A Cloud of Outrageous Blue Read online

  — 11 —

  I wash my hands and face in the fountain and retreat to the scriptorium, drunk on the waking dream of Mason’s presence. The chalky smell of the room hits me first; that, and the faint goaty aroma of the parchment. It brings me back to earth—but I swear I can almost see angels reaching their hands right into the dirt of the world and pulling up spirit-stuff, hands filthy with these rough building blocks of holiness. The air whirls with rock dust and animal skins, planks of wood and beeswaxed linen thread.

  My reverie is sharply interrupted.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, I need you to go to town for me, Edyth,” says Bridgit as I enter the grinding room. “Alice is going as well, for Joan’s medicines. Here’s my list. Go see the druggist first for the mastic and gum, and then the jeweler for the stones. Be careful when you come out of the jeweler’s—keep your wits. You don’t want anyone following you, thinking you’ve got something to steal.”

  The list in my hands is simple, and going to town, what a relief—a long walk to shake out the thousand emotions coursing through my body.

  * * *

  —

  “I can’t believe we get to leave the priory,” says Alice when we meet up at the gatehouse. “My world’s shrunk to the size of a peach pit over the last few months.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I reply, distracted.

  “Though it seems to me like yours is expanding,” she says, an impish smile on her lips.

  On the bridge, we stop to drop dried leaves into the river and see whose comes out on the other side first.

  Footsteps on the wooden bridge make us stiffen. We lower our heads and wait for them to pass, but they pause, and a reflection appears next to mine in the water.

  “Are you going into town?” Mason asks, smiling at our mirror image.

  “We are! Shopping for stones, and, um, mastic, and”—if only I could stop babbling—“and, uh, resin! Those things.”

  “Funny, I’m going, too! Am I…allowed to join you?” he asks cautiously.

  Oh, the delightful sickness pressing in my chest! I open my mouth to reply, but Alice cuts me off.

  “We appreciate the escort,” says Alice. “Don’t we, Edyth?”

  “We do.” My cheeks burn. We all turn toward town, and Mason falls in step next to me.

  “Cold today,” he says.

  If only he knew how not cold I felt just now. “It’ll be warm soon enough.”

  “So what do they have you doing for work? I hope it’s not too awful.”

  “I’m working in the scriptorium, as a matter of fact. Grinding pigments. Did you know there are colors inside rocks?” I squeeze my eyes shut. God, I sound like a child.

  Mason doesn’t seem fazed at all. “Who would’ve guessed we’d both be working with stone?” he chuckles. “You were always more of a wool girl.”

  Alice lets us talk—occasionally giving me a sly nudge. It’s so good to speak freely, away from the eyes and ears at the priory.

  We enter the town gates, and instantly all of my senses war. I’ve never seen so many people. The buildings look like tumbled boats in a moat of dreck, their second stories leaning toward each other, blocking out the sun. Children and animals are running, hawkers shouting, customers haggling. Beggars huddle in ragged, shapeless bundles; coughing and sneezing are everywhere. I’m reeling from the dissonant smells—incense and various animal excrements and baking bread and strong cheese. Shards of dark metallic hues clash and burn with smothering billows of green, and I can barely see, barely hear for the ringing in my ears.

  Alice has been here before—Thornchester is her family’s nearest town—and she weaves through the crowd, leading us, and thank God for that, or I’d fall in a faint, and I don’t want to do that in front of Mason. Then I’d have to tell him about the colors—and maybe he’d think that I had a demon.

  But I feel him close behind me. Then beside me. He slips a hand into my cloak and brushes mine.

  Our fingers touch. Our hands clasp.

  And we make it through the chaos, to the other end of the high street.

  We separate to do our various errands, and Mason meets us at last outside the jeweler’s. It’s a good thing he came: as we head back through the crowd, I feel a thousand eyes searching for my purse, heavy with precious stones, waiting to pounce on a girl who’s half blinded by conflicting, hurtling colors. Bristling with fright, I feel a hand on the small of my back and brace myself for a thief to make a grab.

