The Anchoress of Shere, page 15
It was raining hard when Father Peter came to the door. The priest seemed to be full of his own self-importance because he was bearing a very important letter, although the essence of its content had been unofficially sent from Guldenford a few days before.
William welcomed him warmly. “Come in, Father Peter, and dry yourself by our hearth.”
“Thank ’ee, Will,” said the priest, letting his sodden hood fall on to his shoulders. Sitting on a stool by the open fire, despite his excited state he could not resist casting a covetous eye over the pork roasting on the spit.
William did not ignore the silent request. “Will you honour this home and join us in our meal?”
“I will most gladly, but pray let me read to you all this letter.”
The whole family assembled within the minute to hear the first letter William had ever seen.
The priest looked with concern and affection at Christine, while playing to the gallery in his hour of triumph. “Aye, Christine. Good it be to see you in a womanly robe, but I can tell you that your habit should be readied.”
The family members all stood while the priest raised the document in the air.
“I have here a copy of the response to the bishop’s petition on your behalf. It is in best Church Latin.”
“Tell us in our speech,” said William impatiently.
The priest assumed a self-important stance, holding the letter with both hands, his arms fully extended. Allowing a few seconds for a dramatic pause, he said, “It begins thus: ‘John, by divine permission Bishop of Winchester, to the Dean of Guldenford; we greet ye with grace and blessing.’”
He explained in detail rather than translated the intercession of the Bishop of Winchester with the Pope.
“This part of the letter speaks of our Christine. This is from our Holy Father. Heavens be praised, a letter from the Lord Pope about a humble villager here in Shere.”
The priest was clearly relishing his role as papal emissary.
“Read it, Father,” said Helene, almost unable to contain herself.
The priest nodded with exaggerated dignity. “‘Our sister Christine, an anchoress of Shere, in your diocese, has by humble confession shown us that whereas at one time, as is known to ye, choosing enclosure in the life of an anchoress, she made a solemn vow of continence, promising to remain in that place. Now forswearing’-that is ‘leaving,’ William,” he said with a gentle smile as he looked up at the frown on the carpenter’s face-“‘forswearing this life and conduct that she assumed, she has left her cell inconstantly and returned to the world. Now, with God’s help, she has humbly petitioned us that she may be treated mercifully by the Apostolic See.’”
The overawed family looked at each other and, in turn, Father Peter glanced individually at each person in the room before continuing. “Her transgressions have been forgiven, William. Aye, Christine, the Pope himself has given you absolution.”
Helene started to cry, while young William clapped his hands.
“Now, let me try again-by your leave, Christine,” said the priest, a little less portentously, “but this is learned Latin. I have laboured in the church an hour or more to comprehend the words before I came to this house.
“‘Therefore, we who strive for the salvation of the souls of her and all mankind with fervent longing, wishing to take care of her soul send ye, according to the rules of the Church, absolution for her, by authority of the Lord Pope, from the excommunication usually promul…promul…’” Father Peter coughed nervously and tried again: “‘Promulgated against such persons. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the manner of a good father of a family rejoicing in the finding of a lost sheep, the said anchoress shall come humbly to ye within the space of four months from this our order that she shall re-enclose herself in the same place, lest by wandering any longer about the world she be exposed to the hunger of the rapacious wolf and, which Heaven forbid, her blood be required at your hands.’”
Christine sat down, and covered her face with her hands. The priest cast a quick glance at her before returning to the complexities of the document: “‘After she has been re-enclosed there and has for some time conducted herself in worthy manner, and after she has made salutary penance in proportion to her sin, she will be accepted wholly into the Church. If these requirements be not met then she will lapse into the sentence of excommunication, and this present dispensation shall be absolutely of no moment.
“‘Given at Avignon, the sixth day of the Kalends of August, in the sixteenth year of the Pontificate of the Lord Pope.’”
