The Anchoress

I had always wanted to be a jongluer, to leap from the shoulders of another, to fly and tumble, to dare myself in the thin air with nothing but my arms and legs to land me safely on the ground. An acrobat is not a bird, but it is the closest a person can come to being free in air. The nearest to an angel’s gift of flying.

But that was as a child, when my body was secure, like that of a boy, and I felt myself whole and able to try anything. That was before my arms and legs grew soft and awkward and my woman’s body took away those strong, pliant surfaces of skin, before I knew I could bleed and not die or, worse still, carry a life inside me and die because of it.

He told me he had fallen when learning to tumble; his own knee had broken his nose as he landed.

The day after I was enclosed I thought of Swallow. I’d thrown away everything in this world and leaped into the air, lighter than I’d ever been, flying to God, who would catch me in his arms. Here, like Swallow, I was a body without a body. Even inside the thick walls of my cell I felt I could see the sky all around me, blue and clear, and I thought I had what I wanted.

I didn’t know then that I had landed on hard ground and broken my bones with my body.

“The black cloth signifies that you’re worthless to the world, and it to you. The white cross stitched on top is a sign of your virgin purity.”

He had stepped close, his voice low; I felt the hem of his robes brush against my shoes. “Remember, child, your virginity is your fragile treasure, your jewel, the blossom of your body offered to the Lord. In your cell it is sealed, kept whole.”

His words made my face redden. “Enclosure is the only means by which your virginity may be assured.”

[…] Bishop Michael had told me severely that only women might look in on me, and only if needed, when I counseled them. “There is to be no looking out and no letting men look in.” He stood tall and tipped his head back, in that manner he had. “Lust prowls, it prowls,” he said roundly.

“Very good. There’s a lot for you to get used to, child; don’t rush at this new life. You have all the time you need to grow into it. I’m old, and slowing down; that’s why I can’t visit more often. […] the slow walk [from the priory] makes me look around at the world. I’ve seen things I never noticed when I strode along as a young man. You’re young, Sarah. Think of yourself as a child, still learning to walk, and that will be two of us, learning to lean on God together.” […]

I submitted, wanting all the time to argue. A child? Me? I was no novice nun; I’d chosen the hardest life of all, and he called me a child! He was kind, but he was old, and perhaps he’d forgotten the strength of being young.

Behind her curtain, the anchoress said nothing. When I stopped, exhausted, and apologized for my tears, she told me to let them come, and when I asked her why Ma had died, she said that even though it felt so important, an answer to my question was not what I needed. A few words from me won’t touch your grief, and nor should they. Tend your grief like hard ground, and wait. One day, something will grow; there won’t be an answer, but you will see you’ve found a way to live, and to live with death. Then she was silent for some time, and finally she promised to pray for me.

On the way home, when Emma asked me what she had said, I told her […] that the holy woman’s silence was like presence.

“Sister Sarah, I’ve come to ask for your prayers. I’m not much for praying, though I try. Seems easier when I’m digging weeds or spinning wool.”

[…]

“Sister, most of all, I wanted to meet you. And I thought you might want to meet me—or not me, special like, but someone from Hartham, you know, seeing as you come from another town.”

To meet someone? I would counsel her and pray for her, but how could she think I would be her friend? I’d told all my friends, everyone from my old life, not to visit me.

“I know, I know, Billy told me you’re supposed to be alone and quiet and that’s why you’re here, and so I didn’t come at first. But I think, well, if it was me I’d want to meet someone. I mean, people are people, aren’t they? Don’t you feel lonely sometimes?”

“You will learn in time, Sister, but don’t seek meaning where it doesn’t dwell. Do you remember what your Rule says? That the outer rule may change depending on each one, whether she is young or old or weak or strong, and that a confessor may change the outer rule because his wisdom understands how best an anchoress may keep the inner rule.” […]

As he left, I heard him telling Anna that I must have sufficient warmth.

