Free Flying to Nowhere: A Tale by John Fuller

an intruder?’ No one said anything. Tetty and the second girl went into the scullery, where they found a child hiding in the corner between a cupboard and the wall. Her face was pale, and her eyes were wide and bright, but she was not crying.
    At the insistence of the Manciple they searched the yard, but found no one, nor expected to. The Manciple shrugged, and looked with amused hostility at Geoffrey.
    ‘Your Master is looking for you,’ he said.
    ‘Is he?’ returned Geoffrey.
    ‘I believe so,’ said the Manciple absently, gazing at his nails.
    Tetty buttoned the child’s dress and led her into the dairy. The Manciple was provided with the loaves he had come for and left the farm, his donkey’s panniers full. The girls resumed their work.
    ‘I would kill that man if you wanted me to,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I’d cut little squares out of his ugly face.’
    One of the girls laughed as she filled a pail, but Tetty said nothing. He tried to talk to her about other things, but she wouldn’t speak. After playing with a mousetrap for a few minutes he left and returned to Vane.
    In the afternoon Mrs Ffedderbompau held the lottery. Her curtains were drawn against the sun, and she could barely turn her head towards the door when the girls filed in. Some of the younger ones giggled and held their noses, and they were sent away. Blodwen had brought the bowl with the stones in it, and Mrs Ffedderbompau directed each of them to take the stones in turn until there was only one left, and it was Gweno’s turn to take it. The others, who had been picking their stones out eagerly, now lost interest. They put their stones back into the bowl and left the room one by one, looking at Gweno with wonder, curiosity and a new respect.
    When they were alone, Mrs Ffedderbompau motioned her to come closer to the bed. Gweno obeyed, although the smell was so strong.
    ‘Child,’ whispered Mrs Ffedderbompau. ‘Let me see you as you were made, uncovered.’
    Gweno stood uncertainly.
    ‘Go on with you, slow thing. Take off your clothes.’
    Gweno undid her dress, pulled it off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, standing in its crumpled folds as clean and naked as a peeled stick. The signs of her sex stood on her innocent body like the marks of punctuation that betray meaning in an unknown language, the most common yet most secret code, the very arrows and targets of nature. And Mrs Ffedderbompau sighed for the frail beauty of these indications of nature’s hopes.
    ‘Do you know, child, what it is that you will have to do?’ Gweno nodded.
    ‘I don’t believe you do.’ Mrs Ffedderbompau sighed again. ‘But it will be explained to you. Remember, my dear, that the novice’s ordeal is partly a ceremony, a traditional celebration of the meaning of his ordination with tokens of the new powers he pretends to, and it is partly a real test of those powers. And in all that he has renounced and in all that he has become, he is a true mirror of the Saint.’
    Gweno lifted a corner of her fallen dress with her bare toe. Her eyes remained lowered with what mixture of sullenness, shame and boredom Mrs Ffedderbompau could not say.
    ‘Keep the Saint in mind, my dear,’ she said. ‘The Saint guards our spirit, and restores it when the body is assailed.’ And Gweno, one lock of dark hair falling across her lowered face, thought of the dry bird and the broken rock and the terrible rotting dead private soiled smell of Mrs Ffedderbompau.

16
    The shelves of the Abbot’s library were covered with coin-sized patches of fungus the colour of raw liver. Those that were most developed were raised from the wood and could be turned aside with the fingernail to reveal greenish spores on their underside. When the Abbot tried to rub them off the shelves, he found his hands stained as if from the grease of door-hinges.
    Curious! He scraped at the fungus with a corner of his habit. The cleaned wood seemed fresh and slippery, with a twiggy smell, and the