To Calais, In Ordinary Time

by James Meek

  ‘I mayn’t go unfree,’ said Will.

  ‘Your lord deems you free,’ said Anto. ‘I heard it from his own mouth.’

  ‘Deemed he me free, he wouldn’t offer me no bound acres to farm.’

  ‘You ne know the stead you stand in,’ said Anto. ‘You’ve no thank for the blessings the Almighty and Sir Guy send. You’ve not but eighteen winter and you’ve two worthy brothers to keep your mother, you’re betrothed to the sweetest burd in Outen Green, and your lord, out of the kindness of his heart, bestows on you a cot and ten good acres to farm when you’re wed. And here you’re offered the speed of a fare to fight in France, such as any bold young man would yearn for, and it’s sikur Sir Guy deems you free. How else might he let you go?’

  ‘A bound man on his lord’s errand is bound yet, fares he to the brim of the world,’ said Will. ‘Go I to France, come home again and farm those acres, I were still bound to Sir Guy, for I still owed him two days’ work in six.’

  Anto’s face lost hue and he no longer seemed to have himself in wield. He asked Will, in a steven like to he was choked, what then he’d have his lord do.

  ‘Let him give me an inch of hide with the words of my freedom written in ink and sealed with a gobbet of wax, for me to show all kind living clerks, that they believe my freedom true and not a tale I tell. Then I’ll go to France.’

  ‘You ne know your lowness in God’s read,’ said Anto. ‘You’d threaten all. The higher the ape climbs, the more he shows the filth of his arse.’

  ONCE, THE EXCITING friction between the textual accumulation of old wisdom and the vivacious inquiry of a new generation was to be found in monasteries like this. That vigour has moved to the universities now.

  ‘You have a mind,’ said the prior. ‘Why remain a proctor, and not be a scholar or an advocate?’

  ‘When Oxford desired me for a doctorate,’ I explained, ‘I expected Paris, and when Paris offered to adscribe me, my finances were debilitated. When I had saved sufficient money, I submitted myself to the preliminary examination of Paris, and was rejected.’

  The prior smiled. ‘You are bound for purgatory,’ he said. ‘You are excessively humid for infernal incineration, insufficiently lucid for celestial jubilation. On the margin of destroying humanity, the Deity created a homo novus, and you are the archetype. You are a non-decider. You neither reason nor instruct. You observe without participation. You do not reflect on the sacred mysteries. You comment on action as an alternative to action. You investigate pagan books in the library. You scribble on furtive parchment – and what do you scribble? Is it useful, or to the glorification of God?’

  ‘Ephemera,’ I said.

  THE SERVANT ASSIGNED by Sir Guy to confine Berna to her chamber on her return from church admitted Pogge and closed the door behind her, permitting the cousins their privacy, if not their liberty. Pogge discovered Berna with her face pressed to the narrow ouverture that offered a view into the southern distances. She approached her and placed her hand on her shoulder but Berna ne turned, as if cloyed in the window’s stone surround.

  ‘Does your father’s emollience not surprise you?’ said Pogge.

  ‘Have they persuaded you to join their party, in contravention of our bonds of amity?’

  ‘I shall be loyal to you for eternity,’ said Pogge gently. She sat on the bed. ‘Your father promises to restore your usual liberties tomorrow. He permits you to retain the book in the chamber, for your consolation.’

  Berna detached herself from the window. The sun had set and the chamber was sombre in the blue afterlight, Berna an indistinct form pacing to and fro, her hands in constant motion, now on her cheeks, now combing her hair, now on her hips.

  ‘He considers me a fine animal he has already vended, and desires to maintain in good condition till the purchaser arrive,’ said Berna.

  ‘You are extremely severe in your judgement of his motives.’

  ‘This Romance he so generously lends me,’ said Berna, seizing the volume of a table, ‘isn’t even finished.’

  ‘Berna, I doubt there is another demoiselle within three hours of here who is literate, and would have any non-ecclesiastical reading matter if she were.’

  ‘This Romance,’ repeated Berna, ‘is not the finished article. Our poor family possesses only the first part, the part by Guillaume de Lorris, which concludes with the imprisonment of the Rose in Jealousy’s castle. The greater part of the book, its completion by Jean de Meun, is absent.’

