The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories

  She walks warily through town, past St. Clement's and the round church of Holy Sepulchre, past All Saints and St. Michael's. The streets are deserted, littered with old vegetables and the odd shattered pane of glass. She goes round the long way to avoid Market Square, in case of a mob. At the edge of Petty Curie a huge cart lies on its side, its wheels askew. Under it two men lie in a tangle; not dead, she sees, just drunk and snoring. Does this mean it's all over? Or are they only resting before the next bout?

  She hasn't heard the bells of Great St. Mary's this morning, but when she reaches the church she hears the mumble of the rector saying Mass, as on any other Sunday, so she goes in and finds herself a place to stand at the back, behind the scholars' benches. Because this is what she's always done; because she can't think of anything else to do today.

  She doesn't understand the Latin but she knows which bits to stand or kneel for. The congregation is small and subdued, dark around the eyes. Margery should have had her breakfast. When she feels a little weak, she squats down on the muddy stone floor. Her eyes rest on the altar cloths and the canopy and the holy cruets and the statue of the Virgin and the stone font with the wooden lid that's locked to keep the holy water safe from witches.

  For the sermon, the pale-faced rector switches to English. He walks down the church and climbs the stairs to the pulpit. The people wait to hear the Scripture theme announced, but instead the rector knots his hands and speaks without preamble. "Today is Whitsunday, the feast of Pentecost," he begins in his quiet educated voice, "when Our Lord's Apostles in the upper room were blessed with tongues of (ire. But last night in this town a fire came down which was not a holy fire, but rather a sinful fire, a fire of rebellion and black treason."

  Margery Starre stares up at him, her mouth dry. Not a sound from the congregation except the occasional cough.

  "Men of this town have talked of grievances and deservings," the rector comments, only a little louder. "But I say to you, when and by whom were you told that you deserve anything? Everything you receive in this life is God's gift, and if others receive more than you, that is by God's will. We men of the cloth, we men of the book," he added, standing a little straighter in his bright robes, "have been placed over you by virtue of our greater wisdom. Whoever raises his hand against one of us is damned. I promise you all, whoever takes any part in this foul rebellion will go to Hell." He still speaks gracefully, as a poet might. "People of Cambridge, do you recall what you have been taught of Hell?"

  Margery turns her head to look for a way out, but the floor is covered with kneeling bodies.

  "Because light is reserved for God's chosen ones, Hell is the place of darkness, which rings always with the horrid roaring of blackened devils."

  All at once she remembers what she never lets herself remember: the birth of her son.

  "Because coolness is the reward of a clean spirit, in Hell there is eternally the necessity of burning."

  He came out from her legs like a skinny little eel, past midnight. She was only twenty-three, young Goodwife Starre, but she knew enough to be afraid: this one didn't cry like proper babies cry. She bawled for her husband to send for the village priest to christen him quick. An hour passed, and the priest still wasn't come down. His wife (concubine, some called her) sent a message to say he was drunk and couldn't be woken.

  "It is the place of weeping, and the gnashing of teeth, the crying of Woe, woe!"

  How clearly Margery remembers, half a lifetime later, when she's forgotten so much else. The midwife wailed; she said she'd christen the child herself if she only knew the words. So Margery shouted for a basin of clean water and her husband brought it in. The tiny boy was sticky now, marked with his blood and the prints of her hands. Knowing no Latin, Margery said it in English, all in a rush, as she dipped his whole head into the water: "I christen thee both flesh and bone in the name of the Son and the Father and the Holy Ghost."

  And then her son cried, a proper lusty cry, and she put him to her nipple and he sucked, and all was well.

  Faintly she can hear the rector of St. Mary's now, still calm-voiced, reading from a big book open on the lectern in front of him. "The necessity of burning means that if anyone in Hell asks for butter, he receives only brimstone; if he would give a thousand pounds for a cup of water, he shall have none. There shall be flies that bite his flesh, and his clothing shall be worms. God cannot be merciful, because his mercy is saved for the deserving."

  But Margery won't listen. Her mind runs back to the night she gave suck to her son, and how she let herself doze at last, how she couldn't help it. And in the morning he was cool on her belly, chilly as a small bag of barley.

