Year of Darkness - Part 5 - 1534 by Vivien Teasdale

(Historical note: 1534 was the beginning of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In 1536, the first closures started, including Haltemprice Priory, near Hull. The Pilgrimage of Grace began in this year too.)

I’d hoped to end my days with an endless round of peace and reason. Now all I know, all I want, is to fulfil my need for revenge. They should never have come here.

 

I’m not saying my early life was without trouble. It wasn’t – though we got along, my mother and I. But she had her problems and so we moved around from place to place, never settling for long, never making those close friends you can rely on when times get hard. Sometimes she would disappear for a day, a night, sometimes two. But she always came back. Tired, listless, not wanting to eat for hours, but at least she was there for me. Kept me safe.

 

That was until I followed her, one dark evening. That was when I found out what she was really like, how her temper raged, how she changed and knew that I was tainted with the same blood. I ran that night. Ran as if all the hounds of hell were after me. Ran as if the Lord had given me wings.

 

That was how I ended up here. I ran across fields, across streams until, finally, I ran into the yard of Haltemprice Priory and found sanctuary. I’ve never left this place since.

 

Then the rumours started. Our Sovereign Lord, Henry, wanted to clean out the cesspool that was the old religion. He wanted to shut down the monasteries. He wanted money.

 

They came in May, when we were all busy in the fields, tending the crops and the cows. Not that the crops were growing in the half-light that had become our day. I remember my mother saying this had happened before, that daylight had disappeared and only a dim glow could be seen where the sun should have been.

 

“You were conceived then, when Hell was upon the Earth,” she’d said. Now it was here again. Nature was destroying the land, and the King was destroying God. Hell was awake again.

 

Cromwell’s agents stalked the land. They produced their inventory, despising what they found. Buildings in disrepair, land barely producing enough to feed the few canons left, never mind the poor we were supposed to succour. No wonder Haltemprice Priory paid no taxes. We could not even pay our bills with the local blacksmith.

 

For over two hundred years, we had laboured here. We had given help where we could. It had been my refuge and now we were banished.

 

‘Ha! I thought it was you, skulking in the hedgerows.’ Robert Newton, squire of our manor, glared down at me from the magnificent horse he bestrode. ‘Meric the monk that was, Meric the mendicant that is.  Well, get on your way, there’s no place for the likes of you round here. Go, starve in someone-else’s parish. Let them pay for you.’ Without warning, he lashed out with his crop, catching me full across my cheek. It felt like a brand, fiery and agonising to touch. The weal spread across my face, pulling the skin taut like a death mask.

 

Despite all my efforts, despite my years in the Priory, I felt my blood rise to the challenge. Helpless to prevent it, I let out a howl of pain and anger. ‘I’ve given everything to Haltemprice, the Priory and the village. You cannot cast me out now, you have no right to ...’

‘I have every right. I am the law here.’ Once more he raised the crop, but this time I reached up, grabbing the shaft and yanking so hard he almost fell off his horse.

‘Then I curse you, Newton,’ I snarled, so close I could see the veins in his eyes, startled and staring back deep into my own. ‘I curse you. You will never forget me.’

I let go suddenly, laughing a deep, throaty, growling laugh as he floundered to regain his balance. I lashed the horse with the man’s own crop and my laugh followed him, louder and louder, as he clung desperately to the mane while the animal bolted for home.

 

I spent the rest of the day in an old barn, so decrepit I might as well have been outside. But it was near his house. I crept out just after sunset, watching the men set off for home and the house gradually become just a darker patch against the dark sky. Newton had set off that afternoon to some big meeting in York. Trying to get the monasteries opened again, so I’d heard. But it would do no good. Henry and Cromwell had the gold lust in their eyes and nothing less than total destruction would be enough for them now.

 

I had a different lust. One I’d suppressed for nearly two hundred years, but Newton had succeeded in releasing it. He should have the first fruits of his success.

 

I sneaked into the dairy. Full of cheeses, eggs and milk. That was not what I was looking for, though I ate some in passing, just because I was so hungry. My appetite was sated once I found the dairy maid and perhaps that would have been enough if Agnes Newton had not woken and come down for a drink. I cut off her first screams, but the smell of her fear and her weakening struggles woke something else in me. Something I had never known before.

 

Without conscious thought, I ripped her nightdress from her and took her there, on the floor amidst the chaos and blood I’d already caused, stifling her screams until finally I was sated.

‘Tell your husband, I said “thank you”,’ I snarled, and left her crying on the cold flagstones.

 

And now they’ve caught up with me, as I knew they would, eventually. I can outrun any man, but not arrows from a hunter’s crossbow. I’ve come full circle, back to the remains of the Priory I’d once called home. I’ve lost blood all the way here. Now I’m so weak I can hardly lift my head. Water! I need water.

 

‘Meric!’ Newton’s voice boomed across the courtyard. ‘Come out and be hanged, like a man, or I’ll light the fire, burn you till there’s nothing left of you but ashes.’

 

At that I raised my head. ‘I cursed you once before, Newton. Now I curse you again. You and your family for ever. You will never forget me. No generation will be free of me.’

 

The flames are bright now, sending red and yellow sparks flying through the air. It will not be long before they reach me and I will be no more. But still I rejoice. Newton’s line will never be the same again.