London - Edward Rutherfurd [162]
The old man had smiled kindly. “It is in their nature, child. God has made woman the weaker vessel.” It was an old belief, dating back to St Paul himself. “It is man who is made in God’s image, my child. Man’s seed produces his perfect likeness. Woman, being only the container in which the seed matures, is therefore inferior. She may still reach heaven, but, being inferior, it is harder.”
Several days passed while Mabel digested this authoritative information. Certain things still puzzled her and so, afraid he might be angry and apologizing to him for her confusion, she once more approached the kindly old man and asked: “If man’s seed produces his perfect likeness, how is it that women are born as well as men?”
Far from being angry, the priest had placed his hand on her shoulder. “A very good question,” he told her. “You see, some of the seed is defective. But – and this is one of the wonders of God’s creation – it is necessarily so, to provide vessels by which mankind may continue. Is that all?”
“I also wondered, Father,” she continued humbly, “if a child is born of man’s seed only, why is it that children often resemble their mother and not just their father?”
To her relief he positively beamed. “God’s providence is wondrous indeed. Why, child, you think like a physician. The answer to your question is not certain but the great philosopher Aristotle” – he smiled at this evidence of his own learning – “was of the opinion that while it grows in the womb, the unborn child drinks fluid from the mother which may have some effect. So you may take it that this is the reason.”
“Tell me one last thing, Father,” she asked meekly. “If it is so hard for a woman to be saved, what must I do?”
Now the priest frowned, not because he was irritated, but because he did not know. “It is hard to say,” he replied at last. “Pray earnestly. Obey your husband in all things.” He paused. “There are those, my child, who say that it is only virgins who can easily pass into heaven. But that is not a path for all.”
From this kindly conversation, Mabel came to understand three things: that women were inferior; that she herself might have some talent for the arts of the physician; and that virginity was the likeliest path to heaven. Few of her contemporaries would have doubted the first or last of these statements.
It was not surprising, therefore, when, a few years later, realizing she had little chance of ever finding a husband, her earnest nature should have made her desire to enter the religious life. Here, however, she met a difficulty that might have been insuperable: “Our family are only fishmongers,” she acknowledged.
The decline of the Barnikel family from their glory in Viking days had been steady and probably inevitable. Since the Conquest, the old Danish families of London had lost their hold, pushed steadily aside by incoming merchants from Normandy and the growing network of German Hanseatic ports. The present Barnikel of Billingsgate was a fishmonger, meaning not that he sold fish in the street, though he did have a stall, but that he dealt in fish and other cargo for shipping. And though he was a prosperous and respectable fellow, albeit one given to occasional rages, he and his fellow fishmongers enjoyed a status about the same as the richer craftsmen and far below that of wholesale merchants like Bull and Silversleeves.
Yet why should this be such a problem? It was a commonplace of the time that by adulthood nature provided a greater supply of women than of men – about 10 per cent more in England at this date. By Mabel’s generation, this difference had been increased by the growing number of men entering holy orders and, at least in theory, a life of celibacy. It might have been expected, then, that many women would also choose the religious life.
But it was not so. True, there were the great nunneries, but they were few, select, and expensive to enter, the preserve of noble