The priest’s chest swelled with pride: “This is the Lord Pope speaking to us. Well, speaking to us through the Bishop of Winchester and then the Dean of Guldenford, but it is about our Christine-our sister again in the Church.”
Father Peter then translated the attached letter by the Bishop of Winchester, enjoining the Dean of Guldenford to guard against Christine being torn apart again by the attacks of the Tempter.
“This was given at Farnham, the tenth day of the Kalends of November in the year of Our Lord 1332.”
The family and the priest sat in silence for a full minute.
William was the first to speak: “We all thank our bishops for their pleas to the Lord Pope. I thank ’ee Father Peter. We will talk of this during perhaps one of our last family meals together with Christine. Father, will you take food with us now? Will you sit with us for our humble meal? And will you say a prayer?”
“Aye, with pleasure, but I will ask Christine to say a prayer over the bread. The Lord Pope has honoured her, not me.”
Christine looked at the priest in horror. “It is not right, Father,” she said. “I cannot lead a prayer in front of a priest, and fully ordained at that.”
“Do what the Father says, Christine. He is honouring our house. I have lost one daughter, but I have regained another.”
The priest laid both his hands on William’s shoulders, and said solemnly: “No, Will, the Church has regained your daughter. She will return to her cell, and, with the Pope’s blessing, for her natural life. Thanks be to God. Amen.”
Christine now felt elated, justified and proud, but also a tinge of fear crept into her heart. The Pope himself had granted her absolution, but Hell’s torments would be doubled were she to leave her cell again. For his part, William thought of the coldness of her stone cell, not the fires of damnation.
John, Bishop of Winchester, was reluctant to officiate at the re-enclosure. Only three or so years earlier he had conducted the first such ceremony in the whole of the Suthrige, the district later known as Surrey. These were strange times indeed, he thought, as he made the arduous journey to Shere. Winchester ruled the richest diocese in all England, and he was a busy man, with much to do in his own palace. He did not like to travel far at his age, and, with only four armed escorts, he fretted about the wild robbers who roamed in the woods. The Pope, however, had sanctioned the re-enclosure, and so it had to be done.
Father Peter had readied St. James’s church and himself for the visit of the sternest of bishops. In deference to the superior status of Winchester, the senior clerics of Guldenford had been invited to witness the re-enclosure, but not all were expected to attend, although Abbess Euphemia had declared her intention to see the re-sealing of the godly woman.
Christine’s family and all of the village were preparing, too, for an act ordained by the Holy Father himself. Simon could not attend; he would break out in tears, just like Mistress Anna, he told William, and the carpenter understood well the lover’s pain.
The night before the ceremony, Father Peter organised a small feast to honour the bishop’s visit. John of Winchester was a guest of Vachery Manor, as the new lord had been eager to sanction Christine’s respectability; William and Father Peter had sought and gained his permission for the ceremony. One feast was held for gentlefolk at the manor, and another for the villagers near the church.
Scot-ales were plentiful, although not so abundant as to induce drunkenness, but Noah Flood, whom everyone called Ark, became intoxicated on two ales and mocked the riches of the Church by dressing up as the village “pope,” pretending to grant special indulgences to the revellers. A visiting pardoner rebuked him, and swore that no holy favours or relics would be sold in Shere for a year, whereupon the villagers threw the pardoner into the Tillingbourne. The wet and angry pardoner threatened to complain to the bishop, but Father Peter interceded, soothed the man, and prevented any disruption of the episcopal ceremonies.
Meanwhile, Christine had been summoned to the manor to speak to the bishop. It was troubling for her to retrace her steps along the Stations of the Cross she had endured those years before. Wearing her new habit, the gift of the Abbess Euphemia, she was led by the chamberlain to the bishop’s rooms.
