Paul Moorcraft - The Anchoress of Shere

“Christine,” he said aloud, “where are you? I have harvested another woman for you.”

He could not feel the presence of the anchoress. “You are not in my head,” he moaned. “Do you want me to visit you now?”

Duval left his study and checked in the kitchen to ensure that the trapdoor leading down into the cellar was bolted. Putting on his raincoat, he grabbed the lead and whistled for Bobby.

It was a short trudge in the rain down to St. James’s. He instinctively did not want to be inside a church at that moment, so he walked around to the northern section and, leaning against the outside wall of the cell, he waited. After ten minutes he seemed to feel a force emanate from the cold, wet wall. Now he understood what Christine had endured, and what he had to write.

Within fifteen minutes, Bobby was curled up in front of the stove and Duval’s fingers were dancing on the typewriter.

In the initial tumult of her reunion with her family, little was said about the alleged stigmata. The next day, at dawn, Christine set out for the journey to Peaslake, accompanied by her father. She asked her mother to tell Father Peter that she would seek out the bishop and explain her flight from the cell. If she could, she would renew her vows. But she had to see her sister, even if the price was excommunication.

Although exhausted emotionally by her recent trials, Christine-hooded to avoid any neighbours’ stares-walked at first with relative ease. Every part of creation seemed to be bursting with life: she heard every bird-call, saw every leaf, and every tree proclaimed a miracle. The whole world was welcoming her and for a while the seriousness of her mission was transcended by God’s bounteous earth. The sweet, rich smell of cow dung teased like jasmine, every sense was exaggerated beyond measure. But soon she grew tired, not of the green wetness, but because her body was not accustomed to walking, so her father made her stop every half-mile to rest.

William said very little, his thoughts consumed by his many burdens. During the third rest, sitting on a fallen oak tree, he finally asked, “Will the bishop allow your penance and return-even if that be your desire? Besides,” he went on, “our family is in lowly esteem with Sir Richard. It may be that we all shall be banished by lord and bishop. Perhaps your mother and your brother should have journeyed with us, and then all flee together from Peaslake? While there, we are within the grasp of bishop and lord.”

Christine felt none of his uncertainty. “Father, we must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. I will seek out the dean and bishop, as is my promise, and throw myself upon their wisdom and their mercy. The dean will advise about the injustice done by Sir Richard. Our lord bishop is no friend of Vachery Manor, either. This is known.”

“I doubt not your piety, my daughter, but a village girl, two long years enclosed, may not judge too well the politicking of Church and nobility.” He touched her cheek, drawn and pale with fasting. “But we must be on. ’Tis many a long stride to Peaslake, especially with your weak limbs. Or I may have to carry thee like a new-born lamb.”

At the end of a bitter-sweet day of fatigue and yet reinvigorated senses, Christine and her father arrived in the hamlet of Peaslake, where William’s cousin lived in a row of three wooden houses rather grandly misnamed Queen’s Cottages. One end of the cottages was adorned with a massive dung heap, and the other with a haystack. A pig rushed from the middle house, where Margaret was staying.

Adam, William’s first cousin, greeted them at the door, hospitable despite his surprise.

“Welcome to my home, cousin,” he said. “Good it is to see you. What be it? A year or more? And who be with you in the hood?” Adam started. “Heavens above, it be your Christine. Special leave from bishop then to see your Margaret?”

Christine just nodded as she stooped to enter the dank main room.

Adam’s wife bustled with formalities and offered mead while the children and chickens were shooed out of the room, which was illuminated by a solitary rush light. On a rough straw palliasse Margaret lay sick, but she managed a smile for her closest kin.

Christine hugged her sister as silent tears merged into tiny rivulets chasing down their cheeks. Christine, reluctant to move from the embrace, eventually kneeled beside her sister and, making the sign of the Cross, said a prayer for the sick. The whole room fell quiet as the anchoress prayed.

Finally, Margaret broke the silence: “I be sick in my body, Chrissie, but you need not forsake your holy vows to visit me. Were I well, I would have come to your cell. Has a privilege been granted by the bishop?”

Christine shook her head. “Of bishops and lords will we parley anon, but first tell me what ails thee. Father said your confinement was not a goodly one.”

“Two months or so I think will be my term,” she said grimacing, “but the pains are on me now. The village midwife says it may be nigh, albeit before it be full-grow’d inside.”

She winced as she said this and put both her hands on her extended belly.

Christine put her bony, wounded hands on her sister’s firm ones. “I will tend you till your time. I will not leave my sister. If our father will speak with our kin here, I am sure that I can stay alongside you, to offer help and prayer as much I can.”

William left the next day while Christine stayed in Peaslake, even though she was summoned by the bishop’s man to hasten to Guldenford. Of the threats of ecclesiastic court she did not speak to Margaret.

Left much alone, the two sisters talked of childhood games. On the second night Christine, despite her wounded hands, spent an hour delousing her sister, as she used to do when they were at home together in Ashe Cottage. It was during this sisterly ritual that Margaret confided her story. No tears came now; the pain she had endured was beyond such manifestations. After the story was told, Margaret said, “May I bathe your hands and apply the potions, before new bandages?”

Christine nodded gratefully. Alone, the sisters were reunited in their torment. In turn, Christine finally shared her experience of Sir Richard to help ease her sister’s pain and guilt. Both had suffered too much at their lord’s unholy hand.

“I vow upon the Cross that I will take vengeance for you,” said Christine. “I care not now for the hurts I endured, but will seek our rights by court, if justice there be in our troubled land. To the dean will I speak.”

“I thank you,” said Margaret, “but we are the poorest in this land. And e’en you have left your saintly course, so will the dean or bishop attend your words?”

“It will be well.” Christine spoke with confidence. “God has answered my prayers, I promise. Now let us talk of your unborn son-for a boy-child I think it be.”

Two weeks passed and Christine was joyous in the family atmosphere. Despite the tragic happenings she was rarely discomfited by the throng of bodies in the small, smoke-filled cottage, and she said her prayers either to herself or quietly in the vegetable garden at the rear, not wanting to stray too far from her sister.

There was no doctor in the hamlet, a deficiency which did not trouble the locals because the last one had leeched to death at least two of his patients. His occasional forays into surgery had resulted in even higher mortality, and he had moved to Guldenford to return to his real vocation as barber and pedlar of magic potions. In contrast, Matilda, the midwife, was much respected. William had left some groats to pay for her attentions to Margaret; he had been warned that the labour would be long and difficult.

It was made more difficult by threats from Sir Richard’s armed men when they eventually visited Peaslake, so Adam arranged for Margaret to be carried in an ox-cart to a woodman’s hut deep in the forest. Christine did her best to make it more homely, but the move was dangerous.