Angels in the Architecture Read online

  Angels in the Architecture

  Sue Fitzmaurice

  Copyright © 2012 by Sue Fitzmaurice

  2nd edition 2014

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011961060

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  For Ruby & Madison

  Without whom I fear my life may have been most shallow

  Note to Readers

  Some of the dates provided in quotes at the beginning of chapters, and during events through 1981, hold clues to the story.

  I use a phonetic language for several characters in the Middle Ages; opinion varies as to the necessity for this in modern fiction, however it seemed an appropriate and interesting challenge at the time.

  This is a second publishing of this book. I was not happy with the editing by the previous publisher, nor was I content with some minor story gaps I felt a need to fill. Neither makes any particular difference to the overall story.

  Principal Characters

  1185

  * Bishop Hugh – the Bishop of Lincoln, (c. 1135-1200)

  Father Taylor – a parish priest

  Alice Warriner – a peasant woman

  Gamel Warriner – her husband

  Geoffrey (Gree), Denholm (Dem) & Thurstan Warriner – their eldest sons

  Thomas – their youngest son, an idiot

  Bennet Williams – a physician

  Berta Draper – thought to be a witch

  Fulk – a forest-dweller

  *ʿIṣmat ad-Dīn Khātūn (Asimat) & Eleanor of Aquitaine – two Queens

  * Saladin & Richard Lionheart – two Kings

  1981

  Pete Watson – a father and a journalist

  Dr Alicia Watson – his wife and a physicist

  Tim – their son, an autist

  Jillie – their daughter

  Rose Draper – a deaconess

  Loraine – her friend, also a deaconess

  Maitland – a local gentleman

  * Khalid Islambouli – an Egyptian army officer (1955-1982)

  * real historical figures

  On His right hand flow the living waters of grace,

  and on His left the choice Wine of justice,

  whilst before Him march the angels of Paradise,

  bearing the banners of His signs.

  Beware lest any name debar thee from God,

  the Creator of earth and heaven.

  Leave thou the world behind thee,

  and turn towards thy Lord,

  through Whom the whole earth hath been illumined.

  Surih of the Temple

  Women find peace in the evening. Even the Earth heaves a sigh at the twilight, as though on their behalf. Particles of energy slow their elliptical orbits and thoughts stop thinking. In the quiet, after nightfall, woman’s heart once more registers the rightness of her task. And because of that she knows that the circle of Matter, that is her home and her family, will make its correct orbits again tomorrow.

  Time is not linear. It goes around, and meets at its beginnings and its ends.

  1

  Skinning ferrets would have been one of Alice Warriner’s least favourite jobs had she stopped to consider it, but her life did not afford the privilege of such judgement. Her sons had brought a catch home from the woods at dusk, and she completed the bloody task then since it would be one less thing the next day.

  All the days were taken up from before dawn till after dusk with the endless tests and tasks of land and lords. A peaceful work, like the one Alice undertook now, alone in the quiet, came as a rare indulgence and occasional reward. It was a valued time in the day now for all wives and mothers, when the sound was motionless and hardly seen, and the time was no longer light, but not dark. It was perfect, and there was no woman who did not relish it.

  Alice sat at a low bench seat at the door of her home which was a low stone hut, round and thatched. It wasn’t a place to stand up in, nor to move about too much.

  From this outside vantage point, she had her main view of the world and of each day. It was here that the work that produced the detritus of her life folded into her fingernails – flour and peelings and blood and sinew. The blood that had spattered up her arms was mixed with fragments of flesh clinging to her skirt but was barely noticeable to her in the context of the dross of her life.

  Alice found she needed little by way of implement to assist her task, preferring instead to feel her way through the pulling and tearing of the pelt with her fingers alone. She had long grown used to the grisliness of this method and was so deft at it that she could allow her mind to attend to other thoughts even while her hands went about their business, producing only the rhythmic suck and slurp that accompanied their motion.

  There was not so much to think on though. Aside from endless drudgery, Alice’s daily experience was of large man bodies, her husband and her sons; their strength of labour, the jostling for their share, grunting messages to one another, always moving, yelling, arguing, hitting, or kicking. Voices were raised sometimes in cheer, frequently in rage, often in pleading, excuse or defence. There was little of prayer and nothing of sweetness except that she created herself. Men all around seemed in no need of such things, and a woman who wanted too much for softness would be disappointed, not to mention that such desires could not feed families or bring even any meagre fortune. Alice noted only in a sort of passing, but by no means for the first time that hers was a life of men and maleness, but that at least brought strength to her existence and some kind of sanctuary of its own. So to ponder and allow her mind and senses to go where they will was her main activity this evening, aside from the work of her fingers.

  Alice now had several carcasses in a large metal pot, their furs draped over a frame for the purpose. One boy or another would stretch and fasten them in the morning; they would not shrink or harden in the cool night before then.

