Sacrilege

She watched me for a moment, her expression guarded. Did she blame me for her suffering?

‘The physician came and bled me daily, which only made me weaker, but he could find nothing wrong. Of course, once my aunt was satisfied that I had no bodily affliction, she concluded it was just monstrous idleness and warned me repeatedly that as soon as I was able I would be expected to take on some of the household chores. Hard work was the best cure for melancholy, in her view.’ The note of bitterness had crept back. She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and continued. ‘One morning I woke – I think it was around the feast of St Nicholas – with the sun streaming in through the shutters, and for the first time in weeks I felt like getting up. It was still early and the household was asleep, so I put on some clothes, wrapped myself in a woollen cloak and went outside. My aunt lived on the outskirts of a small town with rolling countryside all around, and in the early morning sun, all laced with frost, the view was so beautiful it took my breath away. I walked for an hour, got myself lost a couple of times, but although I almost wore out my poor exhausted body, I felt I was coming back to life.’ She smiled briefly at the recollection. ‘My aunt was furious when I returned – I think she feared I’d run away. She railed at me: what if the neighbours had seen me in that state, looking like some wild woman of the woods? She had a point; I had not washed in weeks and I was thin as a wraith. In any case, she made me undress and looked me over thoroughly, as you would with a horse, then she heated water to bathe me and spent a long time untangling my hair and washing it with camomile. I was surprised, as you might imagine – she was not usually given to such extravagance. She fed me well that evening and told me I was welcome to walk in the countryside if I chose, so long as I stayed away from the town and one of her housemaids accompanied me. So over the next few weeks, this is what happened. I recovered my strength, and something of the balance of my mind, or at least I learned to lock away my pain where it could not be seen and appear human again on the surface. But I was suspicious of my aunt’s changed attitude – she seemed almost indulgent towards me, and I knew enough of her to doubt that this was prompted by affection. She had also taken to locking me in my room at night.’

‘What happened to the household chores she had threatened?’

‘Naturally, I wondered. Until the child was born, I was protected, because they needed me. I had tried not to think too much about what my life would be once I’d served my purpose – I supposed that at best she would use me as some kind of cheap servant in return for a roof over my head. I expected her to hand me a broom the moment I was on my feet again, but instead, she started coming to my room in the evenings to comb out my hair – it was still long then,’ she said, rubbing self-consciously at the back of her neck – ‘and smooth scented oil into my hands. Not what you’d usually do for someone you mean to do laundry or wash floors.’

‘She had something else in mind.’

Sophia nodded, her mouth set in a grim line.

‘I found out a few days before Christmas. She came into my room one morning with a blue gown. It was beautiful – the sort of thing I used to wear …’ She broke off, turning away.

I remembered how she used to dress in Oxford; her clothes were not expensive or showy, but she wore them with a natural grace that cannot be purchased from a tailor, and always managed to look elegant. Very different from the dirty breeches, worn leather jerkin and riding boots she was dressed in now.

‘I hadn’t thought I cared about such trifles any more,’ she continued, ‘but when she laid it out on the bed, I couldn’t conceal my pleasure. She told me it was an early Christmas present, and for a moment I really thought I had misjudged her, that there was a buried vein of human kindness under that crusty surface. I was soon disabused of that, of course.’

I was about to reply when the serving girl appeared at our table to enquire whether we wanted any more of anything. I asked for cold meat, more bread and another jug of ale; Sophia’s tale clearly demanded some effort and I felt she should keep her strength up. When the food had been brought and she had helped herself to the cold beef, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and resumed her story.

‘She made me put the dress on and turn around for her. She seemed satisfied with the result. When she had pinched my cheeks hard to put colour in them, she stood back, looked me up and down and said, “You shall do very well, as long as you keep your mouth shut. Only speak if he asks you a question, and then make sure it’s a ‘Yes, sir’ or a ‘No, sir’. Understood?” When I asked who she meant, she merely tutted and shoved her sour old face right up to mine. “Your husband,” she said.’

‘I imagine you took that well,’ I said, breaking off a piece of bread, a smile at the corner of my lips.

‘I screamed blue murder,’ Sophia said, a grin unexpectedly lighting her face. ‘I’d have bolted if she hadn’t locked the door. As it was, she had to slap me around the face twice before I would be quiet. Then she sat me down on the bed and made me listen. “Do you know what you are?” she asked me. “You’re a filthy whore, that’s what, with no respect for God nor your family. Plenty in your situation have no one to look out for them, and they end up making their living on the streets, which is no more than you deserve. But you can thank Providence that I have found a better arrangement for you. A decent man, respectable, with a good income, has agreed to take you to wife. You can change your name and leave your whole history behind you. You’re still young and can be made to look pretty. All you have to do is be obedient and dutiful, as a wife should be. If you’d learned those qualities as a daughter, your life might have been very different now,” she added, just to twist the knife. “What if I don’t like him?” I asked. She slapped me again. “It’s not for you to like or dislike, hussy,” she said. “You can marry Sir Edward Kingsley and live in comfort, with the good regard of society, or you can make your own way. Beg for bread or whore for it, I care not. Because if you mar this on purpose, girl, after everything I have done for you, don’t expect me to feed and clothe you for one day more.” So saying, she locked me in the room and told me I had until the afternoon to make my choice.’

‘Sir Edward Kingsley?’ I rubbed my chin. ‘A titled man. You’d think he’d have his pick of women – no offence, but why would he choose a wife whose history could bring him disgrace, if it were to become known? What did he get from the bargain?’

Sophia’s face set hard.

