Katherine (68 page)

These words echoed in Katherine's mind as she held the pebble, joy shimmered through its black flint, there was joy in the grass, the yew tree, the gravestones, the moss. Slowly it faded, and a great sleepiness came over her. She dropped the flint. She scarcely could drag her heavy limbs across the alley to her chamber in the rectory. She laid herself on the bed and slept the night through. There were no dreams.

Each day Katherine went to Julian's cell and listened, each day came back refreshed by glimpses of a love she had not known existed, though the exaltation of that moment in the churchyard did not return.

She argued sometimes, at times cried out in disbelief, unable to hide her doubts, and then indeed Julian once sighed and looked sad and humble, as she said, "All this was shown to me in three ways, Katherine, by bodily sight, by word formed in my understanding, and by spiritual sight. But this spiritual sight, I
can
not, and I may not, show as openly as I would. I trust in God that He will of His Goodness make you take it more spiritually than I can, or may, tell it."

Humility. Katherine saw in those days how far she had ever been from truly feeling it. She saw that she had never known the meaning of prayer. Her prayers had all been violent commands and bargainings - dictated by fear.

To Lady Julian, prayer was communion. "Prayer oneth the soul with God." And it was thanking. Giving thanks even without reward. In the fourteenth showing, Julian had heard the lovely words, "
I
am the ground of thy beseeching."
And with these blessed words had seen a full overcoming against all our weakness and all our doubtful dreads.

Katherine, ever quick to take guilt, had then berated herself for the wrongness of her former prayers, and Julian patiently repeated,
"Accuse not thyself overdone much
... I am sure that no man asks mercy and grace with true meaning, but if mercy and grace have been first given to him."

There came a day when Katherine could no longer listen without pouring out all her anguish to Lady Julian. She did not know what she said, she only heard her own voice calling out the names of those who meant for her the sharpest pain - Hugh, Blanchette and John. When she said the last name, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

Now she saw that though she had meant her letter of renunciation, and honestly thought to spend her life in penance, yet she had not really believed that John would let her go. Always she had felt that the miracle would happen at Walsingham, in return for her suffering, in return for giving John's betrothal ring-to the shrine. She had been sure that in some way Blanchette would be restored to her, her sins forgiven, and - -

"That your old life would start again?" asked Julian smiling. "That it would by miracle become fair and clean in all men's eyes, in God's?"

"Ay - ay - I see now that I thought so. Is it any wonder that God is so angry with me?"

"Truly, Katherine, in all the showings, I saw no manner of wrath in God, neither for short time nor for long. I saw no wrath but on man's part, and that He forgives in us."

Then Katherine cried out that if God had no wrath, why should she fear sin?

And Julian answered ever patiently, "Because as long as we be meddling with what we know is sin, we shall never see clearly the blissful countenance of Our Lord. And this is to break us in twain. For we are all in Him enclosed. And He in us. He sitteth in our soul."

Thai Katherine talked of Sheppey, the convent where she would cloister herself. "- - or even to be an anchoress like you, lady. So with true prayer I might come some day to know Him as you do - and to help others."

For the first time, a hint of sternness showed in Julian's face, for the first time she referred to herself apart from the visions, and she said quietly, "When I came here, I had no one left of my own."

Katherine did not understand her meaning then, nor why she said a moment after, "It was shown to me that we may never come to full knowing of God till we know first clearly our own soul."

That night, she saw what the Lady Julian had meant. Katherine awoke suddenly from deep sleep, and the little rectory chamber seemed to be suffused with a soft iridescent light. This light was peace. It bathed her, permeated her flesh, her bones, until her being was made of light. The confusions, the gropings, the struggles for escape were all dissolved in that light. In their place came certainty - the answer so simple, so right and inevitable and so hard.

It would be hard, but now she did not feel it so, for the light sustained her, and in her heart she heard repeated the words the Lady Julian had told her, that He had said:
My darling, I am glad thou art come to me: in all thy woe I have ever been with thee; now seest thou my loving.

