Green Darkness (30 page)

Ursula, harassed by a dozen last minute travel details, only smiled tolerantly. Celia’s passion for the new beagle puppies was well known.

Yet once outside in the barnyard Celia paused only a second at the kennel where the puppies were squealing and tumbling over their mother. She sped past the granary, darted around the row of cottages, and down to the meadow. It was near dusk, the cotters were inside getting ready for bed. Nobody saw Celia as she ran across the footbridge over the Rother, plunged into the hillside forest of oaks and elms, and up the rough path to the top. She clambered over the mossy remnants of the old wall, and saw without surprise that Stephen was standing a few yards away from his hut. She had expected him to be waiting for her.

He had been digging a garden plot, where he would sow the herbs Master Julian had listed for him. His habit was kirtled high, looped under the knotted scourge at his waist. His legs were streaked with earth. His face was flushed and glistening. He had taken off the dangling crucifix which knocked against the spade handle. He looked younger, less monk-like than she had ever seen him, and Celia called out a joyous, “Stephen! I’m here, at last!”

She ran to him laughing.

Stephen dropped the spade, turning on her a startled face. The girl was wearing the moss-green woolen traveling dress Anthony had provided and a russet velveteen cloak. The hood had fallen back from her bright hair. Her face shone white in the gloaming, and her appearance to him was so eerie, like a dryad flitting from the forest, that his hand rose to cross himself. The pagans, he thought in confusion, they had held rites on this hilltop. Before the True Faith came to England.

“Ye stare so, love—” cried Celia, still laughing. “But ye knew I’d come to thee.”

Stephen’s intake of breath was clear above the chittering of squirrels and the rustling leaves.

“No,” he said.

He pulled down his habit, and became the tall, black forbidding figure she knew too well. “Celia, why are you here? I said good-bye to you this morning.”

“It was a sham,” she said smiling. “D’ye think I’d leave thee? Go off a thousand miles from thee? I saw the look in your eyes. You touched my neck, you
asked
me to bide here.”

His flush deepened, and his voice was cutting. “I said
naught
to you but the
Benedicite
.” Nor had he, yet all day he had been appalled at the realization that his hand of its own will had caressed her hair, had stroked the petal-smooth white neck as she knelt before him. “To be sure you’re leaving—at sunrise tomorrow—for Cumberland. What else?”

She heard the weakness in the question and laughed again gently.

“Oh, ’tis very simple,” she whispered, bending close to him. “I’ve it well planned. I’ve saved food. I’ll hide awhile at Molly O’Whipple’s and can come to you nights up here. ’Tisn’t far. And Molly’ll not gab.”

“Celia . . .” Stephen knew that the girl was not aware of the full purport of her plan, that her innocence was real, yet he quickly found the needed cold and reasonable words. “This is folly, child! Disobedient and ungrateful folly. You’ve no more wits than a titmouse. How long do you think to hide at Molly’s? What would you do after?”

“Why—” she said, faltering, “after a bit I’d go back to Cowdray. And you’d win them over-Aunt Ursula, Sir Anthony. They’ll listen to
you—
and we’d be nigh each other.”

“What for?” said Stephen clipping the words. “I don’t want you near.”

She gasped, twisting her hands on a fold of her cloak. “That’s a lie, Stephen,” she whispered, staring up at him. “You
do
want me nigh!” She rushed forward and threw her arms around his neck. He felt the soft pressure of her body, and his own body’s shameful response as she kissed him. Her lips were hot and sweet. The dizzy flame they lit he had felt before only in the wicked dreams from which he awoke shivering and disgusted. He jerked back from her.

“Slut!” he cried, and pushed her so hard that her foot caught on the fallen spade and she fell to the turf. She lay there, her face covered by her hands.

“You’re a little fool, Celia Bohun,” he said, “and by Our Lady, I believe I hate you!”

She did not move, and he stared down with savage joy at her abasement. Stared at the curve of her hips, and the slender naked leg exposed by her rumpled skirt. His chest constricted with a furious pain. “
Misericorde,
” he said beneath his breath. “These are whorish tricks, Satan’s tricks.”

The eight o’clock curfew bell rang out from Midhurst Church, a sheep bleated in the pasture by the Rother. Two elm branches creaked together as the twilight breeze freshened.

Suddenly Celia leaped to her feet. She confronted him with arms akimbo, her chin high, and spoke with the vulgar intonation of her tavern childhood. “Aye—meaching house priest! Ye’re roight. I’m a fool. I’ve been a lovesick moon calf. I too can hate. ’Tis a far simpler lesson than t’others ye dinned me with. Never fear, I’m off to Cumberland. There’re men there’ll be joyed to see me, no doubt there’ll be many. I bid ye farewell, Brother Stephen!”

