Vixen. Rosie Garland

under the butcher’s nose, piss on the blacksmith’s fire, throw sand between the miller’s stones, spit on my lady’s poached halibut. I watch them fume and shake their fists, so consumed with anger they do not see the towering darkness behind them till He taps on their shoulder and there’s no time for hand-wringing and pleas for mercy.

      I boast, hoping he cannot hear my desperation.

       See how light I can make your labour?

       Did you ever have such fun before?

       What diversions. What amusements! Do I not garland your workaday world with wonders?

      It’s a thin path to tread: I must not get so close that He gathers me into His arms and presses His stinking lips to mine. I must not strike a bargain, their lives for mine; nothing so dangerous as spare me and I will make you laugh. I am not so stupid as to spit on my palm and shake Death’s hand. I’ll keep myself well clear of His claw.

      I am a jolly-man, a wooden-head; not everyman, but every-fool. I dance, I sing, turn cartwheels and weave my body into knots. For Him I flit between boy and girl, between dog and vixen; so fast that I lose sight of what I am, submerged in the swirling, glittering soup of my creations.

      I am exhausted. So very tired of all this labour, this hanging on to life.

       MATTINS 1349

      The Feast of Saint Brannoc

       THOMAS OF UPCOTE

      Because I could not hear the voice of God, I went to the fields.

      I woke early, hoping to find a small corner of quiet in my church, but there was none. Before dawn I knelt at the altar, straining to hear the Lord but instead heard some farmer bawling for his cow. By first light this solitary cry had swelled into a wild congregation of yawning and farting and belching and pissing and wailing and sneezing and hawking and cracking of stretched limbs and banging of doors and no chance to hear the boldest cock crow over the dreadful racket.

      So I went into the meadow. The morning was brisk: crisp bracken, brown as crumbled horse-bread, curled into itself as though trying to keep warm. Holly thickened the hedgerow, beside thorn bushes and grey-skinned ash with its black fists of buds. Small birds fluttered alongside, keeping pace with my steps.

      I strode to the centre of the field. The earth spread its cloak beneath my feet, prickly with barley stalks cut close as stubble on a man’s chin. The breath of the dawn rose in a mist. Drops of water hung at the tips of the grass stems, catching the new light. Rooks splashed in the rutted puddles that lay athwart the fields. Over the sea to the west the sky was dark; the brightness of coming day showed itself to the east.

      I shook my head of these distractions, pressed on, dropped to my knees. The dew came straightway through my hose and chilled me awake. I listened: nothing but my own happy breath. I pressed my palms together and spoke the beautiful words of the Office under the roof of God’s sky. No one bothered me with, Father Thomas, are you sick? I did not have to snap, No; I am at prayer. I am your priest. I pray. It is what we do. It was delightful.

      For a moment only. A crow cawed, emptying its throat of sand. Its fellow answered from three fields away, echoed by the clattering of magpies. A cow mourned for her calf, taken at the last harvest. Bullocks steamed, sheep coughed at the sparse winter grass. All I asked was a little peace. If Hell was unimaginable pain and Heaven was unimaginable bliss, then the bliss I sought was humble silence. I shook my head, tried to retrieve the silence I tasted when I first knelt.

      But here was a fox crying with the voice of a whipped boy, the dit-dit-swee of the titmouse, the rattling chatter of robins, the twee-twee of dunnocks, the bubbling of blackbirds. Seagulls cackled at some private joke. I pushed away the thought that it was myself they found so amusing.

      I prostrated myself upon the earth and inhaled the reek of its dark breath, rolled over and lay on my back, stared upwards into the bowl of the heavens: the half-darkness unrippled by clouds, the stars closing their bright eyes one by one as the approaching daylight spread itself across the sky.

       Can you not pray, my son? Am I so difficult a master?

      I groaned. My disobedient senses were drawing me away from God. I shut my eyes tight, shoved my fingers into my ears till all I could hear was the hissing of the fire in my head.

      ‘Oh God!’ I bellowed, to drown out the world around me.

      My heart slowed. Oh Lord, behold Your servant. That was the sum and total of my prayer, for the hour of the Office was done. It was time for me to spit upon my hands and labour for God. The pilgrims would come today and I would be ready.

      I hitched my cassock and splashed through the ford into the village, slapping warmth into the cold meat of my thighs. Rain slanted down onto the thatch, gathering itself together for another busy day. There had been no frost all winter, only this steady river falling from the sky and making the fields swim. But the rain must stop soon: it was almost spring.

      William stood at the lychgate collecting donations from the gathered pilgrims. He was a fine steward, and I could not fault him for the wholehearted way he displayed his stave of office with its clubbed head of brass. He stopped short of affrighting people, as a rule. Lukas stood at his side, arms folded, eyeing the crowd keenly for anyone who might try to slip in without payment. He grinned, tying up a sack of candles ready to be hauled away to the treasury.

      ‘It is a good take today, Father,’ he said, squeezing rain from his beard. ‘There’s two bags of tapers put by already and we’re barely past breakfast.’

      ‘The people turn to the Lord in earnest,’ I replied soberly. ‘That is what matters.’

      ‘Numbers are up,’ said William, gloating.

      I would speak with him, another time. ‘The Saint’s intercession is most powerful,’ I said. ‘He has never failed us.’

      ‘Indeed, Father,’ he said. ‘Very good to us, he is. And don’t these folk know it,’ he roared, sweeping his arm in a gesture encompassing the company. ‘Come for a piece of his goodness, every one of them.’

      ‘It’s a fine thing he’s so generous,’ added Lukas.

      Aline bawled a greeting and pushed a wooden mug into my hands.

      ‘There you go, Father! The Saint’s ale itself. Fresh this morning and I never brewed a better, if I say so myself.’

      Her face was red. I decided to take it for hard work rather than hard drinking. I sniffed the pot, not discourteously, and took a mouthful.

      ‘It is good, mistress.’

      She grinned. ‘Bless you, Father!’ She turned round, took a deep breath and bellowed, ‘He likes it! Good enough for the Saint’s man, more than good enough for us, so it is!’

      There was an answering cheer from the multitude, many a cup raised. I picked my way through the field of folk, spread thick as daisies upon the grass. They regaled me with tales of how the Saint saved them from drowning, healed broken arms and broken hearts, planted healthy sons in barren wombs, cured this sickness and that sickness till my head spun and my arm wearied from pumping up and down in blessing.

      A man laid on the ground stretched out his arm and grasped my ankle. Though his shoulders were broad and muscular, his legs were so thin they could not bear his weight. The bones of his knees were as big as cabbages.

      ‘Father,’ he croaked. ‘Can your Saint save us from the pestilence?’

      With the speed of a bucket of water hurled onto a fire,