  ‘From what I hear,’ said Pogge, ‘de Meun’s so-called completion is a displeasant addition to another poet’s romance, excessively proud in its own ingeniousness, replete with irreligious mockery and the misprizement of women. I have never comprehended who gave him the authority to declare after another poet’s death that his rival’s verse was unfinished, and that he should complete it.’

  ‘So it is with people,’ said Berna. ‘Some girls consider themselves finished because they’re comfortable with whatever base rewards their parents offer. A Bristol merchant’s daughter may easily be satisfied with an allowance and a merchant’s son to marry when she lacks the imagination to realise how incomplete she is.’

  The chamber was still for several moments, save the evening chants of the birds and Pogge weeping. Berna returned to her place at the window, blocking what little light remained.

  ‘I mayn’t attend my amour no longer,’ said Berna. ‘I shall journey to him.’

  ‘I know I haven’t your courage and imagination,’ sniffed Pogge. ‘I ne present myself as no example.’

  Berna went to the door and demanded a candle of the servant. She took the light and went to sit with Pogge. ‘Pardon me my cruelty,’ she said. ‘My rigour towards you is a sign of my inquietude. Will you aid my escape?’

  ‘I would prefer to aid you in a change of heart,’ said Pogge. ‘Your severity to me bears a greater resemblance to your real nature than your acceptance of the role of the lover’s Rose. I’m not persuaded by your reliance on poet’s language to justify your strange intentions. To say Love’s arrows have crippled Laurence, to say he is Love’s vassal, has the odour of Guillaume de Lorris, not Bernadine. As I remember, Love possessed a sixth arrow, one he never used.’

  ‘The arrow named Frankness,’ said Berna.

  ‘That arrow is more characteristic of you, I would judge. The arrow that issues of a rose with a voice.’

  ‘I am best placed to judge my own sentiments.’

  ‘As my mother says, one is often the last to know one’s own roof is on fire.’

  WILL SHET TILL the shadows were long. He unstrung his bow, put the arrows in his belt, plucked a cluster of loving-Andrew and went down the hill to town. He went by the fields to the back road and in through the Muchbrooks’ orchard gate. Ness’s deaf eldmother Gert, who when she was young had seen the king ride by at hunt like a giant, on a white horse, with gold stars on the harness, sat and span by the back door. The sun had set and the new moon shone. Ness came out bearing one of the friars’ likenesses, with a candle set in it. The Holy Mother of God wept. The light of the candle made a loop of hair between Ness’s forehead and her headcloth’s hem gleam gold. She set the likeness down next to Gert and came to Will. He gave her the blossoms.

  ‘Do you truly go to France on Tuesday?’ she asked.

  ‘Does Sir Guy give me a deed of freedom, yeah. To come again next summer with silver, a free man, and we’ll be wed.’

  ‘Your dad ne came again.’

  ‘I ne go to fight as he did. I go to hold a town already won.’

  The blue leaves of the blossoms shook. ‘If you so yearn for freedom, why bind yourself to me?’

  ‘I need a wife, and you’re the best I know, and the fairest, and go I to France, to Italy, to Jerusalem, I won’t find better.’

  ‘Freedom’s dearer to you than I,’ said Ness. ‘You would I were your chattel, like the silver you hope to win in France.’

  ‘Why so wrathful?’ asked Will. ‘Aren’t you my sweetheart no more?
’

  Ness looked into his eyes and smiled unevenly. ‘My heart yearns for sweetness of you, and you ne give it. Last year you ne heeded me, so I went with Laurence Haket, to egg you on with a show of liking another. And Haket was weary of playing the lover to the lady Bernadine, so he hungered for it. But he japed me.’

  ‘I was ashamed to live so meanly,’ said Will. ‘I’d better my lot before I asked to wed you.’

  ‘Laurence Haket sang to me in French,’ said Ness. ‘He told me truelove things, and made me laugh, and I would kiss him; but to kiss him were wrong. And it was like to when I was a little girl. Mum made an apricot pie, and left me with it, and forbade me eat even one deal of it. But I ate one deal, because it needed me a sweet thing, and after I’d eaten one deal, I was already damned, and might as well eat the whole pie.’

  ‘I forgive you all that,’ said Will.