  Then the village priest came down to her cottage, his eyes lidded against the headache.

  "Father," she told him, "you should have brought the lantern and bell. What this child needs is burial."

  "Hold on," he told her hoarsely. "Did you christen him yourself, is that what I hear?"

  "That's right, she did," muttered Roger Starre, almost proudly.

  "What did you say, exactly?" the priest asked Margery.

  "I said the words," she repeated, confused.

  "Which words?"

  She wept then, as she said them again, over the tiny creature who was dead at the foot of the bed: "I christen thee both flesh and bone in the name of the Son and the Father and the Holy Ghost."

  The priest was shaking his head. "Ah, woman," he said crossly.

  "What?"

  "What is it?" asked Roger.

  Margery was almost shrieking. "What? Aren't those the right words?"

  "Aye," the priest said, pursing his lips, "but in the wrong order. The Father goes before the Son, as any ignoramus knows. It's the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost."

  She stared at him. "What does that mean?"

  "It means this child's soul is lost to hellfire through your carelessness, woman, that's what it means!"

  She said nothing, then. She didn't go for the man's throat; she didn't cry, even. She and Roger stared at each other, and the priest walked home to his wife. The next day the nameless child was buried—not in holy ground in the churchyard, but down by the stream, in a hollow his father dug him, no bigger than a rabbit hole. Margery used to wonder, after that, if Roger Starre blamed her for consigning his son's tiny soul to the flames, but she never found a way to ask him, in the few years before he died himself.

  A terrible pounding. When the Widow Starre comes back to the present, kneeling in Great St. Mary's church, where the rector is still explaining the horrors of hellfire, she realizes that nobody is listening to him anymore. All heads are turned to the back of the church, where the barred doors are shaking like the skin of a drum. A crash, at last, and they splinter open.

  The rector pauses, mid-sentence. His slim finger marks the word where he stopped reading.

  The rebels race up the aisle, and the congregation shrinks back. Somebody—Philbert Carrier, in an incongruous yellow velvet cap—hauls the book off the lectern.

  "How dare you!" The rectors voice has cracked at last. "This book has been in the possession of the Holy Church for three hundred years."

  "High time it went on the bonfire, then," says Philbert Carrier easily, tucking it under his arm.

  Margery Starre feels a huge gulp of laughter in her throat.

  After that it all moves very quickly. Most of the Massgoers slip out the door, but Margery stays where she is, crouched on the stone floor, fascinated. The rebels shove the rector into the back room and come back staggering under the weight of an enormous chest filled with jeweled chalices, silver plate, but also rolls upon rolls of yellowed papers.

  "Widow Starre!" Philbert Carrier sings out her name as soon as he catches sight of her. "Do you know what we've got here?"

  She gets to her feet, stiff-jointed.

  "The charters!" he roars. "Every liberty and privilege of the University is writ down on these scrolls and sealed with royal wax. How fast do you think they
'll burn, Margery?"

  He's never called her that before. She answers before she's had time to think. "Not fast enough," she says, and runs to help the men drag the chest out into the daylight.

  In Market Square the bonfire rages against the pale Sunday morning sky. Doors, windows, posts, and rafters frame its scarlet heart. The heat is fierce; it draws Margery Starre like a child.

  A bearded man tosses some writing tablets onto the pyre, and the green wax runs off like Cam water. A book flies past Margery through the sooty air, like a heavy bird briefly lifted on stiff leather wings, and lands with a terrible scattering of papers. They singe, their edges curling up prettily like the thinnest pastry. They dance as if glad to have the words cleaned off them in this purgatorial fire.

  Yes, Margery Starre thinks, let the old lying books be cast into the fire like gnawed bones with no juice nor marrow left in them, like skeletons that are good for nothing else. She dwells for a moment on the years, the lives of scritch-scratching work spent on these flaring pages. Well, let the learned churchmen see now how little their labours have amounted to in the end: no more than all the ale she ever brewed or the milk she ever had in her to give, gone now, dried up in the blaze of this morning.