I was ashamed and angry. Did Father Peter think me weak? I had vowed to obey him, so I would, whether he be right or wrong. […] I confessed my doubt of Father Peter’s counsel to him, but even though he told me to be patient with myself, I wanted to do as my Rule said, to overcome the demands of my wayward body.

I’d sometimes been angry when Father Peter hadn’t come to visit me every week, ignoring what I knew of his painful, worn-out legs. A sulky child punishing a good father, I would answer him only in single words. But his laugh, his chat about all he had seen on his walk—a bright-colored bird, a young boy who had stopped to talk with him—and my sulkiness slipped away. Now he was to come no more, and I began to recognize that it was fear, not anger, that I’d felt in the gaps between his visits.

I had thought that, dead to the world in my cell, I would not need anything, but just as I needed food and clothing and warmth for my body to survive, I needed Father Peter to help me—to help my heart survive. Now he had left me with the empty voice behind my curtain.

He had to admit that the tale began rightly, with a call to virgins to listen and love the Lord. Margaret, the daughter of a pagan prince, was fifteen when she was sent to live with her stepmother in a village far from her father’s palace. She chose virginity over marriage, seeking Christ as her lover and beloved. Ranaulf frowned, though he did not pause in forming each letter. He could see that women needed to think of God as a husband, given their natural desires, but such language, such words, lover and beloved, they could as easily enflame a woman’s desire as direct it toward Christ. How would the anchoress respond? He wondered if she would recognize such a conceit, that union with Christ paradoxically meant virginity.

The next days fell into one, cold and prayers and reading, memories of Thomas that crept through the cracks, the moans from the church, the grunts and sighs, shudders in my chair, scratches at my ankles, weary light from my oil lamp.

The spark that flies up does not set the house on fire straight away: it lies still and nurses the flames and grows larger and larger until it sets the whole house on fire, before it is in the least suspected.

The words of my Rule. I had chosen four walls, but the spark was not gone, a sin I needed to confess.

I used to frown when she laughed at crudity, drank too much mead, or kissed Godric under the maypole and told him to give her a baby. But that May Day morning at my altar, I no longer saw the lines of pain on her face as she died, but her laugh, the curve of her back, the lift of her feet as she danced, her hair curling with sweat, and I realized, with a shock like being slapped, that in truth I had wanted to do that, to wind around the maypole, to sing and laugh with the others; I had watched on, longing and afraid. A foolish idea; I had always wanted to pray and serve God. My prayers finished, I stayed on my knees, my face throbbing at the thought. Was it a temptation sent by the Devil?

I ran my fingers along the edge of my desk, flicked at a stray piece of straw on my robe, kicked at the wall. My mind was like a bird in a cage, wings flapping, unable to stop even though it is futile. How could I have prevented Thomas from seeing me? My cell was not sealed, though they’d told me it was. My body was whole, but I felt undone, violated. Was it because I had looked out at the women, and let them look in? I opened my Rule and scanned the careful lines; Father Ranaulf did not decide on the words, but he copied them, and told me to obey them. What did he know of women? What did he understand of my life? I paused, surprised; I sounded just like Emma.

Too disturbed to visit the anchoress immediately, Ranaulf wandered into the forest behind the manor grounds; he would pray, he thought, commit the matter to God. Instead, he held a stick in his right hand and swiped at the trees as he passed. Sir Thomas, that smug man, taking control, threatening, bribing. Not only the book for the anchoress, but dismissing his questions about the land as if a scribe would know nothing. […] He was looking at the tattered leaves on the ground when he hit the branch of a willow that swung back and whipped across his face. He cried out, cursed, cringed as if he had been attacked, then struggled with the branch to break it off, but it was too supple and all he could do was bend it and twist it until some of the outer fibers gave way to reveal white-green pulp underneath.

“Sarah, I lose patience. You were always like this. I offer you friendship, or more, and you treat me like a leper.” His voice hardened. “I continue the agreement with the priory so that you may live this ridiculous life and you behave as though I wish you ill. I wonder what it is you want the walls to keep out. Now, do you want the book or shall I take it away?”

