On that morning, I left the royal holding and set out onto the streets of the city proper. That too had its perils, and I knew better than to go unarmed or to carry a fat purse where it could be marked and seen. Winchester was a good town, but saints are beloved in part for their rarity. Most men are sinners, after all. I had managed to find a black robe with knotted belt and simple leather sandals any legionary would have recognised.
The streets were busy and the skies overcast as I hurried through them, worrying about rain. I knew the way to Elflaed’s house, not a dozen streets from the king’s estate, but all on good cobbles. Drains gurgled beneath some of those roads, while fresh rain ran in gutters of fired clay for the poor to collect and drink.
Lady Elflaed’s servants were unsure what to do with a man who wore no cloak they could take. One of them rubbed my feet clean of mud while another dabbed at my forehead, until I told them to leave me alone and announce me to their mistress. At least the lady’s house was laid out in simple structure, with two rooms below and two above. A good fire burned in a chimney that reminded me of a forge hearth. I could not stop to examine it and instead found myself shown to a room where Lady Elflaed and my uncle Athelm stood behind a great table, looking stern.
‘My lady,’ I said in greeting, frowning at them. ‘Uncle.’
The archbishop dipped his head in response.
‘I was not expecting to see you this morning, Uncle,’ I said.
‘Lady Elflaed asked me to attend when she saw you sighing at her niece yesterday evening.’
‘Sighing?’ I said, growing cold. Neither of them had asked me to sit and so I stood before them like a child summoned to explain why the apples had gone missing.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I am talking about, Dunstan!’ Elflaed said. ‘You have been here for, how long now?’
‘Three months, a little more …’ I began. One of my fingers would never again be straight, but my strength had come back like Samson’s.
‘I brought you to court as a young man rising in the Church, Dunstan. A man of talent who might follow in the steps of his uncle, perhaps! As I think his father would have wanted.’
‘I don’t understand what I have done wrong,’ I said.
‘Truly?’ she demanded. ‘Then I will say it as simply as I can. Dunstan, the robe you wear is Benedictine. It gave me hope when I saw you had found another, after your own was so cruelly torn. Yet it is more than a cloak for your back. Such robes are for those who would join the monastic order. You have been carried by angels, Dunstan! You have had visions of great abbeys rising before you – and yet you have made no request to join the brothers in Winchester or London, or in Canterbury. Neither have you asked to be ordained as a priest, though your path is writ clearly before you.’
‘I’m only just sixteen, Lady Elflaed,’ I said, stammering and falling over my words. ‘I thought to see a little of the works of men before I devoted my whole life to service!’
‘You are an innocent, yet you stand there, telling me you wish to see corruption? No, no, it breaks my heart to hear. Perhaps I am to blame! I could not bear the burden if it were my fault you turned your face from the Church.’
To my astonishment, her eyes filled. I wonder now at how easily she wept, but it moved me then, that great tide of her tears.
‘And now, last night, I see you blush and stammer at the sight of female flesh! I heard your lover’s words of bees and honey and queens. Oh, Dunstan, you cannot refuse your fate. You must not.’
I could only blink, wondering how long this flood had been pent up within her. It is always hard to know another’s heart and it seemed Lady Elflaed had made decisions for me without my even being aware of them. To my surprise, I saw Uncle Athelm nodding his big head along with her.
‘I can only add, Dunstan, that I have not regretted a day of my devotion. I was ordained at fifteen and I have given almost fifty years to the Holy Church. If I had that half-century to give again, I would. I would fling the years from me!’
‘I understand, Uncle,’ I replied. I would have gone on, but he turned to Lady Elflaed and laid a hand on her arm, speaking in a low voice.
‘My dear, there are some things not to be heard by delicate ears, that must be said from one man to another in private. If you would excuse us for a time, it will allow me to be blunt with my nephew.’
Lady Elflaed pinched her lips together at that, knuckling away a tear. She seemed to think my very soul was at stake, and I half-smiled as she left, expecting my uncle to at least acknowledge the ridiculousness of it. Instead, he only frowned more deeply.
‘Dunstan, I have had troubling reports from Glastonbury. I imagine some of it is the jealousy or malice of lesser men, something I have known myself. Yet I am troubled.’
I braced myself, thinking how best to answer accusations now that they had come. Encarius was dead and gone, though Abbot Simeon and Brother Caspar still lived, no doubt as filled with poison as the day they had dragged me to a cliff edge and smashed my hands. Just the thought made them throb in memory.
‘These shaking fits, Dunstan,’ Athelm began, surprising me. He indicated a chair and I sat down, though to my discomfort he remained standing. ‘Do they still trouble you?’
I thought of who might have seen and decided to tell the truth.
‘At times. I taste metal, I fall, for a time I am lost, but then I return and all is well.’
‘And the visions? Do they still come? It is so important, Dunstan, to know they are from God and not the ancient enemy of mankind.’
‘They do, though rarely. All I have ever seen is a vast new abbey at Glastonbury – and the grave of a monk who had not then fallen ill.’
‘Father Keats, of course. Nothing more?’
I blushed a little and looked away.
