The Anchoress of Shere, page 2
Duval fingered his typewriter slowly, lovingly, as if it were a venerated church organ. Then he started to type furiously.
December 1326
Sir Richard FitzGeoffrey, despite his relatively humble estates, was an aggressive warrior, and renowned in his county as a crusader in the last doomed efforts to regain a foothold in the Holy Land. His demesne included all of Shere, Gomshall and Peaslake in the shire of Surrey. Sir Richard proudly traced his forebears directly to the Conqueror, and believed his French to be pure Norman, although his curses were base Anglo-Saxon. He saw himself as a warrior of Christ, just as long as the actual battles advanced his favour with his earthly king and increased his landed possessions. His two foreign forays had been careful: very bloody, but comparatively short for the long distances he had travelled. He had served his king in France and in the Levant, but slyly returned as soon as he could in order to secure his holdings at home. Jerusalem he regarded as a tool, not a vision.
Sir Richard’s men followed him in fear and awe. At home in his favourite tavern, Sir Richard’s squire, Phillip of Gomshall, would often hold court, regaling pilgrims and local villagers with tales of his master’s ingenious treatment of captured Saracens.
“It were near Antioch,” the squire would always start. He would scratch his mop of red hair, wait for perfect silence, and then continue: “We had been ridin’ since the break of day. Ten of us there were, two knights, two squires and six men but lightly armed. We sojourned briefly at a well. Bare slaked our thirst when we were surprised by the enemy-at least a score there were.
“Sir Richard and his son Edward flew at the intruders. Sir Richard, still mounted, killed two with his long-sword. Edward-on foot-sundered one unbeliever’s head with his axe. Most of the enemy then took flight, run they did like frightened hares, but we seized four, with the grace of Almighty God. Sir Richard said we should feast there and honour our Saviour with a toast.
“Then my master ordered us to render naked the Mussulmen, to shame them before their false god. We bound them fast to trees and whipped them, for an hour, and so, in submission, they did our biddin’. We told them to dig-the earth was sandy-a hole six feet deep and near four feet wide. They did it speedily, too, with their hands and metalled scabbards, despite the heat and bloodied backs, though they knew it to be their grave. When it was done, Sir Richard bade the Saracens descend into the hole. Pricked by our swords, in fear, they did so.
“Sir Richard then told us: ‘Bury these men, but leave their heads above. We are Christian knights so we shall leave these men to pray to the true God. Place their heads a foot apart, facing east, west, south and north, so they can see that our one true God is everywhere.’
“And so it was. Their heads were like the round hide-balls we throw on feast-days, but resting there in the sand.”
The squire would pause for a deep draught of his ale, and savour the wide-eyed look of expectancy in his audience. He would time his drinking actions to tally with his words: “We drank a little of the wine we had, and Sir Richard bade us share some water with the living heads afore us. The first head, desperate was he for the drops we gave, but the second Saracen-even though his eyes were wide with fear-took the drops and then spat at his provider-that were Thomas, my cousin from Netley. You all know him.”
The audience would murmur a rapid assent, eager for him to proceed with his tale. The squire would hesitate just a second or so longer than he ought, to tease his captivated listeners. “Ah, yes,” he continued, as though he had lost his way for a moment, “Sir Richard saw this impudence, but said naught. He fell to joking with his son about domestic matters. When the sun was dyin’ in the sky, Sir Richard instructed us to light a fire, and we collected some of the wood that lay scattered around. One of our soldiers made to start a fire in the lee of some rocks, but my master said he wanted the Saracens to feel the fires of Hell.
“‘Light the fire between their heads,’ he commanded.
“I could see that the soldier was not willin’, though he did what he had been bidden. The man-Gilbert from London town-lit a small fire that did but heat the Mussulmen a little.
“Sir Richard strode over to the fire and shouted, ‘By the Holy Cross I wear, we will teach these Saracens the price of scornin’ our Holy Father the Pope.’ Those were truly his words.”
