Medieval Woman

COPYRIGHT

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by

Michael O’Mara Books Limited

9 Lion Yard

Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

This electronic edition published in 2012

Copyright © 1996 by Ann Baer

Every reasonable effort has been made to acknowledge all copyright holders. Any errors or omissions that may have occurred are inadvertent, and anyone with any copyright queries is invited to write to the publishers, so that a full acknowledgement may be included in subsequent editions of this work.

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Ann Baer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

The verses quoted at the beginning of each chapter are taken from John Clare’s The Shepherd’s Calendar.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78243-058-2 in ePub format

ISBN: 978-1-78243-059-9 in Mobipocket format

ISBN: 978-1-85479-656-1 in hardback print format

Typeset by Bibliocraft, Dundee

Cover design by Greg Stevenson

Cover artwork: Master of the Life of the Virgin/The Birth of Mary

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

The Yorck Project: 10,000 Meisterwerke der Malerei/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

www.mombooks.com

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

Tu-who;

Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

Tu-whit;

Tu-who: a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

EPIGRAPH

LIST OF CHARACTERS

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

THE CHARACTERS

Marion, a medieval woman

Peter Carpenter, her husband

Peterkin, their son

Alice, their daughter

Sir Hugh, the Feudal Lord

Dame Margaret, ‘M’Dame’, his wife

Magda, their daughter

Rollo, Sir Hugh’s brother

Tom

Ed-me-boy, his son

Joan, bastard half-sister of Sir Hugh

Milly

Old Mavis, Joan’s mother

Loppy Lambert

Father John, the priest

Old Sarah, his housekeeper

Simon Miller, Marion’s older brother

Betsy, his wife

Lisa, Roger, Gib, Ellen, Kate, their children

Matt, ploughman at the Hall

Nell, his wife

Rob, their son

Dick Shepherd

Hilda, his wife

Meg, Mary, their daughters

Molly

Old Agnes, Molly’s mother

Old Marge, Agnes’s sister

Jack Plowright

Small Sarah, his wife

Unnumbered small children

Hodge, a labourer

Cecily, his wife

Jo, Harry, Edwin, Hoddy, their sons

Hodge’s Old Mother, sister of Old Sarah

Hal, a widower, father of Hilda

Old Fletcher

Old Mam Fletcher, his wife, and village midwife

Andrew Fletcher, their son, a labourer

Polly, his second wife

Ned, Andrew’s son

Sal, Andy, Izzy – their other children

Simkin, a labourer

Joyce, his wife

Nick, a labourer

Martha, his wife

Steve, Kit, their sons

Several other small children

Paul Hunter, a freeman

Margery, his wife

Steve, Midge, Paulo, their children

Widow Annie

Wilfred, her son

Dobbin, Annie’s younger son

Jill, Dobbin’s wife

One-eyed Wat, Dobbin’s son

Wat the Tall Rockwell

Nancy, his wife, daughter of Old Agnes

Martin, their son, married to Lisa Miller

Joyce, their daughter, married to Simkin

Stephen, vaguely engaged to Ellen Miller

Several other teenage children

Edward Rockwell, Wat the Tall’s brother

Red Mary, his wife, Dick Shepherd’s sister

Tim, their son

Several other small children

Old Lambert Rockwell, uncle of Wat and Edward and father of Loppy

Chris Foxcap, a tinker

Animals

Tibtab, Marion’s cat

Jix, Sir Hugh’s terrier

Trover, Magda’s dog

Unnamed bitch of M’Dame’s

Janty, True, sheepdogs

Caesar, Chris Foxcap’s donkey

Heart-of-Oak, Sir Hugh’s horse

The Village

Down the Common

MARCH

Yet winter seems half weary of its toil

And round the ploughman on the elting soil

Will thread a minutes sunshine wild and warm

Thro raggd places of the swimming storm

And oft the shepherd in his path will spye

The little daisey in the wet grass lye

Marion rolled over on to her back to ease the ache in her hip. She moved slowly so as not to wake the others, but Peter, her husband, did not stir and his slow groaning breathing did not alter. She stretched out her feet, which touched the back of eight-year-old Peterkin, curled up at the end of the bed, deeply asleep. She put out her right hand, feeling for the cradle, and her fingers touched Alice’s tiny hand, soft and cold as a little frog. She pushed it under the sheepskin cover.

