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Vixen
Rosie Garland
Rosie Garland’s extraordinary tale is a story of superstition and devotion in the time of the Black Death and will bewitch both new readers and fans of her much-loved debut, The Palace of Curiosities.Devon, 1349. In Brauntone, where seagulls screech across the fields and the wind has a mind to change, Father Thomas arrives as the new priest. Determined to impress his congregation, he quells fears of the coming pestilence with promises of protection.For Anne, the priest’s arrival is an opportunity that at sixteen, she feels all too ready for. Convinced a grand fate awaits, she moves in as Thomas’s housekeeper, though hopeful of something more. But his home is a place without love or kindness. So when a strange, mute Maid is discovered, washed up in the marshes, and taken in, Anne is grateful for the company. Their friendship is to give Anne the chance of a happiness she thought she’d never know.But soon the plague strikes Brauntone, spreading panic. And as the villagers’ fear turns to anger, Thomas must sacrifice everything to restore their faith in him.
Epigraph (#ua9fbb700-2dba-51c4-ba73-13f764e6f689)
Love is the longing
for the half of ourselves
we have lost
from The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
Table of Contents
Cover (#ue043ea75-4675-5d51-af9f-e40fef986a4a)
Title Page (#u30f57c30-57e3-508e-ac46-2eec7f40b3f5)
Epigraph
Map (#ufbad61fb-fa37-57a7-9c55-4fcb6539c8f2)
Vigils: 1395
Anne
Advent: 1348
Vixen
Mattins: 1349
Thomas of Upcote
Anne
Vixen
Lauds: 1349
Thomas of Upcote
Anne
Vixen
Prime: 1349
Thomas of Upcote
Anne
Vixen
Terce: 1349
Thomas of Upcote
Anne
Vixen
Sext: 1349
Thomas of Upcote
Anne
Vixen
None: 1349
Thomas of Upcote
Anne
Vixen
Vespers: 1349
Thomas of Upcote
Anne
Vixen
Compline: 1349
Thomas of Upcote
Anne
Vixen
Nocturns: 1349
Thomas of Upcote
Vixen
Nunc Dimittis
Anne
About the Author
Also by Rosie Garland
Copyright
About the Publisher
VIGILS 1395 (#ua9fbb700-2dba-51c4-ba73-13f764e6f689)
ANNE (#ua9fbb700-2dba-51c4-ba73-13f764e6f689)
I declare at the start that I was muddle-brained and spoilt. There. It is out.
For all that, I shall have my say. I wasted years holding my tongue, and the older I grow, the less I am inclined to wastage of any kind, be it time, or bread, or affection. I have not been a particularly good woman, by the reckoning of men. Nor have I been especially wicked. I have been close enough to Death to rub elbows, and what I saw in His eyes did not affright me.
Before I go into His great sleep, I should like to see the village once again: walk along Silver Street, turn west at the crossroads on to Church Street, lift my skirts and paddle through the ford where the Caen runs shallow, pass the church and arrive at the house. There shall I pause, hand on the gatepost, and look up the path to the door. Memory preserves things as they were, not as they are: I see the windows shuttered, more oilcloth than glass in the panes; the thatch half-rotten; the raw patch on the door where the Maid picked at the wood. Therein I saw out my fifteenth and came into my sixteenth year. Such a scant number of months, yet they encompassed a lifetime.
I think of the child I was. I think of Margret, my beloved friend. What she had in prettiness I possessed in plainness, although no mirror could persuade me of that fact. I was queen of my hearth, and carried that conviction into our games. I envied her and she bore the burden of my contrary nature with great meekness. I wish I had been a kinder companion. For does not Paul declare that the first shall be last and the last first?
I wish I could have seen where my feet were carrying me, the dangers of that path. If I had my time again – but here I go, twittering pointless wishes and dreams.
Perhaps my greatest foolishness was to think a grander fate awaited me: better than my sister Cat and her snot-nosed hatchling; better than my dam, planting turnips to feed us through hungry winters; at the very least, better than my brother Adam, gutted for some lord’s whim on a battlefield far from home.
Adam was an oak given breath: as tall, as strong, as gentle. When I wept he was my comfort. He strove to make me laugh, made me his special pet, bore me on his shoulders in games of horse and rider where I was his little lady fair and he my sturdy palfrey. He brought me pretty morsels: a roasted pigeon’s heart, marchpane from the Staple fair, a ribbon so blue I thought the sky should hang its head for being outdone in blueness.
He rose each morning, the sun of my life. The light he cast warmed the mud of my childish heart and I bloomed. I spent many an hour squeezing the muscles of his arm, transformed into rock by the rigours of drawing back the bowstring until the fletchings tickled his ear. How I cheered him at village contests, although he never carried off the prize. I could not understand, in my mind he was the best archer, the best brother, the best man at every task. He was my first love, my best love. I adored him with the innocent and all-consuming passion of a child, before she eats the apple and knows evil in the world.
Then, one spring, just after Candlemas, he was called to fight in France and we did not see him again. We lacked his body to grieve over, and mourned an emptiness that was without solace. I howled fit to tear the sky in half. I wanted God to tumble through the rift and fall to our patch of earth so that I could stick out my lip and demand, face to face, that He bring Adam back from dust. I was greedy with misery and believed none other felt it but me. No one slapped me out of my selfishness, not even Cat. I wept and wept until, just as suddenly, I stopped.
I woke that morning and watched my soul quit my body, slipping across the sea to join Adam. I became a girl without a shadow, a half-girl. I ate, I slept, I crouched over the bucket and squeezed myself empty, but was as lacking of life as the wooden saints in the church. My hands made gestures, my feet moved when commanded, but I was stiff, carved from some tough material that was no longer flesh.
