The Tapestry

By Margaret Allen

Enter the enchanted land of the Tapestry, an exquisite wall-hanging fashioned long ago by a master weaver. His creative talent was such that he gifted his work with real life and it is animated every night from sun-down to sun-up. What adventures does it see?

Orphaned tragically, a young girl named Selina leaves her home and travels to serve a noblewoman who has her own sad history. The rumours say that her husband abandoned her because he could no longer bear to look at her face which had been disfigured in an accident and which she now hides behind a veil. Selina only sees a kindred spirit in the brief flashes of eyes behind the veil and is willing to obey Lady Isabella.

But nothing is ever as it seems and in a twist of fate, Selina discovers the truth: Lady Isabella’s husband never ran into the night - he was lost to her on her wedding night as a result of a spell cast by an evil and jealous sorceress. Only one girl has the power to confront the sorceress and do battle with her for the release and reclamation of Lady Isabella’s husband, body and soul.

Selina, it's time to accept your destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803133553

Margaret Allen

 Margaret Allen has had extensive experience of training, trialling, breeding and showing Labradors. Margaret's dogs have won many field trial and test awards, both at Novice and Open level. Margaret also does Gundog training demonstrations for country fairs and regularly gives lectures on dog training and canine psychology. Margaret and her dogs have been featured in the Shooting Times, Shooting Gazette and The Field. In 2011, she judged the Working Gundog Class at Crufts. 

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Copyright © 2022 Margaret Allen

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1803133 553

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Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To Maura, Kwame, Taali, Namali and John

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter One

Washing her grandmother’s lifeless body, Selina had experienced the truth of so-called dead weight. Frail as she had become in these last months, it had still proved surprisingly difficult after the ablutions to manoeuvre her unbending and uncooperative arms through the long sleeves of shift and overdress. The very fact that those unwieldy limbs were also withered and desiccated made the determined effort she was obliged to employ all the more difficult and distressing. Awkwardly pulling and tugging at clothing as stiff and unyielding as she herself would soon become she reflected on the pity of it all. These garments had been put away long ago, reserved for the special occasion that might come, but of course never had. Instead they would now adorn her body for the occasion of death, rather than in preparation for the life-changing invitation or encounter for which they were initially made. Sewn then in the never-failing hope and anticipation that the best might yet come, they had languished a lifetime as unseen and quietly unfulfilled as the woman who had made them.

There had been no need to close her eyes. She had done that for herself as she had surrendered unresisting to those other forces that would now take charge of steering her dismasted vessel. Maybe too she was weary with the world and its ways, and glad enough to be done with having to look at it. Whatever her fading motivation had been, in the end she had slipped away so quietly and in a manner so devoid of fuss or drama that Selina had not been aware of exactly when she had finally crossed the dividing line between here and gone. Stepping outside the door for the briefest of moments to stretch arms and back, and to take in a good deep breath of air free from the smell of death, she found that in that short space while her back was turned, her grandmother had departed this life without ceremony, leave taking or bestowed blessing.

She had died much as she had lived. Not so much living really as simply existing, and she would leave as little impression on the world she had just departed as her wasted body would leave on the straw mattress on which she was stretched. Selina sighed and shook her head as she finished dressing her, and then laid her out with hands folded across her breast before the stiffening set in. Her final act of respect was to comb and braid her hair and tie up her jaw with a binder. Then she gathered some sweet herbs from their small but well-stocked garden and laid them round about her. When all was done, she cleared away the water and washcloths, knowing she must sit with her a while before she went to fetch the priest.

She had not been close to her grandmother; their relationship defined by the fact that she had never called her anything other than ‘Grandmother’, and she in her turn had remained ‘Selina’. No sweet, affectionate pet names had evolved naturally in the course of their one-to-one shared life. It was a life in which nothing had ever been done or said that was unkind, but also one where if there was no evidence of disaffection neither was there any of affection, of displeasure or pleasure. Such spark of emotional life as might yet have survived unquenched in her grandmother’s shrunken heart was channelled entirely into her needlework for the church and it absorbed her totally. It was her livelihood but also her reason to be. As she sewed, she became lost in executing her exquisitely perfect stitches, consumed by her own ability and the results of it. Maybe through gloriously enrobing God’s ordained intermediaries she found a reciprocal sense of also being of use to the Divine, her work in its own way no less a vocational gift and calling.

