Catherine, Called Birdy Read online

  A big difference between Robert and Edward is how they laugh at me. Robert laughs loudly, showing his big yellow horse teeth, pinching and slapping my cheeks. Edward laughs softly and kindly, but laugh he does. And did. He said with these apples on my chest, I would not fool even the most aged of abbots. Deus! Last year they were but walnuts and I might have gotten away with it.

  I thought mayhap to join a nunnery instead, but as the chief occupation of nuns is embroidery, it would be like falling from the spit into the cooking fire. I could grow turnips, but I have neither land nor seeds. Be a tumbler, but I do not tumble, except when I am trying not to. A musician, but I do not play. I used to study music, since my mother said a lady must be accomplished, but the noise I made was so awful my father gave my lute to the cook. I could be a traveling spinner, but that is no escape. I am left with a beastly father, a life of chores, no hope, no friends, no escape, and a large bosom! Corpus bones! Is there no justice in the world?

  14TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Callistus, slave, banker, convict, pope, and martyr

  My mother must give me the little book of saints. I am already making use of it to find how saints lived and died and what lessons I may learn from them.

  On the way home from the abbey we stopped at Highgate Manor to bring greetings to the Baron Ranulf's family, who are visiting there until Christmas. Their daughter, Lady Aelis, and I were together at Belleford long ago, learning highborn manners and the duties of a lady, until my mother lost another of my unborn baby brothers and in sorrow called me home. What I remember most about Aelis is she liked to complain, said "Yes, my lady" and "No, my lord" but did as she pleased when no one could see, and was more fun than anyone else.

  She has been living of late at the French court. I watched her at supper. She looks to be a lady with her fancy French table manners and her yellow hair, but during the dancing she grabbed my arm and pulled me from the hall for a gossip. We tucked up our skirts and walked round and round the dark manor yard arm in arm, talking of who has rotten teeth and who married someone rich and ugly and who paints her face and stuffs her bosom.

  We flirted with the guards and arranged to meet them later in a chamber, where we will send Aelis's old nurse and her sewing woman on some pretext. They will all have a surprise. Aelis told me she gets away with things because she looks so docile and innocent while she does just what she wants. She says she would like to be a horse trainer but knows she was brought home to wed. It appears that we are both in grave danger of being sold like pigs at autumn fair.

  We pledged to meet in seven days' time at the high meadow, it being but half a day's walk for each of us. Since I left Belleford I have not been much with other girls, and I long to tell her of my life and thoughts and wonderings and hear hers.

  15TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Euthymius the Younger, who lived three years on nuts and herbs

  Home again. While hiding from Morwenna before supper, I watched the geese returning from the pasture to their shed in the yard, all in a line like plump little knights in feathers.

  I think I love geese more than any other birds because no one else does. They are not small and delicate like larks and sparrows, or swift and clever like hawks and falcons. They do not sing like nightingales and cannot be trained to talk or dance or do tricks. They are cunning, greedy, shortsighted, and stubborn—much like me, now that I think on it.

  I have seen swans on the river. They are much more beautiful and stately than geese, but a little vain and not as smart. I think my mother is like a swan. My brother Robert is a rooster, strutting here and there, crowing about himself. Edward is a heron, with his long nose and long legs. Clever Perkin is a falcon, and my nurse Morwenna is a nuthatch, busy and brown and dumpy. My father of course is a buzzard, slow and stupid, the Devil take him. I think perhaps Aelis is a dove on the outside and a hawk within. And I am a plain gray and brown goose.

  16TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Hedwig, who was unlucky in her children

  Before I left the abbey, Edward showed me how to mix some colors and shape goose feathers into pens so I too can make flowers and angels. The black ink is easy. We have walnut husks and an abundance of soot. I also found buttercups, sneezeweed, and moss for yellows and greens, but have no lapis lazuli stone to grind for blue. I made a paste from crushed bilberries that looks as blue as a robin's egg but grows sour and so sticky that I must add a task the brothers never dreamed of—picking bugs out of the heavenly sky or the Virgin's veil.

