Duval was feeling good. This capture had been easier than the others, and it pleased him that he was becoming more efficient and ruthless. Somebody might have seen him put Marda into his car, but how? It was so secluded and dark behind the church. If someone had seen him, surely they would have shouted? No, he was safe. Guildford was not so far, and she had not stirred. That hurtbane potion had worked; an old trick, dating back to the Norman Conquest, which could topple a man for an hour or so if applied correctly.
It was dark driving through the almost unlit village of Shere, and even if someone had seen him in his car with his dog up front, nobody would think twice about it. His driveway at the top of a dead-end lane was completely obscured by trees and bushes. He had been taking a chance, but he had done it. No one would ever know.
He lit the big wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and relaxed in his wooden rocker. In front of him he contemplated the pile of Marda’s belongings. First, he checked through her handbag and removed her address book, purse and keys, then, once the heat in the stove was intense, gradually fed its remaining contents into the fire. Her shoes, tights, skirt, blouse and jacket followed methodically. Duval hid the chloroform bottle in his attic, just in case he might need it for another chosen one. Marda’s purse, address book, keys and watch he put in a secret drawer, to be examined later before their disposal.
After making a cup of tea, Duval treated himself to a hot bath and sat down at his study desk, giving his crucifix a lop-sided grin which any fly-on-the-wall onlooker might have interpreted as a wink. An aura of contentment settled upon him, and he recalled part of a medieval parody of a monk’s prayer:
Meum pectus sauciat
puellarum decor,
et quas tactu nequeo,
Sa item corde mechor.
He loved the sound of Latin vowels, and the vigour of his own translation pleased him even more:
Wounded to the quick am I
By a young girl’s beauty.
She’s beyond my touching?
Well, can’t the mind do duty?
“I shall write tonight. I can feel my words flowing,” he confided to the crucifix.
July 1331
Christine knelt and thanked God for His mercy and His sign of the stigmata. She knew He would understand her leaving and He would condone the breaking of her vows by granting her a holy indulgence. Her bleeding hands were the perfect symbol of the Christian passion, absolute proof; no writhing and howling like Mistress de Kempis.
In her frenzy, Christine had managed to remove two of the stones that stood aligned with the bolts. Parts of her fingers had been worn almost to the bone, and deep gouges despoiled her arms.
To Christine, her own endeavours were God’s miracles; her head was spinning, her senses dulled and vision blurred by pain. On the sixth day after she believed God had granted her the visible signs, she managed to make enough room for her thin wrist to move the bolts.
She kicked the trapdoor open with almost the last of her strength, climbed through it, and stepped blinking into direct light for the first time in two years. The breeze embraced her cheeks as she staggered through the churchyard on legs that had not taken more than one or two paces at a time in almost two years.
Christine recalled and felt overwhelmed by the story of Christ walking on the water, when His lightness of being had overcome gravity. She was following His holy steps, although she did not glide across the ground. In a misty twilight, she limped slowly and painfully to her father’s house, where William opened the door to her weak knock. He could not speak, but Christine smiled on her father; he had visibly aged even more in these past weeks.
“Father. Look on these hands-God has blessed me with the stigmata. These holes are my Heavenly permission. He has told me I can leave the wall. I must be free to do His will outside this cell. His will shall be done.”
William stared in stupefaction at his daughter’s hands, seeing wounds from clawing at stone but no stigmata. He tenderly gave his arm to Christine to help her balance as he sat her down on a bench.
Helene ran to the girl, and grasped her tightly. “God be thanked, you needed to be free from that wall or you would have died.”
They fed her, and bandaged her hands. Neither Helene nor William could tell their beloved first-born that torn hands did not a miracle make, that proof of the stigmata required more than bloodshed and fever.
Duval fingered the knob on the end of the typewriter carriage, and rubbed the stump of his severed digit with his thumb while scrutinising his notes for a few minutes. He was drying up. Taking out a small riding crop from his desk drawer, he struck the top of his thigh as hard as he could. He punished himself thus five more times before returning to his work.
Little is known about the period that Christine spent away from her cell…
He stopped typing, angry with himself.
“Of course little is known. Most of this is the revelation I embrace when Christine speaks to me.” He almost spat the words at his crucifix.
“Christine,” he said aloud, “where are you? I have harvested another woman for you.”
He could not feel the presence of the anchoress. “You are not in my head,” he moaned. “Do you want me to visit you now?”
Duval left his study and checked in the kitchen to ensure that the trapdoor leading down into the cellar was bolted. Putting on his raincoat, he grabbed the lead and whistled for Bobby.
