Excerpt from THE FIRST VIAL : An Inconvenient Woman

In this scene from the medieval novel, THE FIRST VIAL, the local priest visits his sick mistress, in whom he has lost interest.

IN a cottage garden across from the ale house, a woman rose from pulling onions and nudged her companion.
“See,” she whispered, her wide eyes straying to the other side of the muddy roadway. “He’s bent t’ward the miller’s house. To Constance without doubt.”

The other woman shielded a snicker behind a workworn hand and drew in her breath sharply. “Look! He carries the sacred oil and holy waters.”
Both women muttered grimly and made the sign of the cross then hurried inside while the cassocked figure drifted into the cottage across the way.

Father Simon looked down at the wan face of the woman lying immobile on the pallet. Her breath was coming in shallow rasps through chalky parted lips. He said the required phrases, applied the oil and sprinkled the waters. Assuring himself with a quick look that he was alone, he lifted the pillow from beneath the unconscious woman’s head, held it in his hands still watching her, then in a quick rush of movement pressed it down over the woman’s face.

“Sleep well, Constance,” he whispered grimly.

Her struggle was feeble and short-lived. Father Simon continued to hold the pillow against her face long after she’d gone rigid. Carefully he lifted it and gazed dispassionately at the starting eyes, distended neck muscles, the teeth bared in a last gasp for breath. With callous fingers he forced shut the eyelids. He looked at her neck and shrugged. It might appear thus in any case. There was often a frantic gulp for air at the end. He pulled the lips down over the jutting teeth and absently wiped his fingers on the bedclothes. Then he replaced the pillow under her head, studied the result and nodded to himself. A satisfactory end to an unsatisfactory woman.

Perhaps it was time to make the more permanent arrangement of a hearth-mate instead of taking other men’s leavings. That woman now at the castle. It would certainly be a more agreeable solution to his difficulties and it would save him having to go through with his other plans.

While he was pondering his alternatives the cottage door flung open and the miller, panting and distraught, burst into the poor little room. Father Simon composed his face into that of the sympathetic cleric. He laid a consoling hand on the miller and shook his head sadly.
“She is gone, Robert.”

The miller sank to his knees with a groan and touched the cold hand of his dead wife. It lay strangely twisted as if seized at death by a sudden spasm. The miller eyed the hand fearfully. Had she felt the flame of the infernal regions even as she slipped away? He had tried so hard to spare her such an end. Hadn’t he prayed for her wicked soul over and over and offered a penny at Mass only yesterday to secure her freedom from her sins. That she had often been unfaithful to him he knew. She’d admitted as much. In fact she’d mocked him with it on many a night when creeping into their dingy cottage where he lay awake waiting for her. Hadn’t he begged her to repent of her ways and be the wife to him she ought? And now look at her. Damned to hell fire. He dropped his head on his wife’s motionless body and wept like a bereft child.

THE women worked quickly. Although they had prepared bodies for burial many times, it had not lost its horrors. Death was a shameful thing, stripped of dignity. All the while one felt as if one were violating a privacy the dead were helpless to prevent. That somewhere behind those fixed stares they were protesting and demanding to be let alone.

The women removed Constance’s thin shift and undergarments and, grunting under her weight, dropped her body into the bathwater. They scrubbed her briskly from head to toe then dragged her out onto the floor. Clean clothes had been provided by her husband and they hurried to redress the dead woman.

“Whatcher think of fire at castle?” one woman asked the other as she slipped a dead arm into a sleeve.
“Were a judgment on ‘im, I’ll wager,” answered the second. “Fer doin’ away with ‘is uncle. Weren’t no proper master, neither. Struttin’ around like a peacock,” she sniffed.
“I ‘spect you be right,” agreed the first. “Mistress were spared though, saints be praised.”

They crossed themselves solemnly then one cried out, “Why, whatever is this? Look at this, will you.”
She pointed to a large bluish boil under the dead woman’s right arm.
“Didn’t notice that when I washed her. Never seen the like, have you?”

Her companion leaned over the body. “No, but be careful it don’t……oh, now you’ve gone and done it. What a horrible smell. And look at all that coming out of there. We’re going to have to wash her all over now. My man isn’t going to like this. Comin’ home for evening meal soon and me still at it. Come on, let’s get her back in there. Not her fault, silly cow but she’ll need to smell better’n this or Father Simon won’t let her in his church for her own Mass!”

That brought a chuckle from the other woman and together they repeated the bathing procedure. Both were panting by the time they had finished getting the dead woman dressed again and carried to her bed.

“Here, you take this end and we’ll throw the water out behind. Come on now, let’s heave it up.”

The women staggered under the weight of the filled bathtub but managed to carry it outside. They set it down and tipped it on its side to let the water drain out then wiping their hands on their aprons, left for their own homes.

Constance lay alone in the cottage. It grew darker and darker inside the still room until she became only a round black hump on the bed.

In the gathering dusk behind the house two goats had broken their tethers, found the bath water to their liking and lapped it up. A young lad caught up to them there and dragged them back to their own yard with mouths still dripping, where they nibbled at what the cottage garden had to offer before being tied off for milking.

from The First Vial, Thistledown Press, 2005