  Her job done, and some kind of cleaning up afforded, Alice heaved the pot and went inside. Deftly tying a twine and hook to each pair of forelegs, she hung the small beasts from a low railing over the central fireplace to smoke. She picked up a small metal prong and picked at the gunge in her nails, dipping her hands then into a bucket of water and swirling them about to release some of the day’s grime. She sat a moment and whispered a verse she’d learnt long ago. A set of black wooden beads, smoothed these years now almost to the like of stones, counted themselves across her fingers, quiet and light. Alice closed her eyes and instinctively raised her face to the heavens. She smiled, and a fissure came to split in the dirt and grime about her, and she could feel the silky shine of the spirit that came from the prayer as it entered her soul. This was Alice’s softness, and it nourished her enough each day, in this brief stay in time, such that she would feed and strengthen those who depended on her for another day. If it were possible, she would choose to sit in this communion forever, but it was certainly not Alice’s life to do so, nor would she even think about it.

  It was quiet in the small dwelling, and she could feel the darkness around her, punctured by the light of the single candle and its occasional flicker from the draught beneath the sack door. The peace was rare, and she craved these evening moments after her family had finally given up its relentless activity to rest.

  Lord, bestow on me your grace that I may accept my distance from thee. Preserve me from complaining. Keep my sons from fighting and keep Thomas safe.

  Alice’s peacefulness was succumbing to mounting tiredness, and she forced open her eyes to look aro
und the small, mostly unfurnished room. The fire was dying in the hearth. She hadn’t noticed it before.

  A log is needed. Why is there none waiting? Didn’t I ask …

  She placed her beads in their small, lightly carved case, latched the tiny lid, and slid it back beneath a mat, the precious case the only thing of any beauty around about, but of value only to its devoted owner. Nearby on the floor, several crudely hewn wooden animals nestled, each a finger high, the beginnings of one boy’s talent for the crafting of wood and stone. She thought of her boys, all asleep, and pictured each of them having played with the small collection, Thomas lining them up in a perfect row. She brushed a strand of long brown hair from her face and pushed herself up with both arms, stiffness slowing her a little.

  How long did I ache through so much of me. The Lord tests me.

  She straightened, trying to imagine her body young and strong again. Her determined steps to the door belied her real bones.

  Alice understood some sense of the physical illusion that is life. And that God’s expectation was for her to strive each moment to find unity with His will. She only just knew this. She only just knew that she grasped this different reality. She did know for sure that she could see the flow of spirit in things, in a way that she had long realised others could not. She’d always understood this to be a normal thing, although she never mentioned it to anyone. Since, as a child, no one else spoke of it, Alice thought she ought not to either. It must have been a sacred thing, she’d thought, that it was never mentioned, and far be it for her to be so disrespectful as to comment on the pools of light she saw around some people and things, but not others. Once when she was a girl, a brother had blamed another for a theft of some trivial thing. It was nothing, but his lie was so convincing that the innocent brother was punished. When the two boys had stood before their mother, the thief had the merest dark ring about him while the other shone a pale blue that reflected the sky the boys had played under that day. Alice knew straight away who the guilty one was and was surprised when her mother believed the thief. She protested briefly but had no proof of her assertion other than that which she thought at the time to be self-evident, but which she knew in herself she should not speak of. From then on there were other incidents that made her realise that other people did not see what she saw. For a while she became afraid of it. Others may find this out about her, and she continued to feel intuitively it would not be a good thing to reveal. Worse, perhaps it was devil’s work. She came to believe it was not an evil doing when one joyous harvest festival, the wooden Virgin that would be brought into the fields from the small parish church near her parents’ home, shone a golden halo all around. Even some of her mother’s friends said they felt sure the Virgin was smiling, as they all danced and laughed on a rare occasion of fun and particular prosperity. No one mentioned the light Alice could see, but she began to wonder herself whether it was instead a particular gift God had given her, and she became grateful, and because it was her view of the world to do so, she was also humbled. She did not think much further on this phenomenon through her life, just that it was for certain of God, or at least of the Angels..

  I give thee thanks Lord. How may I serve you? Speak me your will that I may obey.

  Alice moved aside the sacking curtain covering the entrance and greeted the cool evening air another time.

  Alice now viewed her real weakness, the real devil in her, to be the slowness and tiredness that stood more and more between her and her endeavours.

  I will wrestle these demons from God’s creation.

  She smiled across the mud before her, and beyond, looking to the fields for all the world as though they grew gold, and the shack on whose threshold she stood a palace. Her thankfulness was real.

  My heart is open Lord. Thy will be done.

  Alice lingered, closed her eyes, and took in the night noises: an owl calling its night sound, a tiny scurry-scurry of rats, trees shushing themselves, a horse snorting, and snoring from a boy or man – each one a silvery mass of light and each a mystery of God’s unseen grace.

