Chapter Three.
At first I panicked, backing away from the bed till I was brought up short by the wall and then sinking to my knees and covering my head with my arms, rocking back and forth and keening loudly. I felt as if I had been simultaneously kicked in the stomach and bashed over the head. She couldn"t be dead, she couldn"t! She couldn"t leave me all alone like this! I didn"t know what to do, I couldn"t cope. . . . Oh, Mama, Mama, come back! I won"t ever be naughty again, I promise! I"ll work twice as hard, I"ll never leave you, I didn"t mean to upset you!
My eyes were near half-shut with tears, my nose was running, I was dribbling, but gradually it seemed as though a little voice was trying to be heard in my head, and my sobs subsided as I tried to listen. All at once the voice was quite plain, sharp and clear and scolding, like Mama"s, but not in sentences, just odd words and phrases.
"Pull yourself together . . . Things to be done . . . Tell them."
Of course. Things couldn"t just be left. I wiped my face, took one more look just to be sure, then ran as fast as I could back to the village. Luckily the first man I saw was the apothecary. As shocked as a man could be, he hurried back with me to confirm my fears. He examined Mama perfunctorily, asked if she had complained of pains in the chest and shook his head as I described her symptoms of this morning, as best I could for the st.i.tch in my side from running.
"Mmm. Ma.s.sive heart attack. Pains were a warning. Must have hit her all at once. Wouldn"t have known a thing."
Indeed, now I had lit a candle for his examination I could see her face held a look of surprise, as though Death had walked in without knocking.
"Will tell the others. Expect us later." And he was gone.
Expect us later? What . . . ? But then the voice in my head took over again.
"Decisions . . . Burial . . . Prepare . . . Food."
Of course. They would all come to view the body, decide how and when she should be buried, and would expect the courtesy of food and drink. What to do first?
"Cold . . . Water . . ."
The fire was nearly out and there was a chill in the room. For an absurd moment I almost apologized to Mama for the cold, then pulled myself together, and with an economy born of long familiarity rekindled the ashes, brought in the driest logs and set the largest cauldron on for hot water. With bright flames now illuminating the room, I checked the food. A large pie and a half should be enough, with some of the goat"s-milk cheese and yesterday"s loaf, set to crisp on the hearth. There were just enough bowls and platters to go round, but only two mugs; I could put milk into a flagon and what wine we had left into a jug and they could pa.s.s those round. Seating was a problem; the stools and Mama"s chair would accommodate three, and perhaps two could perch on the table or the chest. The rest would have to stand.
The water was now finger-hot, and I turned to the most important task of all.
Crossing to Mama"s clothes chest I pulled out her best robe, the red one edged with coney fur, and her newest shift, the silk one with gold ribbons at neck and sleeve, and the fine linen sheet that would be her shroud.
The heat from the fire, which had me sweating like a pie, had relaxed her muscles, so it was an easy enough task to wash her, change the death-soiled sheets, pad all orifices and dress her in her best. That done, I combed and plaited her hair and arranged it in coils around her head, but was distressed to see that the grey streaks would show once I had the candles burning round the bed. She would never forgive me for that, I thought, then remembered my inks. A little smoothed across with my fingers and no one would notice. . . .
I crumbled dried rosemary and lavender between the folds of her dress for sweetness, then went outside and burned the soiled sheets and the dress she had been wearing when she died. Outside it was quite cool, the sun saying nearer four than three, and the smoke from the bonfire rising thin and straight: a slight frost tonight, I thought. On the way back in I gathered some late daisies and a few flowers of the yellow Mary"s-gold, and placed them in Mama"s folded hands, then set the best beeswax candles in the few holders we had around the bed, ready to light once it grew dark.
I looked at her once more, to see all was as she would have wished and to my amazement saw that Death had given her back her youth. Gone were the frown lines, the pinched mouth, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She looked as though she were sleeping, her face calm and smooth, and the candle I held flickered as though she were smiling. She was so beautiful I wanted to cry again- "Enough! Late . . . Tidy up. Wash and change . . ."
I heeded the voice, so like hers-but it couldn"t be, could it?-and a half-hour later or so I had swept out and tidied, washed myself in the rest of the water, including my hair and my filthy clothes, hanging out the latter to dry over the hedge by the chicken run, and had changed into my other shift and my winter dress. Mama would be proud of my industriousness, I thought. But there was no time for further tears, for I could hear the tramp of feet down the lane. My mother"s clients come to pay their last respects.
Suddenly the room, comfortably roomy for Mama and me, had shrunk to a hulk and shuffle of too many bodies, with scarce s.p.a.ce to move. The only part they avoided was the bed.
