The Owl Killers

november

the feast of saint andrew, crucified on an x-shaped cross, patron saint of fishermen. saint rule set sail with the relics of saint andrew to discover where saint andrew wanted his bones to rest and in a storm he was cast ashore in fife, scotland. thus he concluded the bones wanted to be housed in scotland.

i CALLED HER GUDRUN as her grandmother Gwenith named her. It fitted her. “My little Gudrun.” Sometimes when I said it she even turned towards me as if she knew her name. Servant Martha said Gudrun was a heathen name for it means the gods’ secret lore. So the Marthas gave her a new name, Dympna, because she had the falling sickness. It’s cruel to name a child for the affliction that torments her. I bet it was Servant Martha who suggested it. She’d be the first to point out someone else’s weaknesses.

Servant Martha tried to baptise the child too, for neither Gate Martha nor Pega could recall her ever being brought to St. Michael’s, but the Devil would not easily come out of her. Gudrun desperately fought the Marthas who held her, as if they were trying to murder her. Finally she managed to break free and ran out of the chapel to hide in the space between the byre and stable, a gap so narrow you’d think a cat could hardly squeeze in. I sat outside with her half the night murmuring nonsense, trying to coax her to come out with offers of food. She did, eventually, but she never answered to the name Dympna.

At first she ranged restlessly around the beguinage, trying to find a way out, while Servant Martha for her part tried in vain to impose some discipline and order in Gudrun’s day. It was the first time I’d ever seen Servant Martha defeated by anyone. Gudrun could not be set to the simplest of tasks. She wandered away in the middle of sweeping a room, or else crouched in a chaos of wet linen, staring up at the sky in a trance. During services in the chapel she gazed at the candles and the paintings on the walls of the Blessed Virgin, wandering over during prayers to trace the outline of a face with her finger. The clanging of the bell terrified her. She’d press her fingers to her ears and run into one of her hiding places until it stopped. She never seemed to get used to it.

Servant Martha tried to bring her to heel by telling her she would get no food if she didn’t work, but Kitchen Martha and I smuggled food to her in spite of Servant Martha’s instructions. It was pointless to punish Gudrun. She didn’t understand. Hunger was so much part of her life before she came to the beguinage that she didn’t connect it with her actions; to her, it was simply another senseless blow falling without reason. Besides, if I didn’t smuggle food to her, she’d only steal it from the kitchen or the beasts, so I was saving her from a worse sin.

She refused to wear the beguine’s kirtle, repeatedly throwing it off, scrubbing her skin as if it hurt her. All her life she had worn nothing but a light shift and the kirtle must have felt so heavy to her. But Servant Martha insisted her short ragged shift was indecent for a girl of her age, so I stitched her a new linen shift, long enough to cover her, but light enough for her to bear the weight of it. Servant Martha pursed her lips, but said nothing. Even she recognised that it was better that Gudrun wore the shift than walked around half naked. Besides, the girl never left the confines of the beguinage, so who was to see her except us?

Servant Martha had given orders that Gudrun was never to be allowed out of the beguinage. We were not to let her work in the fields for fear that she’d simply wander away and starve by herself or, worse, be drawn to the village to steal food. The villagers already feared her; add theft to her list of crimes and they wouldn’t be inclined to mercy.

We didn’t even take Gudrun with us when we buried her grandmother. There was no point in asking leave to bury Gwenith in the churchyard. Thanks to Servant Martha, the priest wouldn’t grant a Christian burial to any who had lain within our walls, not even on the north side of the church among the unshriven souls. And even if he had, Gate Martha said that the villagers would dig Gwenith up again, dismember the corpse and scatter the pieces, or drive iron nails into the soles of her feet to stop her ghost walking. If they feared her in life, they feared her twice as much in death.

So we took Gwenith’s body back up the hill to her cottage and buried the old woman beneath the stones of her own hearth. In the end the four of us who had brought her down were all the souls who escorted her back up the river to her grave. We buried her quietly and quickly, indecently quickly. I don’t think Servant Martha had forgiven Gwenith for laughing on her deathbed; that’s why she was so determined to force her granddaughter through the gates of Heaven, just to spite the old woman. But how can a soul be brought to salvation, if she can’t understand? And what did Gudrun understand except that the sun was warm and the rain was cold? And her birds, she understood the birds.

Her raven wouldn’t enter the beguinage, but he perched on the outer wall each day at noon, croaking until Gudrun came to him. Gate Martha tried to drive him away by waving a broom or throwing stones. She said a raven hanging about the place was unlucky, a death omen, but it was no use, for the bird would simply flap a little way off and perch in a nearby tree cawing as loudly as ever and watching for a chance to return.

But it wasn’t just the raven Gudrun loved. Whenever I couldn’t find her I knew just where she was hiding. I’d tiptoe into the pigeon cote and there she’d be, squatting on the flagstones, with the pigeons on her shoulders, nestling into her warm hair. They’d lie as quietly in her open hands as if they slept in their own nests. She had a way with them, knowing at once when a bird was sick and how to heal it. Unable to go out to look for herbs, she’d go to the stillroom and take any she needed, pushing aside anyone who tried to stop her. Healing Martha gave her freedom to come and go as she pleased; she said that Gudrun knew as much about curing birds and animals as she herself knew of healing man.

At night, Gudrun slept in the cote, curled up in a heap of straw on the floor, birds nestling against her as if they brooded her. I didn’t try to stop her anymore. On cold nights I’d creep in and cover her up with a blanket while she slept. I’d stand and watch her, her face buried beneath her arm, her hair turned to red-gold in the yellow flame of my lantern. I’d listen to the steady breathing, watch her fingers curled like an infant’s, her baby lips parted as if she was waiting to be kissed. I could watch over my little Gudrun all night.