At this Sir Richard’s squire would drink deep of his ale until his leather jug was empty. He would upturn the empty vessel and stay silent until a member of the rapt audience bought him more. Adopting a patrician smile as they rushed to satisfy his thirst, and with a softer-almost conspiratorial-voice, he would return to his tale: “Thereupon, my lord threw stout faggots on to the stuttering fire. As the flames rose, the Mussulmen’s hair caught fire and they screamed to Allah. Their eyes bulged and popped out like corks from a jug of shaken ale. I must confess I could not bear the sight nor smell of burnin’ human flesh. Just like the smell of roasted pig after Lent, exceptin’ that the stench of burning beard and hair was stronger than the pork…but Sir Richard was not discountenanced at all.
“He used the black gargoyles with gaping mouths that before were heads as hearth-stones for the roasting of our meat. I felt I could not eat, but we had ridden long and hard, and hunger was on us, despite our battle and the smell of flesh. We feasted on the fireplace of the Saracens.”
The squire was always content with the utter silence that would fall on the tavern, no matter that it was the twentieth telling of his tale.
***
Michael Duval was also content with the power of his sadistic invention, or “selective reinterpretation” as he would term it. He would now work this episode into his story of Christine.
The historical evidence for Christine’s story was meagre: essentially three letters, written in Church Latin between 1329 and 1332. Duval had researched related histories of the lives of anchorites and anchoresses as well as local records. But nothing had told him why the most well-formed girl in the valley-the priest was fusing spiritual and earthly splendour-had chosen a life of total enclosure in a cell in the wall of St. James’s church in the hamlet of Shere. Nevertheless, her story had seized his imagination and fired his intellectual curiosity, finally consuming him as though it were a literary transubstantiation: he could feel Christine’s flesh and blood coming alive through him. If evil was caused by the flesh, he asked himself, how could the Devil be explained, the fallen angel who had no flesh? Better to explain evil as integral to man’s nature, but goodness, yes, that could be generated by flesh, especially flesh as perfect as mortality would allow. A young girl’s flesh. The life of Christine was not so much a history as his own creation, a rebirth of his faith, perhaps even the Eucharist of his soul; he had become a consecrated writer. When he picked up his pen to make notes before he typed, he imagined the blood flowing down through his hands into the pen and on to the pure white paper.
August 1327
Edward II had taken up the Cross fourteen years before, and for a century to come the kings of England were to be absorbed in squabbles abroad, for God in the Holy Land and for Mammon in France. When Christine was born in Shere in the year of our Lord 1311, her village had been racked by famine. Harvests failed and murrain infected the oxen and sheep. Plague, taxes and revolt were to lay waste an England often deserted by her lords, her kings and perhaps even by God.
Very near St. James’s, her parish church, Christine dwelled in Ashe Cottage, a house with three large crucks-curved tree trunks-forming a series of arches, with a ridge pole to hold the steep thatched roof. The walls were wattle and daub, strengthened with a solid wooden frame. William the Carpenter had built a screen to divide the cottage into a small open room and a bower, or bedroom. In the main room stood an open fire for cooking and heat, with a space in the roof to let out the smoke. In addition, the cottage boasted four windows with skilfully fashioned wooden shutters. William had also built a small lean-to for his two cows and his goat because, very unusually, he did not hold with animals sharing the house, as was the custom among the English peasantry. His well-crafted cottage was home to his wife, Helene, and his three children: Christine, Margaret, younger by two years, and the last-born, a son also called William.
William the elder, although bonded to the FitzGeoffrey family, also worked as a journeyman carpenter, employing an apprentice of nineteen, a runaway serf who had been caught and branded on the forehead, but who had reformed his character under the stern, albeit fair, tutelage of the craftsman. Recently, William’s status in the village had been secured by his election as the headman of his tithing group. Except at harvest time, he paid his obligation in kind or coin. His garden provided some staple vegetables, but his defence against starvation was his mastery of wood. Despite the years of anguish and hunger in the village William had survived, even prospered, and so his salt box was always full. Through the dexterity of his hands he provided whey, cheese, buttermilk, peas and beans, daily bread of mixed barley and oats, and-on high days-wheaten bread, washed down with spicy nut-brown ale. He could even treat his family to salted beef or smoked bacon, too, on many a Sunday.
