Pilgrims

by Matthew Kneale

  So we crossed London Bridge and reached London, and sure enough it was only Constance and Paul that I said my farewells to. I’d grown fond of them both and there were tears on every face that morning, especially the two little lads, Peter and Paul, who’d become such friends. As to whatever Dame Lucy was contriving, Father Tim and Alwyn and Brigit and Jack all knew what it was, as I saw them smirking as we all rode west, but they didn’t give away a word. On we went, through Wycombe and Tetsworth, and how long ago it seemed that I’d been fretting there at having lost all my farthings, sure that I’d be hanged. At Oxford I half expected Dame Lucy to leave me and take another road, to Chippenham or somewhere else west, but no, on we went together and when we got to Witney, where I’d first met Oswald and Jocelyn, she said, ‘Would you mind if we go with you to your village, Tom? I’m curious to see what it’s like.’ Of course I said no, I’d not mind at all.

  Then I felt strange, as everywhere I looked there was a tree I knew or a stone wall I’d passed a hundred times. It’s been a wet winter up here all right, I thought, looking at the high river. Now I saw the first folk I knew, delving their strips. It was wonderful what being mounted on a fine grey horse and wearing good clothes could do. They looked right through me, not knowing me at all, till I called out, ‘Hello there, Ned. Hello there, Susie,’ and they frowned and gawped at me, gawped once again and then called out, ‘Simple Tom? Is that you? What’re you doing up there?’ And I told them, ‘I’m just back from Rome with some pilgrim friends,’ and Dame Lucy and her party gave their hellos.

  Next I was at our little house and I’d hardly got down from the saddle when Hal and Sarah were hurrying out of the door. Hal grinned and called out, ‘Look at you, my brother,’ and then Sarah looked at me with a sorry face and told me, ‘Oh my dear Tom, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your end of the bed’s gone. There’s no room as the twins have it now.’ So it was twins, was it? I could hear them in there, bleating away. And then, before I could even think of an answer, Dame Lucy cut in, ‘Don’t worry, he won’t need it. He’s coming with me.’ And that was how I finally learned the reason why she’d ridden all the way to Minster, which was so I might become one of her servitors. ‘If you’d like to,’ she said, which I did, most certainly I did. ‘Then I’ll tell you why,’ she said. ‘You’re a good man, Tom, and I trust you.’ Which I suppose was her way of saying she was sorry for having disbelieved me when I helped save her boy.

  That very same afternoon we went to Sir Toby and I gave him his vernicle and his silver cross, hoping he wouldn’t guess it had only cost two shillings and eightpence and not five, which he didn’t, and I gave Dame Emma her sewed Mary and baby Jesus. Then Dame Lucy bought me my freedom. In all my years I’d never thought I might see such a day. Tom son of Tom not bound any more, but a free man. How amazed they all were and none was more confounded than my Auntie Eva. ‘Who’d ever have thought of it,’ she said. ‘A useless cluck like my nephew getting his liberty. I’m glad of it too, though, as at least he won’t be mine to fret about any more.’

  The next morning we set out for my new home. As it was on our road we stopped at Asthall to give our hellos to my first fellow pilgrims, Hugh and Margaret, though I didn’t find them in as good spirits as I’d expected. They’d only got back themselves a couple of days before and Hugh moaned that his idiots hadn’t looked after his harvest well and that a whole sack had been lost to rats. The grouchiest, though, was Margaret. She asked did any of us have a Rome badge we might sell her, though Hugh said he wouldn’t waste a penny on any such thing, seeing as it was all her own fault. It turned out that when they’d been going over the Thames at London in a ferryboat, a gust of wind had whipped up out from nowhere, plucked her hat from her head and dropped it in the river, where it sank in a moment, pulled down from the weight of all those saints.

  Two days later I saw my new home of Ropsley manor where I am still. Though Dame Lucy says we’ll soon be in a great castle, once she’s settled her case against her old husband, Walter. I do like working for her. It’s not onerous. I’m the one who does everything that doesn’t have a special fellow to do it. I’m not the cook or the steward or the garden keeper, but the one who’s sent out to make sure the moat’s high with water, or who chops logs or is sent up to Lincoln to bring back French wine or mead or a new gown that’s been made for my lady. And I’m to stop her marrying some new rogue, so she likes to tell me. Though that’s not really my duty of course, but her gaming me. As if I ever could? I’ve seen her making pretty eyes at all the young gentlemen she meets. ‘I’ll find you a good wife soon, Tom,’ she tells me. ‘I have my eyes open for one, and it’s something I have a talent for.’ In the meantime, though, another duty I have is my sinning. I know when it’s coming up as Brigit has me wash myself from the well and then calls me to Dame Lucy’s room to light a candle or move a chair. After that she leaves the room, Dame Lucy pours me a big glass of mead and tells me what I’m to do. It troubled me a little at first but then she told me I wasn’t to worry as I could shrive it all to Father Tim and he’d absolve me. And so he does, giving me a weary look and telling me, ‘I’ve absolved enough else so why not you?’