The Bishop of Winchester, tired after his long journey, made it plain that his spiritual counsel would be brief. Previously his patience and kindness towards Christine had been stimulated by her usefulness in the bitter legal conflict with FitzGeoffrey. Nevertheless, he had honoured his promise to assist with a papal indulgence, no small matter when letters to Avignon could take many months, if the messengers survived the journey.
Bishop John told Christine to kneel at his feet.
“My child, the Holy Father has been bounteous in his mercy,” he said with due reverence to Avignon, but also a marked irritation because he had a cold and, ever concerned for his health, had been forced to leave his apothecary behind in Winchester.
He sneezed loudly before continuing, “You must know that this indulgence is rare. If you repeat your crime against God, excommunication is inevitable. A second transgression of this kind will make you a heretic. It will affront God and the Papacy, as well as make a mockery of my two visitations here. You can seek out God, or you can face the stake and flames. It is a simple choice which should cleanse your mind of worldly thoughts, of family, of village. Your duty is to God, not man. Compare your eternal life with a score of years wallowing in the mud and dirt of the hovels of your kin. Have you comprehended this, with no doubt?”
Christine, kneeling, spoke humbly: “I have, my lord bishop. I cast aside all, except the Holy Mother Church. My life is devoted to the final mortal ecstasy of finding oneness with God, if it be granted me by faithful prayer and constant devotions.”
The bishop made the sign of the cross: “Then so be it. You will spend the night alone in prayer at the altar of St. James’s. In the morrow I will find you on your knees and lead you to your cell, with all the rites. May God be with you.” He dismissed her in haste, and went to join his host for a supper of roast swan and heron.
Christine returned to Ashe Cottage for a final simple meal with her family. All were quiet over the bowls of soup and bread, followed by salted mackerel. All too soon for Helene, her daughter stood to embrace her. Then Christine enfolded herself in the arms of her brother and father. Her nephew, Margaret’s child, was asleep in a rough wooden cot. She would not wake him, but she bent over to kiss his little hand as Helene held back her tears. William escorted his daughter to the church as a full moon bathed the stone in celestial light. They held each other, but did not speak.
William, seemingly frozen in the moonlight, watched through the church door as Christine walked to the altar and prayed before it on her knees. He gazed on his first-born for long minutes, as the wind fluted through the willows that formed an ostentatious honour-guard for the stream’s passage through the church grounds. A movement in the graveyard suddenly caught his eye: a roe deer had wandered from the Hurtwood. It stood motionless, staring at the carpenter. The deer remained stock-still for a few seconds, then bounded away.
William looked back through the church door at Christine’s devotions, and waited until he could bear no more. If only my daughter had the freedom of that deer, he thought.
Christine prayed throughout the vigils of the night. She asked God to grant her the courage to overcome her fears and doubts. She had been tempted once into breaking her vows, and she could not immediately ignore the maternal urges that her baby nephew had aroused, but this craving would pass from a worldly body cast off when the secular life was renounced for the glories of the Holy Ghost. She prayed for forgiveness for leaving her cell, and for all those who had sought the help of bishops and Pope on her humble behalf.
Because she had been again in the tangible world, among the trees and wind and sun and, above all, people, Christine had lost the sense of being surrounded by the unseen; her material senses had been overwhelmed. In her cell, her previous isolation had refined not only her imagination but also her hearing, which had become very acute. In midsummer she had listened to the song of the grasshopper, at first soft, then gradually louder, stopping quite suddenly before the creature restarted its cycle. In the long evenings in her cell she had paused in her prayers to heed all God’s creatures, especially the nightjars. She had often eavesdropped on the “co-ic” call of the male to its mate; afterwards she would wait for the churring sound of the unpaired males. Then, in the first week of September, the nightjars would fly southwards to unknown parts of the earth, and she would cherish those sounds deep within herself until the birds resumed their courtship in the spring.
In her renewed confinement she would hone her senses once more, and learn again how to transform the mystical nuances of enclosed life into the blessed touch of the hand of God, though she knew that it might be many years before she could personalise the external rhythms of nature into an immanent relationship with Him.