It was intensely dark, but a mother’s sleep is never deep when her infants are near. The raw night air, that penetrated the bedding, and a hot uneasiness in her stomach both combined to prevent Marion sleeping deeply. A sudden whimper from Alice awoke her. She stretched out an arm, felt the edge of the cradle and slid her hand over the cover to feel that Alice’s face was not covered. She had not forgotten the horror, some years ago, of seeing the cat heaving itself up in the cradle, stretching out tense limbs and then jumping down, leaving the already cold corpse of the baby which had earlier made it such a warm bed. But Alice’s face was clear, her nose a button of ice. She slept on.

It was still pitch-dark in the cottage. There was no pale line of dawn or moonlight above the door. Marion pulled the cover, damp with her breathing, up to her face. Her nose was as cold as Alice’s. Into the silence dropped a tiny clink of bark falling from a burnt log, indicating that the fire was not out. Peterkin, still curled up at her feet, breathed more heavily. Peter, a lump rolled in blanket at her side, moved slightly, altered the tone of his breathing for a moment, then subsided into silence again. There was a faint rustle of straw and a thump from the goat, the other side of the partition. Silence again, and perhaps Marion dozed until another whimper from Alice, almost a wail, woke her. But Alice quietened at the touch of her mother’s hand. A dream, perhaps a nightmare, had frightened her, and Marion lay wondering what forms fear and horror might take in the mind of a two-year-old child.

The unease in Marion’s stomach continued and she wondered whether she should attempt to relieve herself. The thought of rising into the chilly air, of going out into the icy dark was very unpleasant. They had always been against adults defecating in the cottage. Perhaps she should wait for the dawn, but no bird in the forest had tried his voice and the cock on the other side of the partition had not even croaked, so dawn could not be imminent. Drowsy but undecided she lay still.

Suddenly Alice gave a yelping cry, a choking cough, and a loud wail. Marion slid out her hand again and encountered warm slimy vomit, which seemed everywhere round the child’s face. Instantly alert to the danger of a baby choking to death, she sat up, pulled away the feather quilt, which seemed sodden, and picked up the wailing child. The cheesy smell of the vomit was increasing her own queasiness. She felt Peter heave and turn over.

‘Alice has been sick,’ she muttered.

He grunted and lay still. Alice continued to cry as much as before. After a while Marion sat on the edge of the bed holding Alice on her lap and wiping at her with a handful of straw from the floor. Peter heaved again.

‘Put her back in the cradle, she’ll soon go off to sleep,’ he said.

‘The quilt and the straw are probably covered in sick – the quilt certainly is. She’d freeze.’

Peter could not sleep with the wailing child, so he sat up. He pulled their blanket over Marion’s shoulders.

‘She’ll quieten down soon,’ she told him, trying to reassure herself.

‘Get back into bed with her,’ Peter said. ‘You’re getting too cold yourself.’ Marion continued sitting and nursing the smelly bundle. ‘Come,’ Peter urged, ‘roll her up in the blanket and keep her on your side of the bed. She’ll go to sleep again. You can clean the cradle in the morning.’

In their fourteen years of marriage they had had many babies, who had often been sick in the night. He was used to it.

Alice’s cries became more intense, as though they were being squeezed out of her twisting body, and then there was more choking and Marion felt the warm wet of another flood of vomit down her front.

The blanket dragged on her shoulders as Peter heaved himself up and edged past her on the bed. ‘Want a light?’ was all he said, and then she heard his feet in the straw and his fumbling under the shelf for the bellows. Tibtab, who usually slept on the shelf, was wakened, and fled with a tiny mew. Peter began to explore with puffs from the bellows some places on the logs which might be brought to incandescent red.

