"God is made of wrath, not love," said Katherine dully. "But since you wish it, I will go. It matters naught what I do."
CHAPTER XXIX
At dusk of the next day when Katherine and the humpbacked parson, Father Clement, rode into Norwich on his mule, Katherine had learned a little about the Lady Julian, though she listened without hope or interest.
Of Julian's early life in the world the priest said nothing, though he knew of the pains and sorrows that had beset it. But he told Katherine of the fearful illness that had come to Julian when she was thirty, and how that when she had been dying in great torment, God had vouchsafed to her a vision in sixteen separate revelations. These "showings" had healed her illness and so filled her with mystic joy and fervour to help others with their message that she had received permission to dedicate her life to this. She had become an anchoress in a cell attached to the small parish church of St. Julian, where folk in need might come to her.
She had been enclosed now for eight years, nor had ever left her cell.
" 'Tis dismal," murmured Katherine, "yet by misery perhaps she best shares the misery of others." "Not dismal at all!" cried Father Clement, with his deep chuckle. "Julian is a most happy saint. God has made a pleasaunce in her soul. No one so ready to laugh as Dame Julian."
Katherine was puzzled, and distrustful. She had never heard of a saint who laughed, nor a recluse who did not dolefully agonise over the sins of the world. It seemed too that though Dame Julian followed the rules prescribed for anchorites, yet these allowed her to receive visitors at times, and that Father Clement had seen her often, when he wrote down her memories of her visions, and the further teachings that came to her through the spirit.
Visions, Katherine thought bitterly. Of what help could it be to listen to some woman's visions? The bleak empty years like a winter sea stretched out their limitless miles before Katherine, and she had no will to live through them. Though the frenzied impulse by the mill pond had passed.
She could not put upon her children the shameful horror of a mother who died by her own act, yet the small Beauforts would never have known. And it were better if everyone thought her dead. The Beauforts then would be less embarrassment to their father. Hawise would care for them, the great castle staffs would care for them, and the Duke, notwithstanding that he had reviled the mother, would provide for them. Tom Swynford was a nearly grown lad and safe-berthed with the young Lord Henry. There was but one child who needed her - and Blanchette was gone.
I will hide me away, thought Katherine, at Sheppey - until I die. Nor would it be long. She felt death near in the increasing pains her body suffered, in the blurring of her sight, and the dragging weakness.
Sometime before they rode through Norwich to the hillside above the river Wensum where Father Clement's little church stood, the priest had fallen into silence. He felt how grievous was the illness of body and soul that afflicted Katherine, and he knew that she was no longer accessible to him.
Guided by Father Clement, Katherine reluctantly entered the dark churchyard behind the flint church. The sky was overcast and an evening drizzle had set in. On the south side beyond the round Saxon church tower, she dimly saw the boxlike outline of the anchorage which clung to the church wall. Breast-high on its churchyard side there was a window, closed by a wooden shutter. The priest tapped on the shutter and called in his bell-toned voice, "Dame Julian, here is someone who has need."
At once the shutter opened. "Welcoom, who'er it be that seeks me."
Father Clement gently pushed Katherine towards the window, which was obscured by a thin black cloth. "Speak to her," he said.
Katherine had no wish to speak. It seemed to her that this was a crowning humiliation, that she should be standing in a tiny unfamiliar churchyard with a hunchback and commanded to reveal her suffering, to ask for help, from some unseen woman whose voice was homely and prosaic as Dame Emma's, and who spoke moreover with a thick East Anglian burr.
"My name is Katherine," she said. Through her weary pain resentment flashed. "There's nothing else to say."
"Coom closer, Kawtherine," The voice behind the curtain was soothing as to a child. "Gi' me your hand." A corner of the black cloth lifted; faintly white in the darkness a hand was held out. Unwillingly Katherine obeyed. At the instant of contact with a firm warm clasp, she was conscience of fragrance. A subtle perfume such as she had never smelled, like herbs, flowers, incense, spices, yet not quite like these. While the hand held hers, she smelled this fragrance and felt a warm tingle in her arm. Then her hand was loosed and the curtain dropped.
"Kawtherine," said the voice, "you are ill. Before you coom to me again, you must rest and drink fresh bullock's blood, tonight, at once - and for days - -"
"By the rood, lady!" Katherine cried angrily, "I've tasted no flesh food in months. 'Tis part of my penance."
"Did our moost Dearworthy Lord Jesus gi' you the penance, Kawtherine?" There was a hint of a smile in the voice, and Katherine's confused resentment increased. Everyone knew that the sinful flesh which had betrayed her must be mortified.
Suddenly the voice changed its tone, became lower, humble and yet imbued with power. Katherine was not conscious of the provincial accent as Julian said, "It was shown to me that Christ ministers to us His gifts of grace, our soul with our body, and our body with our soul, either of them taking help with the other. God has no disdain to serve the body."
For a startled moment Katherine felt a touch of awe. "That is strange to me, lady," she said to the black curtain. "I cannot believe that the foul body is of any worth to God."
"And shall not try tonight," said the voice gently. "Father Clement?"
The priest, who had drawn away, came up to the window. Julian spoke to him at some length.
Katherine was given a chamber reserved for travellers in the rectory across the alley from the church. She was put to bed and cared for by Father Clement's old servant, a bright-eyed woman of sixty, who adored him.
They brought Katherine fresh blood from the slaughterhouse, and a bullock's liver, which they chopped up raw and blended into a mortrewe with egg, they fed her boiled dandelion greens, minced so that she need not chew. They made her eat. Katherine for the first day thought this was a worse penance than any she had undergone, but she was too weak to protest or even to wonder that Dame Julian had said she should not be bled, that it was not sensible to put in blood at one place and take it away from another.
Father Clement twinkled as he told Katherine this, and she smiled feebly, wondering how it was that a man so hideous and deformed always seemed happy. He laboured tirelessly for his parish, yet was always unhurried. He never scolded, or questioned, or exhorted. There was a sunniness about him that shone through all his clean shabby little rectory.
In four days Katherine had gained strength, her pains were less, the bluish sores on her legs had ceased oozing. She began to worry about the expense that she was giving Father Clement, but he laughed at her, saying with truth that the odd things Lady Julian had prescribed for her to eat were to be had for the asking at the shambles, while the greens came from his own garden.
"Never did I think that I should he destitute as I am now," Katherine said on a long sigh. Yet it had become a dream - the glamour and the lavish bounty of all those past years. A guilty dream.
The priest looked at her softly. "Destitute? Perhaps 'tis that you've always been. For our soul may never have rest in things that are beneath itself."
"Ah, see-" she cried bitterly. "Now at last you speak like a priest. 'Tis what Brother William would have said - God keep him - that was killed because of me - he, and others."