It was a short trudge in the rain down to St. James’s. He instinctively did not want to be inside a church at that moment, so he walked around to the northern section and, leaning against the outside wall of the cell, he waited. After ten minutes he seemed to feel a force emanate from the cold, wet wall. Now he understood what Christine had endured, and what he had to write.
Within fifteen minutes, Bobby was curled up in front of the stove and Duval’s fingers were dancing on the typewriter.
In the initial tumult of her reunion with her family, little was said about the alleged stigmata. The next day, at dawn, Christine set out for the journey to Peaslake, accompanied by her father. She asked her mother to tell Father Peter that she would seek out the bishop and explain her flight from the cell. If she could, she would renew her vows. But she had to see her sister, even if the price was excommunication.
Although exhausted emotionally by her recent trials, Christine-hooded to avoid any neighbours’ stares-walked at first with relative ease. Every part of creation seemed to be bursting with life: she heard every bird-call, saw every leaf, and every tree proclaimed a miracle. The whole world was welcoming her and for a while the seriousness of her mission was transcended by God’s bounteous earth. The sweet, rich smell of cow dung teased like jasmine, every sense was exaggerated beyond measure. But soon she grew tired, not of the green wetness, but because her body was not accustomed to walking, so her father made her stop every half-mile to rest.
William said very little, his thoughts consumed by his many burdens. During the third rest, sitting on a fallen oak tree, he finally asked, “Will the bishop allow your penance and return-even if that be your desire? Besides,” he went on, “our family is in lowly esteem with Sir Richard. It may be that we all shall be banished by lord and bishop. Perhaps your mother and your brother should have journeyed with us, and then all flee together from Peaslake? While there, we are within the grasp of bishop and lord.”
Christine felt none of his uncertainty. “Father, we must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. I will seek out the dean and bishop, as is my promise, and throw myself upon their wisdom and their mercy. The dean will advise about the injustice done by Sir Richard. Our lord bishop is no friend of Vachery Manor, either. This is known.”
“I doubt not your piety, my daughter, but a village girl, two long years enclosed, may not judge too well the politicking of Church and nobility.” He touched her cheek, drawn and pale with fasting. “But we must be on. ’Tis many a long stride to Peaslake, especially with your weak limbs. Or I may have to carry thee like a new-born lamb.”
At the end of a bitter-sweet day of fatigue and yet reinvigorated senses, Christine and her father arrived in the hamlet of Peaslake, where William’s cousin lived in a row of three wooden houses rather grandly misnamed Queen’s Cottages. One end of the cottages was adorned with a massive dung heap, and the other with a haystack. A pig rushed from the middle house, where Margaret was staying.
Adam, William’s first cousin, greeted them at the door, hospitable despite his surprise.
“Welcome to my home, cousin,” he said. “Good it is to see you. What be it? A year or more? And who be with you in the hood?” Adam started. “Heavens above, it be your Christine. Special leave from bishop then to see your Margaret?”
Christine just nodded as she stooped to enter the dank main room.
Adam’s wife bustled with formalities and offered mead while the children and chickens were shooed out of the room, which was illuminated by a solitary rush light. On a rough straw palliasse Margaret lay sick, but she managed a smile for her closest kin.
Christine hugged her sister as silent tears merged into tiny rivulets chasing down their cheeks. Christine, reluctant to move from the embrace, eventually kneeled beside her sister and, making the sign of the Cross, said a prayer for the sick. The whole room fell quiet as the anchoress prayed.
Finally, Margaret broke the silence: “I be sick in my body, Chrissie, but you need not forsake your holy vows to visit me. Were I well, I would have come to your cell. Has a privilege been granted by the bishop?”
Christine shook her head. “Of bishops and lords will we parley anon, but first tell me what ails thee. Father said your confinement was not a goodly one.”
“Two months or so I think will be my term,” she said grimacing, “but the pains are on me now. The village midwife says it may be nigh, albeit before it be full-grow’d inside.”
She winced as she said this and put both her hands on her extended belly.
Christine put her bony, wounded hands on her sister’s firm ones. “I will tend you till your time. I will not leave my sister. If our father will speak with our kin here, I am sure that I can stay alongside you, to offer help and prayer as much I can.”
William left the next day while Christine stayed in Peaslake, even though she was summoned by the bishop’s man to hasten to Guldenford. Of the threats of ecclesiastic court she did not speak to Margaret.
Left much alone, the two sisters talked of childhood games. On the second night Christine, despite her wounded hands, spent an hour delousing her sister, as she used to do when they were at home together in Ashe Cottage. It was during this sisterly ritual that Margaret confided her story. No tears came now; the pain she had endured was beyond such manifestations. After the story was told, Margaret said, “May I bathe your hands and apply the potions, before new bandages?”