  So all in all I’m more than glad that I went on my great pilgrimage. As Sammy’s not come into my dreams since I left Rome I reckon he must be in heaven, and though it seems a little unkindly of him not to show me his new home, as I’d love to have a gawp at the place, I don’t blame him. He’ll be busy up there I dare say, chasing paradise mice if they have them. And I have a new cat now. Mirabel’s her name and she’s a dear thing, black as a raven and very sweet and friendly. And though she doesn’t follow me around like Sammy did, she’s a good little animal and sleeps every night on my bed.

  All those months of begging and sore feet let me see half the world, filling my eyes with wonders. They won me my freedom and even gave me a tiny bit of rank, as a great lady’s servitor, and saved me from delving fields in a cold wind. Often I let myself slip into a merry daydream and remember some hospital or barn where we stayed, and strange to say even the dirty, stinking ones are quite cleaned up in my remembrance and seem sweet enough now. Or I’ll recall the folk we met along the way, and how they were kindly to us, most of them, giving me coins and helping us on the road. And I remember our party of pilgrims who I walked with all the way to Rome.

  Of course the ones I’ve thought about most of all just lately are Mary and Helena, or Motty and Merry, whichever they are, though I still think of them as Mary and Helena. They must be glad they chose as they did. If they’ve learned the news yet, that is. The first I knew of it was when I heard Jack the cook let out a great cheer from the kitchen. Then the gardener was cheering too, and a delver who was pulling weeds from the field below the manor house. From what folk say they’ve been cheering all across England. As to what was being cheered, this was the news that King Edward, wanting to make himself more loved, and to get taxes that he wanted, promised to throw every single Jew from his realm never to return. And it’s done him well, too. He’ll get his taxes, everyone says, and in all his days he’s never been more loved than now.

  Seeing how glad they all were, I tried to think it must be rightful in its way. But then a couple of days ago we had to go to Lincoln, as Dame Lucy had more business in the courts, trying to get her castle back from her old husband. It was a bright autumn day, just a little warm, much like the day when I set out on the road from Minster one year before. We were passing through a village and the moment I saw them coming towards us, crowded into carts and walking beside donkeys loaded up with packs, I knew who they must be. Some folk by the road jeered but they paid no heed, like they’d become well used to that on their journey down from wherever they’d come.

  Then, just as we were going by them, Jack the cook stretched out his head and let fly a gob of spit, so big that I guessed he’d been working it up in his mouth, and it landed on the face of a little maid in the cart, who let out a shriek. That turned the jeers to roars of laughter a
nd the maid’s father, as I guessed he must be, had such a face on him that I was sure there’d be trouble, but in the end all he did was give Jack a glare and put his arm round his daughter. ‘Really, Jack,’ Dame Lucy said, though she had a little smile on her face. The only one who looked sorry was Brigit. In a moment we’d gone by them and when I looked back they were already disappearing down the road. So it wasn’t as if anything much had happened. But the maid had long black hair that made me think of Helena. For a moment I wanted to say something and it was like it was there on my tongue, waiting to be said. But it didn’t seem wise to make a fuss. So I just kept very quiet.

  NOTE OF THANKS

  As a relative newcomer to the medieval era, I would like to give all my thanks to the following people, who have kindly offered their expertise, and a great deal of time from their busy lives, to look through and correct the manuscript of this novel: Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London; Marion Turner, Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in English at Jesus College, Oxford; and Malcolm Godden, Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford University. I would also like to thank Rohini Jayatilaka for her warm support of this project; Patrick Reeve for his wise editorial suggestions; Jean Jones, Head of the Vice-Chancellor’s Office of Aberystwyth University, for her help with Welsh language; and Cecilia Trifogli, Professor of Medieval Philosophy at All Souls College, Oxford, for offering an Italian perspective on the subject. I would also like to thank my agent, Georgia Garrett, and my publisher and editor, Will Atkinson of Atlantic Books, for their professional excellence. And of course I would like to thank my family, Shannon, Alexander and Tatiana, for enduring me during the writing process.