‘I see myself as abbot, Uncle, with other monks kneeling to me. I did not want to say, because it seemed vain.’
‘You were right in that, Dunstan. I wish it were not so, but there are jealous men who will always try to pull you down. Some show their spite in the letters they write, foul accusations that reveal their own base nature far more than your own.’
Caspar. It had to be him, I was suddenly certain. All I could do was try to look both modest and deserving of praise at the same time, which is not easy.
‘Lady Elflaed and I have bound our reputations to you, Dunstan, in more ways than one. We have championed you here, as a man rising, as a child of Christ. With faith to melt iron and bring about true miracles. There are eyes watching us all, boy. Those who would see you fail – and through you, our stars brought low, our fires made ashes. We too have enemies.’
He raised his hand like a benediction.
‘You are promised to the Church, Dunstan. I see your heart is set on the monastery, so I will not command you to be ordained as a priest under me. All I ask is that you resist temptations of the flesh, of all kinds. Lady Elflaed’s niece is fallen, Dunstan. Her sins are Lady Elflaed’s private tragedy, but I will say … she is certainly no virgin.’
The fat old gossip! I gaped a little at him as he went on.
‘Women corrupt us, Dunstan, as Eve offered the apple to Adam. Instead of foul lusts, dedicate yourself to study and prayer. Make wonders in the forges and the workshops, Dunstan! Embroider and paint! Let the king’s counsellors see what my brother’s son can bring into the world in the name of Christ Jesus, king of heaven. You have been a novice for years now, Dunstan, but are you ready to devote yourself to God, to take the vows of St Benedict?’
‘I will pray for guidance, Uncle. To be shown the right path.’
He seemed a little crestfallen at my response. He’d been building in tone and volume, and he wanted me to cry ‘Oh yes! I am ready!’, but I confess I’d stopped listening with my full attention after I’d heard Beatrice was no virgin. Athelm may have wanted me to embroider and paint, but I was not quite ready to put aside my foul lusts at that time.
When Lady Elflaed returned to the ro
om, she watched for some sign our manly talk had brought about my repentance. I nodded mutely to her and she gave a great wail and clutched me to her bosom. I suppose Cleopatra did the same, in a sense.
14
The wind bit at me as I came out, so that I dragged my robe up close around my neck. Good, thick cloth is the mark of civilisation, I have always thought. Who could imagine Romans without their togas and cloaks, when they walked in these lands, six hundred years ago?
The street was already busier than it had been – and this time I noticed ranks of trudging men and mule-drawn carts, full of the sort of supplies an army needed. The king’s capital was readying itself to throw a spear into the north. I was fascinated – and nervous of what it meant. For all of my childhood, there had been a threat of war, of raiders slipping inland in shallow-draught boats, scraping onto sloping shores and peering through shutters, looking for women and silver, whatever they could take away in the night. I had seen my father’s men bring torches more than once when they heard some sound they could not explain, or when the dogs started howling at wolves in the darkness. I had never seen a battle, but I knew very well what violence meant. I shuddered and told myself it was the chill of winter on the air.
As I stepped off the doorstep, I turned my head and looked into the face of Beatrice. She was laden with bags, returning from whatever errands Lady Elflaed and my uncle had arranged, to give them time to lecture me. I must have looked about as aggrieved as she felt, for she smiled in sympathy and patted my shoulder, vanishing inside only long enough to drop her parcels. I waited. A team of horses could not have dragged me from that step.
When she reappeared, she took my arm as if we did so every day, as if we were old friends. She moved me away from the house and out onto the street. I felt we’d vanished into a river almost, the crush was so bad. I was buffeted and turned about, so that I was hard-pressed to keep her arm in mine. Yet I did. I would not have let go if Æthelstan himself had commanded it.
I knew I was expected at the forges later that morning, with the master smiths. Lady Elflaed had arranged all manner of tutors and craftsmen to continue my studies. After noon, I had arranged to meet the archivist in the king’s personal library, there to examine texts that existed nowhere else. If there was time, I hoped to spend the evening in the king’s arboretum, studying rare plants with the herbalist there, or if that door was locked, visiting the surgery where men had wounds and cankers treated – and survived, some of them. For one of my interests, with the lady’s influence and coin to back me, Winchester was a joyous place. Yet in the instant I swept into the crowd with Beatrice, all that was forgotten.
Chattering together, we bought bread, cheese and boiled eggs. I had no coin myself, but Beatrice had a pouch with change from what they had given her. She waved away my promises to pay her back, making no bargains with me. I knotted it all in a piece of white linen that was too fine for the task and carried it over my shoulder. We left the city behind us, walking out to where the cobbles ended and the road stretched into ploughed fields all around.
I saw then what I had not understood before: an army was already gathering at Winchester, waiting for the king’s command in a vast encampment, invisible from inside the walls. Group after group rested or trained, or galloped horses, or worked anvil and hammer. I saw scores of banners in great coloured ribbons stretching across the hills around the city, some so far off they were no more than a smudge of mustard or sea blue. I did not know so many warriors existed in the world.