Duval stopped typing and went to the bathroom situated next to his ground-floor study. He felt a little weak. When he denied Marda food, he usually fasted himself, and when he punished her, he had to punish himself. There was no need for a cold bath, he told himself. His third bath of the day would be a hot one; he could think and plan in the luxury of hot soapy water.
He needed to prepare his mind because he had an unwelcome appointment and he did not like meeting strangers. Above all, he did not like Americans, particularly ones who kept pestering him with letters, and he wondered whether he was doing the right thing in agreeing to meet this one.
In fact, Professor Irvine M. Gould had written only three letters; formally couched by the standards of Harvard, but irritatingly intimate according to the conservative norms of English address. The third letter had arrived that morning, and it had begun “Dear Michael.” Duval was appalled at the man’s presumption.
Gould was a medievalist who had initiated a somewhat one-sided correspondence with the priest on the subject of fourteenth-century mysticism. Duval had persuaded himself to answer the second letter, tolerating the foreigner’s interest because it was a mutual one: Christine the anchoress. The professor’s letters had been opaque, but had sufficiently piqued Duval’s interest for him to agree-provisionally-to meet this interloper; “if you come to England,” the priest had blithely written. And now the damned man had actually pitched up in Surrey.
Distrustful of such types, Duval needed time to work out what he would say to the pushy American who had somehow bamboozled him into conceding a meeting. He had two hours before the appointment, which was to take place in the Angel Hotel in Guildford.
Despite his agitated state, Duval was hungry and looked forward to eating that night. Strangely, he thought of meat, even though he had been a vegetarian for many years. He had always regarded his aversion to meat as a symbol of his inability to kill. He reproached himself for this regression, as well as his own nervousness, as he paced up and down his study in a bath towel. Surely he, Michael Duval, was a world authority on anchoresses, and certainly the unchallenged expert on Christine. Nevertheless, the tension forced him to set out early.
Duval parked near the recently completed Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, but did not get out of his car immediately; he sat there thinking, waiting to make a precise entry into the hotel. His Morris shone under the lights of the car park as though it were new, but it was a neon illusion: the car had not been properly cleaned for months. Once he had been fastidious in caring for his possessions, not least his body, but his clothing was beginning to look worn. Members of his congregation had commented to each other that their priest was looking a little seedy, certainly pale and thinner, and perhaps even somewhat scruffy. One had observed a certain wildness in those cold, blue, mesmerising eyes. Duval, however, had not noticed any change in himself.
Punctual to the minute when he walked into the hotel foyer, he asked the receptionist for Professor Gould, then spoke to the man himself, using the phone on the cramped reception desk. The American visitor said he would join him in the small lounge, “the one decorated with reproduction hunting prints.” Duval sat alone in the lounge for a few minutes before a gangly, bespectacled figure with a full beard marched down the stairs, strode up to his table and asked, in an unexpected southern drawl, whether this was indeed Father Michael Duval that he was finally meeting.
Shaking hands, the two men sized each other up. The American’s round spectacles and beard gave the impression of an identikit inhabitant of the ivory tower, while the tweedy jacket with leather elbow patches hinted at what later became apparent: the American was a passionate anglophile. For his part, Gould noticed that the priest was ill at ease, so he determined to be as friendly as possible, despite what he sensed as intellectual suspicion or even rivalry. That, at any rate, was the impression he had garnered from their brief correspondence, but maybe Duval would be more relaxed face to face.
The professor suggested dinner in the hotel. As they sat down in the empty restaurant, Gould explained that he was spending most of a sabbatical leave from Georgetown University in his beloved England. He had already visited the country home of Lewis Carroll, who, as the Reverend Charles Dodgson, had preached at the Saxon church in Guildford. The two enthusiasts of church history soon jettisoned all pretence of small talk: within five minutes they were becoming animated by the concepts of the new Guildford cathedral. Gould admired the original designs by Edward Maufe while Duval did not, although their disagreements were politely academic.