They had all come: mayor, miller, clerk, butcher, tailor, forester, carpenter, thatcher, basket-maker, apothecary; all at one time my mother"s regular customers. The new priest was the only odd one out. In spite of their common interest I noticed how they avoided looking at one another. At last, after much coughing, scratching and picking of noses, the mayor stepped forward and everything went as quiet as if someone had shut a door.
"Ah, hmmm, yes. This is a sad occasion, very sad." He shook his head solemnly, and the rest of them did likewise or nodded as they thought fit. "We meet here to mourn the sudden pa.s.sing of someone who, er, someone who was . . ."
"With whom we shared a common interest?" suggested the clerk.
"Yes, yes of course. Very neatly put. . . . As I was saying, Mistress Margaret here-"
"Margaret? Isabella," said the miller.
"Not Isabella," said the butcher. "Susan."
"Elizabeth," said the clerk. "Or Bess for short."
"I thought she was Alice," said the tailor.
"Maude, for sure . . ."
"No, Ellen-"
"I"m sure she said Mary-"
"Katherine!"
"Sukey . . ."
I stared at them in bewilderment. It didn"t seem as though they were talking about her at all: how could she possibly be ten different people? Then, like an echo, came my mother"s voice: "In my position I have to be all things to all men, daughter. . . ."
The mayor turned to me. "What was your mother"s real name?"
I shrugged my shoulders helplessly. "I never asked her. To me she was just- just Mama." I would not cry. . . .
"Well," said the priest snappily, "you will have to decide on something if I am to bury her tomorrow morning. At first light, you said?"
They had obviously been discussing it on the way here.
"It would be . . . more discreet," said the mayor, lamely. "Less fuss the better, I say."
"Aye," said the butcher. "What"s over, is over."
"What I want to know is," said the priest, "who"s paying?"
They all looked at me. I shook my head. I knew there were a few coins for essentials in Mama"s box, but not near enough to pay for a burial and Ma.s.s.
"I don"t think she ever thought about dying," I said. This was true. Death had never been part of our conversations. She had been so full of life and living there had been no room for death. I thought about it for a moment more, then I knew what she would have said. "I believe she would have trusted you, all of you, to share her dying as you shared her living."
I could see they didn"t like it, but there were grudging nods of a.s.sent.
"What about a sin-eater?" said the priest suddenly. "She died unshriven.
Ma.s.ses for a year and a day might do it, but . . ."
More money. "There isn"t one hereabouts," said the mayor worriedly. "I suppose if we could find someone willing we should have to find a few more coins, but-"
"I"ll do it," I said. "She was my mother." I couldn"t leave her in Purgatory for a year, even if I was scared to death of the burden. "What do I do?"
But no one seemed very sure, not even the priest. In the end he suggested I take a hunk of bread, place it on my mother"s chest and pray for her sins to pa.s.s from one to the other. Then I had to eat the bread.
It near choked me, and once I had forced it down I was a.s.sailed by the most intolerable sense of burdening, as though I had been squashed head down in a small box after eating too much.
They watched me with interest.
"Is it working?" asked the priest.
"Yes," I gasped, and begged him for absolution.
"Excellent," said the priest, looking relieved. "We shall repair to the church, choose the burial site and you may confess your mother"s sins and I shall absolve her."
It was cold inside the church for the sun was now gone and twilight shrouded the altar, mercifully hiding the mural of the Day of Judgment which, faded though it was, always gave me nightmares. To be sure, there were the righteous rising in their underwear to Heaven, but the unknown artist had had an inspired brush with the d.a.m.ned, their mouths open on silent screams as they tumbled towards the flames, poked and prodded by the demons of the Devil.
The priest led me through Mama"s confession-it was very strange confessing unknown sins for someone else-and he told me to confess to absolutely everything, just in case. Some of those sins he prompted me with I had never even heard of.
"Now you may either say a thousand Hail Marys in expiation, or perhaps find it more convenient to make a small donation," he said hopefully.
As it happened I had the change from buying the salt still tied round my waist in my special purse-pocket, so he gave me a hurried full absolution to our mutual satisfaction. Immediately it seemed as though the dreadful heaviness left me, just like shucking off a heavy load of firewood after a long tramp home. Now Mama could ascend to Heaven happily with the rest of the righteous.
We came out into a dusky churchyard, and found the others grouped in the far corner against the wall.
"This"ll do," said the mayor. Next to the rubbish dump. "It"ll take less digging and is nicely screened from view. Why, you could even scratch the date of death on the wall behind. Pity she couldn"t lie next to your father, girl, but of course his bones were tossed to the pigs long ago-"
"My father?" I could not believe what I was hearing. My father had been driven away by jealous villagers and dared not return; my mother had told me so.