Roman eagles stood on rods of ebony, left by legions centuries before. I saw the red dragon and the white, the Wessex wyvern, the Holy Cross, the Greek fish or ‘ichthus’, that stands for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ – ‘Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Saviour’. These were the armies of Æthelstan the king – and they were still coming in. I had never seen so many souls. I felt their gaze, on Beatrice in particular, as we walked the dusty road away from the safety of the city. I swallowed nervously, but they did not trouble us. The king’s peace held and we passed through without injury or insult. Though I was not ordained, I imagine my robe played a part in that. Some men have no fear of a king’s wrath, but then damnation, ah now, that is for eternity. There is no way back, after that cold judgement.
The trees in the wheat stubble and lining the road were all bare, the day cold and grey. It was no stroll of lovers, but the two of us shivering as we sheltered by a bridge out of the wind, tearing fresh bread with our teeth and skinning boiled eggs by rolling them on the flagstones. Beatrice had paid for a flask of ale from one of the street vendors – it was better than the city water.
‘Your uncle believes I am a corrupter of young men,’ Beatrice said. I could only blink at her, hardly able to say that I certainly hoped so. ‘I heard him talking to my aunt, about how important you were. How you must not be led astray.’
‘Led astray?’ I said, my voice muffled by egg. Or it was just that my tongue had grown thick, or perhaps that I had. Beatrice had that effect on me. She was short, but lithe in a way that made me feel clumsy and slow. Perhaps I should not dwell too long on her charms. I will say that I remember her eyes and her grace, as fine as a greyhound. Her hair curled, which I found pleasing. There was always humour in her eyes. If not for the way her breasts moved and the way my breathing deepened – if she had been a man, I mean – we might have been friends.
I have read poems of Greece that speak of beauty. That is not my purpose here, to drag a hook through old forgotten sands of my life, stirring silt back into clear water. I could describe her laugh or the way she could leap and twirl and stand on her hands, revealing her flashing legs. I liked her. That is why she was a danger to me. I might have become a merchant trader in the Winchester docks, just to please Beatrice in that year. If I had, abbeys would have gone unbuilt, tombs ungilded, great works undone.
In truth, that first day is mostly lost to me. Yet it was one of dozens that we stole together while the king’s forces grew all round the city. My studies suffered and I cared not. I spent my time making her a perfect rose in iron. It had taken on spots of rust by the time spring warmed the air and the roads were dry – and by then all we knew between us had come to ruin.
I don’t know whether news of our continuing association came first to my uncle Athelm or to Lady Elflaed. I was sixteen and in love. There is no other age like it, for impetuous youth. Of course we were seen. Of course we were caught.
Beatrice knew the stakes and the dangers. If we had been two village lovers, or a shepherd and a maid, I’m sure we would have eased our passions early on. Perhaps we would have married first, with some bare ceremony of simple folk. Instead, we let desire build like a river rising up against a dam, until it was far too high and crashed over. I could have been a simple man, I think. If I’d married her, she would have been beyond their reach.
I don’t know if Beatrice was entranced by me, or by the thought of stealing me away from the vocation, from the oaths I might take. Perhaps it was just to prove she had power over her aunt Elflaed’s influence, I cannot say.
She and I had known one another at last. In the long grasses of sweet pastures, we took eternity in our hands, and her thighs in my hands – and risked our immortal souls. And then again, in a hayrick belonging to some farmer.
As in the Garden of Eden, all things were changed from then on. No longer did we meet to sigh and talk of love. We fell on each other’s necks as soon as we were alone. I tried not to think of my experience with Aphra in the infirmary, with her foul bag of goose fat. Yet I could not put it completely out of my mind. To my dismay, the old rash returned and caused me the sort of itching that maddened. It began with a pattern of tiny blisters. I thought to endure them until they went away, but of course I scraped them off instead, rubbing at them through the wool of my robe until I had great patches weeping and sticking, tearing free as I stood up. It was the price of sin, I do not doubt. I sprinkled drying powders on the parts affected and I do no
t believe Beatrice ever knew. There were times, in my passion, when I thrust harder to stop an itch than I would have done from mere desire.
Between my love and my most intimate torment, my studies could find little purchase. I had to duck and dart whenever I returned to the royal estate, for fear of meeting one of my tutors as they searched for me. I sweated more in my sinfulness. I ate and slept less, though I washed myself with jug and cloth each morning, the one time I felt clean.
Around noon most days, when the crowds were thickest, Bea and I had fallen into the habit of meeting at a carters’ kitchen we knew well, where the food was thick with horseradish paste, no matter what meat formed the stew. The crossroads lay halfway across the city and my feet were light as I went to meet her. I knew the way so well I hardly looked around me, certainly not to see if I was followed or watched.
It was not uncommon for Beatrice to get there first, if we had agreed to meet. We had our habits by then. If I was able to get away unexpectedly, I’d leave a flower from the royal garden between two tiles over her aunt’s door. I always worried someone would take it down, but they never had. I’d left a sprig of lavender the night before, in moonlight. I suppose I had been followed then as well, though if so, they were uncommon quiet about it.