  ‘Am I to owe you everlastingly for forgiveness?’ said Ness. ‘Your forgiveness is but another name for the right my sin gives you to wed me without loving me, to have a wife and freedom at the same time.’

  ‘My brothers told me maids were unkind and dizzy, but I ne believed it before,’ said Will. ‘I won’t burden you no more.’ He went to the gate.

  Gert, who maybe wasn’t as deaf as folk said, got to her feet, pulled the headcloth off Ness’s head that her gold hair glew in the candlelight, and said: ‘Would you leave such a hoard to go to France?’

  ‘I mayn’t take her with me,’ said Will, and went home.

  His brothers were awake. They chid him that he vexed Sir Guy with his proud asks, when the lord had almost forgiven the town for the theft of his daughter’s gown, and was about to feast them all for her wedding. Went Will to Bristol, they said, he’d see the street thick with men of the land who’d gone seeking freedom and found it begging at a merchant’s door. Any dog, they said, was free to starve.

  The stir woke their mother, who saw Will and buried her neb in her hands.

  Will left them, clamb the hill and sat in the top meadow, looking down on the town under the moon. All had lit candles in the likenesses they’d bought, and filled them with holy water, and from one end to another the town sparkled with the bright falling tears of the Holy Mother.

  Feet trod on the cropped grass behind him.

  ‘I know you, Hab,’ said Will, but he ne turned.

  A mouth breathed on Will’s neck, a side crowded his back, and a hand reached inside his shirt, where it lay against his chest.

  ‘How may you know I’m Hab, and not Hab’s sister Madlen, or some other?’ came a whisper.

  ‘I know your walk, and your steven, and the feel of your hand.’

  ‘Hab and Madlen are brother and sister,’ came the whisper. ‘You mayn’t know which I am.’

  ‘It’s one of two?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You haven’t no sister.’

  ‘Likes you my hand on your skin?’

  ‘It ne baits me.’

  ‘My hand may hold your pintle.’

  ‘Ding you bloody if I feel it.’

  ‘Yeah, were I Hab. And were I Madlen?’

  ‘I’m betrothed.’

  ‘You wouldn’t ding me if I were a maid?’

  ‘It ne likes me to ding no maid.’

  ‘Let there be such a qualm as the priest says, and all die out-take you and I, and we be the only folk left in the world – would you take me then, as you say you would take Ness?’

  ‘Never, so long as you be Hab.’

  ‘And as her sister, the fair Madlen?’

  ‘Look!’ said Will, showing the sky and the town with his finger. ‘Like to the town be a great lake, and all the Holy Mother’s tears the folk have bought the likeness of the stars come again of the water. I would see the sea at night. Dad said the sea’s so great the light of all the stars come of it again.’

  ‘You speak as if the thing you yearned for more than any other were to leave this town. And yet you didder about with Ness and deeds of freedom like to you lack the strength to have your will.’

  ‘Ness said freedom was dearer to me than she.’

  ‘She’s right.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hurt her.’

  ‘Then stint at home. But if you would go and know the world and the sea, you must hurt her, and it were better you hurt her hard and quick than long and steady.’

  ‘I would not.’

  ‘It’s more kindly. Have her and walk away without a word, if you’re bold enough. Let her deem you a wretch, that she ne care so much you’re gone.’

  MARC, EVEN IF this is not humanity’s final hour, it is improbable that you and I will survive the imminent calamity. If these texts have been transmitted to you, it signifies that I have expired; as I perscribe it, you may already be entombed. We here in Malmesbury – the clerics, if not the common people – accept that the pestilence has devastated Avignon, and Provence, and Italy, and must inevitably perflow to this insular location. In the event that I succumb and you survive, transfer these commentaries to the library at Senanque. All other post-mortem instructions are to be invented in my final testament, located in the signed scrine in partition vii of my analogium.

  PS Examine my Latin for errors of syntax and vocabulary and make the necessary corrections. Reject the temptation to edit.

  PPS Purge my debt to the fishmonger – iii sols, as I remember, or the equivalent in candles if he has perished – and apologise to him or his heirs for my intemperate assertions on the quality of his sardines.

  My regards to your wife. I have a presagitation that Judith is secure.

