The False Virgin Read Online Free PDF

It uncurled its long
proboscis and delicately sucked the juices of the dead. The priest vomited again.
    AD 864
    Mildryth holds out her hand for the coin that the pimple-faced young monk proffers. She examines it carefully before sliding it away in her scrip. Satisfied, she nods and leads
him up the path towards the small stone chapel that has been built a little way from the church. She gestures to him to enter and follows him in, keeping a close watch as he kneels in reverence.
Thieves are always ready to steal holy relics, and monks are the worst of them all. Mildryth guards her saint as fiercely as any she-wolf protects her cubs.
    A long wooden box lies upon the stone altar, surrounded by the burning candles offered by the villagers and strangers who come to pray to the saint. There have been many more strangers coming to
the shrine of late. There are rumours the Vikings are preparing to come across the seas in force, not just a raiding party, but huge fleets of longboats full of warriors ready to slaughter and burn
the whole kingdom. People are terrified that they will die unshriven. They come to the shrine to pray to the saint who was slain by the Vikings, for surely she has the power to save them.
    The monk leans forward and presses his lips to the box containing the mortal remains of the blessed martyr. He touches his fingers to it, and then to his forehead, mouth and breast as if
anointing himself with her holiness. Finally he clambers to his feet and backs out of the shrine as if leaving the presence of a great queen.
    He turns and gazes earnestly at Mildryth, then seems to remember she is a woman and averts his eyes. ‘They say you actually knew her. You were her closest companion, her disciple. Tell me
of her death,’ he begs, closing his eyes as if preparing himself for a moment of ecstasy.
    Mildryth has been waiting for this. They all ask for that tale, the strangers who come to her shrine. She recites again how the virgin Beornwyn was praying alone to the blessed St Oswald when
the Vikings attacked, striking her down before the very altar as she was kneeling in prayer. How, like St Oswald, she was dismembered as an offering to the god Odin, but even when the saint’s
head was struck from her body, her lips had continued to pray for the souls of men. The heathens had flayed her skin from her body, but the Virgin Mary had sent a cloud of butterflies, as blue as
her own heavenly mantle, to cover her, so no man might look upon the saint’s private parts to her shame.
    It has been more than fifteen years since the night her mistress was slain and now Mildryth herself can no longer remember what is true. Sometimes in her dreams she sees her own hand stabbing
the knife into that bare back, over and over again in such a murderous rage of hatred she cannot seem to stop. But when she wakes she knows it was the Vikings who slaughtered her beloved Beornwyn;
everyone told her it was and how could she say otherwise?
    The young monk kneels before her, takes her hand and kisses it. They think if they touch the hand of the woman who touched Beornwyn, her blessing will pass to them. She is the living link to the
blessed saint, as the Bishop is the living link to St Peter and to Christ Himself. Mildryth’s touch will save them.
    ‘Ask Saint Beornwyn to pray for me,’ the monk pleads.
    And Mildryth will, for she is the virgin saint’s guardian and protector now, just as she has always been.
    Historical Note
    Lythe means ‘on a hill’, and the church and graveyard of St Oswald are situated on a hill overlooking the sea on the Yorkshire coast. From there you can see the
ruins of Whitby Abbey, several bays further along the cliffs. It is believed that the present St Oswald’s church occupies the site of an ancient Anglo-Saxon church.
    By AD 848, this Anglo-Saxon church was all that remained of a Celtic double monastery that was probably built around the same time as the nearby abbey of St Hilda in
Whitby