  I have tried to be as accurate and true to the past as I could. Readers who are familiar with the later medieval era will notice that several characters are drawn from actual historical figures. Lucy de Bourne is based on Lucy de Tweng, a noblewoman from late thirteenth-century Yorkshire who led a highly colourful life and fought a protracted, brutal and ultimately successful case to divorce her husband. Matilda Froome is based on the mystic and autobiographer Margery Kempe. Kempe lived more than a century after the time when my novel is set and this led me to a little factual invention. The two saints whom Matilda mentions, Saint Truda of Sweden and Saint Sipper of Flanders, did not exist, but are based on two fourteenth-century saints. These are Saint Brigit of Sweden, who persuaded her young husband they should have a sexless marriage, and Saint Mary of Oignies in Flanders, who was known for her weeping and howling. Finally, the character Iorwerth is inspired by a brief claim in the letters of Archbishop John Peckham that Prince Dafydd ap Gruffudd was betrayed to the English by a Welsh clerk, Iorwerth of Llan Ffagan Fach.

  NOTE ON LANGUAGE

  Language in historical fiction is a dilemma. Ancient mouths uttering twenty-first-century slang can be jarring, if not downright ridiculous. An attempt to write a whole novel in thirteenth-century English will be well beyond most authors’ capabilities, and is likely to appeal to a very small readership indeed.

  The language of this novel is, not surprisingly, a compromise. Most words that are commonly used in today’s English already existed by the late thirteenth century, though spelling could be very different. My main concern was to try to avoid any post-medieval words. I decided to use modern spelling so readers would not be constantly puzzling over the text. Occasionally I have included a word that has long passed from usage, to give a sense that this was a very different era, or to give a word an extra emotional resonance.

  When writing this book I constantly referred to the University of Michigan Library’s Middle English Compendium, which I had always open on my computer. I would like to pay tribute to this magnificent online resource. Having taken seventy years to create, containing three million quotations, and offering numerous filters to help one navigate through its definitions, the compendium is an example of scholarly generosity at its best – a great gift to the world. Without it I would have struggled to write this book.

  As I mentioned, I have tried to be very sparing in my use of Middle English words, and I have attempted to use them in such a way that their meaning should be fairly self-evident. But in case one may seem unclear, or if readers want to see them precisely defined, I have included a short glossary, and also a glossary of medieval city names I have used in the text (not many, as most city names were much the same then as they are today).

  Glossary of Middle English

  anoyful

  annoying

  bairns

  children

  barnished

  pregnant

  bordel woman

  prostitute

  bulk

  cargo of a ship

  brewster

  brewer of ale, male or female

  cantred

  Welsh area of administration (as English county)

  cloisterer

  monk

  couch

  to have sex with

  craft

  trade, technique, skill, occupation, strength, ingenuity

  customed

  accustomed to, customary

  dotard

  fool, imbecile, simpleton

  extorcious

  extortionate

  gogmagog

  a misshapen giant

  grub

  dwarfish person, digger, insect larva

  jobbard

  blockhead, fool

  joyed

  happy

  loathfully

  with loathing

  lollerer

  (Middle English loller) lazy vagabond, idler, cheating beggar

  lordlings

  affectionate and respectful term of address

  lovesome

  beautiful, handsome, lovely, delightful

  misborn

  deformed at birth

  miscomfort

  to be disturbed, distressed, a source of anxiousness

  to maunge

  to eat

  noiyous

  annoying

  nulled

  cancelled, annulled

  nun treader

  seducer of nuns

  parage

  lineage, family, rank, parentage, nobility

  pap

  breast

  popelot

  pet, darling

  poppet

  youth, young girl

  to pretence

  to feign, pretend

  proudlessly

  without pride

  putain

  prostitute

  quarantine

  period of forty days

  rounsey

  a work horse

  to scholar

  to teach

  to scelp

  to hit

  scrip

  leather pouch used by pilgrims to carry their money

  scuses

  excuses

  to shrive

  to make a confession to a churchman

  slutterbug

  (Middle English slotir-bugge) dirty person

  sportful

  diverting, entertaining, amusing, pleasant

  stounding

  astounding

  to swive

  to have sex with

  tallage

  arbitrary, one-time royal tax, forced levy

  thrall

  a servant, slave, serf

  truffle

  nonsense, twaddle, balderdash

  uncustomable

  unusual

  unneedful

  unnecessary

  unright

  a sin

  Medieval place names

  Besantion

  Besançon

  Lauon

  Laon

  Lions

  Lyons

  Nicia

  Nice

  Rains

  Rheims

  San Donen (local dialect)

  Fidenza

  Taruenna

  Thérouanne (the
n a sizable city, now a village)