“Look,” she said. She pulled her frock over her head and dropped it on the floor.
She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She looked younger than I had imagined, thin, but womanly—her face was that of a mischievous Madonna, as if carved by a sculptor inspired more by desire than the divine. Her hair was long and the color of buckskin, catching the candlelight as if a single ray of sunlight might make it explode in golden fire. I felt a heat rise in my face, and another kind of rise in my trousers. I was excited and confused and ashamed all at once, and I turned my back on the arrow loop and cried out.
“No!”
Suddenly, she was right behind me, and I felt her hand on my shoulder, then rubbing my neck.
“Pocket. Sweet Pocket, don’t. It’s all right.”
“I feel like the Devil and the Virgin are doing battle in my body. I didn’t know you were like that.”
“Like a woman, you mean?”
Her hand was warm and steady, kneading the muscles in my shoulder through the cross in the wall and I leaned into it. I wanted to turn and look, I wanted to run out of the chamber, I wanted to be asleep, or just waking—ashamed that the Devil had visited me in the night with a damp dream of temptation.
“You know me, Pocket. I’m your friend.”
“But you are the anchoress.”
“I’m Thalia, your friend, who loves you. Turn around, Pocket.”
And I did.
“Give me your hand,” said she.
And I did.
She put it on her body, and she put her hands on mine, and pressed against the cold stone. Through the cross in the wall, I discovered a new universe—of Thalia’s body, of my body, of love, of passion, of escape—and it was a damn sight better than bloody chants and juggling. When the bell rang for vespers we fell away from the cross, spent and gasping, and we began to laugh. Oh, and I had chipped a tooth.
“One for the Devil, then, love?” said Thalia.
When I arrived with the anchoress’s supper the next afternoon she was waiting with her face pressed nearly through the center of the arrow cross—she looked like one of the angel-faced gargoyles that flanked the main doors of Dog Snogging, except they always seemed to be weeping and she was grinning. “So, didn’t go to confession today, did you?”
I shuddered. “No, mum, I worked in the scriptorium most of the day.”
“Pocket, I think I would prefer you not call me mum, if it’s not too much to ask. Given the new level of our friendship it seems—oh, I don’t know—unsavory.”
“Yes, m—uh—mistress.”
“Mistress I can work with. Now, pass me my supper and see if you can fit your face in the opening the way that I have.”
Thalia’s cheekbones were wedged in the arrow loop, which was little wider than my hand.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I’d been finding abrasions on my arms and various bits all day from our adventure the night before.
“It’s not the flaying of St. Bart, but, yes, it stings a bit. You can’t confess what we did, or what we do, love? You know that, right?”
“Then am I going to have to go to hell?”
“Well—” She pulled back, rolled her eyes as if searching the ceiling for an answer. “—not alone. Give us our supper, lad, and get your face in the loop, I have something to teach you.”
And so it went for weeks and months. I went from being a mediocre acrobat to a talented contortionist, and Thalia seemed to regain some of the life that I had thought sure she’d lost. She was not holy in the sense that the priests and nuns taught, but she was full of spirit and a different kind of reverence. More concerned with this life, this moment, than an eternity beyond the reach of the cross in the wall. I adored her, and I wanted her to be out of the chamber, in the world, with me, and I began to plan her escape. But I was but a boy, and she was bloody barking, so it was not meant to be.
“I’ve stolen a chisel from a mason who passed by on his way to work on the minster at York. It will take some time, but if you work on a single stone, you might escape in summer.”
“You are my escape, Pocket. The only escape I can ever allow myself.”
“But we could run off, be together.”
“That would be smashing, except I can’t leave. So, hop up and get your tackle in the cross. Thalia’s a special treat for you.”
I never seemed to make my point once my tackle went in the cross. Distracted, I was. But I learned, and while I was forbidden confession—and to tell the truth, I didn’t feel that badly about it—I began to share what I had learned.
“Thalia, I must confess to you, I have told Sister Nikki about the little man in the boat.”
“Really? Told her or showed her?”
“Well, showed her, I reckon. But she seems a bit thick. She kept making me show her over and over—asked me to meet her in the cloisters to show her again after vespers tonight.”
“Ah, the joy of being slow. Still, it’s a sin to be selfish with one’s knowledge.”
“That’s what I thought,” said I, relieved.
“And speaking of the little man in the boat, I believe there is one on this side of the loop who has been naughty and requires a thorough tongue-lashing.”
“Aye, mistress,” said I, wedging my cheeks into the arrow loop. “Present the rascal for punishment.”
And so it went. I was the only person I knew who had calluses on his cheekbones, but I had also developed the arms and grip of a blacksmith from suspending myself with my fingertips wedged between the great stones to extend my bits through the arrow loop. And thus I hung, spread spiderlike across the wall, my business being tended to, frantic and friendly, by the anchoress, when the bishop entered the antechamber.
(The bishop entered the antechamber? The bishop entered the antechamber? At this point you’re going coy on us, euphemizing about parts and positions when you’ve already confessed to mutual violation with a holy woman through a bloody arrow slot? Well, no.)
The actual sodding Bishop of Bloody York entered the sodding antechamber with Mother sodding Basil, who bore a brace of sodding storm lanterns.
And so I let go. Unfortunately, Thalia did not. It appeared that her grip, too, had been strengthened by our encounters on the wall.
“What the hell are you doing, Pocket?” said the anchoress.
“What are you doing?” asked Mother Basil.
I hung there, more or less suspended to the wall by three points, one of them not covered by shoes. “Ahhhhhhhhh!” said I. I was finding it somewhat difficult to think.
“Give us a little slack, lad,” said Thalia. “This is meant to be more of a dance, not a tug-of-war.”
“The bishop is out here,” said I.
She laughed. “Well, tell him to get in the queue and I’ll tend to him when we’re finished.”
“No, Thalia, he’s really out here.”
“Oh toss,” said she, releasing my knob.
I fell to the floor and quickly rolled onto my stomach.
Thalia’s face was at the arrow loop. “Evening, your grace.” A big grin there. “Fancy a spot of stony bonking before vespers?”
The bishop turned so quickly his miter went half-past on his head. “Hang him,” he said. He snatched one of Mother Basil’s lanterns and walked out of the chamber.
“Bloody brown bread you serve tastes like goat scrotum!” Thalia called after. “A lady deserves finer fare!”
“Thalia, please,” I said.
“Not a comment on you, Pocket. Your serving style is lovely, but the bread is rubbish.” Then to Mother Basil. “Don’t blame the boy, Reverend Mother, he’s a love.”
Mother Basil grabbed me by the ear and dragged me out of the chamber.