In the dream, I’m standing in a birch wood, but there in the middle is a great, ancient yew tree, like the one in the churchyard. And ever since I saw him by the river at Michaelmas, Mason’s appeared, under its boughs. Ripples of color emanate from the crown of the tree, and Mason climbs right into its heart, like you can with yews, and from underneath ushers a deep stream of water. Then, out from the center of the tree, instead of Mason, climbs a great white stag. He leaps into the pool, disappearing completely. I get on my hands and knees and peer in, and what had looked at first like dark water is clear and bright blue, like a window, and somewhere on the other side of the world, the stag leaps away across a field. The water begins to ripple and obscure as dawn shakes me awake.
Whenever I’d have the dream at home, I’d go to the barn and pull out my hidden drawing board, trying to depict it, adding more and more detail each time. It was part of me, like it had been sleeping in my mind since I was born. I drew the elaborate yew tree, the stag, the pool. When I’d slide the board back behind the manger, I’d sigh with relief, like I fit a little more squarely in the world by drawing that dream.
And now there it is: a secret I thought was only in my head, in real brilliant blues and greens of stained glass. Why would I have dreamed of something in Hartley Cross only to see it here in this northern priory church?
When the nones office ends, I can barely restrain myself from running to my cell. I open the wooden chest, but to my horror, I’ve used every one of Da’s parchments, front and back. So I return to the church, in the summer evening light, and draw the image from the stained glass right in the endpapers of my psalter. Agnes can take away the scriptorium, but she can’t take away my prayer book. And there’s plenty of room in the margins.
The transept door opens.
Footsteps—
I tuck the stylus under the book and try to pretend I’ve been praying. Agnes clears her throat, looks at me for a moment—but then she, too, looks up at the window. She climbs the chancel to the statue of Our Lady and changes the spent candles for new ones. I feel her watching me but I don’t look up. She floats back out of the church and shuts the door. I relax, breathe, and keep drawing.
— 19 —
The curse of silence has become a kind of gift. I spend the afternoon hours in my cell, working on the dream drawing in my psalter. The sun shines through the keyhole window, lighting up the bright whitewash of the walls, and I realize that I’ve been surrounded by the biggest parchment of all.
It’s been a while since I drew with the charcoal twigs from my drawing board at home, but I get out the linen bundle and unwrap it—and begin to draw on the wall. All the little bits from the psalter, every detail I can remember from the barn board. A huge yew tree spans the corner where my bed is, each branch radiating needles, the pool gushing forth from its roots in curlicues. It is glorious.
I’m in the middle of drawing a huge rack of antlers on a stag when there’s a knock on the cell door. My hands are full of charcoal. What do I do?
Please be Alice. Please, please, please be Alice.
I get up and open the door a crack, but keep my head down and stay behind it. The guest sweeps in anyway. Without looking up, I know it’s Agnes. I brace myself: whatever she’ll do, it will be something I can’t guess.
“I came to release you from your sil—” The sub-prioress looks around at the graffiti on the walls, at the desecrated prayer book, and I hear her breathing become deep, slow, deliberate.
“Come with me,” says Agnes quietly, turning and exiting into the hallway. My heart begins to race. How could I be so stupid as to think I could get away with vandalizing my cell? She reaches and grabs me by the wrist, dragging me through the calefactory, past the infirmary and orchard to the goat barn. One glance from Agnes is enough to clear the farmworkers out, and she flings me into one of the stalls.
“Take off your habit,” says Agnes dryly while she searches the floor for something.
“What?” I scramble for a reason, knowing and not knowing what’s coming. “Why?”
“Do it. And your tunic, off to the waist.” Agnes returns to the stall with the broken handle of a willow basket. “Turn around.”
I can’t understand what’s happening quickly enough to resist. I’ve barely gotten the second sleeve off my wrist—
One lash.
Two.
Ten.
Dark, jagged purple lines hurl through me, like being shot with arrows, clean through the face.
Agnes throws the bloody handle down in the manure and walks out.
I pull my tunic up, too numb to feel the fabric beginning to stick in my wounds.
My ears ring, the green Sound wild in my eyes, shaking and turning the barn upside down.
I vomit in the corner.
A cold tremble starts in my middle as I dress: the chill of the barn, the icy shock.
Once I can stand, I feel for the walls and push myself out into the daylight. I keep my head down, past the goatherds and stonemasons, and wander to the medicine garden, where I know Alice will be working.
“Edyth?”
I don’t respond to Alice. I sniff back tears and instinctively reach into my fitchet pocket and feel for the little stone house.
“There’s…ah, your veil’s crooked. But there’s blood— Oh God.”
I look up woozily and swoon. Alice steadies me and accidentally touches my back. I cry out but then bite down hard on my bottom lip. I don’t want to draw attention. I just want to disappear.
“Come on,” Alice says discreetly. “We need Joan.”
* * *
—
The infirmary’s large central hall is flanked by open-front cells with heavy drapes instead of doors. In the dim, reddish cast, I can make out wall hangings painted with scenes of the Creation, Crucifixion and Resurrection. There are charts of the four humors—bile, blood, black bile, phlegm; and of the four elements—earth, air, fire, water. Anatomy scrolls and books of physic are strewn on the tables, along with remedies in all stages of concoction. Racks suspended from the large oaken beams are hung with bunches of drying medicinal herbs. Rows of glass bottles line the shelves filled with tinctures and powders. Jars and bowls of all sizes are interspersed with more books, and braziers are lit, with small, three-legged iron pots above them.
It’s the kind of inventory you take when you’re out of your body.
Eighteen bottles on the top shelf. Five different sizes of mortar and pestle.
“You weren’t beaten at home, were you, Edyth?” Joan asks plainly as she examines my bloody back.