William sat contemplating his lot in this August of 1327. This year the harvest had been fruitful and he had completed his boon work for his lord and paid his tithes. The reeve had collected all, even the wood-silver for coppicing the lord’s timber for his carpentry and for his fire. There was, however, one small debt to be paid: the merchet due to Sir Richard. His Christine was to be betrothed to Simon, the tailor’s son. The priest had agreed and all that remained was for William to ask his lord for permission. It was the old tradition, although William knew that in the towns such niceties were being forgotten. It was a relatively small fee, normally six pence, an equivalent in groats or marks, or a gift in kind. So William had fashioned a chair fit for the lord, who, by the reeve’s intercession, had made it known that such a gift was acceptable.
That particular balmy evening, William sat outside his cottage on a bench, dressed in his best breeches, his serge tunic tucked into a belted waist. And next to him stood the magnificent carved chair, which he stroked almost absent-mindedly. His reverie was partly induced by the jug of ale which had been brought to him by Helene, who smiled indulgently at her husband as he, in turn, looked with love on the face that displayed loyalty in every weathered crease. Sipping at the ale, he pincered a hair-louse between his thumb and the broken nail on his forefinger. He looked up as he flicked the parasite away, and locked his gaze on the in-field, the last to be harvested. The barley and oats had been scythed, the strips of wheat had been sickled, and the binders had gathered the corn into sheaves to stack them into shocks to dry. A few of the old people and younger villagers were gleaning the fields to save the last handfuls of the harvest, while the paupers were foraging in the hedges and end strips. Soon the cattle would be set free amidst the stubble.
The sun nestled in the wooded hills that cloaked the pass to Guldenford as the warm ale settled comfortably in William’s stomach. The carpenter was his own man, devout, yet possessed of a fine sense of justice, usually tempered by humour. He was unlettered, it was true, but he had memorised many of the chapters from the Gospel by sheer diligence and attendance at the church of St. James three times each Sunday.
As the trees in the Hurtwood began to turn pink in the scented sunset, he saw Christine walking from the in-field where she had been helping to glean the corn. William noticed that Simon, her betrothed, kept his distance from her, but the young man’s eyes followed Christine as the small group of villagers filed out of the main field.
William thought that her blond hair outdid the glory of even the richest cornfield. She was tall for a village girl and her limbs so perfectly proportioned that even a father could decently note her fair looks. He loved his first-born and had planned her marriage into a respectable tailoring family with considerable care, and not without a little consultation with his wife and Christine, although, ultimately, he was a man who heeded his own counsel.
As she entered their gate, William beamed a toothless grin at her and said, “See, Christine, I have finished your chair. All be agreed with the reeve. This gift be better than a handful of groats-not that I couldn’t be payin’ in coin, what with the good harvest an’ all.”
Christine kneeled by the chair and touched it as though it were a sacred relic. “I thank you, father,” she said, “for all the work. This chair be fittin’-aye, more than fittin’-for a lord.”
She suddenly laughed, and added, “And the seat so smooth, no splinters to rip his lordly arse.”
William tried to look stern, but he could not control the wide grin that consumed his face. Nor could he resist his daughter’s impish sense of humour, although her independent attitude troubled him occasionally. She was too much like himself, he knew.
“An arse he might be, but we must bow to him and to the strong arm that keeps the peace here, and the robbers out of our woods.”
William leaned over to kiss her forehead. “Red you are in the sun and after labourin’. Take a sip of this, a little ale will not go amiss.”
Handing Christine his jug, he spoke through the side of his mouth, in a stage whisper, pretending not to offend his wife: “Now that the chair be done, why even I say you can with Simon tarry.”
