Paul Moorcraft - The Anchoress of Shere

Father and daughter sat silently. Then William stood suddenly, unable to endure his humiliation. “I must take my leave straightway,” he said, not able to look into Christine’s eyes. “Your mother needs more comfort than I.”

“Comfort her well and tell her I do love her,” said Christine through her tears. “And send word of my love to Margaret, too,” she called out as the sound of her father’s footsteps diminished.

Christine sat on the cold stone bench, then fell to her knees. She would intensify her rigorous devotions and pray for a sign to come at last.

She prayed all night, asking for God to guide her in how to avenge her family’s wrongs. She knelt for hours, and stared and stared intently at the altar, willing some holy tears of blood to fall from the crucifix, but her Christ did not answer her. Drained and frustrated, she fought off sleep.

The long night became a day of prayer and fasting, but still Christ did not respond. Throughout the second day and night of prayer, she took no food nor water, and her thin frame shook uncontrollably. The lice and fleas roamed her body and she was too distracted to scratch or search them out.

Usually she needed to pray in seclusion, but she was interrupted that morning by a visit from Anna de Kempis. For once, she was welcome. “Perhaps you are the sign of God, Mistress de Kempis. I have prayed for guidance to leave my cell for urgent business to save the life if not the soul of my sister. Let us pray together and, then, please help me by unlatching the bolts of my door so that I can leave my cell.”

Anna de Kempis’s eyes widened in horror. “Oh, I cannot, holy anchoress, you are tempting me and God is tempting you. Were I to sin thus, I would be excommunicated, and tortured on the rack. I know God will strengthen you, just as when He gave fortitude to His Son on the Holy Cross. I know the pain, the terrible pain…”

She threw herself on the ground and started to kick her legs in the air and wave her arms and scream, and sob, and whimper, and then scream again. Christine had seen her share the agony of Christ on previous occasions and waited for her passion to pass, but Mistress de Kempis wailed for longer than before, and louder. Father Peter heard her cries and came to the north wall. He kneeled to comfort her and she threw her arms around him, sobbing more piteously.

The priest rocked her gently. “Ah, the Holy Spirit is leaving you for a while, Mistress de Kempis. Peace be with you now. Hush. Go and pray in the church, and I will speak to you after the Mass.”

The wailing woman staggered off, and Father Peter spoke to Christine: “God works in strange ways with strange people.”

“Father,” moaned Christine, “God is ignoring my earnest supplications. He has not answered my prayers. Please undo the bolts. I must leave to help my sister.”

The priest looked at her in amazement. “After all our devotions together, I cannot throw you to the Devil! What can you do that your father here in Shere and our Father in Heaven cannot? This is worse than foolishness, it is vanity. This is Satan’s temptation-you must know that. You do know that, don’t you?”

Not a little anger suffused his face. “I must be off to Mass, before Mistress de Kempis causes mayhem in my congregation,” he said with unaccustomed terseness. “I shall pray for you. But I shall return soon to confirm that your resolve… and the bolts…are firm.”

An hour later she heard her priest rattle the bolts, but he did not speak to her. Self-loathing, fear and doubt engulfed her, and she cried in long choking sobs until night fell upon the church.

At the end of the second day, a fever crept upon her, but she did not feel the touch of death. On the third night of her intense devotions, she felt the flood of warmth embracing her whole body. Through the mist over her eyes she peered at the crucifix. Did it move? Were there holy tears of blood? The mist cleared and there was nothing. The crucifix stared back, immobile, untouched, unresponsive.

She hid from the gaze of her mother when she brought her food, and the priest spoke only in communion prayers.

In her solitude, in darkness except for a little light which framed the edges of her curtain, she dreamed that her long nails were broken. Blood flowed from her fingertips, blood seeped from the iron nail that had been plunged over and over again into the frame of the trapdoor. She dreamed that she was tearing with bare hands against the crumbling mortar around the wooden frame.

She raised her bloodied hands in despair and, in the slim shaft of light, noticed two tiny holes appearing on the palms of her hand. She watched them grow, indefinably at first, then over the hours she could not be mistaken.

On the fourth day blood began to seep through, although there were no wounds in the palms. Then it stopped. On the fifth day the blood appeared to flow copiously for a few seconds when the Mass began. On the sixth day, it happened again.

She felt the gashes on her forehead, and imagined them as wounds from the crown of thorns. Her shoulders ached, perhaps from the weight of the Cross, she thought, and she babbled in tongues.

This she saw and heard and felt in her fever.

In truth, her hands were a mass of gore, her fingers were ten stumps tearing at the door frame, fumbling for the rusted bolts.

God, she believed, had answered her with the blessing of the stigmata.

And God had answered Duval.

“Don’t S-H-I-T on your own doorstep,” the priest had said to himself and to Bobby more than once, when the dog made a fuss of local women. When occasionally he swore he would spell it out under his breath, as he didn’t like to profane openly. He knew that Christians in medieval times believed that Christ’s body was continually wounded by those who blasphemed in the course of their work.

Duval was cautious, meticulous in his planning, and usually his modus operandi demanded a geographical distance from his chosen ones. But, in this very special case, Marda had obviously been presented to him.

Reassured, he returned to his typewriter. For two nights ideas swept across his mind in invading hordes. The words raced onto the page. On the third day the words stopped, the ideas transformed into a vortex of contradictions. Perhaps he was being weak? Should he persist, retreat, wrestle with his muse, not advance into the world of flesh and those pale young girls, frightening in their innocence…? And yet, and yet their fear was so intoxicating. He adored that unique smell of terror which oozed from the flesh of young women, as pungent as the reek of cordite and rotting cadavers on the battlefield, an abiding memory of his brief few months as a military chaplain in the Korean war. The aftermath of battle had appalled and terrified him, and he had been recalled in some disgrace, but now this aroma was sweet to him because it flowed from the women’s demonic desire to live, and it came from every pore of their skin, especially from beneath their pinioned arms. Fear was the precondition for their new life, fear of one man helped them to fear and, ultimately, love the one true God.

Duval had finally decided. He knew that action would have to replace words and ideas, that the frisson of planning must succumb to the surge of adrenaline which always accompanied the capture. It was surely time.

It was around seven on that chill early October evening when the bus dropped Marda Stewart at the top of Upper Street, and as she walked down Rectory Lane it was almost dark. Gathering the top of her anorak around her neck to ward off the cold, she felt pleased with herself: she had visited a number of car showrooms in Guildford, having saved enough money to buy a new Mini, but a basic Mini rather than the flash Cooper which her friend Jenny’s father could easily afford to buy for his spoiled daughter. Marda had decided on a bright red one, although she hadn’t signed the papers yet. She would take Jenny with her in a few days just to confirm that she had made the right choice. Marda had no mechanical bent at all; she had simply fallen in love with the sparkling little machine. She surprised herself by starting to hum “Yellow Submarine.” Why not? Life was good…except for her brother. The new car had temporarily displaced bitter thoughts of Mark, while the pleasant memories of her former lover in France had almost totally slipped from her conscious mind.