“You’re free to come and go as you wish, but you will be expected to attend the Sunday Mass at the church, likewise the daily prayers in our chapel. As beguines our purpose is to study, write, and teach, to care for the infirm and sick, and work selflessly for our community and for the poor. We put food on our table and clothes on our backs through the labours of our own hands, not from money taken from the people or the Church.”
The room was too warm. I couldn’t breathe. Images and faces kept sliding away from me, dissolving before I could grasp them. A fire, roaring up taller than a man; someone screaming; black wings hovering above me. I couldn’t move. I was being crushed. His weight was still holding me down and I couldn’t break free. It was all I could do to stop myself lashing out. I tried desperately to concentrate on what she was saying. Don’t think about last night. Don’t think.
Servant Martha was frowning. Her mouth grew tighter. Her voice snapped like a dog on a chain.
“Your personal belongings, dowry, and everything you bring to the beguinage remain yours and you may take these with you if you choose to leave. But if—”
A single phrase caught in my mind. “I can leave?”
Servant Martha looked startled. “This is a beguinage, not a nunnery. Did I not say that we make no perpetual vows here?”
“And I can take the money my father gave you?” That didn’t make sense. Girls don’t own their own dowries. Husbands or Mother Superiors take them.
“We make no vows of poverty. The money is yours, but while you are here you should neither live in luxury nor deny yourself to excess. Both extremes show pride of spirit. Merchant Martha, who is also our Martha of the Common Purse, will keep your money safe for you and you may ask her for it whenever you wish. Who knows, you may yet want it for a dowry.”
“Don’t be stupid! You know I won’t!”
Everyone in the village knew I could never marry. My sisters had taunted me with it ever since I was born. No one would ever take me and I was glad of it. No, more than glad, I was ecstatic. If anything or anyone ever touched me again, I’d kill them. I swear this time I’d kill them. I closed my eyes tightly, feeling that creature’s stinking breath burning my neck. I started gagging. I was going to puke. I bit my fist hard trying to choke it back.
Servant Martha drew herself even more upright. “Very well, Agatha, since firm words are all that you will respond to, I will oblige you.”
Her tone was as sharp as a slap, shaking me out of the nightmare. I was almost grateful for that. I took a deep breath and looked up at her as coldly as I could. What firm words? What did she think she could say that I hadn’t heard my father say a thousand times before? Whatever it was, I wouldn’t let anything hurt me anymore.
“Mark this well, Agatha: If you are sent from here in disgrace, you will leave with only the clothes you stand up in. All else is forfeit.”
I almost laughed. Was that all? I knew it was too good to be true. Whatever she called it, this place was no different from a nunnery. She tried to stare me down, but I wouldn’t look away; I met her hard dark blue eyes without flinching.
Servant Martha stalked over to the door and called out to someone I couldn’t see. “Would you be so kind as to ask Kitchen Martha to attend us here?”
We waited, the silence broken only by the crackle of the fire and the rattling of the shutters in the wind. Finally, the door opened, sending gusts of smoke swirling round the room. A small plump woman tumbled in. Despite the bitter wind, her face was flushed and shining from the heat of her fire.
“Kitchen Martha, this is Agatha; she seeks a home with us.”
Kitchen Martha beamed and hurried forward. “Welcome, child, you are very welcome.”
I had to stifle a scream as she swept me into a great hug, half smothering me in her massive bosom.
“She will be placed in your charge.” Servant Martha hesitated. “She will need as much guidance as is in your power to give her.”
I scowled at Servant Martha. Her careful words had not fooled me for one minute. What she meant was “Watch her, control her, and discipline her. She is a hellcat and must be tamed.”
But if I understood the code, Kitchen Martha clearly didn’t, for she looked from one to the other of us in bewilderment as if waiting for Servant Martha to say more, but eventually she nodded and began to bustle me towards the door.