  Margery Starre wades into the crowd, hoists a book about the weight of her son on the night he was born and died, tosses it into the bluest tongue of the flames. She snatches an armful of scrolls from a cobbler's wife and slings them one by one into the crackling bonfire. The pen outdoes the sword, or so they say, but Margery reckons the flame outdoes them both.

  Of course there'll be punishment. Is there a single day that doesn't drag its punishment behind it, as a ewe her filthy tail? Margery knows and right now Margery couldn't give a fart. Once in a while comes a day unlike all the others, priceless in your hand like a peppercorn you must wager the rest of your days to win.

  The flames lick lovingly. The scent of black soot clouds round Margery Starre. It's the sweetest smell she can remember. She goes closer, breathing destruction, and dips her hands into the delicate ash. She feels no pain. Her palms are singing. She scatters the ash on the air like rice at a wedding, like blossoms at the end of spring. "Away with the learning of the clerics!" she bawls, hoarse with laughter; "away with it!"

  And even though she knows there are hundreds of books still locked up safe in the libraries and universities of the world, still the churchmen will tremble when they hear of Margery Starre—read of her, even, maybe. In the turning of a page, in the lifting of a pen, in the taking of a breath, they will pause to think how fast paper burns.

  Note

  When the Peasants' Revolt came to the city of Cambridge on 15 June 1381, and University charters and books were burnt in Market Square, an old woman called Margery Starre is said to have scattered the ashes and shouted "Away with the learning of the clerks, away with it." This brief anecdote, the basis for "The Necessity of Burning," is found in the Arundel MSS.350 fol 15.b (British Library), first translated and published in Victoria History of the County of Cambridgeshire, Vol. I'll (1948). My source for detailed information on the Revolt was Rowland Parker, Town and Gown: The 700 Years' War in Cambridge (1983).

  The violence in Cambridge was quelled by the Bishop of Ely four days after it began, and all the University's privileges were restored. Margery Starre is not one of the rioters recorded as having been imprisoned or executed, and nothing further is known of her.

  Looking for Petronilla

  I've been away too long.

  The plane took me (rom London to Dublin in less than an hour. I would have come this way before if I had known how simple it was. When I first took the boat to England, vomiting up my whole self into the Irish Sea, I swore I'd never go back. But most promises wear out in the end. This plane trip was almost merry, clouds back-lit by champagne.

  I bought it in honour of Petronilla. Since she couldn't be here today it seemed only fitting to toast her virtues with overpriced bubbly, ten thousand feet above the island she never left.

  The rented Volvo took me to Kilkenny with surprising speed. They've built craft shops on every corner, and knocked down a lot of old houses. Kyteler's Inn is still there, though; its wooden lines stand firm against the swarm of tourists. There's an Alice's Restaurant in the cellars ("It's a kind of magic!" jokes the sign, catching the sunlight), and upstairs is called Nero's; how very suitable. What's your poison, traveller?

  I stand at the bar and order a glass of the best red they have. I look around, waiting for the centuries to fall away, but my eyes lodge on the chintzy little tablecloths and chairs. I am so used to the twentieth century that it is almost impossible to imagine myself back to the fourteenth. Hard to believe that this round-bellied building was ever cold and damp, with one fire sighing and the smell of tallow flaring in the nostrils of visitors.

  I peer at the wall, where a Disney hag pours cups of smoking brew for four little men with uneasy expressions. Perhaps they have noticed that their shoes, toes tied to their knees, are from the wrong country and century. I read through the five-line caption, which is a tribute to the powers of invention. Nothing worth losing my temper over. Why should anyone remember, anyway, except someone like me whose business it is? There's been a lot of water under the bridge since 1324. History always becomes a cartoon, where it survives at all. Your best hope for a ride towards posterity is the bandwagon of folklore.

  "Oldest house in Kilkenny, this is."

  I accept the wineglass from the graying woman behind the bar. "So they say."

  "You know the story?"