When I placed myself in the path of the new priest, Father Thomas, I reasoned that it was out of desire and affection, rather than a hunger for possessions to fill the empty place in my soul. I thought to find consolation. Not raising up to an estate I had no right to, but some peace. I wanted a mild man who lifted his hand only to bless me; a modest house to call my home; a son who toddled on fat legs to bury his face in his mother’s lap. I did not start making sense of the world until much later.
I lost the better part of myself when Adam died and did not get any of it back until the Maid came to the village. My Maid, if I may make so bold – and I do, for I have grown courageous. Of all the folk who have burnished my life, she is the one I wish to see the most. She was flint to my iron. Dull as I was, she struck fire and I have burned bright since that first spark.
I think of her always; yet she comes rarely to my mind. It is a conundrum and I apologise. She was never fenced in, not with words and certainly not by any effort of man. I fear I will not capture her, either. But that part of my tale must wait a short while. There is more to tell, and there is time.
ADVENT 1348 (#ua9fbb700-2dba-51c4-ba73-13f764e6f689)
VIXEN (#ua9fbb700-2dba-51c4-ba73-13f764e6f689)
Must I speak?
Must I stand here, say my piece? Make my words dance to the cramped tune of quill and ink? Must I squeeze myself onto the scored lines stretched tight across this page of parchment? I have no time for books – not that the likes of me can read them. Wear out my eyes squinting at scribbles when I could be lying on my back looking up at the clouds? I’d rather read their restless journey from lands where no man has set foot, and what they saw there.
I need no one, I want no one and no one wants me. That is the finest way to pass through this world, running so swiftly even the air cannot stick. I shake off everything as a fox sheds its tail when the hounds take hold. I’ll skip through this world tailless rather than not at all.
I scratch my scars: the ones on my back, the ones between my legs, the ones between my ears. They itch, particularly when the wind has a mind to change. This year is such a wild turnabout that the earth creaks with the upside-down, pitch-and-toss of it all. What’s at the end I know not, but a topsy-turvy world suits me. It opens new doors to slide through and leap out onto a different side.
Through it all I sing and dance and keep a step or two ahead of Death. Of course He is always there, but for the most part keeps His distance: playing His pipe on the roof-ridge of the next church but one, supping ale in the tavern I was in yesterday, banging on my neighbour’s door all night. The rat-tat-tat keeps me awake but I do not care, for it is not my door.
This year He draws too close for comfort.
I’m the first to see Him. I’m on the quayside, watching ships come in. He stands on the prow of the largest, waving. I’m the only one to wave back. Even from this distance I can hear Him piping out the mortal tune that is playing across the world, from Jerusalem to Rome and all the way to this slack lump of muck.
A woman at my elbow, head bundled up against the winter, says, ‘Who do you see? Who’s there?’
‘Don’t you see Him?’ I say.
‘Who?’
‘The pestilence!’ I cry.
‘Don’t say that!’ she hisses. ‘What are you trying to do; bring it down upon us?’ I laugh until she twists away, making the sign of horns with her fingers.
The moment the ships tie up, it begins.
I see three ships come sailing in with wine and glass, bolts of cloth and spices, things I may name but never dream of owning. Mooring ropes are thrown out: hands catch them, loop them tight, sew the hulks to the hem of the harbour. Rats skitter down the ropes and into town. The gangplank sticks out its tongue and the hold breathes out. I smell what’s on the air. These ships are spewing out the taste of Death.
I know the truth as I know the lines on my hand: this is the Great Mortality come at last. I see Him: strolling down the walkway, trailing rotten robes, worms tumbling in his wake. He steps on to the quayside, licking His lips, for He loves the savour of man and woman, old and young, rich and poor. I look Him in the eye and He grins.
‘Aren’t you afraid of me?’ He growls, and only I am shrewd enough to hear. ‘Aren’t you fearful of my bony fingers, ready to snatch and snuff you out? Of the smile that stretches to my ears? My wormy guts, the sores and scars and scabs I’m studded with? Doesn’t it make you want to piss yourself and run?’
Of course I’m terrified. Only a simpleton would not be. But I fix His hollow eye with mine and shrug. I’ve seen worse painted on church walls: seen bloodier, blacker, harsher.
‘Let others run, and scream, and fall,’ I say. ‘If it’s really you, I’d rather dance.’ I smile. ‘I’ve heard so much about you. About the fever you bring this year.’
Oh, how He picks up his heels and rattles them along the street! Elbows clattering in and out, knees up, knees down, fingers snapping, clapping His great jaws together, arms a frantic windmill.
‘All fall down!’ He sings.
There’s never been anything so fit to make you roar: we two capering fools, skipping along the harbour wall. I laugh until I ache. Of course, He falls in love with me and I have to dodge His kisses.
‘Marry me!’ He croons. ‘I’ll give you such a dowry as will snatch your breath away! Make you the richest bride in seven kingdoms!’ He promises. ‘I’ll furnish a feast that goes on seven days and seven nights! Silk for your sheets! Wine till you burst!’
But dancing is all I want. So I dance, and watch others die.
The harbour-dwellers are first to sicken. They say it’s foul air brought by the ships. The breath of a latrine may make me gag, but cannot kill me. I’ve cleaned up rich men’s shit for long enough to know.
I see men die, and beasts live. Especially the horses: Death hates their odour, which makes me love it, purely to annoy Him. Then there are the rats, too small for men to notice. What is a rat? Of no more consequence than a girl. A girl who does not know her letters, but can read men. Who does not know her prayers, but knows what they are for. Who is tired of waiting for a saviour to turn stones into loaves.