The next morning Katherine sought out Father Clement. He was sitting in his garden under a mulberry tree, while five children from the parish capered in front of him. He was teaching them the parts they were to play at the pageant of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin next week. He acted each part in turn for them, now squealing through his huge empurpled nose, now growling in imitation of a bear, now flapping his hands on either side his hump for a crow. The children shrieked with laughter, and called him Bo-Bo, a pet name that they had for him. They did not think him hideous, nor did Katherine. She no longer saw his deformities, as she no longer heard the burr in Lady Julian's speech.

He hushed the children as Katherine walked over to them, and looked at her with gladness.

She had washed her pilgrim's weeds and borrowed a clean white coif and shift from his servant. Her hair had grown long enough so that bronze tendrils escaped beneath the coif, and curled at her temples. She was sparkling and fresh, and smelled of the lavender she had rubbed on to her skin. Her illness had nearly left her; the priest saw that she was a lovely woman.

She stopped beneath the clustering purple mulberries, and gazed long at the children. "Father," she said, "I'm going back to Lincolnshire. To the place where I should be."

"Aha?" he said, cocking his head. "And was it not that, you told me on the road here to Norwich, that you could never, never do?"

"It was," she said. "I was wrong. Father, tonight will you hear my confession? I dare to hope that - that tomorrow - at Mass-" Her voice faltered, she drew a deep breath, and

smiled tremulously into his compassionate eyes.

The next morning in the little flint-walled church, from Father Clement's hands, Katherine received again at last the Holy Sacrament. Julian kneeling by the narrow church window of her cell shared in the Blessed Communion and, watching Katherine's rapt face, humbly knew that once more God had used her as a channel to touch another soul with the message of her visions, and a glimpse of His meaning when He had said,
It is I, I that thou lovest, that thou enjoy est, that thou servest. It is I that thou longest for, it is I that is all.

Exaltation would fade, the wanhope and doubtful dreads of the world would seep back, but whatever befell, Katherine would never be totally bereft again. This Julian knew.

Later that morning, Katherine set out on the road west across Norfolk, bound for Lincolnshire. She rode on Father Clement's mule. The priest and Lady Julian had lent her money for food and housing on the journey. This money and the mule would be returned after she reached Kettlethorpe.

In the leave-taking, Katherine tried to tell them of her gratitude, but they would not let her. Instead, in the tiny fragrant cell, Lady Julian had given her a hearty kiss on the cheek and much practical advice about proper diet and rest.

Father Clement, while he stood on the stone step outside his rectory, had been equally bracing. He cracked his little jokes and eased the difficult parting moment with brisk directions as to the best road and what to do when Absalom, the mule, baulked.

Katherine was turning to put her foot in the stirrup when the priest said in the same brisk voice, "And here is something that once belonged to you - will you take it now?" He held out his open hand. On the palm lay the Queen's little silver brooch.

"But I cast it away," she cried, "in Walsingham."

"Ay, and I picked it up. 'Tis yours."

She flushed. Pain had gone from the memory of that day in Walsingham, but yet there was a taint of shame. " 'Twas because of the motto I threw it away," she said.

He nodded, looking up at her quizzically, his head pressed back against the hump. "So I thought."

She stared at the brooch, thinking of the anguish she had suffered and of that moment by the mill-pond. She looked from the little lathe and plaster rectory across to the churchyard, where she could see Lady Julian's cell outlined against the blue September sky.

She reached out and took the brooch, remembering what Julian one day had said of faith: "For it is naught else but a right understanding, with true belief, and sure trust of our Being; that we are in God, and God in us." No more. No demands for proof, no promise that sorrow would be banished. Nothing but sure trust of our Being.

She pinned the brooch at the neck of her black habit, and looked down at the little humpbacked priest, at his purple-pitted nose, the bristly red tonsure on his misshapen head, the long apelike arms and the merry tender brown eyes.

"I remember what you quoted from Dame Julian's visions, that afternoon by the mill-pond," she said. "I did not know that I heard it then, but I've thought much on it since."

