To Calais, In Ordinary Time

by James Meek

  ‘I would you kept her,’ said Will.

  ‘She’s done her work for me,’ said Ness, and shut Will’s fingers on the token. ‘I got her in an uncouth land, where I went with a child in my womb, and I came back heal without it. Where’s your freedom?’

  Will showed her the letter, and Ness turned it in her hands, and rubbed the seal against her lips to feel the smoothness of the wax.

  ‘It’s but the deed of a deed,’ said Will. ‘The freedom will be redeemed by one in Calais.’

  He took her hand and led her off the path to a dim stead under a low oak branch, horseshoed by holly. He set down his bowstaff and took off his pack and stroked Ness’s tits through her kirtle. She kissed him and put her tongue in his mouth and reached under his kirtle and into his breech for his pintle and stroked it. She lay on the ground on her back and pulled up her barmcloth and kirtle and shirt and pulled down her breech. Will let down his hose and breech and his pintle swung out stiff and thick. ‘It’s a fair one,’ said Ness. ‘If you ne put it in my cunny quick as a wink, I’ll die.’

  Will knelt between her legs and shoff his length in and out and Ness squealed and thrashed her head about on the leaf-mould. Once Will dight, twice, thrice, four times, five, six, ten, and he stinted, and a sigh came of him.

  He stood and righted his clothes and put on his pack.

  ‘Likes you my cunny?’ asked Ness. She bustled to him on her knees and put her arms about him.

  Will ne spoke. He shoff her away roughly. His neb was red and he might not meet her eyes with his.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Ness. ‘How did it ne like you? Won’t you say nothing? Won’t you say you care? Won’t you say goodbye?’

  ‘I must go,’ said Will. ‘I’ll come again next summer.’

  He turned and went away. Ness might not see his tears, for he ne looked again, and she might not hear how he wept, for she sobbed so loud herself.

  WILL FARED TO the high road. He wiped his eyes and nose with his sleeve. He looked one way and the other. Flies stirred about his head. He sat by the wayside, pitched a twig in the dust, looked up at the sun and made marks near the twig the length of its shadow. The shadow nad crope to the first mark when a pig grunt in the trees behind him.

  Under an elm stood Hab. He wore a high-born maid’s gown, made of the cloth Sir Guy had shown Will, gold and white and sewn with blossoms, and a maid’s white headcloth. By his side the boar Enker cast his snout about balefully. The pig was shod for a far fare.

  ‘You’ll hang,’ said Will.

  ‘You greet a maid roughly on the first meeting,’ said Hab.

  ‘You’re no maid. You’re Hab the pigboy and you wear a wedding gown you stole of the lady Bernadine.’

  ‘You mistake,’ said Hab. ‘Hab’s not here. I’m his sister Madlen. My brother gave me the gown and went away. Ne deem you me winly in silk and gold?’ He spun about with his arms stretched wide.

  ‘I’ve woned in Outen Green as long as you. You haven’t got no sister. You’ve got Hab’s neb, Hab’s steven and Hab’s shape. You’re Hab.’

  ‘We’re alike,’ said Hab. ‘So alike man can’t know one by the other. Hab speaks high for a man, and I speak low for a maid, so we meet there. But my brother hasn’t no tits, and I do, as you see, good ones.’

  ‘You stuffed it with moss to make it seem you’ve got them.’

  ‘If you ne true them, feel them,’ said Hab.

  Will reached with his hand.

  Hab thacked his wrist hard. ‘Ne be so bold, you know me but a handwhile,’ he said.

  ‘For the love of Christ, take it off and hide it in the wood before you’re seen, or you’ll be lolled up by morning.’

  ‘I go out of Outen Green today,’ said Hab.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I go to Calais.’

  ‘You mayn’t go and you know it.’

  ‘Why may you go and I not?’

  ‘I’m a free man and you’re bound to the manor.’

  ‘I ne came into the world with no chain about my neck. I’ll come with you to Calais. How might you go so far without a friend? Tell the bowmen I’m your wife.’

  ‘I’m bethrothed to Ness Muchbrook.’

  ‘She’s all arse and tits. I saw you ride her and I saw it ne liked you. You were like to the woodpecker makes fast to peck a hole in a tree only so he might rest the sooner.’

  ‘You were wrong to bid me fuck her and walk away without a kind word,’ said Will. The tears came of his eyes again. ‘Now my heart’s sore, and so is hers, and the guilt’s all mine.’

  ‘I ne bade you do nothing,’ said Hab. ‘I’ve never met you before. That must have been my brother.’

  ‘Fiend fetch you, you’re a liar, and besides, you’ve no right to behold while I do to Ness what’s lawful in God’s sight.’

  ‘If I ne beheld, who would? God has better things to do than see a Cotswold churl and his burd go five-legged in the woods.’

  ‘Who learned you to deem the swive of others?’

  ‘Hab,’ said Hab.

  ‘To learn his own sister how to swive, there can’t be no sikurer way to the fire.’

  ‘So you own he has a sister,’ said Hab.

  ‘There’s no Madlen, you’re Hab in the likeness of a maid, and if you dare follow me, I’ll ding you and fell you and leave you to lie for Sir Guy’s men to find.’

  He reached for Hab, like to he’d snatch the headcloth of his head, but Hab stepped back and said in a sharp steven: ‘Your bowmen are coming.’

  Hab ran back into the woods, Enker behind him. Hooves rang on the road.

