Angels in the Architecture

Angels in the Architecture

Sue Fitzmaurice

Copyright © 2012 by Sue Fitzmaurice

2
nd
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

*
ʿIṣ
mat 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 around 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.