In Cherry Time

By J.W. Wood

J.W. Wood is this month’s winner of $577.50 for a story about making hard moral choices.

Bio: J.W. Wood is the author of six books of poems and a novel. His work has been published in several countries and has received awards in the US, Canada, UK and India. In March 2025, AN Editions (UK) will publish his first collection of satires, “Captcha This!”.

Website: www.jwwoodwriter.net

Without further ado, “In Cherry Time” by J.W. Wood.

My stonemasons found her lying at the bottom of our cathedral spire. She must have fallen from the scaffold – or been pushed.

She was not above twenty winters when she died, and well-known to all of Salisbury. Rosemary, her name was: Rosemary for rue, the one you’d regret. No one was a stranger to her teasing words, her smile that sang to you. Black hair and hazel eyes, skin as fine as a bee’s wing. And in that season, as the cherry blossom kissed the common, she wore flowers in her hair.

I met her first when taking a small beer with my men. I was cooling my neck on a rough wooden ladder when I saw her walking across the common. She wore a dark purple shift and clutched a bundle of linens. She bid me good morrow in passing. God help me, but the Devil took my loins – and I the father of three small children, as honest to my wife as the day I married her twenty years ago.

“Eyes on your tools, Master?”

One of my apprentices, unloading his cheeky wit. I stared at his sideways grin – and him not ripe enough to use a razor. Then I downed my beer and chided my men to get back to work.

As I climbed the ladder to our work stage, I turned to see young Rosemary-you’d-rue chatting with some novice monk. There was hunger in her eyes, along with youth: while this Spring season means growth, it follows Winter – and most of our poor would be hungry now, the empty winter stores not yet replenished with the first fruits of harvest.

Watching the young ones flirt, I felt want burn my privates and envy in my soul. The young to the young – I was forty now, an old man by any reckoning. Yet still I could not help wanting her. God help me: I try to be as good as my father was, constant and honest. But where there is beauty, can the Devil be far behind?

***

After work, I chanced upon the novice I’d seen chatting with Rosemary. His tonsure was freshly shaved, face full of young, pushing blood above the collar of his cassock. I chose to tease him, as much from envy as from goodwill:

“Now young Master. Did I spy you imagining fleshly delights?”

My fluff-cheeked apprentice snickered.

“That ‘un’s clueless – he’d drink piss if they said it was beer!”

Clearly, envy does not only consume the old. The novice blushed, rounds of pink rising in his cheeks.

“Forgive me, Master Mason. I cannot know the ways of God until I taste the ways of this world. At least, such is the Abbott’s teaching.”

“I cannot believe our Lord Abbott would tell novices such things.”

The novice grew flustered and ran a hand across his shaven pate.

“Rosemary was on her way to the Cellarer with linens, and I” –

“Do not explain, young Master. We were all callow once.”

I patted him on the back and headed for home. As my father taught me, a man that does not spend his time with his family is not a real man. And he knew what it meant to be a man – forty years a mason, a record I hope to match if God spares me.

***

That evening, I sat before the firelight as Maeve darned and the children prattled merrily behind us. I looked upon my wife. Dressed in a widow’s wimple, twenty years and three children had long besieged her: grey hair tucked under a band, she seemed ancient though not yet forty and I still quick and vigorous. Too quick and vigorous, perhaps.

“I hear of goings-on at the cathedral,” Maeve murmured, her voice low and soft.

“Have you seen anything?”

“What should I see? I have no time for gossip.”

“They say women toil for the Dark One in the cloisters. With the monks, no less.”

I thought of my weekly meetings with sour-faced Abbot Peter. I could imagine no man less likely to sin.

“The gossip of fishwives!” I retorted. A picture of Rosemary’s firm, light arms carrying her bundle of washing came to my mind: those purple flowers in her hair, her slender waist and forlorn eyes.

“Just mark you don’t fall into the same pit” – said Maeve, skewering her embroidery with a pin.

