August 1327
On the walk back to the village, William questioned the reeve until he was reassured that Sir Richard’s man was no more informed than himself.
“Take it as a mark of favour,” suggested the reeve. “And the priest will accompany her. Think on the extra wedding gift…Besides, his command is law in these parts.”
William nodded, but was unconvinced. He kept his doubts to himself; nor would he trouble Christine with his concerns.
Seven days after her father’s encounter with Sir Richard, Christine accompanied her priest at the appointed hour. She had bathed in the Tillingbourne stream that ran past Ashe Cottage and had applied an herbal potion to her hair. Barefoot all summer, she had put on the sandals that William had crafted for her the previous winter. Her long hair reached to the waist of the dark blue kersey dress that he had bought for her during his first and only visit to the fair on St. Catherine’s Hill, near the castle in Guldenford.
“You have dressed to wed,” Peter the priest joked with her as they made their way to the manor house, but he seemed uneasy with his jest.
Christine blushed and replied, “Father, this is my first summons to the lordly house. Should I dress as though to herd pigs or milk our cows?” She had a sense of her own worth, tinged with youthful vanity.
Just as her father before her, so too was Christine made to wait an hour outside Sir Richard’s antechamber. When they entered, Sir Richard was alone. This time the windows were all shuttered, and guttering candles lent a comforting warmth to the darkened room. The table was set with wine from Aquitaine, although red stains shamed the exquisite white cloth which covered it. The lord, with his face almost hidden by a green hood, sat on one of the side-benches, engrossed in cleaning his long-sword with a leather strip. For a minute the priest and Christine stood in the middle of the hushed chamber.
The priest coughed. “My lord, I have accompanied William the Carpenter’s daughter at your request.”
Sir Richard shook back his head and the hood slipped on to his shoulders. Christine, noticing something odd about his eyes, trembled slightly, but told herself she had nothing to fear.
“Thank you, Father,” said Sir Richard softly. Rising to his full six feet three inches, he pulled out a small velvet bag. “I have here ten groats. Five for you to carry to William the Carpenter as a gift for the wedding feast and five for extra prayers tonight in my chapel for God’s guidance in directing my stewardship of this demesne.” Sir Richard handed his man the coins, an addendum to the groats he had bestowed privately upon the priest.
“How long should my devotions in your chapel be?” the priest asked, with as much suspicion in his voice as his position would allow.
“Pray, sire, until I bid you stop,” Sir Richard replied impatiently. “Do you presume to measure God’s guidance? Pray for Christine’s soul, but remember where your earthly duty is bound.”
The black-robed cleric, his head bowed and hands in prayer, walked slowly out of the antechamber and closed the heavy door.
Christine had not followed this conversation closely because she had been too overwhelmed by the majesty of the great hall, and was now intrigued by the patterns on the tiles adorning the walls of the chamber. When she realised that she was alone with Sir Richard she felt as though she were but a child, so she fixed her gaze on a wax candle impaled upon a vertical spike with a tripod base.
Flattered by the invitation, she had expected a brief homily on her devotions to earthly and heavenly lords. Instead Sir Richard said, “Will you taste the fruits of Aquitaine?”
Christine’s eyes searched for fruit on the table, before Sir Richard offered her a goblet. She had never drunk wine but, surprised, she took it as her lord beckoned her to sit beside him on the bench. She sipped the wine and pursed her lips at the strong taste. Despite the sourness, she found it enticing.
She had not yet spoken, but Sir Richard intruded on her silence. “So you are to marry the tailor’s lad? Do you find him handsome?”
Christine did not know how to answer, but stumbled out a reply: “Simon, the son of Andrew the Tailor, is a good man, sire. From a Godly family.”
Sir Richard smiled broadly, displaying his stained and broken teeth. “Have you tasted him, Christine, as you now taste this wine?”
“I…I know not…what your lordship means,” stuttered the girl.
“Have you coupled with him, girl?” the lord said angrily. “Are you bovine, like the cows? I had thought that God had created a head to match the bounteousness of your limbs. You are the fairest creature I have seen among those who live on my land.” He paused, then added more softly, “I have watched you working in the fields.”
Christine, clutching her goblet tightly, looked down at the flagstones beneath her feet. She became conscious that her breathing was somehow difficult, shallower, more desperate, as though suffocated by the darkness of the room and Sir Richard’s presence.