Christine nodded gratefully. Alone, the sisters were reunited in their torment. In turn, Christine finally shared her experience of Sir Richard to help ease her sister’s pain and guilt. Both had suffered too much at their lord’s unholy hand.
“I vow upon the Cross that I will take vengeance for you,” said Christine. “I care not now for the hurts I endured, but will seek our rights by court, if justice there be in our troubled land. To the dean will I speak.”
“I thank you,” said Margaret, “but we are the poorest in this land. And e’en you have left your saintly course, so will the dean or bishop attend your words?”
“It will be well.” Christine spoke with confidence. “God has answered my prayers, I promise. Now let us talk of your unborn son-for a boy-child I think it be.”
Two weeks passed and Christine was joyous in the family atmosphere. Despite the tragic happenings she was rarely discomfited by the throng of bodies in the small, smoke-filled cottage, and she said her prayers either to herself or quietly in the vegetable garden at the rear, not wanting to stray too far from her sister.
There was no doctor in the hamlet, a deficiency which did not trouble the locals because the last one had leeched to death at least two of his patients. His occasional forays into surgery had resulted in even higher mortality, and he had moved to Guldenford to return to his real vocation as barber and pedlar of magic potions. In contrast, Matilda, the midwife, was much respected. William had left some groats to pay for her attentions to Margaret; he had been warned that the labour would be long and difficult.
It was made more difficult by threats from Sir Richard’s armed men when they eventually visited Peaslake, so Adam arranged for Margaret to be carried in an ox-cart to a woodman’s hut deep in the forest. Christine did her best to make it more homely, but the move was dangerous.
Despite the best ministrations by the midwife and Christine, Margaret began to bleed copiously after a healthy son was pulled out feet first, after much struggling. The loss of blood was too much for the sixteen-year-old girl. They tried to staunch the flow with all the herbal remedies known, but to no avail.
Ghostly white, Margaret found the strength to cradle her son for a few minutes, and even managed these words: “Shall we name him William Adam…after my father, and the kindness of cousin Adam?”
“Hush, now. Sleep. Restore your strength,” said the midwife with kind authority in her voice.
And sleep she did, for eternity.
William and Helene had been summoned; they arrived too late, just as a friar was conducting the final rites. After a few attempts at comforting words of Christian resurrection, the friar departed, his tonsured head showing sunburn as he ambled nonchalantly into the woods. What mattered a hasty funeral compared with his reward of a good meal?
After her own simple words of farewell, Helene cut her daughter’s nails and put the parings, along with a lock of her hair, in a small cloth bag. This she would keep with other relics from her parents and her grandparents, unconsciously honouring a pagan order from long before the message of Christ found its way to these islands. William busied himself with constructing a suitable wooden cross for the grave.
Christine prayed unceasingly for her sister’s soul, but also planned her words for the bishop’s court. She remained for another two days, hidden in the deepest wood, insisting that she would see her sister buried in Peaslake even though she had been warned that armed men awaited her. At the church, four soldiers stood guard, but they were Christian men, and allowed the funeral to be completed. Thereafter, without chains, she was taken to Guldenford.
Duval looked at his watch. It was five o’clock in the morning, and his mind wandered back to other times. His earlier selections had been made away from Shere, one removed from Weybridge, two from the Dorking area, and one from Reigate. The first one had been selected in London, but that had been a mistake. Too rushed. Duval now knew he needed time to gauge their suitability, yet he also needed his anonymity in Shere. It was much easier to lose people in bigger towns, but Shere was small, perhaps too small. Marda, though, had been easy prey.
He usually liked to leave his guests in the cellar for a day or so on their own; they were much quieter, easier to manipulate, after the initial panic had subsided, but this time his curiosity was getting the better of him. Marda was going to be different, interesting and compliant, he felt sure. Duval bathed, scrubbing himself extra clean, then brewed some camomile tea and poured two cups.
Despite the thickness of the door to her cell, Marda could hear a muffled sound of another door opening somewhere outside. She sat up, tense and alert.
It must be him. Her mind was racing. Has he come to release me? To explain some terrible mistake? She dared not think of the alternatives.
She could make out footsteps on a stone floor outside. Something metallic slid across the outside of the door, and a shaft of light entered her tomb. She had not noticed the fifteen-inch-square indentation in the door, shielded by a solid metal grille on the outside.
Instinctively she edged towards the back of her cell and huddled in the far corner of her wooden bench. The presence of light seemed both magnificent and ominous as it jabbed at her eyes. Her dark world had been transformed only for seconds, but her fear made them seem acute, long minutes.
