‘Margret—’ I begin.
At that moment the lady Sibylla, wife of our Lord Henry, approaches and enquires after our health. We fluster, curtseying and murmuring at being noticed by a person of such high degree. After a moment she moves on to make her gracious good morrows to the rest of the congregation, setting up a flutter like a fox in a chicken coop. The venom has been sucked from my meanness, but there remains a prickling unpleasantness.
‘The Saint is truly powerful if he can make great ladies pass the time of day with peasants,’ Margret remarks.
‘Ah, Margret,’ I say. ‘Let me—’
‘I declare,’ she interrupts. ‘I see Mistress Aline. I will greet her. God be with you, Anne.’
She tightens her mouth, turns and strides off. She does not glance back. I quiver with the desire to run after her, push aside the holiday crowds and beg her forgiveness. But shame and guilt have the governance of me and will not permit me to bend. So I stand and watch my friend walk away. By and by her sun sets in the distance and my world fades into a dimness of my own making.
I have said what I have said. I have set my eye on this Thomas, a man to hook and bring to shore. I must set my eye on ambitions greater than girlish friends. I tell myself I have no further need of Margret. I will see her at the next festival. But by then, everything has changed.
I strike south-west, outskipping Death. Only when I pause for breath do I realise how hectic has been my dash from the Great Mortality. My feet are worn out from dancing, my tongue a clapper of wood from all the jokes I’ve had to tell.
I stand at the gate of the forest and beg safe passage.
‘Oh, grandmother, let me in, and I’ll bring you the head of a charcoal-burner!’ I cry.
She opens to me straight away, for wood-burners are her greatest enemy.
‘Show me the path away from clever folk, and into the arms of simpletons,’ I add, for it pays to be specific when asking favours from powerful persons. ‘Do this, and I’ll steal a hundred axes, and throw them into the sea.’
She shakes her branches and a swish of laughter ripples overhead. She knows it is a brazen boast, but my heart’s-wood is behind it.
‘Lead me away from Death,’ I say, and she falls quiet.
I take it as a good sign. She makes no promises, nor does she make merry at my fear. It’s as good an answer as I’ll get from trees, so I content myself with it and press further into her labyrinthine belly. She draws me into her arms and I let her rock me. Death tries to follow, but her shadows conceal me from His eyes. I am safe under the swing of her cloak, for she is fearsome only to those who do not know her.
The forest is my song, the best kind: no words, but all manner of music. I tune my ear to her particular melody and she rewards me with all I need to know. I listen for clues, for knowledge, for information, for the sheer pleasure of it. Overhead, boughs rustle; dead leaves crunch underfoot and warn of pitfalls that can swallow your foot and snap it sideways. She guides me more clearly than any gazetteer, instructs me better than any primer, delights more than any gold-splashed psalter.
Most of all, she is peaceful. Where there are people, there is greed. Thievery. Falsehood. Murder. When beasts kill each other, they do so simply to eat. What I have seen of men is that they kill to clear a bigger space at the world’s table for themselves.
I pick my way with the tiptoe step of a deer, so delicate that when I come upon a herd, they lift their heads without fear. Some of the does are heavy-bellied, flanks quivering as the fawn within stirs in its wet sleep. In me they see a cousin crippled with two legs instead of four, not someone come a-hunting. I am to be pitied and not scurried from, so they bend their necks and return to the more important business of grazing.
I almost trip over a fawn. He lies still as a stone dropped from Heaven and marked with the thumbprints of the angel who threw him. I stare at him; he stares at me, eyes bigger than my fist and blacker than the bottom of a well. His nostrils flare: he catches my scent and presses his nose into the fork between my thighs. If he is seeking milk, he finds nothing but the scent of the sea.
‘You won’t hurt me, will you?’ I ask, and he trembles his answer.
His dam crashes through a bush and glares her jealousy. He droops his head, guilty for falling in love with another so fast, him not even weaned and her not gone five minutes.
‘And you,’ I say to her. ‘You’ll shake your head and stamp your hoof, but that’s all.’
She answers by doing both. The fawn sighs and takes her teat. Her envious glare melts into satisfaction. She’s not yet lost him to another female.
‘There are arrows far more deadly than those of love,’ I whisper, but she is deep in her trance of milk-giving and does not hear my warning. ‘Rest easy,’ I say. ‘I’m away.’
I’m as good as my word. With beasts there is no need for lies.
I am safe here; safe as anywhere on this unreliable earth. There are rabbits to snare, raven’s nests for my larder. Death cannot reach me. Perhaps I could hide in the trees and wait for Him to pass over.
But Death wants for amusement and so do I. I stuff my belly with eggs, laugh at the birds as they flap useless wings. Their blunt beaks cannot hurt me. What next for me? Who shall be my next fool? Where can I find me a dupe? So do I lie, sucking yolk from my fingers, head blooming with dangerous fancies. I ought to know better. I should be careful of what I wish for.
From Saint Alphege to Edward the Martyr
‘A man should not do the work of women.’
The man filled the mouth of my door, rain streaming off his woollen cloak. I scrabbled in my mind. Was this piece of wisdom a line from a psalm?
‘Even less a man of God,’ he continued.
‘Indeed,’ I agreed, wondering who he might be.
‘You have let your needs be known, Father.’
‘My needs?’ Some agency sent heat into my face.
‘A priest needs a housekeeper.’
‘Yes,’ I spoke hastily. ‘I need a housekeeper.’
‘Indeed, Father. My Anne would be a good housekeeper.’
‘Anne?’
‘I am her father. Stephen.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘The carpenter.’
‘Ah, yes.’
‘You know her.’
‘I do?’
‘By my head; you smiled at her on Relic Day.’ Water dripped from his muzzle onto his clogs.
‘I did?’ Again, I searched my memory but found the face of each female as unremarkable as the next.
‘Indeed you did, Father.’
‘I smile at all my flock.’
‘But her in special.’ He gnarled his eye shut and I realised he was winking. He