“Thank you. […] Would you leave it on the ledge, please?” […]

“No, it’s a gift. I’ll give it into your hands.”

[…]

A book, pages to turn. And a story about a woman. Like me, perhaps. I had no stories of people doing things, losing things, discovering things. The tightness in my chest, wanting it—my own book, a new one.

[…]

I told myself I had no choice. I pushed my hands through the cloth […]

I held her hand flat on mine and carefully traced the shape onto her palm with my finger, one at a time, saying each sound slowly. It was tiny and thin, her hand, the skin still soft, her fingers fluttering at the new sensation, a little bird between my palms. The feeling of skin on skin, the life of another body so close to mine. Warmth tingled into my arms and up into my chest, the familiar longing. […] She was entranced, caught whole into the thought of her name being made of shapes. Bodies and words; I was breathing fast, more excited than I could remember in this cell.

He pushed the door shut, wishing he had never said the words. Don’t come to God and ask to be safe. He had only wanted to defend himself against Sarah’s accusations about Sir Thomas’s delivery of the book, had plucked them from the past, quoting Abbot Wulfrum. The love of words is a gift from God, but they can cut you open, too. The work of a scribe is still and quiet, like prayer, but the words you copy are not. Remember that. Don’t think that God is safe. Now she was quoting them back to him and he had to listen.

The door was closed, but a breeze gusted through the opening, the dampness of the forest. It was so dark, but I thought I saw a movement. I shuddered. Isabella was there, I was sure.

I wanted to explain, to tell her everything. “I know he made Anna, forced her because he can’t get to me. My Rule tells me I must pay for his sins. Anna mustn’t die.” Admitting it, speaking the words, was letting out a breath I had held since I first knew Anna was with child, even before Thomas’s last visit. Silence for a time, only the murmurs of night.

Sarah. Her voice was low, the soughing of the wind, and I strained to hear her. You want to save her? Because of Thomas?

Yes, I thought. “It’s my fault,” I said.

Only a sigh of air. The curtain wavered. I knew that she was gone.

Later, Ranaulf looked through the Old Testament, eventually found the verse in Hosea.

Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts. Otherwise I will strip her naked and make her as bare as the day she was born; I will make her into a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst.

Ranaulf sat back and set down his quill. […] She had sinned, no doubt, asking to leave after making vows. The bishop had a right to be angry with her inconstancy. Penance was appropriate, certainly, but violence? And they were villagers’ words only, accusations against the bishop. What was he doing, talking to villagers who’d been sworn to silence […] it was the worst disobedience. He would stop. No, he’d come too far to stop.

He picked up a piece of pumice stone and rubbed it gently over a new piece of parchment. It was a mercy the pages of the chronicle weren’t bound, so he could keep the account separate. He could add the dates of Isabella’s enclosure to the main document—that would be suitable—but he would include the full story of her departure only if he decided it was necessary.

He looked up toward the window. An anchoress with a pregnant maid. How could he speak of her devotion? She had shamed herself and him. He put the pumice stone down on his desk without looking and it slipped, fell to the floor, and shattered quietly. A thousand tiny gray shards, a pile of dust. Shame. He thought of Maud’s words: She were angry, Father, not shamed.

“She’s in my charge and I’m in your charge, so Anna must be in your charge, too, at least in part.”

“They’re slippery words, Sister. Sophistry.”

That word was new to me, but I understood what he meant.

“I’m a scribe, a monk, and your confessor. That is all.” His words might have cut the curtain hanging between us. “Anna has sinned, not only against God, but against you, and brought shame on your calling.”

“Yes, Father, so you’ve told me. I’ve spoken to Anna. And now we have to show forgiveness and mercy. Surely. Anna and the baby are just as much my care and duty as before.”

“I agreed when you said the maid was too sick to be moved, but I thought that as for a short time only. Now you say she still cannot leave. The sinner must pay for her sin.”

