Paul Moorcraft - The Anchoress of Shere

Love

Marda

PS. Have a lovely Christmas. Please remember that we will be celebrating the birthday of Christ. Perhaps you will go to church and say a prayer for me. I certainly shall be praying for you.

Dear Christine,

I suppose this is a little crazy, but I feel I need to talk to you, somehow, despite the gap of over 600 years. I have been reading your story, and trying so hard to understand you. Michael has explained the spiritual aspects of your search, but I want to know how you feel…about being cut off from your family above all. I suppose they can…

Marda crossed out the present tense, and shifted to the past tense.

…could at least talk to you, but didn’t you feel like hugging them, especially your little brother or nephew? I would give anything to hug mine. Or talk to my parents at least. God must give strength…to us both, but does that mean that He gives more strength the more we are cut off from those we love? How did you cut off your feelings for Simon? It must have been such a difficult thing to give up all hope of having children, but life must have been very different in your time. I have been reading about the Middle Ages. Sometimes, I wish I could hold your hand and lead you through today’s Guildford-the place you called Guldenford. There are cars, trains, jet planes, TV. I wonder whether all these modern inventions would have affected your faith, your desire to be secluded? Was it easier then than now? God doesn’t change, but we do. How do we adapt?

I haven’t finished your story yet, but I hope-no, I pray-that you found what you were searching for. I will write to you again when I know more about you.

With affection,

Marda

Marda wrote a series of letters throughout the rest of the afternoon, using pages from her supply of exercise books. When she had finished, she climbed on to her bench and managed to winkle out the tiny folded squares that constituted her previous archive in the air vent. She destroyed the old ones by soaking them in the well of the paraffin heater and letting them burn bit by bit. Clearing away the ashes, she put them in her waste bin. Satisfied with her rewriting of history, she put the new letters in the vent.

Duval brought down some coffee and slices of chocolate cake around 5:30. That’s what his watch said, but she didn’t know whether it was morning or afternoon; the nature of the food indicated it was probably the latter.

He seemed much more relaxed, so she asked about his book: “I’ve read up to her returning to St. James’s church. I know there’s an Amen at the end, but you said you were still working on a conclusion. If you’ve finished it, can I see it? I know so much about Christine up to the age of twenty-two-is that right? — but what about her later years as an anchoress? Did she stay there, or did she leave again?”

Michael smiled at her transparency. “I haven’t finished the conclusion, but I will show you soon.”

He talked for a while on what he had read about Bolivia. At the end of his long monologue, Marda said simply, “Seems all jungles and revolutions.”

As she finished her last piece of cake, she said, in a patently wheedling tone, “Michael, I have a favour to ask. I don’t like to think about…the other rooms. But from what I have learned-from what you have taught me-I would like your other guests to have a proper burial.” She paused, trying to read his facial expression, but she could not discern the impact of her question.

Marda continued, “I suppose it would be too…difficult…to arrange a church burial, but couldn’t you do something in the garden? You said it’s quite secluded. And then you could say a blessing, even though it’s not holy ground. Excuse my presuming to tell you about Christian rites, but it would seem proper. Or have I spoken out of turn?”

“No, I had considered the same thing myself,” said Duval in a very conciliatory fashion. “They were suicides, they starved themselves, so I felt I could not take them to consecrated ground. But they should be treated with some dignity. It would be wrong to leave them where they are, especially if I do go to Bolivia. If.

“I should have done it before. I do apologise to you for not giving them a Christian burial. I will do it in the next few days, but I will tell you beforehand. I shall close your door and close the grille-I don’t want you to get upset again.”

Smiling, he added, “Is that to your satisfaction?” He enquired as though he were promising to take a favourite young niece to the funfair.

Marda heard the faint chime of a doorbell for the first time. She realised that he must have left the main cellar door open for the sound to carry this far.

He pretended to look unconcerned. “Ah, I was not expecting a visitor. Too late for the post. Perhaps somebody to do with the local elections, or a Jehovah’s Witness.”

The bell rang again. He quickly excused himself and, without shutting the cell door, hurried up the stairs.

Marda waited for a few seconds, and then put her head around the door. She ran along the corridor and up the short wooden stairs to the main cellar trapdoor, begging God that it would be unlocked. She tried the handle gently at first, then more and more frantically while trying to avoid being too noisy. It was locked. She thought of trying to shout through it. To scream. To bang.

She didn’t.

Marda returned to her cell, her eyes brimming with tears, the first for more than a month. She sat picking up bits of cake crumbs with her fingers and waited.

He returned within ten minutes, seriously agitated.

“Who was it?” Marda tried to ask as casually as she could.

“Bishop Templeton. Insufferable intrusion. Some excuse to drop off information about Bolivia. Said that he had to visit a friend in Shere anyway. He just wanted to snoop around my house. Blast him!”

Marda didn’t know what to say; she let him rant. Eventually she said, “The bishop doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do. You always get men higher up in a bureaucracy who are afraid of new ideas.”

Duval turned on her. “Don’t give me this Job’s false comforter routine. If I hadn’t locked the door, you would have been out screaming for the bishop to lock me up, I know. Don’t lie to me.”

Marda looked at his blazing eyes and felt utterly forlorn. She didn’t think he could have heard her fiddling with the lock.

“No, no, Michael. I was sitting here waiting for you. I was just trying to be kind because you seemed so upset. I want to help you.”

“You’re a liar. Just like the rest of them.” As he stormed out of the cell, he spluttered, “Yes, I’ll bury them, and you…if I can’t trust you.”

He locked the cell door, switched the light off and closed the grille.

Marda felt the fear again, that same cold fear of her early incarceration. She prayed that it was not entirely her fault, just a tantrum because of the bishop’s unexpected visit. He had been severely rattled. She would not cry, she swore to herself, but she needed to do something, not just endure as a passive victim of his moods.

She sank on to her bench and lit up a cigarette. For a change, it was quite warm in the cell; she pulled up her robe and rubbed her legs a little, feeling the hairs she had not shaved for months. As she puffed a smoke ring in the dim light of the paraffin heater, she moved her hand up her legs to remind herself of human touch. Utter desolation closed in on her soul, as she longed to touch someone who loved her. And to be held. She was held now by the dark, cold walls of a tomb.

She pulled her bare legs to her chest and curled into a foetal position. Through the black despair she thought of her mother’s comforting arms around her when she’d suffered nightmares as a child. She was not a promiscuous person, but she had always enjoyed physical contact. Marda remembered the warmth and kindness of her first real lover, Gerard. Where is he now? she wondered. Hours of gentle passion on balmy evenings in Bordeaux seemed to belong to the memory of another person, another life, another planet; that kind of intimacy was almost impossible to imagine, then, now or ever again. She worried that her sexuality had drained away for all time.