William welcomed him warmly. “Come in, Father Peter, and dry yourself by our hearth.”
“Thank ’ee, Will,” said the priest, letting his sodden hood fall on to his shoulders. Sitting on a stool by the open fire, despite his excited state he could not resist casting a covetous eye over the pork roasting on the spit.
William did not ignore the silent request. “Will you honour this home and join us in our meal?”
“I will most gladly, but pray let me read to you all this letter.”
The whole family assembled within the minute to hear the first letter William had ever seen.
The priest looked with concern and affection at Christine, while playing to the gallery in his hour of triumph. “Aye, Christine. Good it be to see you in a womanly robe, but I can tell you that your habit should be readied.”
The family members all stood while the priest raised the document in the air.
“I have here a copy of the response to the bishop’s petition on your behalf. It is in best Church Latin.”
“Tell us in our speech,” said William impatiently.
The priest assumed a self-important stance, holding the letter with both hands, his arms fully extended. Allowing a few seconds for a dramatic pause, he said, “It begins thus: ‘John, by divine permission Bishop of Winchester, to the Dean of Guldenford; we greet ye with grace and blessing.’”
He explained in detail rather than translated the intercession of the Bishop of Winchester with the Pope.
“This part of the letter speaks of our Christine. This is from our Holy Father. Heavens be praised, a letter from the Lord Pope about a humble villager here in Shere.”
The priest was clearly relishing his role as papal emissary.
“Read it, Father,” said Helene, almost unable to contain herself.
The priest nodded with exaggerated dignity. “‘Our sister Christine, an anchoress of Shere, in your diocese, has by humble confession shown us that whereas at one time, as is known to ye, choosing enclosure in the life of an anchoress, she made a solemn vow of continence, promising to remain in that place. Now forswearing’-that is ‘leaving,’ William,” he said with a gentle smile as he looked up at the frown on the carpenter’s face-“‘forswearing this life and conduct that she assumed, she has left her cell inconstantly and returned to the world. Now, with God’s help, she has humbly petitioned us that she may be treated mercifully by the Apostolic See.’”
The overawed family looked at each other and, in turn, Father Peter glanced individually at each person in the room before continuing. “Her transgressions have been forgiven, William. Aye, Christine, the Pope himself has given you absolution.”
Helene started to cry, while young William clapped his hands.
“Now, let me try again-by your leave, Christine,” said the priest, a little less portentously, “but this is learned Latin. I have laboured in the church an hour or more to comprehend the words before I came to this house.
“‘Therefore, we who strive for the salvation of the souls of her and all mankind with fervent longing, wishing to take care of her soul send ye, according to the rules of the Church, absolution for her, by authority of the Lord Pope, from the excommunication usually promul…promul…’” Father Peter coughed nervously and tried again: “‘Promulgated against such persons. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the manner of a good father of a family rejoicing in the finding of a lost sheep, the said anchoress shall come humbly to ye within the space of four months from this our order that she shall re-enclose herself in the same place, lest by wandering any longer about the world she be exposed to the hunger of the rapacious wolf and, which Heaven forbid, her blood be required at your hands.’”
Christine sat down, and covered her face with her hands. The priest cast a quick glance at her before returning to the complexities of the document: “‘After she has been re-enclosed there and has for some time conducted herself in worthy manner, and after she has made salutary penance in proportion to her sin, she will be accepted wholly into the Church. If these requirements be not met then she will lapse into the sentence of excommunication, and this present dispensation shall be absolutely of no moment.
“‘Given at Avignon, the sixth day of the Kalends of August, in the sixteenth year of the Pontificate of the Lord Pope.’”
The priest’s chest swelled with pride: “This is the Lord Pope speaking to us. Well, speaking to us through the Bishop of Winchester and then the Dean of Guldenford, but it is about our Christine-our sister again in the Church.”