"And I," said the priest laughing, "do not remember
what
I said. This often happens with me. Alas, I fear I talk too much. 'Tis a parson's failing."

She shook her head, thinking how strange it was to feel pure affection, and how that never until she had come here had she received or given an entirely undemanding love, nor known the lack. "It was this you said, and Lady Julian has told me too. 'Our dearworthy Lord said
not,
Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be afflicted, but He said,
Thou shalt not be overcome!"
Father Clement, of all the teachings, this seems to me the most beautiful."

Glowing strength stayed in Katharine's heart that day, while she rode her mule along the fair Norfolk road towards King's Lynn. It was Michaelmas. The crisping air sparkled like a fountain, it smelled of wood smoke, and of the succulent geese that were roasting in many a brick oven for the feast. In the woods and thickets, the leaves were flecked with gold or russet; beneath the beeches and giant oaks, pigs snuffled greedily, rooting for the acorn mast, between clumps of creamy woodbine.

The following day she entered the Breckland heaths. These chalky wastes teemed with rabbits and pheasants so tame that they did not hide while the mule clopped by between the outspread brilliance of the orange gorse, the fading pink and mauve of heather.

Near Castle Acre with its hostel, where she would find night's lodging, Katherine's road crossed the Palmers' Way to Walsingham. She had been alone for some time on the westbound road, but at the crossing a band of pilgrims came along and greeted her courteously. They wore shiny tin Ws fastened to their broad hats, and lead medals of the annunciation on their chests, for they had visited the shrine and were homeward bound. They assumed that Katherine was en route there, and they vied with each other in shouting out the glories she would see.

"No wonder like it in this world!" cried a small dark woman with shining eyes. " 'Tis Our Lady Herself, you know, has taken up Her home in Norfolk, when the infidels forced her to flee from Nazareth. No one has ever been to Her but She did help. Look, Dame Pilgrim!" cried the little woman. She rolled back her grey sackcloth sleeve to show a shrunken withered arm. "See!" she cried again while her birdclaw fingers moved one after the other. "Since I was a weanling and God smote me with sickness, these fingers've not moved, but whilst I knelt before Our Lady and gazed at the Holy Milk, the miracle happened. Life tingled in my hand."

"For sure, you were most blessed," said Katherine, bleakly.

The pilgrims passed on southward, Katherine flicked the mule with her staff and continued towards Castle Acre, but the peace which had sustained her ever since Norwich was gone. She remembered this crossroads and how she passed here at dawn of the day she got to Walsingham. How certain she had been that there would be a miracle for her! The woman with the shrunken hand had said, "No one has ever been to Her but She did help." There had been no help at all, nothing but further suffering. Ay - what horror would have happened to me had it not been for Father Clement?

Then of a sudden she heard the priest's laugh, and she heard Dame Julian speaking as she had the first day in that little cell. "Katherine, Katherine - well I saw that nothing is done by hap or chance, but by the foreseeing wisdom of God. 'Tis our blindness when we do not see that."

Blindness! Once again it was as though a shutter opened. For there
had
been a miracle at Walsingham. The Blessed Lady had answered with a marvel as great and yet as simple as any She had wrought. What else but marvel was it that Father Clement had that day ridden to the Austin priory in Walsingham on behalf of one of his parishioners in Norwich? That he had seen Katherine drop the Queen's brooch, and understood and watched over her, that he had taken her to Julian for cure of body and spirit?

What a weary time it took to learn how homely and direct the answer was, that it needed no thunderbolts and naming wonders for Him to fulfil his promise,
I
will keep thee full securely.
That He had as many ways of loving as there were droplets in the ocean, the ocean that was yet all one sea.

Katherine rode her mule through the sunset of the quiet rolling heaths, and her heart filled with thanking. Three times, in three different ways, the sure light had come to her: in the churchyard, in the rectory chamber and now on the Norfolk road.

The fourth day after, Katherine crossed the fens and mounted the high ridge way that led to Lincoln. Already she could see the rooftops on the distant hill, and the triple spires of the cathedral against the cloud-massed sky.