Before we reached it, Servant Martha called out, “One thing more, Agatha. In the chapel on the Sabbath you will receive your new name, to mark the beginning of your new life with us.”
I felt a jolt of hope. “I can choose a new name for myself?”
“Of course not. We do not choose our own names in life; they are given to us. A suitable name will be chosen for you by the Marthas after much prayer and thought. It will be their gift to you.”
The despair came flooding back. It would be no different here than in my father’s house.
HOLDING OUR SKIRTS OUT of the infernal mud we scuttled, heads down, through the driving rain to a long, low building. Kitchen Martha pushed me down on a stool in front of the fire and shook the rain from her cloak before unwrapping a steaming slice of bough cake from her scrip.
“Eat it up, child, while it’s hot. I’ve seen a plucked chicken with more colour in its cheeks. I don’t know what Servant Martha was thinking of, talking on like that, when even a blind man could see you were near to fainting. How can anyone listen to anything on an empty belly?”
The smell of the spiced honeyed batter suddenly made me realise how ravenous I was. I bit off a great mouthful of thick sweet batter and soft baked fruits inside and gulped it down greedily.
“Steady, don’t burn yourself, child.”
Kitchen Martha turned to poke the fire. Her hands were dimpled like rising dough and scarred with a hundred tiny burns, probably from years of cooking. No one could have called her pretty; her bulbous nose was lumpy and pitted and her cheeks crazed with red veins. But she had merry eyes and a mop of greying curls that, like mine, refused to stay in their bindings.
I gazed around me. We were in a long room. Narrow wooden cots were ranged along the sides and between each of them was placed a simple banded wooden chest. Rough stools were set around a long table in the centre of the room with books and quills neatly stacked upon it. I longed to see what the books were, but I was afraid to pick them up. At the far end of the room several tallow candles were already set for the night around a crucifix. Night! Soon it would be dark again.
I shivered, pulling my cloak tighter around myself. My ribs and stomach ached. As I shuffled my feet, the smell of thyme rose up from the herb-strewn rushes on the floor. I longed to fill my body with the sharp cleanness of its smell. They say thyme expels the worm that gnaws at the mind and drives you mad. But nothing could drive that worm out. It was inside me. That demon was inside me and nothing I could do would expel the horror of it from my body. I took another gulp of air, but the scent had dissolved and I could not bring it back.
“And this is where you will sleep, child.” Kitchen Martha was pointing to the cots near the door. How long had she been speaking? What else had she said?
“I think that those four cots are unoccupied. You may choose whichever you wish. That chest has spare kirtles and the grey cloaks. You’re sure to find one that fits. You can put your own clothes in that one, though they’ll want cleaning before they’re stored away.” She came closer and turned my face to catch the light. “That’s a nasty cut. How did you come by it?”
I flinched away from her touch. “It isn’t anything, just a scratch.”
“Come with me and I’ll ask Healing Martha to look at you; she has many ointments that will soothe it.”
“Don’t touch me. I’ll tend it myself.” I could hear myself shouting, but I couldn’t stop. “Go away and leave me alone!”
Kitchen Martha looked startled. Her hand stretched out awkwardly as if she wanted to soothe me, but she withdrew it. I felt sick and every part of me was burning. I just wanted
to hide in some dark corner and never come out.
“The other children will be joining you shortly.” Kitchen Martha waddled to the door. “Cheer up; you’ll soon make friends.”
I waited until the door had closed behind her, then chose the cot in the corner furthest from the occupied ones and lay down, curling up in a ball under my cloak. The straw in the pallet rustled under me. It was harder than the bed I was used to, but at least the cot was too narrow to share.
All day I’d been wandering round stuck in a waking nightmare. I hurt so much that I couldn’t even think about where I was being taken or what would happen to me. Now, lying in a strange bed, I suddenly realised that for the first time ever, I was alone among strangers, without any idea what to do or what they wanted of me. Panic choked me. I’d always longed to escape from my father’s house, but now that I had, I wanted to run straight back. At least there I knew what to do. But I couldn’t go back; my own father had disowned me and thrown me out into the street as if I was a servant. I had no home and no family. I had nothing but these foreign women.
