Needle in the Blood (42 page)

“Meg? What is it?”

Margaret lifts her head to find her hot, sore eyes staring at Gytha. Gytha in the flesh, with dark strands of hair escaping from her plait and the laughter lines which bracket her red lips more pronounced than Margaret remembers them. Gytha, whose eyes are deep enough to understand anything. So she isn’t dreaming, and the hasty departure from Canterbury, the days of bumping about in the base of a cart followed by silk cushions and mackerel in mint sauce are real. And what Alwys said is real.

“Tell me,” says Gytha, in her worn, husky voice that will brook no nonsense. She reaches across the frame for Margaret’s hands, and they sit in silence for a little while, their interlinked fingers suspended in the space which tomorrow will once again be crowded with Odo’s stories. The wind rattles the shutters and flings raindrops hissing onto the hearth. This is her chance, this lull before the embroidery’s clamour begins again.

“Alwys is right. I am wanting,” she starts.

She tells Gytha everything. How her brother, her favourite brother, lies in the infirmary at Christ Church, his mind in torment, his soul a battleground for good and evil, his body abused and neglected, and what has she done to help him? Nothing. She has carried on stitching her trees and shorelines as if nothing had changed, as if he were indeed dead. She will as surely burn in hell as Tom with his blasphemies if she does not try to help him. She must see him again, and soon, before he is fully recovered and ready to leave Christ Church. But how? How long does Sister Jean intend to keep them here? Even if Sister Jean would let her go, how could she find her way back to Canterbury alone? What Gytha said all those years ago is as true as it ever was. The women are not free.

Now Gytha says, squeezing her hands, “Tell her. Tell her the truth. She’ll be happy for you. Consider how she is with Lord Odo. She knows what can lie between a brother and sister.”

“But what if she told the king he was still alive?” She has convinced herself completely that Tom had played some role so vital for King Harold that his survival must be kept secret from the Normans at all costs.

“The king?” laughs Gytha. “I do not think the king would worry one way or the other.”

“No,” says Margaret in a small voice. It is as though the restless night has been playing tricks with her all this time, transforming tables into dragons or hanging cloaks into ghosts, and Tom into a looming presence of such massive importance she could not see to the edges of it. Now Gytha has lit a lamp, a magic circle of light on whose edges the storm snaps and snarls, and there he is, just Tom, with his laughing eyes and his hair like plaited fire.

Suddenly she hears her father speaking. She and Harry and Aelfred had been caught, during the Lenten fast, stealing preserved medlars from the store cupboard where their stepmother and Hawise, their servant, were stocking food for Easter. The boys had been given a beating and sent to bed supperless, but in Margaret’s case, her father had succumbed as usual to the irrefutable logic of the twins; if he punished one, he punished the other, and Alwys had been nowhere near the stolen fruit. Very well, if Margaret would own up, he compromised, she would escape the rod and be permitted a small glass of buttermilk before bed. If all else fails, he had said to her, tell the truth. Gytha is right. She will tell Sister Jean about Tom. Good news is made better by sharing. She gives Gytha a weak smile, rapidly followed by a yawn.

“Go to sleep, now,” says Gytha. “I’ll come with you to talk to Sister Jean if you like. She should be in a good humour tomorrow after a night’s sleep on Lord Odo’s featherbed.”

The wind and rain have begun to die down, and Gytha herself does not return to her pallet but, pulling her cloak close and slipping her feet into her shoes, goes outside to inspect what damage there may have been. She is tired, but her mind races, scrabbling like a hungry rat at half buried scraps of thoughts. She hopes the cold, and the featureless vastness of the cloudy night sky, will act as a balm upon the anger Margaret’s story has roused in her.

All these women, their lives, their families, small hopes and ordinary aspirations, wrecked in one way or another by the Normans. But that is not at the root of her anger; at its root is confusion, because she believes Sister Jean is also damaged, in some way she cannot fathom; and the queen, who, they say, loves her husband but is compelled by him to spend most of her time alone, in Normandy, mediating between him and their sons; and the little Countess of Mortain with her cheekbones like slivers of glass, her vomit sticks, and the way the English cold makes her shiver like a whipped dog. And what of herself, stepping clear of the wreckage on the arm of the man some say is the worst Norman of them all, the architect of the Bastard’s ambition, the power behind his throne?