‘Control, I suppose. He got a wife who was young and pretty enough – though that’s all gone now,’ she added, passing a hand across her gaunt cheek.

‘Not at all,’ I said, hoping it did not sound insincere. A flicker of a smile crossed her lips.

‘The fact that I had a past to hide appealed to him,’ she continued. ‘He thought it would be a way of keeping me bound to his will. He imagined I would be so grateful to have been saved from a life on the streets that I would put up with anything, not daring to complain. Absolutely anything.’ She fairly spat these last words. ‘Of course, I didn’t learn any of this until after we were married. He could be very charming in company.’

‘So you agreed to marry him?’

There was a long pause.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Bruno. What choice did I have? I had nothing left – nothing. You of all people should understand that. The hot-headed part of me thought of running away, of course. But perhaps having the child had changed me.’ Her voice grew quieter. ‘I knew it would be hopeless – I had seen beggar women and whores in the street, I knew I would not survive long like that. Besides, I had formed an idea – you will think it foolish …’ She looked at me tentatively.

‘Try me.’

‘I thought that one day, when he was older, he might somehow be able to find out my name and come looking for me.’

‘Who?’

‘My son, of course. I had this idea that, when he grew, he would realise he did not look like the people he believed to be his parents, and then the truth would come out, and he might want to learn of his real mother. I didn’t want him to find me dead or living in a bawdy-house if that day came. And this Sir Edward seemed affable enough, when he came to visit. The way my aunt fawned on him, you’d have thought he was the Second Coming. So I made my choice. I would swallow my pride and marry a man I did not care for. I would not be the first woman to have done that, in exchange for security and a house to live in.’

She fell silent then, and picked at her bread.

‘Tell me about this Sir Edward Kingsley,’ I prompted, when it seemed she had become sunk in her own thoughts.

‘He was twenty-seven years older than me, for a start.’ She curled her lip in distaste. I tried to look as sympathetic as I could, bearing in mind that I was a good sixteen years her senior and had once desired her myself. And did still, if I was honest, despite the alteration in her. I could not help wondering how she would feel about that; would the idea prompt the same disgust that she expressed at the thought of this ageing husband?

‘He was a magistrate in Canterbury,’ she continued. ‘Do you know the city?’

‘I have never been, but of course I know it by reputation – it was one of the greatest centres of pilgrimage in Europe, until your King Henry VIII had the great shrine destroyed.’

‘The shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, yes. But the cathedral dominates the city even now – it is the oldest in England, you know. I suppose it would have been a pleasant enough place to live, in different circumstances.’

‘What was so wrong with your situation, then?’

She sighed, rearranging her long limbs on the bench in an effort to find a more comfortable position, and leaned forward with her elbows on the table.

‘Sir Edward was a widower. He had a son of twenty-three from his first marriage, Nicholas, who still lived at home. They didn’t get along, and he resented me from the outset, as you may imagine. But that was nothing compared to my husband. Sir Edward was of the view that behind closed doors a wife ought to combine the role of maid and whore, to save him paying for either, and do so meekly and gratefully. And if I was stubborn, which was his word for refusing his demands, he whipped me with a horsewhip. In his experience, he said, it worked just as well on women.’

She kept her voice steady as she said this, but I noticed how her jaw clenched tight and she sucked in her cheeks to keep the emotion in check. I shook my head.

‘Dio mio, Sophia – I can’t imagine what you have been through. Was he a drinker, then?’

‘Not at all. That made it worse, in a way. There are those who will lash out in a drunken rage – that is one kind of man, and they will often repent of it bitterly the next day. My husband was not like that – he always seemed master of his actions, and his violence was entirely calculated. He used it just as he said, in the same way that you would beat an animal to break it through fear.’

‘Did anyone know how he was treating you?’

‘His son knew, I am certain, but we detested one another. And there was a housekeeper, Meg, she’d been with Sir Edward for years – I’m sure she must have known, though she never spoke of it. She was afraid of him too. But she showed me small acts of kindness. Other than that, I only had one friend I could confide in.’

‘And I suppose she could do little to help you.’

‘He,’ she said, and took another long draught of her ale. Immediately something tensed inside me, a hard knot of jealousy I had no right to, and for which I despised myself. Of course it was absurd to think that Sophia could have lived for months in a new city without attracting the attention of some young man, but whoever this friend was, I resented his invisible presence, the fact that he had been there to comfort her. Had he been a lover? On the other hand, I tried to reason against that voice of jealousy, where was he now, this friend? Had she not found her way to London, in her hour of desperation, in search of me? I composed my face and attempted to look disinterested.

‘He, then. He could not help?’

She shook her head. ‘What could anyone have done? Olivier listened to me, that was all.’

Was it really, I thought, and bit the unspoken words down. I felt as if I had a piece of bread lodged in my throat.

‘Your husband did not mind you having friends who were …?’ I left the sentence hanging.

‘French?’

‘I was going to say, men.’

Sophia’s teasing smile turned to scorn.

‘Well, of course he would, if he’d known. He didn’t even like me to leave the house, but fortunately he was out so often at his business that I sometimes had a chance to slip away on the pretext of some chores. Olivier was the son of French weavers – his family came as refugees to Canterbury twelve years ago, after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day.’

I shivered, despite the stuffy air; the mention of that terrible event in 1572, when the forces of the French Catholic League rampaged through the streets of Paris, slaughtering Protestant Huguenot families by the thousand until the gutters ran scarlet with their blood, never failed to chill me to the bones. The memory of it was kept fresh in England, as a warning of what could be expected here if a Catholic force were ever to invade.