The light from my candle flickered. It lit up one side of the apple where it curved, red. I picked up the apple, cupped it in my hands, felt it lying heavy against my palm, ran my fingers across its smooth skin. I had confessed to Father Simon my sin against my confessor, pulling back the curtain and presuming to know better than him. But if I wrote on this apple, took it and gave it to Anna to eat, I would disobey him further. I understood that, but I had vowed to do everything I could for Anna, to pay the price for Thomas’s sin.

Lizzie had taught me a charm to command the baby to come forth, and I recited it, over and over. I remembered Maggie the midwife chanting the same one to Emma, for what worth it was. Maria virgo peperit Christum, Elisabet sterilis peperit Iohannem baptistam. Adiuro te infans, si es masculus an femina, per Patrem et Filium et Spiritum sanctum, ut exeas et recedes, et ultra ei non noceas. I knew enough Latin, along with Lizzie’s vague comprehension of the charm’s meaning to understand what I was asking: Mary, though a virgin, gave birth to Christ; Elizabeth, barren, gave birth to John the Baptist. I adjure you, child, boy or girl, by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, come forth and move away, and cause her no more harm.

“Your grief leads you to sin, Sister.” For a moment, Ranaulf felt himself on firm ground. “You presume to know the ways of God. You have tried to control God with your prayers and your rituals. Words on an apple, Sister? I was very clear that you were not to use a charm and you disobeyed me. Faith beseeches, it does not presume to have certainty—that is its nature, to trust without certainty. But you have turned your faith, your prayers, into demands.” He looked down at his hands again […] His sense of assurance was waning. The words were correct, he could quote the scholar, the work, the progression of the argument.

Sarah, you tell stories to the stones. Tell them about St. Margaret.

St Margaret; her story seemed so long ago, I could hardly remember, but I began. “There was a woman in a dark cell who wanted to fly away, and a man who hurt her. He was important and powerful, and said she would have jewels. But he shouted at her and hit her, pulled at her clothes because he thought she should always do what he wanted. When she didn’t, he punished her. I remember the smell of straw, a door with nails. A wall, too, just like this one.” I hesitated, looked around. I’m confused. Is that St. Margaret’s story?”

Yes, it is. And your story. And mine.

“All this time I’ve been here I thought I would deny my body, and I tried to follow my Rule, but it makes me think on my body more and more. When I eat, even if it’s only Louise’s pottage that I thought was always the same dull stuff, now I can taste the peas, or the turnips, or whether she’s used some parsley or another herb that Anna told her about. I was to shut out the world in here, but sounds and smells creep in my windows and wrap themselves around me. The smell of hay, mouldering berries, the sound of a spade. They’re the things that I love now. They’ve become part of how I pray, how I care for people. Whatever my Rule says, my body is part of that.”

Perhaps the Rule doesn’t know everything of God. I thought Isabella spoke, but it might have been the wind.

“The man deserves to suffer.”

Silence for a time. “I cursed him, too, but we can’t wish him to suffer. No. Not right.”

“There’s Alyce in the ground just there, an Anna, and Sam. We can’t wish more death.”

“Anna. Think of the maid and why she died. And he’d have bled us dry and thrown us off our land, given it to the sheep.”

“Strange to think: for all a man’s money, all it takes is a spark.”

“And so we must pray for him. He’s a man just like us.”

I lifted my robe and pulled it over my head. My shift was thin, and the air was cool on my arms and legs, but the sun warmed my skin, licked at me, played around my face, ran its fingers along my arms, across my breasts, and down my legs.

It seemed to me that Christ called to me and touched me. My Rule tells me that I must come to know God by controlling my senses, by keeping the flesh in need and not allowing my eyes or nose or ears to lead me back to the world. I had read and reread the words, wearied myself, tried to hard to be a holy woman, beaten my body and heart against stone. But that morning, it was as if I turned, and love was there, simple and without rules.