  17TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feasts of Saints Ethelred and Ethelbricht, sons of Ermenred, great-grandsons of Ethelbert, brothers of Ermenburga, nephews of Erconbert, and cousins of Egbert

  I had a sweet dream last night. In my dream I was captured by a dragon who looked like my father. My uncle George, wearing a cloak made of feathers, stabbed the dragon in the neck with a goose-quill pen. Then George leapt onto his horse and, reaching down, gathered me up and lifted me to his lap. We rode off together to be crusaders. After I awoke, I kept my eyes closed for a long time so I could hold on to the dream.

  18TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Luke, writer of gospels, physician, and artist, who lived to be eighty-four and died unmarried

  In the village late last night, one of Thomas Cotter's chickens, hunting in the dirt of the cottage floor for bugs, scratched too close to the cooking fire and set her feathers aflame. She squawked and flapped about the cottage, from bed to table to the bacon hanging from the roof beams, setting all on fire. Chased by a naked Thomas, the chicken flew out the door and down the road toward the church, leaving little fires smoldering in her path, until Ralph Littlemouse threw a bucket of water on her, whereupon she lay down gasping in the road, bald and charred. Thomas's family now sleep in our hall until a new cottage is built—all the family but the chicken, which they ate. I try not to laugh when I see Thomas's family, for they are sore grieved. It is no easy task.

  The king, I think, should be informed of this event. I can see him besieging the Scots by setting fire to hundreds of chickens and letting them flap over the Scottish castle walls.

  19TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Frideswide, virgin, though why that should make someone a saint I do not know

  While we picked bugs and burrs from the weaving wool this morning, Morwenna tried to make me understand why my father seeks a husband for me and why it is my duty to marry where he says. I understand full well. He is as greedy as a goat.

  I believe we have enough of things. Those with many manors have to travel from one to another to take care of them. More cows and pigs mean more dung. More pots and bowls and tables mean more cooking and scrubbing. But my father does not see it my way and seeks to improve our position through my marriage bed. Corpus bones. I have not even begun my monthly courses yet, so how can I be a wife?

  Later I told Morwenna my jest about the flaming chickens and she, traitor and carrytale, told my mother. I have now to embroider another cloth for the church. They think I am not trying hard enough not to laugh. Bleak. All is bleak.

  20TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Irene, killed by a man because she would not love him

  My uncle George has come home! He is tall and fair and funny. Last night he told us wondrous stories of the places he has been. The cities have names that whisper like the wind: Venice, Damascus, Byzantium, Samarkand. I say them over and over to myself so I will not forget them before I can tell Perkin. I used to imagine Uncle George in the Holy Land, wearing a red cross sewn on his white tunic, nobly fighting for God and Christ and England. I could almost see the line of crusaders reaching from Jerusalem all the way back to London, like a procession on a holy day or the arrival of foreign merchants at the fair, with snow-white horses and mules prancing in their bells and silks, ladies in coaches of gold and jewels gleaming in the sun like fire, musicians with harps and timbrels and trumpets, and little children scampering alongside throwing flowers in their path as they sing songs of praise to those coming to free them from the heathens. It must have been like the marc
h of the righteous into Paradise.

  I told Uncle George about my imaginings and he laughed and laughed. He said I did get one thing right: There were plenty of donkeys, but not all of them had four legs. His years on crusade, he said, were more like Hell than the Heaven I imagine, with little cheering and singing but much dying of thirst, eating dead horses, and wading knee-deep in blood and broken bodies. I must doubt this.

  21ST DAY OF OCTOBER, least of Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand companions, martyred by the Huns

  Uncle George is teaching me—in Latin, Greek, and Arabic—what he says are the most useful phrases for a crusader:

  "Tell me the way again, more slowly."

  "How much for wine? Too much."

  "Have you herbs for my aching head?"

  "You cheat. You lie. You son of a dog and a camel."