And it was because of Gudrun that I didn’t leave the beguinage when Servant Martha told us that Father Ulfrid had excommunicated us all. I should have gone when I had the chance. Servant Martha gave us a choice, if you can call what she offered a choice.

“If any of you wish to return to the beguinage in Bruges, we will arrange immediate passage on board ship for you.”

A sea crossing in the middle of winter; who would be crazy enough to attempt that? It had been bad enough in summer. It was like saying to a prisoner you can rot in jail or you can escape by running through a hall of mad dogs.

She’d assembled us all in the chapel after dark. Andrew’s reliquary lay on the altar in front of us, beneath the crucifix and the painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The rest of the Marthas sat around Servant Martha, facing us, grave but composed. Servant Martha rose and stood taller and straighter than ever, the candlelight casting a giant shadow of her on the wall.

The Marthas must have known what she was going to say, but we mere beguines had heard not a whisper of what had been discussed and there was a shocked silence in the chapel as Servant Martha told us what the priest had demanded-the relic and our public penance or excommunication. Little Catherine, sitting beside me, began to sob like a terrified child when the words sank in.

Servant Martha, ignoring Catherine, let us digest these momentous facts for a few moments, then she presented us with her solution. We needed no priest to mediate between us and our Lord; we would consecrate the Host ourselves, she said. We would give it to one another as the first Christians had done, as indeed, Christ had intended that night He met with his disciples.

“Women feed the world,” she declared, “from the cradle to the grave, nourishing the unborn in the womb, suckling the infant, feeding husband, children, friend and stranger, the old, the sick, and the dying. Is it not the most natural thing in the world that our sex should give the bread of life to the soul just as we give it to the body? Is it not in fact our natural part, our role, our calling?

“We recite each day that God’s spirit is in us. Should we not stand upon the truth of what we say or is it just an empty phrase, a hollow piety? If our spirit is with God and as God, if God is in us and we are in Him, then why should we not consecrate His body as He does ours?”

The beguines stared at one another. Servant Martha’s gaze swept the room as if daring any one of us to challenge her. I knew what she was saying was all wrong, but I could not put my arguments into words. Surely if anyone could consecrate the bread, the Church would have told us. How, after hundreds of years, could it suddenly be possible for a woman to do what the Pope said only a priest could do? But I knew whatever I said, Servant Martha could defeat with a clever phrase.

Servant Martha said any who believed what she was proposing was wrong should obey their conscience and leave the chapel at once. Then she sat down and watched us. All the Marthas watched us, except for Kitchen Martha, who stared miserably at her chubby hands, unwilling to look at anyone.

I should have left then. I could have gone back to Bruges, to the comfortable life I had so long regretted leaving. But I didn’t move. The sea crossing-yes, that was enough to dissuade the bravest soul-but I was thinking of Gudrun curled up asleep in the cote. I couldn’t leave her to the mercy of a woman like Servant Martha who had the warmth and compassion of a stoat. Someone had to look after the child. Gudrun needed a mother; she needed me.

No one rose and walked through the lines of beguines to the door. I don’t know why, perhaps they too knew there was no escape or maybe they really did believe what Servant Martha was doing was right. But that night we all ate the little piece of damnation she offered to us in her hands.

The Marthas rose and one by one extinguished the candles burning round the chapel until only a single candle burned on the altar in front of the miraculous Host. All eyes were turned to it, seeking shelter from the darkness in that one tiny flame. Then Servant Martha stepped forward and lit her candle; when the flame burned steadily she bent to light the one in the hands of little Margery, who served at the altar, then sent her into the body of women. We each lit our candles, one after another. The flame passed along the rows, from hand to hand, the light spreading, filling the chapel, driving the shadows from us into the deep corners and high up into the rafters.

Wherever these candles shall be set, the Devil shall flee away in fear and trembling with all his ministers.

As the light spread, the dancing began. Some of the women picked out the tune of the Nunc Dimittis on their instruments; the rest gathered it up in song as if it was a joyous Easter carol. I stood silently watching them becoming drunk on the light, as I grew more sober. I don’t know how long they danced, for we sang the Nunc Dimittis again and again, the last amen running into the first note as if they could not stop singing.

Servant Martha seemed content to let the psalm be repeated until the women were exhausted, then she broke the circle and placed her candle before the statue of the Virgin. One by one, we added our candles. The light swelled around the Virgin until she floated on a carpet of yellow flame.

Blessed art Thou that through Thy pure body, redemption came into the world and lifted the curse of Eve from man.

The beguines did not take their eyes off Servant Martha as she said Mass.

We have received Your mercy, O God, in the midst of Your temple.

She held the Host in both hands. Her hands trembled, but her voice rang out strong and hard as a Cardinal’s.

Domine, non sum dignus.

The hands of a woman lifted the chalice, His holy blood. I expected the chalice to shatter in her hand, as it had in the hands of Saint Benedict when the wine was poisoned. Was I the only one who saw the blasphemy of what she did? But they were all caught up in a rapture I couldn’t share. I was a beggar spying on a feast, smelling the food but not tasting it, hearing the music but not dancing. Even Pega, solid sensible Pega, was as witched as the rest by Servant Martha. She was actually smiling at Osmanna. The two of them were as excited as children unwrapping gifts. None of the women seemed to understand what Servant Martha had done. Not only had she cut us off from the Holy Church and from the sacraments, but now she was putting our very lives and souls in peril.