But as they had never talked about such things, Selina could only guess at the reasoning of her head and heart. The bare facts of her life were known to her only from her own mother’s telling; a tale in which it seemed that everything that was going to happen happened early on and then was over. Barely started before it was finished.

In her long-forgotten girlhood, her grandmother had been seduced by an itinerant mummer. He had come into and gone out of her life with careless but potent brevity, like an incubus whose dreamlike visitation had an adversely tangible outcome – her own mother’s birth.

Selina’s grandmother had raised her child on her own with scant sympathy and even less assistance, but her salvation was in her exceptional ability as a fine needlewoman. For in recognition of this, the church had given her free tenure of a humble dwelling and a meagre stipend in return for fashioning vestments, altar cloths and whatever else the house of God had need of. With her eligibility for procuring a legitimate husband and helpmate irredeemably compromised this then had been both work and penance ever since. And she had accepted it without complaint or rancour as her just deserts, the wages of sin inarguably allocating her place in the scheme of things. The mummer never came back nor did she seek him out. Instead she supplemented the church’s barely adequate provision by taking on commissions from the better heeled, and thus kept body, soul and child safely steered away from total privation.

Over the years, despite living a more or less hand-to-mouth existence, her grandmother, like many others, had still managed to put aside a few coins every week to ensure a coffin of some ilk, a simple service and a marker for her grave – stone if funds ran to it, wood if not – when the time came. A pauper’s burial was the dread of the impoverished and to be avoided at all costs, the resulting shame and stigma untenable. No matter that they would be dead and gone, they still would not escape such considerations, for it was common knowledge that you would languish in Purgatory or worse for all eternity should your mortal remains be left to rot in unhallowed ground. Selina hoped her grandmother’s work over the years for the church would have earned her a decent resting place whether or not the adding up of her contributions fell short of the mark.

Fortunately, when her own misbegotten mother grew to maturity, she met with better fortune than a vagrant opportunist. Her head was turned by a handsome, able and entirely suitable young man encountered at the annual May Day fair – the accepted trysting place for seeking and finding a partner. She left with him, glad to go, shed her bastard status and start a life of her own in another settlement. The distance between them meant Selina saw her grandmother rarely at first and finally not at all and news came but sparsely.

There was traffic enough from place to place with pedlars, story-tellers, tooth-pullers, actors and acrobats coming and going, all of whom you would be a fool to trust if you seriously wanted to send word.

Few could read or write, so for the written word you needed to employ two scriveners, one to pen the news and another to read it at the other end. Added to this burden of expenditure was the cost of the purveyor of the missive. In a climate where dubious dealings were normal commerce, it was all too likely that while on the road the bearer would spend his fee at a wayfarer’s inn and thereafter lose the incentive to fulfil his side of the bargain. Were he to be caught and challenged, he could always plead that he had been ill-used on the road by brigands, which being indeed so prevalent would be hard to disprove. Another possible choice was the wandering friars who were undoubtedly honest and who would also refuse payment other than a morsel to sustain them along the way. But they could lose themselves and all sense of worldly matters at any time if they were caught up and whirled away in a divine rapture. In transcendent holy madness, all else was as nothing to them, a fact that, when all was said and done, meant they were no more reliable than the rest.

Her parents had thrived in their committed endeavours with a sound beginning and the promise of a prosperous future ahead of them. Her industrious father apprenticed as a youth to the guild of weavers, had achieved the position of journeyman and aspired in a matter of a few years to become a master in charge of his own business. Being thus secure, they had been able to send word to her grandmother through guild and church channels to come and join them, but she had refused their generosity. Her restricted life had come to entirely suit her and she sought none other. So, for all her early years, Selina and her two older brothers, Daniel and Edward, knew nothing at all of their mother’s mother, other than that she was alive and apparently well, or well enough.