She made him a slow sweeping curtsy, smoothed down her skirts, and tossed back her hair. She vanished as she had come, melting into the forest.

“Blessed
Jesu
—” Stephen whispered. He stood a long time, staring down at the spade. His eyes stung and watered. He walked slowly into the little chapel and knelt on the stone altar slab. “
Ave Maria in gratia plena
. . .” The words were dry as the rustling leaves. “
Pater Noster . 
.
 . libera nos a malo
. . .”—the meaningless cluttering of squirrels.

He went into his hut, and sat on his stool, his eyes went as always to his picture of the Virgin. The benign, the loving look had gone. It seemed to him that the beautiful face smirked at him with leering reproof. He gazed at it a moment. He got up and covered the picture with the purple linen pall which shrouded Her in Lent. Then he strode out of his hut, and down the hill’s western slope towards the town, away from Cowdray. He walked all night on Midhurst Common.

Wat Farrier, two days later, guided his charges along the Borough High Street into Southwark, while a clamor of church bells rang out for noon.

“Blessed Mary, what a din!” remarked Ursula smiling. “I’d forgot the town was so noisy.”

Below the ding-dongs from parish churches on both sides of the Thames, there was a constant rumbling of carts, horses’ whinneys, barking dogs, shouted orders to porters, and the melodious street cries. “Who’ll buy? Who’ll buy?” “What d’ye lack?” “Milk—Country milk . . .!” “Scissors and knives, to grind—to grind!”

The street narrowed, and grew shadowy beneath the overhanging windows from which came periodic shouts—“Onguard below!” while someone flung out the contents of a chamber pot into the gutters. They jogged past old Tabard Inn, and heard pleasanter sounds through the paved courtyard. The plunking of a lute, accompanied by a penny whistle, and someone singing, “Back and side go bare, go bare.”

“Used to be vastly
more
noise,” remarked Wat, adjusting his felt hat, and winking at a pretty barrowmaid who was trundling baskets full of peaches and apricots. “We had the monastery bells
too.
Often I thought my ears’d split. Bigod, I did.”

“Aye,” agreed Ursula thoughtfully. She had not been to London in many years, nor ever lodged on the South Bank before. They were to stay in Southwark in Sir Anthony’s town house, which was the former priory of St. Mary Overies. Along with Battle Abbey in Sussex, King Henry had presented this ancient Augustinian priory to the elder Browne. Ursula had, so far, no particular scruples about dispossessed monks, or sacred places turned secular, yet as they neared the great priory’s church, now the parish one-rechristened St. Saviour’s, and therefore spared destruction—she was dismayed by the raffish state of the adjoining chapels. Both had been boarded up, the fair Gothic stonework daubed with plaster, the stained glass splintered and then replaced by tattered paper. The smaller chapel had become a bakehouse, with an oven built on the site of the altar—the Lady Chapel housed a drove of squealing, malodorous pigs.

Wat, who shared these startled discoveries, gave his deep chuckle, and said, “Welladay, Lady—times do change—pigs and bread be more useful to a man than a gaggle o’ droning monks, though me old master’d never’ve permitted this. Young master he don’t pay heed to the property here. Forever stuck down at Cowdray.”

Ursula did not answer; even valued servants must be repressed when they spoke too freely, but it occurred to her that in avoiding his London home, Anthony might be showing proper caution. It was from here that he had been hauled off to jail for hearing Mass. And Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, once all-powerful favorite, was now disgraced and imprisoned in the Tower. She glanced at the bishop’s palace close by them. The windows were shuttered; the huge pile had a forlorn neglected look.

It
was
a dangerous time for Catholics, Ursula thought. At Cowdray she had scarcely realized this, and obeyed Anthony’s orders during the King’s visit simply from fear of displeasing her patron. Larger perils had not seemed real, and, thought Ursula, with an uncomfortable flash of honesty, had she not been secretly relieved when Brother Stephen was shut up in the cellars? Relieved even by the rat bite sickness later?

They approached the river, and Ursula glanced at Celia. “Oh, look, sweeting!” she cried. “There’s London Bridge!”

The girl looked eagerly. During the last days of traveling, as they plodded through heavily mired ways, up and down the Weald, entered and left a score of villages, spent the night at two inns far more luxurious than the Spread Eagle, Celia’s gnawing black hurt had receded. She had walled it off in a secret cell. She knew that it was there, but she could ignore it.