Servant Martha, Kitchen Martha, Healing Martha—who were they? My father said they were nuns from some wealthy order. He knew that by the way they threw their money about like pig slops. He could always find a reason for docking a hired man’s wages and he despised anyone who couldn’t.
He knew all about these wealthy orders, he said. Convents made rich by the dowries of highborn women who were too ugly to be married off, so their families hid them away in nunneries where they busied themselves in needlework and prayer for the souls of their fathers and brothers until they withered up and died quietly. But the first time I’d seen these women I knew that if they were nuns, they certainly weren’t like any I’d ever met before.
The year they arrived was a bad summer, wet and cold. Crops wouldn’t ripen. The wind and rain beat them into the mud where they stank and rotted away. The servants at the Manor cursed the foreign women for bringing the evil weather with them.
The first time I saw them close up was at Mass at St. Michael’s Church in the village, standing together, all dressed alike in plain grey kirtles of heavy wool with grey cloaks and hoods drawn about their heads. I couldn’t take my eyes off them; they were so still. My two older sisters, Edith and Anne, were praying piously, moving their lips with great exaggeration as we’d been taught, so that everyone could see that they were praying. Everyone else in the church was mumbling away to themselves, like my sisters, but not these women. Their lips didn’t move at all. The old priest, the one before Father Ulfrid, was watching them too, and he looked angry. The villagers edged away from them. It was dangerous to be different in Ulewic; everyone knew that.
A SINGLE BELL RANG OUT over the courtyard. Before I could sit up, the door burst open and the wind flung a child into the room. She raced across the floor and threw herself facedown on her cot laughing and panting, as other little girls chased in after her.
“I’ve won, I’ve won,” she squealed, then sat up as she caught sight of me in the corner. Her playmates followed her gaze. We stared at one another. I knew I should be the one to speak and explain my presence in the room, but the unsmiling faces of the little girls watching me reminded me of the hostile stares of the servants’ children who always ceased their games when I approached.
“Are you Agatha? Kitchen Martha said you’d be here,” called a voice from the door. “I’m Catherine.”
The newcomer shook the rain from her cloak. The girl looked five or six years older than the others, about my age, with skinny brown braids framing a long melancholy face, making it look even longer. She reminded me of my father’s wolfhound.
“I thought everyone was called Martha here,” I said peevishly.
“Oh no, everyone has a beguine name—not their old name, of course, a gift name—but if a beguine is elected to help run the beguinage she’s then called a Martha after the blessed Saint Martha who worked for our Lord.” Catherine gabbled so eagerly, I could hardly understand what she was saying. “Servant Martha is the head, then Kitchen Martha runs the kitchen, Shepherd Martha tends sheep—”
“I’m not stupid; I had worked that out for myself.”
She looked as hurt as Kitchen Martha had and I felt a little prick of guilt, but not enough to make me care.
Catherine bit her lip. “You come from Ulewic, don’t you?”
“What of it?”
Catherine glanced uneasily at the children, but they had already lost interest in me and were huddled round the far end of the table engrossed in a game of knucklebones. Catherine came closer and glanced at me shyly. “I heard some of the beguines talking about the fire in the forest, about the … Owl Masters. Who are they?”
“No one knows who they are; that’s the point. Why else would they wear masks?” I shuddered, desperately trying not to see those feathered masks circling the fire.
“But why owls?”
“I don’t know! I suppose because owls bring ill fortune and death to any house they alight on. That’s what the Owl Masters do.”
“Pega says owls eat the souls of dead babies if they die unbaptised,” Catherine whispered.
“So why ask me?” I snapped. “Ask this Pega. I’m not a villager. Stop asking stupid questions. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The bell sounded again and Catherine jumped up. “Vespers! We mustn’t be late.”
