whips to drive away temptation. God, she knew, was love, not pain. She had known pain enough; it was His love she sought.
Christine chose to clothe herself in a simple cap with a white veil instead of a wimple, and a plain dress of coarse flax. Her family would provide her food and clothes, and some church alms would be granted to sustain her. A small cell was built on St. James’s dank north wall where the sun never shone, and William helped with such woodwork as was necessary. The squint and quatrefoil were placed in the wall, with a few stones left aside for the enclosure ceremony.
It would be some decades before Guldenford would be designated as a suffragan or subsidiary bishopric, and therefore the dean did not have sufficient authority to approve the enclosure. So the Bishop of Winchester’s final approval was sought, and granted: “On the fourteenth day of the Kalends of August in the year of our Lord 1329, and in the seventh year of our consecration…I have sought fit to grant licence to the said Christine that she may be enclosed in the church at Shere in the manner of an Anchoress, so that, aside from public and worldly sights, she may be enabled to serve God more freely in every way, and, having resisted all opportunity for wantonness, may keep her heart undefiled by this world.”
He attached his bishop’s seal. And the next day, the day after her eighteenth birthday, Christine was sealed within the northern wall for life.
The words did not flow with ease, and Duval struggled with the muse for weeks. His writing was sometimes becoming a task to hate, not a pleasurable outlet for his passions, as in the past.
Duval’s congregation in Guildford was becoming more disenchanted, complaining that he was cold and distracted even when he finally stirred himself to visit a sick or troubled member of his flock, and his penances imposed during confession raised more than a few hackles. They had become onerous, almost bizarre. The bishop summoned him twice to counsel him: “a self-improvement programme” was the bishop’s precise phrase. Bishop Templeton had recently been an enthusiastic participant in a church administration course in New York, and so he talked sociology, not theology; management, not morality. The prelate was a passionate advocate of modernising to preserve the best of the old traditions. Duval suspected that the bishop’s real love was not God but sport; that he worshipped at the altar of the Marylebone Cricket Club. And Duval despised him for it, even though he could accept Lord Mancroft’s famous argument that the English, not being a spiritual people, had invented the game to give themselves at least some conception of eternity.
The bishop was a short, portly man, and Duval interpreted his superior’s dedication to the manly world of sport, albeit as a passive spectator, as a symptom of the small- man complex; “a Wisden Napoleon” Duval was pleased to observe in his diary. The priest found Templeton’s obsessions trifling and endured the counselling sessions with poor grace. Templeton, he thought, might have made a good, self-indulgent Anglican bishop, but he rated him poorly as a Catholic. His superior talked about theological possibilities, not faith; religion had become mere philosophy. The bishop would thus never comprehend his subordinate’s sense of spiritual mission, even if Duval deigned to try to explain it.
Nothing mattered to Duval except Christine, and she was slipping away from him. Yet there was little he could do. Duval felt utterly compelled to recreate her history, and that compulsion spurred on his faltering steps towards his literary antiphon.
1330
Christine’s first winter in her anchoress’s cell was the coldest Surrey had ever known. The oldest cottager in Shere, Ranulf the Miller, stiff with rheumatism at sixty-eight, swore to that. Yet despite the severity of the season, Sir Richard was not generous in granting permission for the villagers to gather kindling in the Hurtwood. Some of the sheep which had been brought from the North Downs perished from the cold, even when they were allowed to graze in the water-meadows of the valley. In January and February snow fell a foot deep on the hills and the Tillingbourne froze over. Even Christine accepted an extra coverlet and hide boots from her father, once Father Peter had given his leave.
William could see his daughter succumbing to the cold, and shared his concerns with the priest.
“The Holy Spirit can warm the heart, but not always the feet,” Father Peter told William. “She is attendant to all her devotions, but her health is not as strong as her will.”
“Cannot God’s mercy be extended to my child?” pleaded William. “The mercy of just one visit to our hearth, where fire and meat can heal her soonest? Margaret, my daughter at home, cannot bear to see her sister freezing in the wall.”
“Leave she cannot, William,” said Father Peter earnestly. “To permit her to leave her cell-unless to see a doctor when she is nearest death or for me to give a final sacrament-is beyond me, and the bishops. Were she to leave, only our Holy Father the Pope could grant her rights of return. You know that she cannot break her solemn vows. Would you have her excommunicated and her soul consumed in the fires of Hell? But she should take meat.” Father Peter’s face betrayed his concern for his charge. “She fasts without my leave and I have told her this.”
William replied sadly, “My wife or I do attend her every day after Matins. She takes her drege, the best mix of barley and oats that her mother can make. Some cheese, too, and pease porridge. And buttermilk she enjoys. Her salted beef she refuses. Fruit she asked for in the summer…such unhealthy food…and now she begs us bring roasted nuts. Speak to her, Father, on this matter. She will parley but little with me except to know a word or two of her brother and sister. I speak of matters spiritual, as is right, but sometimes her voice is weak…” William broke off, his anxiety about his daughter and yet his desire to do right by the Church all too evident.
The priest patted William’s hand. “I pray for her each day, Will, but she is in God’s heart. I must confess to you that she is much near to Him. I could not reach that grace that she possesses.”
“But, Father, must she die of cold to prove her grace?”
“If she dies, Will, no purgatory waits for her. See the Doom painting, the Final Judgement, painted there above our church door? Ascend she will to God’s right hand. She will be free of our earthly cares.”
“Aye, Father,” said William, “and free of one mighty care-Mistress de Kempis of Peaslake.”
Father Peter smiled. Anna de Kempis, a wealthy widow, was renowned in the villages of the Hurtwood, and beyond, because she claimed to have the “gift of tears,” the ability to feel and share Christ’s final agonies on the Cross. At any time this gift might be bestowed, and she would howl and scream and writhe on the floor. Her frequent holy fits did not endear Mistress de Kempis to others. She had recently journeyed to a holy shrine in France and, it was said, nearly all her fellow pilgrims tarried in Dover for a week awaiting another ship to avoid the screamer. And when she was not travelling, she sought out holy men and women in her locality.
“Anna de Kempis is touched by God even when she roars. It is not for us to judge His ways,” Father Peter said mildly.
“Forgive my blasphemy, Father.” William humbly lowered his head. “But I judge her touched by the moon. She wails and splutters to my Christine, and quotes scripture by the hour at her grille. The Devil can tempt us in holy guise, for the fallen angel knows his Bible well. This brings harm to Christine’s mind and her devotions, I fear. How can she contemplate when the howlin’ of Mistress de Kempis fills church and village? This is purgatory at our door!”
“Hush, Will.” Father Peter’s hand now returned to his distraught parishioner. “Do you want to be dragged to the bishop’s court or be burnt, when livin’, in the pit for heretics? Go speak to Christine, while I attend to Mass. It is too cold to speak for long in this yard.”
William stomped his feet to regain some warmth and trudged through the snow to the north wall of the church. Stopping at the bulge in the wall which was the cell, he tapped on the small trapdoor.
“’Tis I, William. Please slide the grille.”
Christine pushed the grille open and looked through the black cloth with a white cross in the centre which protected her from the prying eyes of those who sought her counsel.
“Pull the curtain aside, Christine,” William said, a little more sharply than he had intended. “I need to see 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.
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.”