  Thomas

  ON MONDAY, THE holiday, it seemed to us Will had lost everything, for we heard he’d fallen out with his betrothed and his kin, and no word had come from the manor about his proud ask. Folk said Sir Guy would withdraw his offer of land. It seemed Will’s pride would leave him worse off than before, without a bride, without acres, without the speed of a fare to France. He’d lost the freedom he’d always had, in his fellows’ eyes at least, by seeking to get a clerk to write it down.

  All liked Will, but we were glad to see him lowed. We would not that he got his deed. Most of us that were free hadn’t no deed to say so; got he one, would that make us less free than he? And what of the bondmen? Got Will a deed, were it like to he deemed all bondmen worthless churls that they ne durst ask for one themselves?

  Will ne looked ever so alone as in church, for Ness ne seemed to mind him, but kept her eyes to the ground and her fingers knit together with a string of beads. The Muchbrooks ne looked at the Quates, and the Quates ne looked at the Muchbrooks, out-take Will, who turned his head her way at the saecula saeculorum.

  After mass the priest led us out of church and downhill. We bore the likenesses of St George, St Andrew and St Michael, and Rob the deacon bore the oaken rood with the likeness of our Maker nailed to it, and Whichday and Cockle and Tom the smith and Bob Woodyer bore the likeness of our Clean Mother in her blue kirtle with her fair white face shined with wax and lambswool and lips hued red. The knaves rattled sheep knuckles in boxwood cans and we sang

  Domine Maria I have in mind

  Whereso I wend

  In well or in woe

  Domine Maria will me defend

  That I ne stand

  For no manner foe

  We came up to the bonefire and the priest bade us kneel and hold up our hands to heaven. The priest stretched his fingers over us and spoke in Latin and then a bead in English asking Christ to ward us of ferly death.

  Then Nack came forward and un-knit the cloth around the horsepanthing and set it on the pole pitched in the middle of the heap of bones. No smith of Outen Green hadn’t made no horsepanthing since the ill crops of the old king’s day, and most of us hadn’t seen one. Tom put a little nail in the horsebone for each soul in Outen Green, edging the eye and nose pits with nail heads as to make it seem the horse were undergirt with iron when it was quick in our fields.

  We tinded clouts soaked in pitch and cast them
on the bonefire and it was fired and burned and black smoke ran off the bones. It stank all day and darkened the sky. Evening it dwined to ashes, and though we ne yet knew would Will outgo, the ploughmen set up a board for a bowman-ale in the churchyard, and some of our shepherds came.

  It ne fetched but six shilling for Will’s shrift, and we ne knew would it be spent, for there wasn’t no word of Sir Guy, and none nad seen him. Whichday fetched his pipes and Buck the warrener his gittern and they played Guy Came Out of Warwick, The Maid of Cardiff, Three Strings and a Reed, The Mirthful Sparrow, Green Grow the Rushes, The Fiend and the Gleeman, My Love Yed to Fair Gloucester, The Oak Is Hoar and The Ram Would Have Good Wether. A few maids came by and we hopped with them.

  When the moon was high, Whichday and Will ran and fetched Whichday’s ox and hitched it to a plough and they began to plough the duck pond, saying when they’d ploughed it they’d sow it with duck eggs, and in a fortnight crop baked duck.

  ‘POGGE. POGGE! ARE you asleep?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll take bread with me, and a veil for my face. And a blanket. It may be necessary to sleep in the forest.’

  ‘You won’t sleep in no forest, for you won’t go nowhere, and on Saturday you’ll be married.’

  ‘Pogge, I have no money. I mayn’t travel without money.’

  ‘All the more reason why I shouldn’t lend you none.’

  ‘One night’s lodging on route, and stabling for Jemsy.’

  ‘Your father’s horse?’

  ‘Two florins should cover it. I’ll repay you double when we’re safe in Calais.’

  ‘The larger part of femininity, if they may not marry him they love, will take the marriage, then try to return to their amour in secret once their social and financial position is secure.’

  ‘Pogge! How can you make such monstrous pronouncements? You evidently consider the larger part of femininity to be a branch of the sorority of prostitutes. A woman who permits a man she ne loves to possess her as a secret route to her real amour? Haven’t sufficient virgins been martyred rather than surrender to such advances?’