  It’s Mason, thank goodness. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “It’s—it’s time to start back to the priory,” I stammer.

  “We can take our time,” he says softly. “The day’s not half spent.”

  * * *

  It was two years ago at Michaelmas when I first saw Mason.

  Services had ended and the congregation filed into Saint Andrew’s churchyard, the little ones playing hide-and-seek among the tombs and trees, and the old ones gathering to gossip and talk harvest. Da was about to lead us in a paternoster at the graves of Mam’s parents when Lord Geoffrey Caxton took him aside and made him an offer.

  “We’re starting a cloth trade right here in town, Edgar. We’ll need weavers, fullers, dyers. And all those workers will need a manager. Your name was put forward as reeve.”

  Reeve? That was almost like being in charge of the whole town! Was this really happening? To us?

  “You’re the man for the job,” said Lord Geoffrey, playfully slapping Da’s chest. They laughed and shook on it robustly. “It will mean being away sometimes…Flanders and such…but you’ll be given a wage. Your wife will be happy about that, won’t she?”

  A wage! Mam and I grinned.

  “We’ll be rich,” I whispered, grabbing her by the elbow. Mam and I were on our toes with anticipation. Da turned to us with a new straightness of spine, his red beard swinging.

  Henry and I followed Mam and Da home along the copper-green river, gathering the last of the fallen walnuts. The larder was already full, because Da had a knack for getting to the walnuts first. That is, unless Old John Mason beat him to it.

  “Looks like Old John’s been here and about cleaned us out,” said Henry, cracking a nut against the stone river wall.

  “Oooh,” I replied with a shudder. “Don’t say his name, Henry!”

  “How can he eat all them nuts with no teeth?” He mimicked the gumming mouth of an old man. We laughed and I hopped up onto the wall and balance-walked, leaping across each gap. My cheeks were flushed despite a bit of chill in the air, and my lungs felt pained, but I was having too much fun to care.

  Old John wasn’t really that old, and I felt guilty for poking fun. He was only about the same age as Da. When he’d reach up to shake the thick branch of the walnut tree, the lines in his forearms would carve the story of decades of stone pushing and sledgehammer swinging. But the stone dust got into his chest and threw his humors off balance; his twisting cough, huge hunched shoulders and gray skin made him a living gargoyle.

  “Boo!” Henry suddenly jumped up in my way just as I was about to leap across to the next wall. I stopped short and wobbled, falling onto the soft, grassy bank, my ankle twisting as I rolled. I rubbed it—it wasn’t sprained—and I heard Henry laughing at me, but further down the bank, someone else was looking our way.

  A wooden punt was tied to the landing, and a boy was helping load it with baskets of river clay. His shaggy, dark blond hair waved out under his cap. He smiled at me, and I tasted honey.

  “Boy!” a gruff voice threatened. “Boy, get these baskets loaded, or by ’is bones I’ll give ye such a thrash—” It was Old John himself down in the boat, his menace dissolving into an awful cough.

  Henry helped me up and left me, running over to the boat landing. “Mason!” he called to Old John’s son. “Where have you been?”
<
br />   “Henry, old friend!” The two clasped hands. “I had an apprenticeship, building the new spire at Christchurch. I’m glad to be home! At least until the next job.”

  “Well, come by for a bite later,” said Henry. “We’ve got the goose roasted, and my father’s just been named reeve! Things are looking up, I guess!”

  Mason shot another look at me. “Looks that way.” He smiled, and I felt the river flow right through me. “I’ll see you around vespers.”

  Mason came every Sunday after. Mostly, he and Henry went off to help Mason’s father get ready for winter. The old man’s cough was getting worse. But always, as he left, Mason nodded and smiled at me—mocking me, I was sure, the way they all did—but my whole body filled red as cherries anyway. It took me three weeks, but I finally got the courage:

  Right, I told myself. I may as well smile back.

  * * *

  —

  It’s just past noon, and the sun starts to drop toward the treetops up on the priory hill. Alice climbs a little ahead.

