The stillness was killing me, so I walked to the sheep pen, took off my mittens and ran my hands over the warm, growing fleeces, pressing into the wool and letting the heat swirl around my cold fingers. And the voices of Mam and Da were so present in my ears that the agony of their missingness made my knees buckle under, and I was grateful the sheep were there to lean on. Just then, the dawn light emerged, streaked with the dull sound of a horse’s hooves, and of cartwheels rolling up to the market cross.
— 4 —
“This’ll be Thornchester,” says the driver. “The rest of us’ll get out here and seek the guesthouse, but you two, monk and young maid, see the gatekeeper on your own.”
The passengers begin packing up. The father breaks off some bread and cheese for his son, who offers me a few dried Spanish apricots. My knitted brow softens; my pressed-white lips part and I thank the boy. The tart sweetness of the apricots tickles the inside of my nose like little blue sparks. I take a deep breath and chew as slowly as I can.
The old monk lifts the wagon covering up front. On a hilltop ahead, the Priory of Saint Christopher rises white-limed and clean from the encircling town. In Hartley Cross, it wasn’t unusual for houses to be raised and fall back into the soil within one generation. The only two stone structures we had were little Saint Andrew’s church and the river wall.
The huge priory church looms in the moonlight, its heavy base tapering upward to twin quill points laced with tracery that defies its material, like two arms reaching to be picked up by a parent, a rock child learning to walk.
We ride over the stone bridge and under the massive arch of the gatehouse. I’m surprised to feel solid pavement beneath my feet.
When I jump out of the cart, the monk gets out, too, helped by the father and greeted by a tall priest. While the driver hands a note to the gatekeeper, I stand in the vestibule, staring back at the river encircling the priory, torchlight rippling reflections in its current.
The town spreads out on the other side of the river, its two-storied row houses, some timber-framed, some limestone, winding along the streets. Every now and then the flutter of candlelight punctures the darkened windows. There must be glass in those windows; no sane person would keep their shutters open on a wintry night like this.
After a few minutes, I’m ushered forward by a dark female figure and led through the vestibule into a wide, open space. The moon makes the pale buildings glow and the shadows utterly black. In front of me towers the enormous church. Oh, that stone could fly like this, weightless, above the earth! I think, in spite of myself. We turn in to a doorway and wind through tangled passages, the middle-of-the-night quiet punctuated by loud snoring. That awake-but-am-I-dreaming feeling governs my feet as I follow the silent form to a little room.
In the light of my guide’s candle, there isn’t much I can see of the tiny, stuffy cell. A hundred questions fill my head, but I think better of asking, since this woman does not speak one word to me. She puts my satchel in a chest at the foot of the bed, lights a candle on a shelf, and leaves me.
I don’t know what to do. Sleep? Unpack? I stand in the shaft of moonlight and stare blankly, with nothing but an unformed question turning over again and again in my mind, until I begin to wobble on the balls of my feet. I lie down on the bed in my cloak and shoes, too exhausted to cry.
The light dims, and freezing rain begins, with a different sound than I’ve always known, the soft patter-tap on thatch above and mud below. This roof is timber, and the drops echo on the inside of this wood-and-stone box that is now home. A different rhythm, a different peace, a different color—pale yellow pops of powder on the insides of my eyes.
Where is the earthen floor beneath me, the animals burrowing holes for their beds beneath my straw pallet? I’m on a second story, lifted from the floor on a bed frame, floating in the air, unconnected to anything I know.
Pahhh goes the powdery sound, falling and falling, like a game of volleyed wool puffs. On nights like this, Da would sit at the trestle table and watch his family sleep by rushlight, singing to his Heloise a tune he learned in Flanders—
Car tant vous aim—sans mentir—
Qu’on porroit avant tarir
La haute mer
Et ses ondes retenir
Que me peüsse alentir
De vous amer.
For I love you so much—it’s no lie!—
That one could dry up
The high seas
And hold back their waves
Before I could hold back
From loving you.
The memory makes my heart ache. I fumble in the satchel for the bundle of little parchments and sit at the desk. Da’s face in the burnt drawing is only fractionally recognizable. In the half-light, I try to re-create, on a fresh sheet, what I can remember of him, and stare at the ghost of his image.
I’m sorry, Da. I’m sorry our last words were quarrels about Mason. I’m sorry I never got to say goodbye.
I lie down on the warm floor, kiss the brass-point lips and hum his song, falling asleep with the drawing under my cheek.
* * *
—
I wake a little to a change in the atmosphere of my priory cell. At home, I could always tell it was snowing by the color of the light, the way the world became muffled and the Sound grew brighter and wider.
At night, even when my whole family was asleep, without even the rustle of my wool blanket on the bedsheet, there was always the Sound.
It’s like the drone of a bow on a psaltery string being played across a field. And it vibrates in a thin green line just out of the corner of my left eye. It’s only disappeared a few times in my life, so it usually blends into the background. But I’ve learned the hard way that no one else hears it or sees these colors except me.
There are a thousand sounds that make up silence. There’s the wind blowing snow past your ears, right to left and back again. There’s tree branches clacking together like drum beaters. And there’s what surely must be women’s cries for help—until you realize it’s the boughs of a half-fallen tree squeaking against its neighbors’ bark.
But you can’t know the loudness of silence, can you—unless you’ve known what it is to be truly alone.
— 5 —
I wake to a blinding beam of sunlight falling across me through an arched slit of a window set high in the plastered wall, like a bright keyhole. A shadow interrupts the light, and I become aware of a lavender voice repeating—