Her earnest expression was so irritating that for a moment I almost felt like ignoring her, but Servant Martha’s words echoed in my head: If you are sent from here in disgrace … If I was sent away from this place, where would I go? I would have no money and no craft by which to earn a living. What happened to girls like me? I couldn’t survive out there alone.
Catherine was jiggling anxiously from foot to foot, her hand on the iron ring of the half-open door. Outside, the rain drummed down on the muddy courtyard. The light was fading fast under the thick canopy of clouds.
If you are sent from here …
In the deep forest, beyond the safety of the courtyard walls, it would already be dark. The trees would be closing together, their branches blotting out the sky like the walls of a cave. There was no escape, no way out of that living prison. No way of running from the brambles that dug their claws into my skirts, or the roots that wrapped themselves around my ankles, chaining me down in the suffocating reek of rotting leaves. And somewhere in the forest, that creature would be watching for me to step outside the beguinage gate. I felt the rush of air from its wings on my face, the cold talons gripping my skin. The demon was waiting somewhere out there in the darkness, waiting for me to come again.
may
rood day or crossmas
saint helen discovered several old crosses. to test which was the true cross she stretched a corpse out on each cross and the one that revived the corpse was pronounced the true cross on which christ had died. this is also known as avoiding day, a day of ill fortune. time to avoid getting married, travelling, or counting money, because the evil spirits are determined to cause mischief.
pisspuddle
mY BIG BROTHER WILLIAM picked up a fat handful of pig shit and grinned at his friend Henry.
“Watch this—I bet you I can land this right on her nose.”
Henry snorted. “Even your stupid sister could hit her from there and she’s a girl. Dare you to stand behind that post and do it.”
William looked scornful and sauntered back to the post.
Little Marion could see what was coming and she tried to duck her head, but locked into the stocks she couldn’t move much. Thick rivers of snot ran from her nose. She wriggled on the narrow strip of wood she was sitting on. It was a thin plank turned on its side and hammered into the Green. She couldn’t slide back because of the stocks round her ankles. It was really sharp, that wood. Last time she’d had this big black welt across her backside for days after, from where she’d been sitting on it. It hurt worse than a switch.
William took aim and Marion started baw
ling again.
“Don’t, William, that’s mean!” I yelled before I could stop myself.
William turned to me, grinning. “You want me to throw it at you instead, Pisspuddle?” He raised his fist again, this time in my direction.
Henry sniggered. “Your little sister’s got a face like a turd anyway, nobody’d notice the difference.”
“Yeh. Come here, turd-face.”
I started to run across the Green. I knew he’d do it. I kept expecting to feel the wet slap of it on my back.
“Drop that at once, boy.”
I stopped and peered round, with my hands up in front of my face, just in case. Henry was running away, but a tall lady had got hold of William by the wrist and was forcing him to open his hand. The shit plopped on the ground. The tall lady pulled William’s wrist down until he yelped. Then she wiped his hand back and front on the grass as if he was a baby still in clouts.
I’d seen the lady before, in church. She came from the house of women.
“Outlanders,” that’s what Mam called them, that’s why they dressed so queer. “It’s not natural,” Mam said, “a group of women living altogether, with no men among them. Only witches or nuns do that.”
I’d seen nuns when they came to the village with the shrivelled lips of Saint Alphege to collect money. They walked slowly in silence and never ever smiled, as if they always had a headache. But these women were always laughing whenever they came to the village, all except this one; she looked like she’d eaten a sour apple.
The lady let William stand up, but she still had him by the wrist. His face had turned red.
“Now, boy, for whom did you intend that?”
William looked from me to Marion and opened his mouth like a great fat carp, but nothing came out.
“Speak up, boy, I can’t hear you.”
She looked like a giant heron, grey cloak, grey hair, and grey kirtle. She had a nose as sharp as a beak.