Father Peter then translated the attached letter by the Bishop of Winchester, enjoining the Dean of Guldenford to guard against Christine being torn apart again by the attacks of the Tempter.
“This was given at Farnham, the tenth day of the Kalends of November in the year of Our Lord 1332.”
The family and the priest sat in silence for a full minute.
William was the first to speak: “We all thank our bishops for their pleas to the Lord Pope. I thank ’ee Father Peter. We will talk of this during perhaps one of our last family meals together with Christine. Father, will you take food with us now? Will you sit with us for our humble meal? And will you say a prayer?”
“Aye, with pleasure, but I will ask Christine to say a prayer over the bread. The Lord Pope has honoured her, not me.”
Christine looked at the priest in horror. “It is not right, Father,” she said. “I cannot lead a prayer in front of a priest, and fully ordained at that.”
“Do what the Father says, Christine. He is honouring our house. I have lost one daughter, but I have regained another.”
The priest laid both his hands on William’s shoulders, and said solemnly: “No, Will, the Church has regained your daughter. She will return to her cell, and, with the Pope’s blessing, for her natural life. Thanks be to God. Amen.”
Christine now felt elated, justified and proud, but also a tinge of fear crept into her heart. The Pope himself had granted her absolution, but Hell’s torments would be doubled were she to leave her cell again. For his part, William thought of the coldness of her stone cell, not the fires of damnation.
John, Bishop of Winchester, was reluctant to officiate at the re-enclosure. Only three or so years earlier he had conducted the first such ceremony in the whole of the Suthrige, the district later known as Surrey. These were strange times indeed, he thought, as he made the arduous journey to Shere. Winchester ruled the richest diocese in all England, and he was a busy man, with much to do in his own palace. He did not like to travel far at his age, and, with only four armed escorts, he fretted about the wild robbers who roamed in the woods. The Pope, however, had sanctioned the re-enclosure, and so it had to be done.
Father Peter had readied St. James’s church and himself for the visit of the sternest of bishops. In deference to the superior status of Winchester, the senior clerics of Guldenford had been invited to witness the re-enclosure, but not all were expected to attend, although Abbess Euphemia had declared her intention to see the re-sealing of the godly woman.
Christine’s family and all of the village were preparing, too, for an act ordained by the Holy Father himself. Simon could not attend; he would break out in tears, just like Mistress Anna, he told William, and the carpenter understood well the lover’s pain.
The night before the ceremony, Father Peter organised a small feast to honour the bishop’s visit. John of Winchester was a guest of Vachery Manor, as the new lord had been eager to sanction Christine’s respectability; William and Father Peter had sought and gained his permission for the ceremony. One feast was held for gentlefolk at the manor, and another for the villagers near the church.
Scot-ales were plentiful, although not so abundant as to induce drunkenness, but Noah Flood, whom everyone called Ark, became intoxicated on two ales and mocked the riches of the Church by dressing up as the village “pope,” pretending to grant special indulgences to the revellers. A visiting pardoner rebuked him, and swore that no holy favours or relics would be sold in Shere for a year, whereupon the villagers threw the pardoner into the Tillingbourne. The wet and angry pardoner threatened to complain to the bishop, but Father Peter interceded, soothed the man, and prevented any disruption of the episcopal ceremonies.
Meanwhile, Christine had been summoned to the manor to speak to the bishop. It was troubling for her to retrace her steps along the Stations of the Cross she had endured those years before. Wearing her new habit, the gift of the Abbess Euphemia, she was led by the chamberlain to the bishop’s rooms.
The Bishop of Winchester, tired after his long journey, made it plain that his spiritual counsel would be brief. Previously his patience and kindness towards Christine had been stimulated by her usefulness in the bitter legal conflict with FitzGeoffrey. Nevertheless, he had honoured his promise to assist with a papal indulgence, no small matter when letters to Avignon could take many months, if the messengers survived the journey.