The only man who has ever roused her to passion.

“Mistress Gytha.” Fulk appears in front of her. He has a dishevelled, apprehensive expression on his face and a shrivelled, silent piglet tucked into his jerkin.

“What is it, Fulk? Have we had a lot of damage? No one is injured, I hope?”

“No, madam. It’s just that…I’m sorry, madam, what with having to move all the furniture earlier and then Marigold farrowing…” Glancing down at the piglet, he adds, “Runt. Might be able to revive it.”

Gytha smiles. The revival of runts is becoming something of a competitive sport between Fulk and Odo. Odo has had great success with a piglet, now two or three weeks old and named Melusine, which seems to believe Juno is its mother. “And has it got a name yet?” she asks. “What did you forget?”

“A message, ma’am, from Abbess Biota at Saint Eufrosyna’s. She asked if you would wait on her tomorrow…today. After Terce.”

“Well. And I thought her holiness was content to accept our charity as long as she never had to contemplate us in our sinful flesh.”

“The piglet, ma’am, I’d best get it indoors.”

“Goodnight, Fulk.”

“Goodnight, madam.”

Clouds roll back from the smiling face of the moon, revealing a litter of broken branches among the cart ruts in the yard, and an empty chicken coop rocking gently on its side in the remnants of the gale. She sets the coop to rights then stands for a moment, smiling back, letting the tension drain from the muscles in her back. Then, realising her feet are soaked, picks her way through puddles back to the house. The men are right to cosset the piglets; they seem to have some healing power.

***

“You may ask,” replies Sister Jean cautiously next morning, when Margaret approaches her, saying she has a request to put to her. Sister Jean is supervising the restoration of the embroidery panels to their frames, checking that none has been damaged on the journey, that they are stretched at the correct tension and display the right points in the narrative. Alwys is busy sorting needles; Freya and the women not engaged at the frames are winding and hanging wool. Gytha is nowhere to be seen, but now Margaret has made up her mind; she needs only the recollection of Tom’s blank eyes and suppurating wounds to give her the courage to proceed.

“I wondered how long we might be staying here, Sister?”

“We’ve hardly arrived, girl. I don’t intend returning until I’m sure it’s safe to do so.”

“Yes, but how long will that be?” Margaret persists.

Sister Jean gives her a searching look. “What’s your hurry? Surely you are happy to see Gytha?”

“Of course I am, Sister, it’s just that…it’s Brother Thorold’s patient. I would like to visit him again.”

Ice water trickles in Agatha’s veins. “He will either have recovered or died by the time we leave here. You should put him out of your mind.”

“But Brother Thorold told me he would keep him by until he was back in his own mind. That might take some time, I expect.”

Scarcely able to bring herself to look at Margaret’s hopeful, childlike expression, Agatha asks, “What is this man to you?”

As Margaret tells her, she feels a tingling in her feet the way she does when she hears a good dance tune. Her brother. Her brother. Only her brother. The phrase has the rhythm of a jig.

“Of course you must go,” she says, “as soon as we return.”

“Could I not go back straight away? Just in case?”

“I’m afraid not.” She is kind, but emphatic. “I have no one to accompany you and no one to take your place if you go. But if Brother Thorold says he will keep your brother, then you may rely upon it that he will.” Patting Margaret’s freckled hands, feeling the ridges of bone beneath her skin, she adds, “Trust in God, Meg, He is merciful.”

“If you say so, Sister.” Glancing down at the frame closest to her, she recognizes Emma’s hand in the face of King Edward on his deathbed, all haggard concentration, his bed hangings like furled sails, waiting to catch the wind for Valhalla. Around him are arrayed a number of unfinished figures, and at the foot of the bed his weeping queen, dabbing her eyes on a fold of her headcloth. Though what she is weeping for, thinks Margaret, Heaven only knows, for he had, they say, never touched her. How can you feel the loss of what you have never had?