  "Oh yes." I take a sip: not dry enough. I wonder what kind of hash this woman could make of the tale, but it hardly needs another telling. It is remarkable only for the gender of the protagonist. When a man kills his wife, he is a tortured rebel, criminel de passion, dusky Othello, or bluff King Hal. When a woman kills her husband, she is never allowed to forget it. I stare at the drawing again. Alice Kyteler, four times widowed in two dozen years, has evolved into a long-nailed monster, a Kilkenny Clytemnestra.

  "Researching?"

  My eyes swivel back to the bartender, who is polishing glasses with a Guinness tea towel. "Beg your pardon?"

  "Doing a radio programme or something? Family history?" she adds. Her hand has paused, knuckles yellow against the glass.

  "More or less," I tell her, with a ghost of a smile.

  "Very nice."

  I glance back at the wall beside me, then at the others, weighted down with old maps and giant replica copper pots. No picture of Petronilla de Meath. I suppose I could ask the bartender, but I'm not sure if my mouth could bear to form the words.

  Why is it that almost nobody knows Petronilla's name, when she was so much more remarkable than her mistress? No demon that Dame Alice called up and bound with spells ever served her so faithfully. What interests me is not so much the mistress's evil, which seems after almost seven centuries to amount to no more than a banal footnote in the annals of war and treachery, but the maid's extraordinary ordinariness. How through thick and thin, sickness and sin, Masses read backwards and Christian Minerals, Petronilla retained her sense of being a good servant, whatever that could mean in a house like this one. As if she had heard some fireside tale that ended with the tag Whanne that yr mistresse sell here soule to Luciphere ond take a widdhe for to kille her lawfulle wedded husbandes, he you of gode cheere ond giff her al manere of aide for to brewe ye poysionne.

  "I love history, myself."

  I turn to the bartender, who is rubbing at the lipsticked rim of a glass. "Why is that?"

  Her blue eyes, behind her glasses, seem surprised by the question. "Well, it makes you feel more complete, doesn't it?" A pause. "Knowing where you're from, as it were."

  "Does it?"

  "Reminds you there's more to the whole business than you own little life." She gives me a wholly unmerited smile. "I like to think that no one ever really dies as long as their folks remember them."

  "Perhaps they'd prefer to."

&
nbsp; "Remember them?"

  "Prefer to die."

  "Oh. Oh I don't think so," says the woman, as if to reassure us both.

  I ask to be directed to the Ladies; this seems the best excuse for poking around. For all the dark wood, most of these walls look new; these smooth beams have never had a sconce stuck in them. I hitch up my tights, careful not to tear them. I take off my heavy ring to wash my hands. My face looks back at me with a hint of defiance: no new lines today. On the wall, a Kondo-Vend machine offers me a Quality Range of Luxury Lubricated Sheath Contraceptives. I can tell I won't find what I'm looking for in Kyteler's Inn.

  As I cross the narrow elbow of St. Kierán's Street, I find myself humming a tune, a very old one; I realise that it has been stuck in my head since Dublin. The words slide onto each other like water over worn rocks. Voice on anonymous voice, disciplined in melancholy resignation.

  Quiconques veut d'amors joïr

  Doit avoir foy et esptrance

  Such patience the singers had back then, giving every melancholic syllable its own line of music, a full half minute to a phrase, as if they had all the time in the world. The seeker of love must have faith and hope. Faith to keep you longing, hope to relieve your despair.

  The town has become a maze of gift shops and boutiques; I can't tell where anything used to be. As I step off a kerb, a car roars by, inches from my handbag. Labhair Gaeilge, says the bumper sticker, as if simple encouragement to Speak Irish could set my tongue to talking the language I've long forgotten.

  What was Petronilla's first name, I wonder? The one she knew herself by when she was a raw servingmaid who could speak only two tongues and both of them with a County Meath accent. When her hair still fell loose under her white coif, not yet having been tucked away as the mark of womanhood. When she came in a cart to Kilkenny, telling her beads, before her mistress renamed her for the saint whose day it was, the Roman Virgin who tended Peter: Petronilla. What went through the girl's head those first months, I wonder, as she ran to order: "Fetch my Venetian brocade, the rayed one you fool," or "Strap on my pattens if you would not have me wade through every puddle in town," or (in a low voice) "Have you fetched candles of beeswax for the ceremony?"