Bishop John told Christine to kneel at his feet.
“My child, the Holy Father has been bounteous in his mercy,” he said with due reverence to Avignon, but also a marked irritation because he had a cold and, ever concerned for his health, had been forced to leave his apothecary behind in Winchester.
He sneezed loudly before continuing, “You must know that this indulgence is rare. If you repeat your crime against God, excommunication is inevitable. A second transgression of this kind will make you a heretic. It will affront God and the Papacy, as well as make a mockery of my two visitations here. You can seek out God, or you can face the stake and flames. It is a simple choice which should cleanse your mind of worldly thoughts, of family, of village. Your duty is to God, not man. Compare your eternal life with a score of years wallowing in the mud and dirt of the hovels of your kin. Have you comprehended this, with no doubt?”
Christine, kneeling, spoke humbly: “I have, my lord bishop. I cast aside all, except the Holy Mother Church. My life is devoted to the final mortal ecstasy of finding oneness with God, if it be granted me by faithful prayer and constant devotions.”
The bishop made the sign of the cross: “Then so be it. You will spend the night alone in prayer at the altar of St. James’s. In the morrow I will find you on your knees and lead you to your cell, with all the rites. May God be with you.” He dismissed her in haste, and went to join his host for a supper of roast swan and heron.
Christine returned to Ashe Cottage for a final simple meal with her family. All were quiet over the bowls of soup and bread, followed by salted mackerel. All too soon for Helene, her daughter stood to embrace her. Then Christine enfolded herself in the arms of her brother and father. Her nephew, Margaret’s child, was asleep in a rough wooden cot. She would not wake him, but she bent over to kiss his little hand as Helene held back her tears. William escorted his daughter to the church as a full moon bathed the stone in celestial light. They held each other, but did not speak.
William, seemingly frozen in the moonlight, watched through the church door as Christine walked to the altar and prayed before it on her knees. He gazed on his first-born for long minutes, as the wind fluted through the willows that formed an ostentatious honour-guard for the stream’s passage through the church grounds. A movement in the graveyard suddenly caught his eye: a roe deer had wandered from the Hurtwood. It stood motionless, staring at the carpenter. The deer remained stock-still for a few seconds, then bounded away.
William looked back through the church door at Christine’s devotions, and waited until he could bear no more. If only my daughter had the freedom of that deer, he thought.
Christine prayed throughout the vigils of the night. She asked God to grant her the courage to overcome her fears and doubts. She had been tempted once into breaking her vows, and she could not immediately ignore the maternal urges that her baby nephew had aroused, but this craving would pass from a worldly body cast off when the secular life was renounced for the glories of the Holy Ghost. She prayed for forgiveness for leaving her cell, and for all those who had sought the help of bishops and Pope on her humble behalf.
Because she had been again in the tangible world, among the trees and wind and sun and, above all, people, Christine had lost the sense of being surrounded by the unseen; her material senses had been overwhelmed. In her cell, her previous isolation had refined not only her imagination but also her hearing, which had become very acute. In midsummer she had listened to the song of the grasshopper, at first soft, then gradually louder, stopping quite suddenly before the creature restarted its cycle. In the long evenings in her cell she had paused in her prayers to heed all God’s creatures, especially the nightjars. She had often eavesdropped on the “co-ic” call of the male to its mate; afterwards she would wait for the churring sound of the unpaired males. Then, in the first week of September, the nightjars would fly southwards to unknown parts of the earth, and she would cherish those sounds deep within herself until the birds resumed their courtship in the spring.
In her renewed confinement she would hone her senses once more, and learn again how to transform the mystical nuances of enclosed life into the blessed touch of the hand of God, though she knew that it might be many years before she could personalise the external rhythms of nature into an immanent relationship with Him.