***

Accompanied by Fulk, Gytha sets out for Saint Eufrosyna’s soon after Prime. The journey should not take longer than an hour on horseback, but Gytha, despite instruction from Fulk and Odo, remains a cautious horsewoman, and after the storm in the night, there is no telling what state they will find the roads in. They travel mostly in silence, Gytha riding slightly ahead, feeling irritable and nervous. She would have welcomed the opportunity to dress more carefully for this visit, but it was late by the time she and Freya could gain access to the bower where all her clothes are kept.

She chose a gown of fine dark blue wool, but now regrets it; although suitably sober, the indigo dye makes it too rich, too obviously the dress of a wealthy man’s mistress playing the part of an honest woman. She wears no jewellery but a tiny, rather battered gold ring set with turquoise and seed pearls which used to belong to Odo’s mother and which, having placed it on the air finger of her left hand the night before he left her for Christmas, a night of tearful looks and anguished hand holding during the Advent fast, he has forbidden her to remove. Nevertheless, her shoes are calfskin, her cloak silk-lined and her girdle of silver. Abbess Biota’s disapproval is already reaching back along the road, in the muddy puddles which splash her hem and the breeze whipping a flush into her cheeks.

When they reach the convent, however, the portress, having accepted Gytha’s offering of beeswax candles and duck eggs, tells her it is not Abbess Biota who wishes to see her but another nun, a Sister Cygnea, one who is not in orders but chooses, of her piety, to submit to the Rule. The portress’ gaze, properly lowered, reinforces the eloquence of her reproach. Has Abbess Biota set up this meeting as a warning to her irregular neighbour? Clearly this Sister Cygnea has herself at one time been a great man’s mistress; it is not uncommon for such women, ousted by younger rivals or exposed by the death of a lover, to seal a pact with a nunnery, to don a habit (though with fine linen beneath) and observe the offices (though not between Compline and Terce). Abbess Biota cannot know that Gytha has sought refuge in a convent before, or that, without Odo, monastic life would hold no terrors for her.

The portress conducts her to a low building of lath and plaster set apart in a corner of the convent garden, overlooking a rose bed whose well pruned stumps poke green wood through packed mounds of manure. Its sharp tang mingles with the scent of applewood smoking up from a narrow funnel in the roof. A cherry tree curves protective branches over the door arch, budding with fat, pink pledges of spring. The portress coughs discreetly at the door and excuses herself.

The occupant is a tall woman, who has to duck her head under the lintel to greet her guest, which she does with a graceful incline of her neck that seems to mirror the arc of the cherry tree. Slender beneath the shapeless habit cinctured tight at the waist, she stands very straight, making no attempt to disguise her height, her white hands with their pearly nails folded over her belly. She smiles; her lips are pale pink, her complexion almost as pale as her headcloth, so tightly wound her smile threatens to escape its bounds. With a low whimper, Gytha flings herself to her knees, embracing the nun’s legs, pressing her face into the folds of her habit.

The nun takes her gently by the shoulders and raises her to her feet. “Gytha, Gytha, there’s no need for all this.”

“Oh, madam,” says Gytha, and again, “oh, madam,” shaking her head, tears spilling from her eyes and running into the corners of her smile. “What a wonderful surprise,” she manages eventually. “It must be a miracle.”

“I think not, my dear, merely the triumph of common sense over adversity. I thought you would have guessed, from the name. You have a little Latin, don’t you? Cygnea. Swanlike.”

Gytha shakes her head, feels her smile spreading foolishly, without her volition, as though it lives independently of the muscles of her face. “Only what Lord Harold used to recite, and then I never understood the half of it.”

“And you have learnt no more?” Her tone is searching, her look almost mischievous as she stands aside and gestures for Gytha to enter her bower. She has eyes that would appear intelligent were it not for their doll-like roundness and cornflower blue colouring.

“Why should I, madam?” In her eagerness to take in her old mistress’ surroundings, Gytha gives no thought to Edith Swan Neck’s question, or her own, disingenuous reply. The room is small, but crammed with beautiful objects Gytha remembers from Edith’s house in Winchester. So Odo did not take everything, she realises with a surge of relief; her mistress managed to salvage some remnants of the old life.