  “Mason, you’ll need to go separately from us,” she calls over her shoulder. “Wait until we’ve gone in, and come later. If the guards see us all together, there will be talk, or worse.”

  “I’ll avoid all appearance of evil,” he pledges cheerfully. But as we approach the bridge, he suddenly takes my hand and leads me quickly down to the riverbank. He looks up to make sure Alice can’t see—and wraps his arms around my waist completely, kissing me hard. Months of longing and grief fill our mouths, like we could resurrect everyone we loved with this kiss, like we’re swaddled in blue velvet.

  “I have to see you,” he says. “Edyth.”

  “It won’t be easy,” I whisper, and kiss his cheek. “But we’ll find ways. We just have to be careful.”

  “It’s not an accident that we’re both here.”

  “How could it possibly be?” Maybe I haven’t been tossed to fate, after all. For the first time in months, true hope wells up in me.

  I squeeze Mason’s hand and run back up the hill to meet up with Alice.

  Under her veil, she’s grinning. “Not exactly one of the Pitiful now, are you?”

  — 12 —

  Can a room be alive, alert?

  The scriptorium feels carved with eyes, in the walls, the books, the magnifying globes. Everything must know what happened under the bridge. The tingle of Mason’s kiss still on my lips, my body all secrets, and that’s how it must stay if he and I are to meet again.

  I’ll go straight to the grinding room, give Bridgit her wares and make some excuse to leave early and find Mason. Potato-peeling duty, something like that.

  But no luck—Brother Timothy says hello and waves me over.

  “Good morning, little sister!”

  “Good morning, Brother Timothy!”

  “Fine job on the paints yesterday.” He leans in and whispers, “I like yours better than Bridgit’s. Hers can be rather gritty.”

  “Let’s not hurt her Scottish pride,” I chuckle.

  “She’s had too much experience. There’s the zeal of youth in you, little sister. You haven’t yet learned where to cut corners.”

  “I can hear you, Timothy,” Bridgit chides, emerging from the pigment room. I give her the bag from the marketplace, and she hands me a list of the afternoon’s orders.

  My hopes of leaving early are dashed. I just pray she can’t see my annoyance, so I feign a good attitude. “Thanks. I’ll get started right away.”

  Muriel: Terre verte and ochre, each 30 grains. Azurite, coarse dark, 12 grains.

  Anne: Vermillion ink, 4 drams.

  Timothy: Sinopia, 20 grains. Ultramarine, 2 grains.

  “Bridgit, it says ultramarine on my list. I think you meant to put it on yours.”

  “No, it’s no mistake. I was thinking to myself, Now, that Edyth, she’s a bright girl. What would happen if I gave her just a little bit more? So today, I’m going to show you how to extract the lapis lazuli. You can do the other pigments afterward.”

  I gasp. Lapis lazuli? Me?

  “But, Bridgit,” I protest, “I shouldn’t do it. I haven’t even mastered the other recipes—”

  “Oh, come on,” she coaxes, a cheeky twinkle in her eyes. “You’ll see. It’s a bit of magic.”

  There’s no debating her; Bridgit’s already set up. She’s got lapis stones in several stages of grinding: a little drawer of raw stones streaked grayish white; brighter little blue pebbles; a light blue powder the color of a summer sky.

  “These are the raw lapis stones, very hard and worth their weight in gold. We’ll leave off grinding them for another time, and just make the pigment with some I’ve already done.” She melts beeswax and resin in a brazier and adds the powdered lapis. When it’s done, she pours the grayish-blue slurry out on a slab.

  “You make it into wax sticks and let it dry for three days. Here’s a piece that’s done, see? Soften it in that warm water there and knead it like bread dough. Go ahead.

  “Now put the dough into this bowl of lye. Careful, don’t touch the liquid or it’ll burn your skin clear away. Take these wooden sticks, and pound the dough into the lye. There, do you see how the liquid turns blue? That’s the pure pigment coming out. It’ll settle at the bottom.”