He shifted down the bench to her side and whispered in her ear, “Are you untouched by man, Christine?”
She could smell the wine on his breath. Looking straight ahead and mustering as much dignity as she could, she said, “Sir Richard, if I am bid to answer to such questions, I will tell you that I am a Christian woman. The sacrament of marriage is as sacred as my prayers to the Holy Mother. Plainly, sir, I am pure in body, although I confess my venial sins readily to Father Peter. I will come to my husband as a maiden.”
“Good. That is how the Church dictates, despite the abasement of your rustic life. I am glad you shall go to the altar in goodly conscience, as our Lord demands.” Christine let out her breath in relief, but then Sir Richard contorted his face into a half-smile, half-sneer. “And your earthly lord demands his pleasure too…”
Before she could react, Sir Richard had taken her roughly by the shoulders and kissed her hard upon the lips. Her arms pinioned by his great bulk, Christine’s pewter goblet fell and clattered across the floor. She let out a strangled cry, staring in terror towards the door in the hope that the priest would hear her distress. Somehow she managed to loosen his grip and stood up as if to run. Sir Richard caught her hem and seized the sword upon the table. He crouched and, holding the weapon low and vertical, raised its tip to an inch beneath her chin.
“Christine,” he said calmly to the shaking girl, “I will have my pleasure of you this night. I will not take your maidenhood, but I will take you in Byzantine way. No one will hear you if you scream. There is no man nearby except that sodden priest who receives my stipend besides. You will do what you are bidden and then depart…I would rather there be no force, but if you resist I will have a soldier’s way and not that of a courtly knight.”
The summer ruddiness in Christine’s face had disappeared. She felt as though all the blood in her body had sunk into her feet and all the air had been squeezed out of her lungs. She gasped and cried out to the heavens: “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness…”
“You have no rosary, child,” said Sir Richard with mocking kindness. “No Hail Marys will help you. You can make your penance after.” His tone hardened. “Take off your robe or I will cut if off.” He let the weapon just touch her chin. “Take off your clothes now,” he shouted, his lips slightly flecked with foam and his eyes hungry with malice and lust. “Now. Now!”
She did his bidding and gently raised her robe over her head, then clutched it in front of her body.
“I will see it first. Let me see your maiden’s shame.” Again he raised his sword to her neck.
“Let it fall,” he shouted, as if to a band of soldiers.
She stood there, naked except for her new sandals, petrified, eyes squeezed shut, trying to cover herself with her hands.
“By the Holy Cross,” she heard him scream. “I will kill you now if you do not obey me. Take your filthy peasant’s hands away.” There was not a bat-squeak of pity in his words.
Tears poured down her cheeks as silently she prayed to St. Katherine the Martyr. Her eyes still shut, as if by not seeing she could not be seen, Christine lowered her hands.
“Aye, a goodly sight, that it is. Fine curves, strong legs and you have cleaned yourself,” said Sir Richard, as if he were appraising a fine horse. He took the wine jar off the table and sent his goblet away with a sweep of his arm. “Lay yourself upon the table. You can hide your shame. Lay on your belly along the table. Do it! Now!”
Her legs would hardly obey her, but she kneeled upon the bench and then forced herself to flatten her body across the table. Trembling in every muscle and teeth chattering, she felt utterly exposed, her body as white as the cloth on which she lay. She sensed her tormentor moving behind her and felt something tight around her right ankle and then her left as her legs were forced apart and tied fast with cord to the trestles beneath the table.
“Nay!” she screamed. She squirmed to unloosen the ankle bonds, but Sir Richard was too quick. He seized her wrists and forced them down and apart as he tied them to the thick trestle supports.
For a minute the lord surveyed his trussed prize, reliving his own sexual past. His wife, cold, always absent, thank God, a marriage forced upon him, a coupling of vast estates, not ardour. And before that, the beatings, the endless humiliations at the abbey. Isolated in Northumberland, far from family, sent to learn how to read and write about the saints; the bribes of the abbot, a leg of chicken perhaps, some stale bread more often, the whippings if he cried after he was tied and sodomised…Anger rose like bile, and he wanted to kill every living thing in creation, so that no one would know of his ignominy.