  Mayhap Uncle George will help me take up the cross and be a crusader. I won't even have to bind my chest and pretend to be a man, for it is well known how Eleanor, wife of the second Henry, mother of Richard the Lionheart and the terrible John Softsword, led her band of women on crusade. They sat astride magnificent white horses and, below their linen tunics, wore tight-fitting hose and red leather boots to the knee with orange silk lining. I would walk to the Holy Land for red boots with orange silk lining. I will speak to Uncle George.

  22ND DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Donatus, an Irish monk who was proclaimed a bishop when bells miraculously rang as he entered a church

  Learned men in the East call this the birthday of the world, the anniversary of the Creation on this day four thousand years ago. So says Uncle George. I wonder who has kept the reckoning. Few of the villagers know even when they were born. They say it was the year the miller's barn caught fire or the new priest was driven from the village for lechery.

  Uncle George's baggage finally caught up with him and he has given us all presents—bronze knives and cooking pots, silk for my mother in shades of saffron and lavender, and for our stomachs ginger, cinnamon, cloves, figs, dates, and almonds. For me, something called an orange, shriveled and dry, with a brown musty smell. When I close my eyes, under the must I can smell just a hint of sweet hot sunshine. George says when they are new, oranges taste like water from the rivers of Paradise.

  He also brought me a special gift, a popinjay in a cage carved of ivory and sweet-smelling wood, to join the family of birds in my chamber. Since my father built the solar where he and my mother and any important guests sleep, I share a sleeping chamber only with my nurse Morwenna, my mother's serving women, any visiting girls, and my birds. With the popinjay, I have nineteen birds in cages hanging from the roof timbers. Linnets, skylarks, and nightingales for their song, magpies for their talk. Now that I don't have to hear my father bellowing and snoring and spitting, I can hear their music. Last night I fell asleep smelling my orange and listening to my birds sing. I dreamed I was an angel.

  23RD DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Cuthbert, first man ever to shoe a horse

  I was finally able to speak to Uncle George about my idea of going on crusade to the Holy Land. It is too late, he says. Their own greed, cruelty, and stupidity defeated the crusaders, and the Turks have only to sweep them out like soiled straw.

  Sometimes George does not sound like one who has worn the Holy Cross. He says he stopped being a crusader when he realized God could not be pleased by so much blood, no matter whose.

  He makes me confused. My cheeks glow, my heart flutters like a hawk moth, and my dreams grow soft and swoony. I do not know if the turmoil of the liver I am suffering is because of George or because I had two portions of eel pie for supper.

  24TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Maglorius, who chased a dragon out of jersey

  I met Aelis in the high meadow, as we planned. She had lost the circlet that bound her hair, her boots were torn and muddy, and her nose was red from the sun. She looked much like me.

  She told me more stories of the French king and his ladies, of castles and tournaments, of the Lady Ghislaine who kept a tame badger, of Guillot of Lyons who farted as he bowed to the king and was sent from court for a year, of her best friend Marie who married a ghost.

  I told her about my handsome, confusing Uncle George. She is eager to see him for herself, so I will have my mother invite her for my saint's day celebration.

  Aelis thinks George must look like the archangel Michael. I told her he looks more like the Saint George who slew the dragon. In truth he is handsomer than either of those, for his green eyes are alive and change colors in the sun, at times a red blush flows across his cheeks, tiny drops of sweat shine in the little hairs about his mouth, and he smells of horses and spices and leather. No dead saint could be as beautiful as that.

  I missed dinner and supper both, but I reached home before dark. I told my mother I was gathering sloes for jelly for Morwenna. Told Morwenna I was sent for rose hips for my mother. Mayhap they will not compare stories until after I am asleep.

  My uncle George is an eagle.