  Bridgit taught me to say a prayer before I work on each pigment. Because lapis is used to paint Our Lady’s clothes, Bridgit prefers the Magnificat. So we recite as I begin kneading—

  Magnificat anima mea Dominum

  Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo

  Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae.

  My soul magnifies the Lord

  And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior

  For He has looked on the humble estate of His servant.

  “Here’s a bowl I did yesterday,” says Bridgit. “Take a spoon to the bottom, and see what you pull up.”

  “My God,” I gasp. A warm glow climbs the back of my neck as I draw up a spoonful of vivid violet-blue.

  The color completely takes me over, like I’m living inside a memory.

  Or kissing Mason. The same feeling.

  I’m inside color itself, inside purity, inside nothing and everything at the same time.

  Before I know what’s happening, I hear Bridgit chiding me—

  Wake up, girl, wake up! What’s wrong with you?

  —and she’s patting my cheek. Hard.

  The cloud of outrageous blue before my eyes dissipates into soft paleness and clears away. I’ve been staring at the ultramarine, frozen and holding the spoon, dripping vivid puddles of blue soup on the table around the bowl. A total waste.

  “What…what happened?” The trance peels away from me and leaves me with goose bumps.

  Bridgit clucks her tongue and gestures toward the table. “You were daydreaming, or in some kind of stupor—I don’t know! But look at this mess!”

  I scrape what I can of the spilled pigment onto a piece of scrap paper.

  “You can’t use that now,” Bridgit sighs. “It’s tainted. You’ll have to mark it as substandard. Maybe someone will use it for patch work. Good thing it was only a small bit.”

  My cheeks flush fire at Bridgit’s scowl, at the pigment, like I’ve thrown pure gold into the rubbish pile.

  “I don’t know why that happened.” I hang my head in my hands. “I knew I shouldn’t have done the ultramarine. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry….It’s too much.”

  “What’s too much?” she rebukes. “It’s just a different process, Edyth. Why on earth—”

  I’m paralyzed, mouth gaping, tears coming. Can’t tell her about the colors. She’ll think I’m insane. She’ll send me away from the scriptorium. But Bridgit’s been good to me. Maybe—

  “The color—it took over,” I confess. A shroud of shame covers my hea
d.

  “What do you mean, took over?” Her face is twisted in confusion.

  “Almost like fainting,” I try to explain. “I’ve never seen a color like that. It’s beautiful when it’s dry, but when it’s wet like that…too much.”

  Bridgit lifts her hand and I flinch.

  But instead of striking me, she puts her arm around my shoulder and gives me a little squeeze.

  “Forgiven,” she sighs. “It happens.”

  “It does? Really?”

  “Well, no,” she says. “But…you’ll try again tomorrow.”

  A headache is beginning just behind my eyes. Bridgit cleans up the pigment, wrings a cloth in cool water and puts it on the back of my neck, then sits across from me and folds her hands, staring at me.

  “Right,” says Bridgit, finally. “Let’s get you to bed. I’ll say you’ve taken ill.”

  Bridgit walks me down the endless winding halls to my cell. I sleep through the bells and wake at dusk, staring at the shadows being thrown by the dying light, that space between, where I always seem to live.

  * * *

  —

  After compline, Bridgit brings Joan the Physician to see me, with Alice assisting her. Joan asks me a string of questions.

  “Bridgit said the color…took over? What color? What do you mean?” A suspicious glance passes between the women.

  “I’ve never seen blue like that before,” I say, shamefaced. “Doesn’t it…do something to you?”

  “What, lapis stone? Hardly,” she chortles to Bridgit. “I use it for eye sores.” She gives me tincture of hellebore in a brown bottle and a corked pitcher of water. “At any rate, I find nothing of concern. But keep this tincture here in your cell. If it happens again, four drops in this spring water, no more—or you will vomit all night.”

  “All right,” I say, eyeing it warily.

  “It probably won’t kill you,” she says dryly, “but give a holler if you see Saint Peter.”