He raised his sword and gazed at her helpless, heaving, fleshy rump. Much better to thrust his steel into that instead of the bones in her back, more satisfying…
Sir Richard was brought back from the brink by a prayer he recognised from his schooldays, as Christine wept and prayed to all the saints she knew.
“Hold fast your tongue, and cease that prattle. Cease that noise, I say, or I will cut out your tongue, girl. Do not doubt my words.”
Christine did not. She managed to stifle her prayers.
Sir Richard’s mood swung back from frenzy to mock sympathy: “Few women of your position have tasted their lords. Consider this an extra wedding gift.” As he spoke, he stroked the contours of her back with the flat of his sword. “Hush, woman, a stallion-ride to hell is better than a feast of swords.”
Sir Richard loosened his leather belt and pulled up his robe as he positioned himself at the end of the table. He swallowed a deep draught of wine from the jar and swilled it around his mouth, then projected a mouthful of red spittle into his cupped hands. He rubbed them together enthusiastically, before rolling up his sleeves. Grunting at his own inspiration, the knight scooped a lump of goose-fat from a small wooden tub on the side-bench and anointed her rear, pausing to admire his handiwork. Satisfied with this preparation, Sir Richard pulled the girl towards the end of the table; the bonds stretched her arms and she screamed, but the movement allowed him to bend her almost at a right angle.
Then, legs astride, as if preparing for combat, he thrust himself hard into her. For a second, the breath was squeezed from her body. Then a red-hot searing pain ripped through her insides. The sound that emerged from her mouth was not so much a human scream, but more like the last mortal cry of a hunted deer. A long, eerie animal noise filled the large room. “Sweet Jesus, let me die,” she shouted.
“This is the devil’s ride, Christine,” he gasped. “The coupling the learned Greeks did applaud. I will leave the other to your husband. Be thankful that I leave a virgin for him.”
He pushed himself deep inside her, the more savage his penetration the better the revenge on those who had abused him in his youth. Every murder and every rape were steps to the complete oblivion of his shame. In his few reflective moments, he rationalised these actions as his physical confession, an atonement, a purging of his memory. His erect phallus was a sword of redemptive justice. Thus inspired, he grasped her hips to keep himself engaged while her screams and pain stoked his lust. “Aye…aye…this be a ride indeed…scream on then, girl…I…break my horses when they whinny thus.”
In his final thrusts, Sir Richard grasped the back of her neck with both his hands; Christine, shouting, crying, choking for breath, prayed for death to end her agony. She felt she was being crucified on her master’s table. As he reached his grunting climax, he collapsed on top of her with his full weight and sunk his teeth into the nape of her neck. The extra pain devoured her ebbing strength and she lost consciousness for a few blessed seconds.
As suddenly as he had attacked her, Sir Richard extricated himself from his victim. Half-heartedly, he wiped some of the blood from his stomach, and swiftly adjusted his clothing. His lust spent, he quickly undid the bonds.
Almost tenderly, he said, “Put on your dress.”
But she could not move nor speak; her wounded body pulsated with pain and her breath rattled from her parched mouth. With her arms stretched out, as if in rigor mortis, she appeared to be nailed to the wood. Roughly, he pulled her from the table and laid her along the side-bench.
“Compose yourself, girl. Here are five groats. If you speak of this again, you and yours will be ejected from this demesne. Be sure of that. You are a virgin still. Be thankful that I have taken my pleasure thus. Here, take this cloth and sop up those tears. I will summon the priest and he will compose you before you go.”
Christine still did not move. Sir Richard picked up her discarded gown and propped her up on the bench. Pulling up her arms, he dragged her clothing over her. Christine slumped trembling back on the bench and, lying on her side, hunched her ravaged body into a foetal ball. In her trauma she prayed silently to God for strength. The sin of Sodom, she knew, was like murder and oppression of the poor, sins which cried to heaven for justice. Her love of God and family had been despoiled by hurt, and anger, and fear. And vengeance. All these emotions ran around her brain like screeching demons.
Sir Richard walked to the antechamber door and called to the priest: “Father, this maid has been bad afflicted by the dropsy. She began to foam and shake and I tied her to the table for the moment in case she did me or self a hurt. I have tended her with wine. Take her with you and pray for her…Call my doctor to her home and leech her well. Charge me all the potions. For her wedding day she must be strong. I will call for a horse and wagon to help her on her way. Be sure my kindness in this event is announced to all who wish to know, and that you were present for all the stages of this fit.”