Duval’s strong face peered in, transfixing Marda like a rabbit bewitched by a headlight. Not able to speak, she just trembled.
Duval spoke matter-of-factly: “I have brought you some herbal tea. You’ve had a difficult night. I am sure you need something.”
He handed her a cup through the grille. Desperate for something to drink to take away the acrid taste in her mouth, she stood up to receive it as Duval passed it through the hatch, but she could only stare at him.
“Drink it,” the priest said kindly, as though making small talk with a parishioner in his study. “It’s camomile tea; I have just brewed it. Milk spoils it, but I put sugar in for you. I don’t know if you take one or two spoonfuls, so I compromised by putting in one and a half. Sugar is good for shock.”
Duval saw her hesitate as she drew the cup to her lips. She was like a deer in the Hurtwood, thirsty, quivering at the edge of a stream, sniffing a breeze tainted by the scent of man.
He smiled at her overwhelming vulnerability. “See,” he said, “I am drinking mine. Take this one. It has just one sugar in it. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
He handed her his cup, half empty.
“You will need something. When your stomach has settled, I shall bring you some cornbread, if you like.”
Marda stared at him as she carefully sipped the aromatic tea. A part of her felt like throwing it in his face, but her throat and mouth were screaming for some liquid, anything to drown the sour taste.
After the first sip, she gulped the remainder. It made her feel warm, and she found her voice. “Please, Michael,” she said, breathing rapidly, “let me out of here. I don’t know why I’m here. I’m sure there’s been some terrible mistake. Just let me out with an apology, even without an apology, let me go home, and we can forget all about it.”
The words cascaded, but Duval said nothing. He merely looked at her and smiled. In another context it could have been interpreted as gentle charm.
“There’s no need for the police,” Marda continued, her voice catching. “You can apologise. Explain if you can and let me go. Please. It’s terrible in here, and it’s very cold. Please let me have my clothes back and let me out.”
Duval casually took a sip of his tea.
She watched him through the square in the door, bathed in the light from the corridor. It was almost as if she were looking at her own black-and-white television screen, except that she could see the deep penetrating blue emptiness of his eyes. Cold blue counterpointed against the dark metal frame of the grille, and then the yellow of the light, enhancing the brown of his jacket, and the colours of his checked shirt…She felt faint again, but willed herself to challenge him.
“Speak to me,” Marda pleaded. “Tell me why I’m here, and when you’ll let me out. Have I done something to you? What? Tell me. What? Have you confused me with somebody else? I’ve never done you any harm, so why did you kidnap me? Why? Please tell me.” She was crying now. “My family has very little money. But if you want some, I’m sure my father will give you what you ask. Please tell me you’ll let me go.”
Finally Duval spoke. “There is no mistake, Marda. You are the one I need, as I think you need me. You are assuredly not a kidnap victim. You have been brought here for your own good. Indeed, I could argue that you brought yourself here…You have manifested your destiny, and I am a mere catalyst. Trust me. You will even thank me…in time.”
“What are you?” Marda shrieked. “A Russian spy or something? I’ve got nothing to do with politics or anything. I simply work for a wine company. I’ve never been to any communist countries. You can check up on me. You’ll know I’m telling you the truth.”
“I have checked on you,” Duval said patiently. “I have chosen you because of your truth. Now, if you are cold, I will look for something to dress you in. In a few hours I will bring you some refreshment. It isn’t very nice in this place so, with your co-operation, we can perhaps…later…look for ways to make it more comfortable…”
Marda stared at him in rage now. “I don’t want to be comfortable here,” she shouted. “I just want to get out. Please. Where am I? Is this some sort of prison? Am I in London? Who do you work for?”
“I work for no one but God.”
Duval’s words chilled Marda; not just the content, but the coldness of his tone, the deadly humourless conviction which so belied the smile. Duval seemed an embodiment of the belief that Christ never laughed. He spoke to her like a well-educated but bored post-office official helping a particularly stupid customer fill in a very simple form.
As he slid the grille across, the beam of light was removed; darkness reconquered the room and her soul.
She rushed to the grille to see if she could open it, but it was impossible from the inside. Putting her ear to the grille, she tried to catch some sound from the outside, and heard Duval say, “Hello, Julie. Hello, Denise. And you, Mary. Justine, you have company. And Dorothy, you used to be so lonely. You have a friend now.” As he said each name, Marda could hear a tap as if on separate doors.
So I am in some kind of prison with other women, she thought. Somehow that made her feel better. She was still terrified, but she was less alone.