Then that assured confidence that came with the belief that all was well and good with themselves too, had in a matter of a few short weeks been turned on its head.

Every once in a while, which none could either predict or prepare for, a number of unfortunate villages would be visited by the Pestilence. Some but not all, and where it came from God only knew, and whom it would take likewise as unknowable. But like an ill wind it blew where it would, and with relentless malevolence into the mouths of its chosen victims, like the foul breath of a grave-risen vampire. There were few who could survive that kiss of death. A whole generation might be spared the coming of this baleful miasma, and when it did come sometimes it would seek out only the aged as its chosen victims. Then, in that pitiless culling, there would come a strange silence from those corners in homesteads where the old beldames sat. Often lame or otherwise impaired in their dotage, they were still able to sit long hours spinning to the accompaniment of the sweet hum of the wheel. As they span the wool with practised hands into fine thread, they supplied the weavers like Selina’s father, who then wove it into good cloth before they in turn passed it on to the dyers and fullers.

This time however it wasn’t just the crones and gnarled old men who were silenced, nor those at the opposite end of life’s journey, the babes-in-arms and little children. More inexplicably it was visited on those in their prime, young still and full of vigour. Selina’s father qualified as a perfect candidate, and then her mother also. She would not leave his side for a moment in her devoted efforts to save him, so in health and in sickness they were not parted but went out through death’s door together, though Selina and her brothers found scant comfort in that.

Nor were they the only ones going through that ominous portal, far from it. By the time the accursed scourge had run its course through the borough, in and out of the houses, seeking and scything, the populace had been decimated.

Stunned with grief and shock, Selina, Edward and Daniel were denied the consoling comfort of ritual. With so many to bury there was no time for the normal niceties, and indecent haste was the order of the day. The stern but soothing poetry of the burial mass was reduced to a hasty ceremony, lacking all dignity, said as it was at mass interments for no one in particular. And there were no eulogies and no gatherings afterwards. No time to talk, to praise and lament. No time to come to terms with or make sense of it. No time at all for any of the things that they were in sore need of.

Her brothers at least were provided for. Willingly following in their father’s footsteps, they were already serving their apprenticeships and living in their master’s house as was the custom. But Selina had no such option, and at the awkward age of eleven it wasn’t easy to know what to do with her. With orphans abounding, there were none willing or able to take her in, so she was made to pack her box and was packed off to live with her grandmother, though neither had been consulted on the matter.

Selina had travelled with her few personal possessions on a wagon loaded with cloth bound for the coast, from whence it would be transferred aboard a ship setting sail for France. There, fine English woollen material, unlike herself, was much sought after. She wondered what it might be like to stow away on such a vessel, and what adventures, good or bad, could be had starting afresh in a new country. She could not imagine she would feel any more lost, alienated or abandoned in France than she did at the moment where she was.

Edward and Daniel had each other, the familiarity and security of the master’s house and their friends, the other apprentices learning their craft alongside. It was the nearest thing you could get to your own family. Saving pestilence or accident, their road ahead was mapped out precisely. All they had to do was follow the path. If only she had been a boy, she too might have bided there with them, instead of being disposed of with neither consultation nor consent.

When she had stumbled down from her unconventional transport, weary and disorientated, her grandmother had received her with an uncomplaining resignation. It was an attitude that mirrored exactly her acceptance of the sinner’s stance, for a fall from grace so she believed, must ever have continuous retribution heaped upon an unworthy head. So, having declined joining her family, preferring her simple and solitary existence, she nevertheless took Selina in without any evidence of resentment.

Selina, though arriving forlorn and desolate, soon found that the very lack of any emotional charge in her new homestead had an unexpectedly beneficial effect – it was calming. It soothed her tumbled and undisciplined desperation. The placid daily round was reliably consistent and after so much tumult and turmoil, it provided an unforeseen but welcome sense of security and sanctuary. She was not unhappy.