Father Peter thought, but could not say, “To Christine it must have been the Stations of the Holy Cross.”
When the priest entered the room and saw the prone figure of Christine, an immense anger welled up inside him. The murder of his patron was his first thought, followed immediately by his concern for Christine. He started to rush to her, but Sir Richard raised the flat of his hand to stop him. The priest ignored him, but the crusader’s powerful sword arm propelled the priest to the floor.
Sir Richard strode dramatically to Christine as she lay frozen on the bench. He kneeled in full concern and knightly grace. “Christine, be strong. If I hear that you have not recovered well, I may have to summon you again. I will hear from the doctor how you progress. Farewell.”
Father Peter, named after the Rock of Christ, helped Christine stagger to the door while cursing Sir Richard under his breath. The girl appeared to be in a trance, her consciousness swamped by agony.
The priest was outraged by his lord’s cruelty to Christine and disdain of the Church. Speak to others of the crime he could not, but Christine would be his charge. Prey sometimes he was to temptation, yet the pure remnant of his vocation would tend to her. All this he swore to God and to himself.
Christine took to her bed and remained there in fevered silence. Apart from murmured requests for a little food or drink she did not speak to family, doctor or priest. Soon the fever worsened with the leeching. The wedding was postponed, for the presence of Christine’s betrothed aggravated her illness.
William the Carpenter tried to seek out the priest, but Father Peter skilfully avoided being alone with him. Eventually, he had no choice: William had waited outside the church door for hours.
Eschewing his normal deference, William struck at the heart of the matter: “What has FitzGeoffrey done to my daughter?”
Throughout the difficult interrogation, the priest lied and lied to protect his stipend and his shame. He counselled William not to question their lord, warning of his famous temper.
“Damn his temper, Father. A judge to hang him is the course if I find that he has harmed my girl.”
“Hush, man. Fear his sword then if you despise his anger. His sword is the law, remember.” The priest reached out to touch the man’s arm, but William recoiled.
“Pray for Christine instead. Intercession with a mightier Lord is better counsel, Will,” said Peter with utter sincerity.
William grew even angrier at the failure of the priest to look him in the eyes. “If Christine dies, I will kill that knight with my own hands…”
The priest finally accepted the challenge of the carpenter’s frenzied gaze. “Your hands may be the strongest in this valley, but they are useless without a sword in them. Sir Richard has killed many men by the sword, and he has armed followers. You have nothing. Hold your temper, Will, and pray.”
The carpenter managed to contain his anger as, with one final contemptuous look, he turned and walked away.
Father Peter prayed in earnest, both at Mass and at Christine’s bedside, as she slipped in and out of consciousness.
William called a healer from Netley, who at first said that she had had a fit and that it would soon pass. When it did not, the local man summoned from Guldenford a wizened sage who administered a potion concocted from rare mushrooms; he also covered her upper body with an ointment made from juniper berries. For three days many such remedies were applied, but without effect, and finally he resorted to his rarest medicines: borage for ailing lungs, and mastic for heart palpitations.
When Christine did not respond to even these powerful potions, the Guldenford sage, with some insight, announced, “Christine is suffering from what the old monks call accidie, a sickness of the soul, where nothing has meaning, and all days seem the same, in an endless string of pain…until death. Sadly, this is the worst case I have seen, and I fear I can do no more; a priest is best.”
He returned home, and left Christine to endure her inevitable fate. Soon, her pale face grew white and mottled like speckled marble. Her breathing became erratic and heavy gasps rattled in her throat. All her courage and joyful independence, every fibre of her being, had evaporated, and so had her will to live. Even the instinct of inhaling and exhaling had almost been lost. Finally, after a month of suffering, Father Peter was brought in to perform the Extreme Unction, the final sacrament.
Duval rewarded himself with a large brandy for creating a scene of which he could be proud. He was sufficiently self-aware to realise that many critics might describe his style as stilted, his characters as two-dimensional and his subject matter perverted, but he knew they would be wrong; he did not want the fripperies of style to mask his essential search for truth. Evil had to be exposed, and his writing was his absolution, the way for his soul-perhaps-to pass through purgatory. Heaven, he sometimes suspected, was not waiting expectantly for him.