"Of course. Led us a merry chase, but we caught him about two mile into the forest, and-"
"She doesn"t know," interrupted the miller, glancing at my face. "Happen her Ma told her something different." He looked at the others. "No point in bringing it up now."
I could feel something crumbling inside me, just like the hopeful dams I had built as a child across the stream, only to see them crumble with the first rains. I had cherished for years the vision of a handsome soldier-father forced to leave his only love, my beautiful mother, and now they were trying to say- "Tell me!" I shrieked, the anger and bewilderment escaping me like air from a p.r.i.c.ked bladder, surprising them and myself so much that we all jumped apart as though someone had just tossed a snake into our midst.
So they told me, in fits and starts: apologetically, belligerently, defiantly. At first it was just as Mama had related it; there had been fever in the village, the stranger had sought refuge at our cottage and they had enjoyed their secret idyll. Then everything had gone wrong. Houses left empty by fever deaths had been looted, and as they reasoned no one in the village could have been responsible, they had searched farther afield, and had found some of the bulkier objects hidden in a sack at the rear of our dwelling. My father had run; they had pursued him into the forest where a lucky arrow had brought him down. Although he was dead they had had a ceremonial hanging in the village, then had chopped him in pieces and thrown the pieces to the pigs.
So the man whose memory I had cherished, the father who my imagination had made taller, handsomer and braver than anyone else in the world, was nothing more than a common thief!
"I don"t believe you, any of you! You"re all lying, and just because Mama isn"t here you"re-you"re-" I burst into tears. But I knew they were telling the truth; they had no reason to lie, not after all this time. But the anger and frustration would out, and I switched to another hurt. "And I won"t have Mama buried next to the midden! She must have a proper plot, a proper marker, a decent service and committal, just as she deserves-"
"Now look here, girl," interrupted the butcher angrily. "Don"t you realize we have to pay for all this? Now your Ma"s dead you have nothing, are nothing. Of all the ungrateful hussies-"
"Easy, Seth," said the clerk. "She"s upset. None of this is her fault. It"s up to us to do the best for-for . . . I"m sorry, girl, I don"t think I remember your name."
"My name?"
"Yes," said the tailor. "Always just called you "girl," as your mother did."
There were nods, murmurs of confirmation from the others.
"Well?" said the priest.
I stared at them all aghast. I could feel myself falling. . . .
"I haven"t the faintest idea. . . ." I croaked, then everything went black.
Chapter Four.
They brought me round with hastily sprinkled font water.
I had never fainted before in my life and I felt stupid, embarra.s.sed and slightly sick. Their faces swam above me like great moons, in the light from the miller"s lantern. For a moment I could remember nothing, and then it came back like a knife-thrust: Mama was dead, my father a thief, and I had no name. In a way the last was the worst. Without an ident.i.ty I was a blank piece of vellum, a discarded feather, the emptiness that is a hole in the ground. I felt that if I let go I should float up into the sky like smoke, and dissolve as easily. I was deathly frightened.
Then somebody had a good idea. "You must have been baptized." Of course, else would I not have been allowed to attend Ma.s.s.
They helped me to my feet and we all repaired to the vestry, where by the light of the lantern and the priest"s candle, the fusty, dusty, mildewy parish records were dragged out of a chest.
"How old are you?"
But I couldn"t be exact about that either, till the miller suggested the Year of the Great Fever, and there was much counting backwards on fingers and thumbs and at last the entry was found, in the old priest"s fumbling, scratchy hand.
"Here we are. . . . Strange name to call anyone," said the present priest. Only the clerk, he and I could read, and I bent forward to follow his finger. There it was, between the death of one John Tyler and the marriage of Wat Wood and Megan Baker. The cramped letters danced in front of my eyes, but at last I spelled it out.
No date, but the previous entry was June, the latter July.
"Baptism of dorter to the Traveling woman: one Somerdai."
"Somerdai . . ." I tried it out on my tongue. "Summer-day." And Mama had called herself one of the Travelers. All right, she had given me an outlandish name, but at least I now existed officially. And, according to the records, I was seventeen years old, and knew something more of Mama"s origins. All at once I felt a hundred times better, and was able to invite them all back for the funeral meats almost as graciously as she would have done.
It did not take them long to demolish everything. I closed the shutters, made up the fire and lighted the candles around Mama; they threw our shadows like grotesques on the whitewashed walls and made it look as though Mama sighed, smiled and twitched in a natural sleep.
The mayor accepted the dregs of the wine jug, drained them and brushed the crumbs from his front. Clearing his throat, he addressed us all.
"I now declare this special meeting open. . . ."
What meeting?
"Having determined to settle this little matter as soon as may be, I think it is now time for us to agree on our previously discussed course of action."
My! They had certainly been busy amongst themselves, either on the way here or in the churchyard. . . . But what "little matter"?