She has enough problems. Lord Guillaume still isn’t here, his prive is in love with her, and Christmas is coming. She’s recruited half the village as servants and cooks, and they are out of a number of essential supplies which Imeyne insists they send to Oxford or Courcy for. Agnes adds to the problem by being underfoot and constantly running away from Maisry.
“You must send to Sir Bloet for a waiting woman,” Imeyne said when they found her playing in the barn loft. “And for sugar. We have none for the subtlety nor the sweetmeats.”
Eliwys looked exasperated. “My husband bade us—”
“I will watch Agnes,” I said, hoping the interpreter had translated “waiting women” properly and that the history vids had been right, and the position of children’s nurse was sometimes filled by women of noble birth. Apparently it was. Eliwys looked immediately grateful, and Imeyne didn’t glare any more than usual. So I’m in charge of Agnes. And apparently Rosemund, who asked for help with her embroidery this morning.
The advantages of being their nurse is that I can ask them all about their father and the village, and I can go out to the stable and the church and find the priest and Gawyn. The disadvantage is that a good deal is being kept from the girls. Once already Eliwys stopped talking to Imeyne when Agnes and I came into the hall, and when I asked Rosemund why they had come here to stay, she said, “My father deems the air is healthier at Ashencote.”
This is the first time anyone has mentioned the name of the village. There isn’t any Ashencote on the map or in the Doomsday Book. I suppose there’s a chance it could be another “lost village.” With a population of thirty, it could easily have died out in the Black Death or been absorbed by one of the nearby towns, but I still think it’s Skendgate.
I asked the girls if they knew of a village named Skendgate, and Rosemund said she’d never heard of it, which doesn’t prove anything, since they’re not from around here, but Agnes apparently asked Maisry, and she’d never heard of it either. Ms. Montoya puts the “gate” (which was actually a weir) at 1360 or later, and many of the Anglo-Saxon place names were replaced by Normanized ones or named for their new owners. Which bodes ill for Guillaume D’Iverie, and for the trial he still has not returned from. Unless this is another village altogether. Which bodes ill for me.
Gawyn’s feelings of courtly love for Eliwys are apparently not disturbed by dalliances with the servants. I asked Agnes to take me out to the stable to see her pony on the chance that Gawyn would be there. He was, in one of the boxes with Maisry, making less-than-courtly grunting noises. Maisry looked no more terrified than usual, and her hands were holding her skirts in a wad above her waist instead of clutching her ears, so it apparently wasn’t rape. It wasn’t
I had to hastily distract Agnes and get her out of the stable, so I told her I wanted to go across the green to see the bell tower. We went inside and looked at the heavy rope.
“Father Roche rings the bell when someone dies,” Agnes said. “If he does not, the devil will come and take their soul, and they can not go to heaven,” which, I suppose, is more of the superstitious prate which irritates Lady Imeyne.
Agnes wanted to ring the bell, but I talked her into going into the church to find Father Roche instead.
Father Roche wasn’t there. Agnes told me that he was probably still with the cottar, “who dies not though he has been shriven,” or was somewhere praying. “Father Roche is wont to pray in the woods,” she said, peering through the rood screen to the altar.
The church is Norman, with a central aisle and sandstone pillars, and a flagged stone floor. The stained-glass windows are very narrow and small and of dark colors. They let in almost no light. There is only one tomb, halfway up the nave.
An effigy of a knight lies on top of the tomb, his arms in gauntlets, crossed over his breast, and his sword at his side. The carving on the side says, “
Agnes told me the tomb is her grandfather’s, who died of a fever “a long time ago.”
Except for the tomb and a rough statue, the nave is completely empty. The contemps stood during church so there aren’t any pews, and the practice of filling the nave with monuments and memorials didn’t take hold until the 1500’s.
A carved wooden rood screen, twelfth century, separates the nave from the shadowy recesses of the chancel and the altar. Above it, on either side of the crucifix, are two crude paintings of the Last Judgment. One is of the faithful entering heaven and the other of sinners being consigned to hell, but they seem nearly alike. Both are painted in garish reds and blues, and their expressions look equally dismayed.