***

On Fridays I met with Abbot Peter in the East Transept. When seeing the Abbot I am permitted to enter by the processional gate, to walk through serried banks of pews, past claret-red walls lit up by sunlight that streams through the crystal windows above.

The Abbot stood before the huge stone font I witnessed being carved as a lad. He always sported full ceremonial dress for our meetings. His straggly white beard obscured the cross on his chest and his hand clutched his crozier as if he might collapse without its support.

“Blessings on you, Mason Michael.”

“Thank you, Father Peter.”

“How goes the work? Are your men still content to serve God’s glory?”

“Always, Father Peter. And never happier than on Fridays, when God’s glory manifests in pennies and groats.”

The Abbot harrumphed and waved a finger as a sign to give him news of our progress on the spire. I told him of our need for more stone which could take months to arrive by barge from South Wales. He listened, eyes set on the cross above the altar. When I finished, he paused, then:

“Mason Michael, I must ask you a service. I hear some brother monks have … fallen. With women. And drink. That they have turned their minds from God.”

My mind turned to Rosemary like a dog to fresh-slaughtered tripes. I remembered her teasing the novice – then Abbot Peter drew me back:

“Michael, in God’s name. The height at which you work, up in the scaffolding. You see what happens below. Use that height to observe the monks and the townsfolk. And tell me everything.”

I took the Abbot’s hand, kissing it, and bowed.

“Now go, Mason Michael. Go and do God’s work.”

***

Saturday, the day before Lord’s Day. I told Maeve to take the children to the May Fair on the common as I needed to check my men’s work. I left her at the cathedral’s main gate, our kids chirping with excitement at the prospect of the May Pole and the Punch and Judy.

As I climbed the thick, splintery scaffolding to my workplace, I observed more of the landscape around me. Over there – old Sarum, built by the Normans two hundred years ago, its puny tower leaning towards ruin. Nearer, the three gates of the old city and nearest of all, the townspeople at the fair on the common land around the cathedral.

I stopped well below our work stage. Already at this height there was a slight breeze. Here would do: if the Abbot wanted me to spy on people, I had to be close enough to tell on whom I was spying. The first person I spotted was the Cellarer, holding a heavy sack in either hand, hurrying towards the kitchen garden. The garden was his dominion, dotted with raised beds and greenhouses, where he grew vegetables for the cathedral’s religious community.

I looked down and saw the novice who spoke to Rosemary yesterday. He perched alone against the cathedral wall, scratching something on parchment with a quill. I turned and was about to climb higher when I spotted a woman hurrying towards the far end of the nave from the common. She carried bundles of linen, much as Rosemary did yesterday.

The woman opened the gate to the kitchen garden and slipped inside. There she met the Cellarer, who showed her the two sacks he was holding. She laid her bundle of linen down on a bench, took the two sacks from him and looked inside. Then she set them down next to the linens and she and the Cellarer stepped into a greenhouse.

Through the glass I saw their bodies conjoin in sin – and I thought of Rosemary, the bitter joy and hunger of her face, as Bahapomet took hold of me and my pulse thickened in my throat. After some minutes the woman left the greenhouse, picked up the Cellarer’s sacks, and left the garden. Then the Cellarer emerged, snatched the bundle of linens and made for the cloisters.

I had seen enough for one day. The Abbot was right – though I knew not whether I should tell him what I had seen. Idle gossip begets Evil, and God knows what I had witnessed was bad enough.

***

By the time I reached the bottom of the ladder, there were hundreds thronging the common for the May Fair. I went looking for my family. Through the crowd, I heard the slap of laughter from the Punch and Judy show. Then a woman’s voice behind me murmured:

“Master Mason. Working on a Saturday?”

I turned and my heart dropped into my belly. Young Rosemary, dressed in a plain shift, a chain of cherry blossom in her hair. “Or were you spying on us all?”

She leaned in and I caught the scent of soap and nectar. She flicked back a strand of hair.