Christine blushed deeply, even though it was the custom for betrothed couples to tryst before their marriage. She had been teased by some of the village girls because she had insisted she would remain a virgin until her marriage day.
Hilda, the miller’s daughter, the girl with the distracting wart on her nose, had shouted at her, “Mistress high and mighty, you are. What makes you better than us girls, then?”
Christine had thought about the remark and wondered whether there really was something wrong with her, or perhaps just something different. They wanted marriage and nothing else while, for her, a husband would be just part of her existence, because she was curious about life beyond the village, beyond England, perhaps beyond this world. These thoughts were half-formed, glimmerings which sprang from her lively intelligence.
But her father would not understand this. “Time enough for tarryin’, father,” she said firmly. “Rest I need after gleanin’, not more rushin’ hither and thither.”
“Enough, daughter, for I am eager to see my liege. The reeve has appointed tonight for my gift to be laid at the master’s door. Then next Sunday, God willin’, your name will be fixed on the church door to declare the banns.”
An hour later William, dressed in his Sunday clothes and carrying the chair, was standing with the reeve outside the gatehouse of Vachery Manor. The reeve, armed with his customary stave, bustled with self-importance. The Manor had once been a small castle, and the moat remained, although the Norman fortifications had been partly demilitarised and transformed into a grand house. It was built for luxury, admittedly, but still could be a stronghold if necessary-all for the glory of Sir Richard. The drawbridge was down. Facing the gatehouse was the entrance to the main hall, where most of the household slept, ate and amused themselves. The hall was open to the roof timbers, and it had a hearth in the centre of the floor and a louvre in the roof through which the smoke was supposed to escape, but the smoke and ash from the fires of many winters had besmirched the fine display of shields. The largest was painted red with diagonal stripes and topped with the sign of a crescent moon.
The reeve pointed to the shield and whispered, “Saracen-captured by our lord.”
William was overawed; he had not been inside the hall since he was a young man.
The two men carefully picked their way through a floor thick with rushes, mixed with basil, sweet fennel, lavender, mint, pennyroyal and violets. And, inevitably, mustard seeds had been sprinkled to ward off the evil spirits. The dead flowers and herbs, however, could not compete with the stench of the grease, bones, spittle and the excrement of dogs and cats that mingled with the rushes.
At the lower end of the hall was an entrance from the courtyard. A large screen, carved with scenes of noble exploits in the Holy Land, shielded the hall from some of the draughts. On the other side of the screened-off gangway were doors into the pantry and the former kitchen, now a small armoury. Over the passage formed by the screen stood a gallery where musical instruments were marshalled, waiting patiently for their masters. As he walked past the gallery, William asked the reeve to tell him what the instruments were.
The reeve wasn’t sure, but his pride and position would never allow such an admission: “That be an Irish harp, that a dulcimer and that be a shawm.”
They stepped through the hall, skirting the dais and high table, past a fine carved oak chest which served as a travelling box, and on to the door of the lord’s antechamber. Here they waited an hour or so upon their lord’s pleasure until, eventually, the chamberlain summoned both reeve and William to Sir Richard’s presence. Even the antechamber seemed a magnificent hall to William, so rich was it in wall hangings and beautifully embroidered cushions, all from France, or so the reeve said, again in a whisper.
The lord sat alone in a large curved stool without a back, but heavy with carvings in the legs. A good piece of work, William thought. The very last light of dusk filtered through a glass window, set in a transportable frame, above his head, and it was the first glass window, outside a church, that William had ever seen. Noticing the remains of an opulent private meal on the main table and on the two long benches that flanked it, William sniffed approvingly at the smell of roast meat that hung about the chamber.
Sir Richard did not speak; he seemed distracted by the magpie that had flown in through a rear window to peck at the scraps of food lying on the pewter platters. William and the reeve stood silently, uncertain of their master’s wishes.