  25TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, shoemakers, pricked to death with cobblers' awls

  I have mixed water and eggs with my writing inks to make paint for my chamber walls, where I am painting a scene from Heaven, with dogs and birds who look like me, angels with my mother's face, and saints with the faces of Edward and Aelis and George. Below is Hell, where poor souls with my father's face writhe in eternal torment. I gave God Perkin's face since Perkin is the wisest person I know, but Morwenna flew into a terrible fright, wailing about blasphemy and damnation, so I painted Perkin out and now God just has a sort of watery gray face.

  26TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saints Fata and Bean, which I think is very funny

  Meg from the dairy and I sorted cider apples today. My mother makes the best cider in Lincolnshire. She swears it is because she always includes a number of rotten apples in the mix. I was wondering if this could be true of people—if the world needs a few rotten people to make the sweetest mix. This would explain the problem of God allowing evil in the world.

  Meg only giggles when I talk to her of these matters. She is, however, good to talk to about how to get a weakly calf to drink from a pail, what will keep fairies from getting into your eggs, and whose wife threw him out of the cottage for taking too much ale. Except for Perkin, Meg is probably my best friend on the manor, when I can stop her from curtsying and my lady-ing me.

  27TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Odran, over whose soul angels and devils fought

  The sun is shining, so I have thrown open the shutter in my chamber to let light and air in. I love my chamber when it is warm and sunny. In the middle is the bed I share with Morwenna, large and high, with curtains all around and a trundle under, where the serving maids sleep. At the foot is a chest, carved and dark with age, that looks as if it should be full of treasure but instead is stuffed with old clothes. On the right wall is my mural of Heaven and Hell. On the left wall are three pegs for my gowns and cloaks. And straight ahead is the window, shutters open now, and a stool pulled up, so I can sit and write and look over the yard to the hills and meadows beyond.

  Rain tomorrow. It is certain always to rain heavily on the feast of Saints Simon and Jude.

  28TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saints Simon and Jude

  Sunny.

  29TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Colman, an Irish bishop who taught a mouse to keep him awake in chapel

  Aelis has come with a load of puppies from her best hound, a gift from her father to mine, she says. I think she could not wait for my saint's day to see the beautiful George. She heard Mass with us and stayed for dinner and dancing and gossip and supper and now must spend the night as it is too late to ride home. Aelis thought of everything.

  I have named the puppies. The little male is Brutus, after the first king of Britain, and the females are all called after herbs: Betony, Rosemary, Anise, and Rue.

  30TH DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint Marcellus the Centurion, killed for resigning from the arm
y

  I tried after dinner today to get George to play chess with me, but he said he promised the Lady Aelis a walk to acquaint her with our manor. Corpus bones! It is moat and muddy yard, house and stables and barn, dovecote, privy, and pig yard. She could see it all from the hall door.

  I watched George and Aelis from my window. When they walk together, she walks straight and slow and quiet. This is not the same Aelis from the high meadow. She looks at George as if he were the king and he looks at her as if she were made of Venetian glass. Seeing them gives me a pain in my liver. I must doctor myself with wormwood and mint.

  31ST DAY OF OCTOBER, Feast of Saint En, British martyr, and Allhallows Eve, when ghosts walk

  We sat up late tonight eating nuts and apples, watching the bonfires lit throughout the shire to drive off witches and goblins. Many people are afeared tonight of the dead who come back to visit the earth, but the only dead I know are my tiny brothers and sisters who died before they were born, and how could I be afeared of them? I wish they would come visit. It might ease my mother's grieving.

  As we roasted apples in the fire, Uncle George told us of the places he has been. I could almost see them as he spoke—the Gravelly Sea, all gravel and sand without a drop of water, which ebbs and flows as other seas do and is full of fishes; the nearby Isle of Giants, home to men thirty feet tall who sleep standing up; and the Isle of Pytar, where the people are tiny as elves and eat nothing, but live by the smell of wild apples. I especially long to see the beasts he described—unicorns, dragons, snails so great men live in their shells, a splendid big beast called an elephant with a tail at each end (this one I think my uncle's fancy), and the incredible whales, fish as big as houses, who could swallow whole a man or a bear or a horse.