She found her feet in routines that gave her purpose but were not overly demanding. She gradually took over all the household tasks – cooking, cleaning, laundry and the care of the little garden plot – leaving her grandmother free to concentrate on her needlework. This arrangement suited them both, and had the additional benefit that with more time for sewing a little extra money was coming in. This gave life a welcome degree of breadth and leeway now there were two of them rather than one to sustain.

Selina grew to love her small garden almost as much as her grandmother loved her needlework, and for want of a little animal to lavish affection on, all her caring went into the plants she nurtured. This manifested in an abundance of produce. From such a modest space came prodigious yields. They ate well, and her grandmother saw to it as her side of the bargain that Selina was decently clothed for all seasons.

From her non-church commissions, she often had left over remnants of velvet, silk, satin or cloth of gold, but none were allowed to dress above their station and, like her own unworn finery, they could only be put away unused and wasted. When she was alone though, if her grandmother had gone to the church or for a fitting, Selina would open the chest where they were stored and feast her eyes on the sumptuous colours and stroke the opulent textures. They awakened in her a need for beauty, a yearning for something more than basic necessities and serviceable homespun.

With the Pestilence she had lost not only her parents, but the particular lifestyle and status that would have been her entitlement. Cloth of gold may have been the preserve of those of noble birth, but silk and velvet were allowable and available for those of her rank with wealth enough to pay for them.

The four years Selina lived with her grandmother had gradually seen her sense of grief and displacement lose their all-consuming power; though they were still an essential part of her, they no longer defined her. And the quiet that had suited her at first was now fast becoming more burden than blessing, for the chest of exquisite offcuts stirred that something in her that had nothing to do with the self-effacement and timid humility that her grandmother so willingly embraced. Her mother and father may be dead and gone, but the strong and vital blood that pumped through her veins was their legacy, and it was stirring in her the qualities of courage and assertion.

As she sat on a stool beside her dead grandmother, her primary feelings were of sorrow and regret on her behalf for a thwarted life only half lived, but there was none of the searing inconsolable grief that was so much a part of losing her parents.

Also, her grandmother’s death had happened at a time when Selina was already aware that, no longer being the broken little creature that she had been on arrival, change must come. Whoever she was now, or was becoming, she knew for a surety that continuously living in obscure isolation was no part of it. Like her brothers, she had served her apprenticeship in that accomplishment and was fully certified. It was time to move on, but to what she did not know, for her life and her choices were still not her own to make; they were not in her remit. The priest would come when she summoned him, to attend to her grandmother and pray for her immortal soul, and as the church owned the dwelling, what happened to her next and where she went from here was very much church business. Once again, death had forced irrevocable finality not just for the dead but for a whole way of life, and, as with the Pestilence, there could be no arguing nor bartering that would buy you grace or remission from your fate. But this time she was ready for change, and old enough now to refuse to be forced into what did not suit her, or so she fervently hoped. Her grandmother’s devoted service would surely also buy her that consideration.

She stood up then, ready and willing to take the first step into whatever was to come next. But before she set out, she first gently pulled the coarse cotton sheet up over her grandmother’s chilled body, already so clearly devoid of anima. However, she found she must stop short of covering her head, for she could see that in the little while since death had occurred, her grandmother’s face had changed, but not in the same way as her body. Rather than stiffening, it had gently softened. The deeply etched lines around eyes and mouth smoothed out as the accretions of a hard life had been stripped away to reveal a wholly unsuspected sweetness of mien. One that must have been there in the very beginning, before destiny riding roughshod over her hopes and dreams had obscured her original nature. Marching time had over-printed her face with very different but indelible markings, finally changing her features irrevocably into those of a completely different woman. The revelation of this unknown aspect of her grandmother stirred a novel tenderness in Selina and a resultant sense of loss. She was in bereavement now, forever bereft of any chance to get to know her grandmother better, to discover the person she had been and truly was. It had not been possible in life and now in death it was too late.