  Nearby, several already dried ferret pelts lay nailed to crude boards, leant up against a low stone wall surrounding. They would be taken to market tomorrow, along with a small excess of turnips and hay. There they’d be traded, or the meagre earnings would be used for the purchase of some ground wheat and a small weight of rye – the small dealings of small landholders that could make a family’s table more or less redolent for the week. The business was undertaken with due seriousness by all transactors, bargaining almost to the last grain, with generally none feeling wronged or cheated, for there was rarely such intent. And it was an adventure and learning for youngsters to see the village business and its ways, and observe their fathers’ doings. It was most sons who were in awe of their fathers, all solid men of fighting and moral substance that did what they did as they’d learnt from their own fathers.

  Alice breathed deeply and felt the air cool her forehead, around her nose as the breath passed the space above her mouth, her eyelids, and her open eyes.

  She turned to a pile of logs by the door. Selecting two sizeable blocks, she tucked them into an arm, stepping back inside. The musty warmth stayed in. The fire was low in the hearth now, but she knew the logs would take, and her family would stay warm through the coolest hours of the night, although the early morning would bite at them.

  Lord protect us.

  The air inside was thick with smells of cooking, of animals, mud, sweat, and smoke. The colours of Alice’s life were all around her: grey, black, dirty yellow, brown, and blood-red on filthy cotton. Alice wasn’t even sure what was colour and what was smell – grass stains on worn leather, wrinkled and old, always old, old before you want to be, and old as everything here was old. Even the newborn seemed old, which is to say if they lived at all.

  Alice had lost five. The first came dead and too soon. Two might as well have, for they lasted one an hour, one a day. A little girl passed in the winter, a tiny sweet thing. And Thomas’s twin, a strong boy, as chattering as Thomas was dumb, his leg crushed beneath a cartwheel and unfathomable, unjust pain and fever overtook him after a week. His little eyes wept and screamed and stopped shining back the sun. But no one who saw him or heard him in those days really remembered him anymore, except his mother, and Thomas who was curled up now with his brother’s tunic. And these were Alice’s babes with the Lord’s Mother. But seven lived, and Thomas, he was the seventh, and a nine-year-old baby. Alice prayed for all their souls, because she knew she must. She felt certain that Thomas at least received some blessing and special care from Heaven.

  Alice was sure Thomas saw things as she did, although he could not say so. She saw him look at nothing; although Alice may see a swirl of energy in his sight sometimes, it seemed often to tease him and be playful. Alice knew this was the existence of Angels, as surely as she knew the existence of her own sons. There was a mystery to this that she couldn’t put words to, because she had no such education, but she had more than a sense of it. Alice knew that her Thomas and others such as him were as invisible to most ordinary people as the Angels were, but she did not blame them for that.

  Alice kissed her boys and lowered herself to the mat by her husband, cradling her Thomas, his mouth open a little, catching the stifled air. How was it that these great boys, almost men, looked so sweet and young when they slept, and there was Thomas who looked almost an infant? Alice thought it must be such that their mothers will keep to loving and protecting them, as their sleepy sweetness sang straight to a mother’s heart and pulled on its fibre.

  Thomas nuzzled into his mother’s shoulder and hair.

  Thy will be done, Lord.

  Alice held her son close and slept.

  The sound of running water turned Thomas around, smiling and giddy with joy. Light bounced around and ricocheted between objects; it was both still and moving, and alive and inanimate, all at the same time.

  Water had the most special light. It told
Thomas stories that delighted and excited him. The stories made him jig and shake about, smiling, laughing, and singing in his way. They were full of silliness, caught him up and made him part of their telling. He didn’t know the light told him more than just stories. He knew only to be joyful from it, and that dancing was a response that also spoke of respect and love for the light.

  Don’t run, Thomas. Go calmly. Listen.

  The light on the water bounced up to Thomas’s face and spoke to him directly. This happened often, and Thomas struggled sometimes to hear, to listen, and to take heed, although he knew he was being compelled to do just that. It was finding what response to give; to come to this was a struggle for his brain such were the obstacles of his senses, so he kept on dancing and spinning and laughing.

  ‘Thomas, ya’ git, sturp ya’ drubble ya’ weed!’

  There was laughter amid heavy work. Things were being lifted to the cart for taking to the village; sacks, baskets, wooden this-and-that, some pots of food, pelts, some wool, and a few vegetables were stacked to keep stable along a potholed journey; every item precious and worth food and strength for its owners. Nothing could be lost or broken, or else some boy would pay and none wanted such, nor to go hungry either.

  Thump. And again Thomas felt the pain, but only fleetingly. These blows came often to him, but he didn’t know that pain could last and so it didn’t. There was no sense of wrong, just less that was right.

  You’re happy today, Thomas. We’ll start soon. Are you ready?

  Thomas smiled at the words and the something of a sound behind them. He liked these voices more than any other.

  ‘Wha’ ya’ starin’ at ya’, moron? Look at ’im, Gree, look a’ the empty-headed stink. Wozee grinnin’ a’?’

  ‘Aye, the turd. Ger’out, Thom, yer sprayin’ water all over. Ya’ lame pigeon. Ger’ off!’

  ‘Ay, Thomas, look over ’ere, look over ’ere!’

  Splot! Mud and tunic meet. Wet and sticky neck! Laughter! Others’ laughter.