In the month of April

What happened in the days that followed Easter eclipsed even the matter of my baby, at least as far as Joan and Marmion were concerned. The first was that Titus died. Gradually he lost the power of his limbs and then the light in his eyes; in his final days he lay crumpled on a pillow, shivering but otherwise barely moving. Agnes nursed him with a fierce devotion. She had wanted to keep him in her bedchamber but, accepting that he needed the warmth of a steadily burning fire at night, allowed him to be moved to the hall. Joan made her leave him there when it grew late, and go upstairs to sleep, but nevertheless she would still creep back in the middle of the night. So when she found him stiff and dead one morning, after a night that she had slept through by mistake, she blamed herself and would not be consoled. We’ll buy you another monkey, Roland said, but his offer made her weep the harder. If it were a child who died, she said, would you replace it with another at once and grieve no longer?

Then it came to the question of burial. When the dogs die they are thrown on the midden, but this would not do for Titus. A little pit dug in a corner of the orchard seemed the right place for the corpse, but Agnes had other plans. Telling no one – except for Henry, as I later learned – she sought out the gravedigger in the village and ordered him to lift the stone that sealed the opening to her parents’ tomb. The gravedigger, John Verney, went to Simm, and Simm, knowing that this command could not be fulfilled, came straight to me.

I tried to soften the message. I promised a ceremony at a grave in the orchard and flowers to strew on it. But Agnes was immovable, and I asked Sir Joselin to talk to her. He explained that an animal, however deeply loved, could not be laid in holy ground.

But Titus is carved on my mother’s tomb, she argued, so why should he not be in it?

Because, unlike yours, his soul is not immortal. And unlike you, he will not rise again. To your mother – to all of us when we die – the grave is like a bed in which our bodies rest until the voice of the archangel calls them on the last day, just as the cock crow wakes us now while we are living.

But I believe that I will see Titus in heaven.

Well, God loves his entire creation and, as his is the law of the kingdom of heaven, who are we to say what we shall find there? But on earth it is against the law to bury an animal in a consecrated church.

Do you not know that the law is changing? Are you too old and blind to see that?

That law will not change.

William will disagree with you when he comes back, Agnes said.

I do not think he will.

When the priest had left us, I rebuked Agnes for her discourtesy to him. I had to; it could not go unremarked. She did not care. You forget that this is my house, she said, and I am mistress of it. And he is a stupid old man.

I let that pass. And as the creature’s body was beginning to decay, the next day she allowed it to be placed in a hole dug hard beside the wall of the churchyard. When William comes, I will rebury him, she vowed.

The next disturbance was instigated by the wandering preacher. Or, since he has ceased to wander, it would seem, perhaps he should be called the new incomer to the village. No longer satisfied with his daily pulpit by the water pump, he took his gospel of dissent to the very door of the church. While Sir Joselin was saying the morning mass of Thursday, when the willow was still green in every house and the candles were still burning at the sepulchre day and night, the preacher took up a position in the porch to denounce what he termed the idolatry within. Images are lewd lessons painted by the Devil, in his words. Poor Joselin came out to find a band of his own parishioners clustered at the open entrance, cheering on the firebrand. The people soon dispersed when they saw the priest, but later in the day someone unseen daubed a streak of pitch on the white marble bier of the dead Christ. For now, that sacrilege has united the most part of the village in outrage – and the transgressor must have been either half-hearted or a coward to have spared the image and only marked its bed – but how long will that last? Marmion has heard that all the churches in the land are to receive visitations to confirm that their proceedings keep within the letter of the law. Whose law? As Agnes rudely but rightly said: the laws are changing now.

These are confusing and unfathomable times. When I asked Roland for his opinion, he said: Jesus was a rabble-rouser too. That’s why Herod feared him.

I see that could be true. I wish that Hugh were here, with his untrammelled vision.

The monkey and the turbulent preacher had fewer immediate consequences for the household than the third event. Yesterday, Saturday, Agnes did not come down to breakfast and Joan, ever motherly and mindful of her, went up to her bedchamber to see if all was well. It was quiet and dark within, Susan having risen hours ago, and Joan was worried. Afterwards she told me she had been afraid that Agnes might have taken poison. If her seeming composure since her father’s death had been deceptive, the loss of Titus could have tipped her over the edge into despair. So it was with caution that Joan drew back the bed-curtains, to be met by the sight of Agnes fast asleep in the embrace of Henry Martyn. The lovers woke, of course, and Henry scuttled shamefacedly away with his shirt clutched to him, and Joan berated Agnes roundly. But what is done is done; Agnes is undone and must be betrothed at once. Now Henry is firmly lodged here, like a burr in the fur of a dog.

Do you sleep like the dead? Joan railed at Susan. So soundly that this knave could steal into a maiden’s bed unbeknownst to you? Did you not hear them at their unlawful business?

It seems that she did. Susan wept and protested that she had only been obeying the young mistress’s instructions and indeed was trying to save her from doing herself worse harm. Joan was not the only one to fear for Agnes, and the girl had insisted that Henry alone could save her sanity. But Susan’s good intentions were not enough to save her and now she is dismissed. And Joan is beside herself because she fears that Agnes may be pregnant.

William Clare returned to the village this evening, straight into this commotion. I have not seen him yet. I don’t know what he can do to help, but we are all glad to have him back. Sir Joselin has not yet recovered completely from his illness of the winter and I know he has been struggling to carry out his duties on his own.