The Owl Killers

servant martha

iBLEW OUT THE CANDLES in the chapel as the women, yawning, shuffled off to their beds. Finally, when the chapel was in darkness save for the eternal flame hanging above the altar, I closed the door and made my way wearily towards my own room.

The precious hours of dark between Lauds and Prime promised something more important even than sleep: the chance of solitude away from the chatter and noise which filled the courtyard all day long. There were a hundred problems constantly plucking at my sleeve and I found myself longing for just a day, an hour even, away from them. Usually I took great comfort in the kneeling forms of the women gathered around me in the gentle candlelight, but that night I’d found even their quiet breathing a distraction from my prayers.

Across the courtyard, a glimmer of yellow flame shone dagger-thin through the shutters of Andrew’s room. She had been locked away from the world for ten years, for her every waking moment spent in communion with our Lord. She didn’t even have to concern herself with who would feed her, still less with who would feed them.

My sister Eleanor was like that. As a child she had no idea what effort it took to put food on the table or clean linen in the cupboard. She simply expected that it would be there whenever she reached out her hand for it, and it was. I kept house for my father, and the household was well run: the accounts in order, always a good table for his guests, the beds sweet and clean, and servants who troubled him with nothing. And yet I don’t think he spoke more than a dozen words a day to me, but his face lit up at the sound of her voice if ever my sister’s husband brought her to visit, which wasn’t often. Eleanor’s visits became even rarer after our father took to his bed, when he could no longer control his bowels and shook with the palsy. She said the stench made her sick and soured her milk. Dangerous for pregnant women and nursing mothers, she said, and she was always in one condition or the other.

I tried so hard to provide for the beguines and to take in every broken soul that men had rejected. Yet at every turn I found obstacles hurled in my path and sometimes, Christ forgive me, it felt as if the obstacles came not from the Devil, but from God Himself. Was God so jealous that He punished us for the time we gave to the wretched and sick that might have been used to worship Him? I could not believe that. Yet what if I was wrong? That night I could not find even words for my prayers, but Andrew’s prayers were given angels’ tongues.

I WAS SHAKEN AWAKE. My legs were so stiff and numb that I pitched forward as I tried to rise. It was still dark. I must have fallen asleep where I knelt beside my cot.

Gate Martha caught my elbow and helped me as I struggled to my feet.

“What… what is it?” I asked her.

“The grey friar who came with Andrew is outside,” she whispered. “I told him to go away and come again after Prime, but he insists he must speak with you now, Servant Martha. He’ll not budge.”

“I thought he had returned home with Andrew’s mother. What can he want and in the middle of the night?”

As usual she shrugged, but her yawns told me that for once she had no real curiosity to find out. She just wanted him gone from her gate, so that she could return to her warm bed.

Wrapping my cloak around me I followed the light from Gate Martha’s lantern towards the gate. Taking the lantern from her I slipped outside, instructing her to bar the gate behind me. If there was trouble outside I had no wish to invite it in.

It was a cloudy night. I held the lantern up before me, but saw only trees and shadows. One of the shadows spoke. I spun round, my heart pounding. The lamp illuminated only a thin nose beneath the cowl pulled down low over his face.

“Servant Martha, forgive me for disturbing you at this hour, but it’s safer for all of us if I’m not seen here. Can we be overheard?”

I knew he was thinking of Gate Martha. I led the way down the track a few paces to reassure him we were alone. Then I turned to him impatiently.

“What do you want of us?” I was half dead with tiredness and in no mood for courtesies. “Do you bring another sick soul to us?”

“No, I bring this.”

He held out a small wooden box. In the flickering lantern light I could just make out the image of our crucified Lord carved upon its lid.

“For Andrew,” the friar said. “It is the body of our Lord. Seven pieces. You must give it to her each day after she makes her confession to you. It is all the nourishment she will take.”

I shrank back. “You should not even have such a thing in your possession! Where did you get it?”

“Please don’t ask me, Servant Martha. It is better you do not know. But you must take it, for Andrew’s sake. You know that your priest will not give her the sacrament daily; indeed it is very likely he will refuse to give it to her at all once he knows that she was sent away from St. Andrew’s and what is said of her. But she must have it, else she will die in spirit as well as in body.”

“Do you have any idea what you are asking?” I demanded. I found myself glancing round fearfully, even though I knew there was no one near. “I cannot give our Lord’s body to Andrew or to anyone and nor can you. Have you not eyes to see, Brother? I am a woman. You know as well as I do that only a consecrated priest may administer the sacraments. For you, a friar, to dare such a thing is sin enough, but for me… Don’t you realise that the penalty for committing such a blasphemy would be flogging and imprisonment at the very least, even mutilation or worse?”

He was still holding out the box to me as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

“Servant Martha, I know that your sister beguines in the Low Countries have done so before, when the priests have refused them the sacraments. And I ask not that you take this for yourself, but that you offer it as a servant of our Lord to a soul in need. How can that be a sin? The lowliest servant may offer venison to a guest in the King’s hall, though he himself owns neither deer nor forest. Did not the first Christians share the bread and the wine among themselves, each giving it one to another? You know the love that Andrew has for our Lord. She needs no priest to mediate for her; she is risen beyond that. She reaches out to her soul’s love, her sacred bridegroom, and He to her. They have no need of a marriage broker. For her soul’s sake and yours, do not separate her from her Lord.”

I shivered and drew my cloak tighter around me. The light from the candle in the lantern danced on the box held out before me and the crucified figure on the lid seemed to move his arms, stretching them out to me. I found my fingers closing around the box and I cried out as they grasped it. The box was warm, as if the figure on it was carved of living flesh.

The Franciscan folded his hands back into his sleeves, in a gesture that seemed to say his hands had always been empty and innocent.

“I will come on this day and at this hour every week to refill the box, Servant Martha. Leave it after the midnight prayers in the alms window in the outside wall with the shutter unfastened. I will reach in and find it. We should not be seen meeting again. Dominus vohiscum. The Lord be with you, Servant Martha.”

“Et cum spírítu tuo. And also with you.” My lips spoke the words without thought. And then he was gone, sliding away into the shadows as if he was one with them.

The road was empty. Were it not for the box clutched tightly in my hands, I’d have sworn that I still slept and talked with ghosts in my dreams. Only the trees stirred above my head. The clouds slipped across the moon and the night suddenly grew much darker. I hurried back to the gate, knocking softly until Gate Martha let me in. She was too sleepy even to bother questioning what had transpired, though her curiosity would doubtless return in the morning. I would have to think of some explanation, but not now. I was too tired to think about it now.

Once I was safely back in my room with the door fastened, I looked round for some kind of hiding place for the box, then thrust it behind some linen on my shelf. My hands were trembling violently. I squatted down by the embers of the fire, clamping my hands under my armpits to keep them from shaking.

Why had the Franciscan asked me to do such a thing? He had no right to lay this terrible burden upon me. Yet Andrew was depending on me. Her soul, everything she had given her life for, was for this one end-to die in God’s grace. If the sacraments were denied to her now, her whole life would have been a pointless waste. I could not stand by and see a life thrown away. I could not keep from her what her soul needed.

But I was a woman; I could not possibly offer anyone the Host. It was forbidden; it was unthinkable. And yet… and yet, I was the only one who could give it to her.