She stared at the bridge. Her mother had told her about it many times, and taught her the childish singing game.

“But, it’s all
houses,
Aunt,” Celia said frowning. “It looks like a street. I pictured it of marble, like the chimneypiece in the Great Hall at Cowdray!”

“Aye, Maiden,” said Wat, laughing, “dreams’re seldom like the truth. Ye’ll learn that in time.”

“No doubt!” answered Celia pertly, with a slight toss of her head which tickled Wat. He was delighted that the girl had recovered from the dumpish sulks with which she had started the journey. He was amused that his son, young Simkin, had taken to reddening and goggling when he helped Celia down from the saddle. Might be a match one day, Wat thought. When the lad grows up a bit. He’ll not be a stableboy long. I’ll see to that. If I send him a-soldiering he might rise fast i’ the world. Wat understood that Lady Ursula had ambitions for her niece, but he thought they were foolish. Celia was only a tavern wench, with a bastard father from an extinct stock. Steward wouldn’t even seat the girl above the salt. That showed her station! And Lady Ursula herself—her equivocal position at Cowdray was obvious to all.

“’Tis here, Lady,” he said to Ursula, pointing and nudging her horse. “Sir Anthony’s lodging. I trust the caretaker’ll be about since they’ve had no notice.”

Wat showed his party into the erstwhile cloisters. The central garth was planted now with turnips and pot greens. Four of the priory rooms had been sparsely furnished with bedsteads, tables, stools and cupboards, but they were dusty and airless. The caretaker, a doddering monk kept on by old Sir Anthony out of charity, was finally discovered snoring on a straw pallet.

“Wake up, Brother!” cried Wat, shaking the skinny shoulder. “We’ve come from the master at Cowdray!”

The old man jumped. He clutched his tattered habit around him, and peered up with frightened eyes. “I’ve done naught wrong,” he whispered. “There’s been no Masses here. Ye can look for yourselves—there’s naught papist here . . .”

“Nay, nay—” said Wat impatiently. “We ben’t King’s proctors. We come from Cowdray, from Sir Anthony Browne. We’ll stop a bit. Bestir yourself, ye old trout.”

Under the combined reassurances of Wat and Ursula, Brother Anselm lost his fears and brightened into garrulity. He had been alone in the priory rooms for months, suffering from a leg playfully injured by one of the King’s men when they had come to arrest Sir Anthony. “Tripped me up wi’ his pikestaff, did the blackguard,” Brother Anselm explained. “Same one who took an axe to our little altar and crucifix which we thought well hid i’ the old cupboard.”

Celia kept her eyes away from the monk as he rambled on. There was no reminder of the secret blow except the monk’s habit; and being Augustinian as well as filthy, it bore scant resemblance to Stephen’s, but she whisked into practical matters—laying their bedding on the steads, helping Simkin kindle a fire to cook dinner. Food and action keep miseries at bay—this she had learned in childhood.

The next two days were spent in seeing London. Ursula was as excited as Celia as they rode through the city from the sinister Tower to Temple Bar, then gaped at the palaces along the Thames until they reached Westminster. Agog as any country folk they gazed at the Abbey, and set foot in the portal. But Ursula would not attend a service there. Her Catholicism she had taken for granted in Sussex; in London she began to realize how destructive the new religion was. As they rode the streets they constantly encountered ruins. Priories, convents, hospitals and churches (those not rededicated for a parish) all had been torn down the stones carted off to build Protestant mansions The streets seemed very odd without the friars the monks the nuns who used to throne them Their place was taken by starving beggars who lay moaning near the door steps, hopeless and without asylum.

“’Tis horrible—” said Ursula one morning on the Strand, as a tattered scabrous woman suddenly screamed, vomited blood and died before their eyes. “Nobody cares for them now. Nobody cares for the old, the sick, the poor.” She had doled out all she dared from the purse Anthony had given her for expenses, but it did so little good. And prices had doubled since she had been in London years before.

Celia was naturally less appalled. She was not mature enough to understand human suffering in which she had no part. But as Ursula continually exclaimed in pity, Celia was forced to recognize the wickedness in the callous transformations. The Crutched Friars’ Church was now a tennis court where young gallants batted balls. St. Mary’s Hospital of near two hundred beds had been razed; nettles grew in the ruins. The Church of the Knights Hospitallers had been blown up with gunpowder. Everywhere they looked they might see jeweled fragments of stained glass, or broken crosses piled in heaps.