Duval stopped typing and went to the bathroom situated next to his ground-floor study. He felt a little weak. When he denied Marda food, he usually fasted himself, and when he punished her, he had to punish himself. There was no need for a cold bath, he told himself. His third bath of the day would be a hot one; he could think and plan in the luxury of hot soapy water.
He needed to prepare his mind because he had an unwelcome appointment and he did not like meeting strangers. Above all, he did not like Americans, particularly ones who kept pestering him with letters, and he wondered whether he was doing the right thing in agreeing to meet this one.
In fact, Professor Irvine M. Gould had written only three letters; formally couched by the standards of Harvard, but irritatingly intimate according to the conservative norms of English address. The third letter had arrived that morning, and it had begun “Dear Michael.” Duval was appalled at the man’s presumption.
Gould was a medievalist who had initiated a somewhat one-sided correspondence with the priest on the subject of fourteenth-century mysticism. Duval had persuaded himself to answer the second letter, tolerating the foreigner’s interest because it was a mutual one: Christine the anchoress. The professor’s letters had been opaque, but had sufficiently piqued Duval’s interest for him to agree-provisionally-to meet this interloper; “if you come to England,” the priest had blithely written. And now the damned man had actually pitched up in Surrey.
Distrustful of such types, Duval needed time to work out what he would say to the pushy American who had somehow bamboozled him into conceding a meeting. He had two hours before the appointment, which was to take place in the Angel Hotel in Guildford.
Despite his agitated state, Duval was hungry and looked forward to eating that night. Strangely, he thought of meat, even though he had been a vegetarian for many years. He had always regarded his aversion to meat as a symbol of his inability to kill. He reproached himself for this regression, as well as his own nervousness, as he paced up and down his study in a bath towel. Surely he, Michael Duval, was a world authority on anchoresses, and certainly the unchallenged expert on Christine. Nevertheless, the tension forced him to set out early.
Duval parked near the recently completed Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, but did not get out of his car immediately; he sat there thinking, waiting to make a precise entry into the hotel. His Morris shone under the lights of the car park as though it were new, but it was a neon illusion: the car had not been properly cleaned for months. Once he had been fastidious in caring for his possessions, not least his body, but his clothing was beginning to look worn. Members of his congregation had commented to each other that their priest was looking a little seedy, certainly pale and thinner, and perhaps even somewhat scruffy. One had observed a certain wildness in those cold, blue, mesmerising eyes. Duval, however, had not noticed any change in himself.
Punctual to the minute when he walked into the hotel foyer, he asked the receptionist for Professor Gould, then spoke to the man himself, using the phone on the cramped reception desk. The American visitor said he would join him in the small lounge, “the one decorated with reproduction hunting prints.” Duval sat alone in the lounge for a few minutes before a gangly, bespectacled figure with a full beard marched down the stairs, strode up to his table and asked, in an unexpected southern drawl, whether this was indeed Father Michael Duval that he was finally meeting.
Shaking hands, the two men sized each other up. The American’s round spectacles and beard gave the impression of an identikit inhabitant of the ivory tower, while the tweedy jacket with leather elbow patches hinted at what later became apparent: the American was a passionate anglophile. For his part, Gould noticed that the priest was ill at ease, so he determined to be as friendly as possible, despite what he sensed as intellectual suspicion or even rivalry. That, at any rate, was the impression he had garnered from their brief correspondence, but maybe Duval would be more relaxed face to face.
The professor suggested dinner in the hotel. As they sat down in the empty restaurant, Gould explained that he was spending most of a sabbatical leave from Georgetown University in his beloved England. He had already visited the country home of Lewis Carroll, who, as the Reverend Charles Dodgson, had preached at the Saxon church in Guildford. The two enthusiasts of church history soon jettisoned all pretence of small talk: within five minutes they were becoming animated by the concepts of the new Guildford cathedral. Gould admired the original designs by Edward Maufe while Duval did not, although their disagreements were politely academic.