Selina gently folded the sheet back then, leaving it tucked neatly just beneath her chin, more as if she was preparing her for bed and sleep than laying her out. Then resolutely she crossed to the door and took down a light woollen shawl hanging from the peg on the back. She wrapped it tight around herself and well up over her own head so that from the side her profile could not be seen. It was April and the warmth of spring could already be felt as the land woke to the vigour of new life, but Selina covered her head not against a possible chill in the unsettled and unpredictable early season but to show she was in mourning. She closed the door quietly behind her also out of respect, for though her grandmother could not be roused by the harsh noise of clumsy movement, and there were none other present to take offence, it offended against her own sensibilities. Turning then to step onto the narrow, well-worn track to the church, trodden smooth as stone over time by her grandmother’s constant comings and goings, she was aware of the auguries of this particular journey with regard to herself.

Spring was the wrong time to die, but it was the right time for new beginnings. She had received no last blessing from her grandmother to ensure good fortune, but as she made her way she beseeched instead her sorely missed dead mother to grant her this. If it was possible to influence worldly matters from her heavenly abode, she implored her to demonstrate she was still her mother wherever she was, and to do her utmost to guard and guide her in the life ahead. She didn’t want to mimic her grandmother’s lifestyle in any way if she could possibly help it.

Chapter Two

The priest had returned with her, bearing the tools of his trade: vestments, oil, holy water, candles, bell and sacred writ. As he set them out, Selina withdrew respectfully to stand beside the door, giving him enough space to perform the sacraments and an essential distance from other close human contact while so doing. Watching from her discrete position as he celebrated the offices, she readjusted the shawl around her more loosely. She still kept head and shoulders covered though, no longer as a sign of bereavement, but as she would have done were she in church.

For in donning the vestments, the clergyman became at once an ordained man of God and the simple room a sacred space. It seemed as if the robes in themselves had the power to imbue divine authority. He kissed the holy symbols, lit candles, and then applied oil and water to her grandmother’s body, all the while intoning the hypnotic murmur of ancient chant and prayers for the dead. Revered over centuries, the rhythm coupled with the smell of incense and the chime of the bell was the long-established accompaniment to the soul’s journey home, and it provided great solace. Selina added her own amens where they were required with a very real sense of the need to participate. Her grandmother, thank God, was finally being given what she had yearned a lifetime for, the full benefit of the church’s rites, and Selina was glad. They had been denied her parents and that lack of absolution pained her still on their behalf. She added her own silent prayer, asking that through their family connection blessing would come at last to them all.

Afterwards, when the priest had put away all that he had brought with as much care and attention as he had in setting them out, she sat with him at the rough-hewn but well-scrubbed table. She offered bread, fruit and curd cheese, along with spring water and some ale, simple but acceptable fare. Although for a man of the cloth wine would have been more appropriate, there was none to give him. She abstained herself as was proper, and the priest took a little of the bread and cheese as was also fitting, and they talked of her grandmother and her devotion to her church and church work. In his summation, he assured Selina that in the execution of those duties over the years, she had more than earned forgiveness for her sin and he promised a good plot and a decent headstone.

He shifted on his bench then to face her more directly and she knew the talk was now to be focused on herself and what was to become of her. She waited to hear what had been decided. The priest was recognised as a good man, one you could put your trust in. Of middle years he had the look of a born contemplative, and, although rather austere, he strove always to practise what he preached in sincere imitation of his Lord. But there were others who were not so exemplary and who might dismiss her situation as a trivial inconvenience of little, if any, concern. Her fate depended on whose opinion held final sway.

Leaning forward on his elbows, although his long, narrow face expressed genuine concern, he maintained appropriate formality as he addressed her.

"Selina, it is known that you do not have your grandmother’s skill with a needle, but even if that had been the case you could not take on the tenure here, being a young woman on your own without a chaperone. In due course you might well return to your brothers when they are established and able to receive and support you, but in the meantime we have to find other provision for you.

You will of course remain here until your grandmother’s funeral, which as custom decrees will take place after the third day. Also, there will be those who knew her who will wish to call in and pay their respects during that time, and it is your duty to receive them and accept their condolences. Then, after the interment, you will gather up all of yours and your grandmother’s accoutrements and clean and prepare the dwelling for its next incumbents.

If he was stating the obvious and taking his time to get to the point, she was aware that his deliberations were not