The vomit seemed everywhere. Marion, wiping in the dark with little bits of straw, tried to hush Alice’s cries. She wondered how the little body on her lap could have contained so much. The bellows puffed, Alice moaned, Peterkin lay still, determined not to wake.

In time Peter’s bellows blew an area of glowing red on a log. He reached out in the dark and found a branch with dead leaves on it which he kept for tinder, stuck into the cottage wall above the shelf. Propping this twig up in the ashes with a leaf against the red glow and continuing to bellow, he got the dried leaves alight. They flared up, lighting the whole inside of the cottage for a moment. Peter grabbed at the little rush candle that he kept in a block of hollowed out wood on the shelf. But the flaming leaf had died down and he had to blow again and press more leaves against the glowing scrap of wood before he finally managed to light the candle.

It made a tiny area of faint light but it was enough for Marion to see Alice’s white glistening face surrounded by mess. Alice’s cries had lessened and the flame took her attention. She drew in each breath tremblingly and then Marion saw her lower lip quivering, so adult a show of grief, so unlike the outward rolling of the lip of a crying angry infant, that Marion was filled with compassion for her child. With Peter holding the light, she laid Alice across her knees and pulled her hooded robe over her head. The folds of the hood were filled with vomit and she dropped it on the ground. Alice’s body was wrapped round with a broad strip of woollen cloth, its upper part smeared with vomit, its lower part sodden and stinking.

‘I’ll sit by the fire with her for a bit,’ said Marion. ‘She’s shivering. Put the blanket round me, then you get back to bed and get warm again.’

An ancient crescent-shaped log, half circling the hearth, was their usual seat, and Marion moved to it and sat down close to the remains of the fire, leaning back against the log. She undid the front of her robe, itself wet and slimy, and pushed cold Alice in. Peter put the blanket over her shoulders, this action blowing out the candle’s flame. In darkness she heard the bed boards creak and the straw rustle as he got back in. Except for the red glimmer from the fire, they were in darkness again.

Marion crouched there holding shaking Alice against her breasts and shivering so violently that every shiver made her arms squeeze and shake Alice. Though her bare feet were on the hearthstone, she felt no warmth from the pile of ashes. Alice’s breathing slowly quietened and Marion, guessing she slept, did not dare move for fear of waking her. Though she was sitting on a little straw, her bottom ached with the cold and the hard ground. Marion endured. Her head felt heavy and the hot boiling in her stomach increased. Once or twice she feared she would be sick herself, for the smell was nauseating. There was still no pale line above the door. How endless the winter nights were. She would have liked to rest her head somewhere, but the log was too low, only high enough to rest her ribs against. Peter was silent; she did not know if he slept or not. Alice, she guessed, did sleep. Her thoughts turned from Alice, this wretched little life, lying against her body, to all her children – how a mother gave and gave and gave to each child, its being, its birth, its food, its shelter; how all her days and nights were spent in giving to her children; how the children took and took, and how, even so, she could not give enough and so many babies had died. Alice, fortunately, had been a hearty baby and was growing into a strong child. ‘My poor little girl,’ Marion whispered, putting her head down to where Alice’s was under her dress, ‘my poor little girl.’

Her thoughts drifted to her most recently dead child, Margery, who had died two months ago. She had been twelve years old, an age by which, having passed through the dangers of childhood, children could be expected to survive. Margery’s face came sharply to mind, thin and narrow, hung around with lank dark hair, her anxious dark eyes, her half-open mouth too full of teeth for her lips to meet easily, her lower lip scaly and cracked, her breathing guttural. She had always been a skinny silent child, undersized, with little strength and no vitality. Marion had often compared her with her brother, Simon’s, two girls, Ellen and Kate, one four and the other two years older than Margery. So different were they, bouncing busy young women, both advanced in their adolescence while Margery still had the slight body of a child.