“How like you this, Master Mason? My new shift, of finest cloth? And my cherry blossoms?”

She gestured to the flowers in her hair, hands rough from the work of washing clothes. Up close, I saw the outline of her cheekbones – ravenous, like so many of our poor.

“Now is the Spring of my life, and I shall gather pleasures while I can! Will you dance with me at the May Pole, Master Mason?”

“I am too old for such games, young lady. But I wish you much delight in your sporting.”

Rosemary laid her fingers on the shoulder of my leather tunic, and my blood smouldered. May God defend my constancy. She leaned in closer, so close I caught the sweetness of her breath.

“I know some things the Abbot wants to hear”, she whispered. “Meet me in the heavens at ten bells. I shall leave a trail of flowers.”

She dropped her hand from my shoulder and melted into the crowd.

The heavens. The rafters of the cathedral. How could she access the heavens? Only monks, carpenters and masons held keys. After compline at seven, the monks retired and the cathedral would be as quiet as the grave.

Then my dear wife Maeve appeared from the direction of the Punch and Judy with our children, all four chewing on pieces of fried cheese bought from some hawker.

“Who was that harlot?” Maeve asked, eyes spitting anger. “I told you not to fall to the ways of the clergy!”

She stalked off toward the Maypole, half-dragging Simon, our eldest. I followed in their wake like a beaten cur. May the Lord help me, but I would go to young Rosemary that night: my Abbot commands me to be the eyes and ears of our Lord, and I must obey.

***

I excused myself from our fireside after the watchman had cried nine bells from the Town Hall. The children were abed, and I told Maeve I had forgotten my tools on the scaffold and could not risk leaving them at the mercy of crooks. Though Salisbury is enclosed by walls, still thieving and harlotry of all kinds happens – and nowhere more than around our common and cathedral.

As I approached the cathedral, I saw the candles of the lumen christi shining a dull yellow from inside. I reached the scaffold where I worked. I noticed what I first thought was a bunch of rags left lying against the cathedral wall. Cursing my men for their carelessness, I approached the rags to find they disguised the novice I’d spotted earlier, hiding from me under his cloak.

“Young master! Ought you not be asleep in your cloister?”

“I am sorry, Master Mason. I had planned to meet someone.”

“Who, my lad?”

He gave a faraway smile, then –

“Master Mason, judge me not. Neither, I pray you, tell the Abbott that you found me here. In exchange for your silence, I could tell you what deeds I have seen. Of those who wear Holy Orders, yet work in the service of Lucifer.”

“What deeds, boy? Explain yourself, or the Abbot shall hear of this!”

“The Cellarer gives townswomen our best food and drink, and they, they slake his lusts.” The boy’s skin turned a deep scarlet. “And that is not all”, he added.

I looked around me. The nighttime common stood still, the stars craned in the pitch night above, and the dark hulk of the cathedral loomed behind us. I could not be late for my assignation with Rosemary, so I chose to let the boy go – for the time being.

“I bid you good night, young master.”

With that, I began climbing the scaffold. As a subterfuge in case I should be discovered by anyone in the cathedral grounds at such a late hour, I fetched a chisel that my apprentice had left at our work stage. When I returned to the ground level, I found the novice gone – as I had expected.

I unlocked the West door to the nave and entered the Cathedral, its blood-red walls dull ochre in the candlelight. I walked up spiraling stairs, past graffiti from monks and tradesmen, stopping at the tribute stone to my father: WILLIAM, CARPENTER hoc aedificium fecit MCCCXXVII – MCCCLV. Then I saw a cherry blossom on the landing five steps above.

At that landing, another blossom pointed to the far side of the nave. I was now hundreds of feet above the floor, buried in darkness. In the dim candlelight from the altar, I made out a figure some yards in front of me.

“Master Mason. At last.”

It was Rosemary. In one hand she held a scrap of parchment, in the other a bunch of cherry blossom. She wore the shift I saw her in earlier, the chain of blossoms still in her hair.