Paul Moorcraft - The Anchoress of Shere

She couldn’t be sure, but Marda estimated that it had been a few hours or so since she was taken. So, she realised, it was a kidnap. But the wrong girl, she thought. Maybe they-Marda assumed a gang-were after Jenny, her friend with the rich father. But that was unlikely because she had spoken with this Michael on a number of occasions. And she had visited him in a church. Was he a bogus priest? It couldn’t be mistaken identity. He had seemed so kind, so cultured. If he’s so cultured what’s he doing putting me in here? A pervert? A psychopath? “Oh, God. Maybe he wants me for that. Then he’ll kill me.” She started to cry again, but stopped herself. “Whimpering and wailing are not going to do you any good, my girl.” The harsh-kind words said aloud reminded her of the times she had said them to comfort homesick younger girls in her boarding-school dormitory.

He seems a reasonable man and he’s obviously educated, she thought. Maybe there’s some mistake. I can talk to him. Explain. He’ll apologise and let me go home. Home? Nobody’s in my flat, she thought sourly. Nobody knows where I am. I’m not supposed to meet my boss in Bordeaux for a few days yet. I could be dead and buried by then.

She felt terrified and sick, and suddenly yearned for a cigarette, but he had taken all her belongings away. She could not believe what had happened to her, so she tried to organise her questions to make some sense of her living nightmare. In the confined space, she realised that she could smell her own fear, and this fear, she knew, was undermining her judgement. What judgement-how could she have trusted this priest? Who knows I’m here? No one except him. So who is he? Where is he now? What does he want? Where am I? Why, oh, why did he do this? What comes next? What if nothing is next…and I’m just left here to rot?

A talon of dread tore at her very being, and she shivered from terror as much as from the cold. Her breathing became laboured as she worked herself once again into a state of hysteria.

“Calm down, Marda,” she said aloud to herself. “We can sort this bastard out.”

Suddenly the “we” made her feel desperately alone, and she felt her whole life rushing before her. She so wanted to live. Once she had doubted the very existence of God, but now she wanted to be wrong about that. If there were a God, surely He could not be so cruel as to end her life here in this horrible dark place.

All her personal ambitions, plans for a career and tender unspoken hopes of love flashed through her mind in seconds. Now they were all gone. Now all she had was fear and darkness. She was entombed.

Duval was feeling good. This capture had been easier than the others, and it pleased him that he was becoming more efficient and ruthless. Somebody might have seen him put Marda into his car, but how? It was so secluded and dark behind the church. If someone had seen him, surely they would have shouted? No, he was safe. Guildford was not so far, and she had not stirred. That hurtbane potion had worked; an old trick, dating back to the Norman Conquest, which could topple a man for an hour or so if applied correctly.

It was dark driving through the almost unlit village of Shere, and even if someone had seen him in his car with his dog up front, nobody would think twice about it. His driveway at the top of a dead-end lane was completely obscured by trees and bushes. He had been taking a chance, but he had done it. No one would ever know.

He lit the big wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and relaxed in his wooden rocker. In front of him he contemplated the pile of Marda’s belongings. First, he checked through her handbag and removed her address book, purse and keys, then, once the heat in the stove was intense, gradually fed its remaining contents into the fire. Her shoes, tights, skirt, blouse and jacket followed methodically. Duval hid the chloroform bottle in his attic, just in case he might need it for another chosen one. Marda’s purse, address book, keys and watch he put in a secret drawer, to be examined later before their disposal.

After making a cup of tea, Duval treated himself to a hot bath and sat down at his study desk, giving his crucifix a lop-sided grin which any fly-on-the-wall onlooker might have interpreted as a wink. An aura of contentment settled upon him, and he recalled part of a medieval parody of a monk’s prayer:

Meum pectus sauciat

puellarum decor,

et quas tactu nequeo,

Sa item corde mechor.

He loved the sound of Latin vowels, and the vigour of his own translation pleased him even more:

Wounded to the quick am I

By a young girl’s beauty.

She’s beyond my touching?

Well, can’t the mind do duty?

“I shall write tonight. I can feel my words flowing,” he confided to the crucifix.

July 1331

Christine knelt and thanked God for His mercy and His sign of the stigmata. She knew He would understand her leaving and He would condone the breaking of her vows by granting her a holy indulgence. Her bleeding hands were the perfect symbol of the Christian passion, absolute proof; no writhing and howling like Mistress de Kempis.

In her frenzy, Christine had managed to remove two of the stones that stood aligned with the bolts. Parts of her fingers had been worn almost to the bone, and deep gouges despoiled her arms.

To Christine, her own endeavours were God’s miracles; her head was spinning, her senses dulled and vision blurred by pain. On the sixth day after she believed God had granted her the visible signs, she managed to make enough room for her thin wrist to move the bolts.

She kicked the trapdoor open with almost the last of her strength, climbed through it, and stepped blinking into direct light for the first time in two years. The breeze embraced her cheeks as she staggered through the churchyard on legs that had not taken more than one or two paces at a time in almost two years.

Christine recalled and felt overwhelmed by the story of Christ walking on the water, when His lightness of being had overcome gravity. She was following His holy steps, although she did not glide across the ground. In a misty twilight, she limped slowly and painfully to her father’s house, where William opened the door to her weak knock. He could not speak, but Christine smiled on her father; he had visibly aged even more in these past weeks.

“Father. Look on these hands-God has blessed me with the stigmata. These holes are my Heavenly permission. He has told me I can leave the wall. I must be free to do His will outside this cell. His will shall be done.”

William stared in stupefaction at his daughter’s hands, seeing wounds from clawing at stone but no stigmata. He tenderly gave his arm to Christine to help her balance as he sat her down on a bench.

Helene ran to the girl, and grasped her tightly. “God be thanked, you needed to be free from that wall or you would have died.”

They fed her, and bandaged her hands. Neither Helene nor William could tell their beloved first-born that torn hands did not a miracle make, that proof of the stigmata required more than bloodshed and fever.

Duval fingered the knob on the end of the typewriter carriage, and rubbed the stump of his severed digit with his thumb while scrutinising his notes for a few minutes. He was drying up. Taking out a small riding crop from his desk drawer, he struck the top of his thigh as hard as he could. He punished himself thus five more times before returning to his work.

Little is known about the period that Christine spent away from her cell…

He stopped typing, angry with himself.

“Of course little is known. Most of this is the revelation I embrace when Christine speaks to me.” He almost spat the words at his crucifix.