  A SCORE HORSEMEN rode toward Will. The sun found the gleam of harness in the dust they made. They rode long grey horses, tall, lean, right-boned men with fair faces, clad in grey shirts and white kirtles marked with red roods. Swords hung of their belts and each second man bore a bow on his back. They ne spoke and their eyes rested on the road ahead, like to their only longing were for the fight to come. Among them was one horse without a rider, and behind them, at the same great speed, came a two-wheeled cart hued with the likeness of St George and the worm, driven by a knave with blue eyes and a golden beard, who stood upright, gripping the reins.

  Will stepped into the road and lifted his bowstaff. The bowmen ne slowed. Neither the horsemen nor the driver of the cart looked at him as they clattered by and Will must press back against the hedge not to be struck by hooves or a wheel. Will picked up his pack and ran after them, calling into the dust that he was the bowman of Outen Green who was to go with them to France. He stumbled and fell. When he was on his feet again the riders had gone behind a crook in the road. The noise of hooves and harness and the chirk of axle wasn’t to be heard no more.

  BERNA CONDUCTED HER horse from the forest. She hadn’t had time to assemble no baggage for the journey when she escaped from the manor. She possessed a saddle and harness, a blanket, and the clothes she wore when she departed.

  She apperceived Will Quate by the roadside. He regarded the distance with visage dolorous.

  ‘Quate,’ she said, ‘you attend your archers, I suppose.’

  He stared at her. She wore a white wimple, a veil covering her face, and her marriage gown, gold and white and sewn with flowers.

  ‘I would you ne looked at me in that way and manner, Quate,’ she said. ‘How I choose to go about my kin and family’s land is not for you to deem or judge. I bid and command you not to tell no one you meet on the road that you saw me here.’

  Will Quate approached her, closer than a villain had ever stood, so close she took a pace back. At first, when he saw her, he’d appeared surprised, but now there was menace in his eyes.

  ‘Get away from me or I’ll have you beaten,’ she said. But Will Quate paid no attention.

  ‘Thinks you,’ said Will, ‘you might as well be hung for a horse as a gown?’

  ‘How dare you address me as an equal?’ said Berna.

  ‘First you steal a gown, then you steal a horse, then you steal the tongue
of the manor. You took their words to make yourself sound like a high-born. Or was it your swine taught you to say “equal” and hack your speech into trim gobbets?’

  ‘You’re a lunatic,’ said Berna.

  ‘I warned you not to follow me, and now I’ll ding you, but I’ll have the moss of your false bosom first.’ He plunged his hand inside her gown and firmly enclosed one breast.

  Berna screamed. Will pulled his hand of her and his mouth fell open. He blenched, retreated and stammered his incomprehension; he was sure Hab had no sister, he said, he ne knew how she might be a maid.

  Berna took her chance to mount her horse and ride away southward. The last she heard of Quate was of him crying for her pardon.

  ‘Is this what happens when we leave the places we were born?’ she demanded of her horse. ‘That a noble lady is deprived of her authority, and a villain transformed from an obedient servant into a savage, senseless beast?’

  SOON AFTER THE sound of the horse’s hooves had faded, Will heard song. Four men came down the road from Gloucester in breech, shirt and thick shoon. They were white of dust, with packs and bowstaves on their backs. The singer sang in Welsh and wore a straw crown webbed with reed, pitched with stalks of pig’s parsley. He had long black hair in rings, and a nose like an axe-blade, and a string of onions hung of his belt. Beside him came a short freke, thick of body, with a deep wem aslant his neb, like to his head had been cloven and put back together; and the third was a sweaty man, crooked of his burden, his mouth hung open and his eyes turned down.

  The fourth was a giant, as long as two of the others together, in a hide hat under which brim his neb was shaded. Hung from his neck by a thick silver chain was a great rood bearing a likeness of the Lord of Life nailed up. The likeness was hued so wonder like a man, the pale flesh sucked in between the ribs and blood that oozed of his wounds, it seemed Christ might ferly stir and call out to them for help.

  They went by Will and ne stinted. Will went after them. He asked was one of them Hayne Attenoke.

  ‘I,’ said the giant, and his steven was like to thunder in the womb of a hill. His neb was as a rocky hillside, with eyes set deep within it like coves.

  ‘I’m the man you look for,’ said Will. ‘The bowman of Outen Green. I’d be of your score, and go with you to Calais.’

  They ne shortened their stride. It was like to they ne heard him.

  ‘I’m a free man,’ said Will. ‘Strong, heal and I shoot well.’

  The bowmen ne stinted. ‘We shan’t take you,’ said cloven-head.

  ‘Why?’ said Will. The bowmen ne answered but strode on.

  ‘I’ve seen one band of bowmen go by already, and I shan’t miss the second,’ said Will. ‘I shan’t go home again but if you show me to be no bowman.’

  ‘What band of bowmen was the first?’ said cloven-head. Will told them and the Welshman laughed.

  ‘He mistook the players for us,’ he said. ‘Maybe you were better as a player than a bowman. You’ve the face for it.’

  ‘I’ll show you I shoot true, and not in play, if you let me,’ said Will.

  ‘Have you arrows?’ said cloven-head.

  ‘I ne brought none,’ said Will.

  ‘The moon,’ said Hayne, who ne slowed, and ne beheld Will.

  Still ne stinting, cloven-head strung his bow, took an arrow of a cocker on his back, nocked it, found a mark to his left and shot, all in one swift stir. The arrow hit an oak stump two hundred feet away in the sheep field above the road.

  ‘Fetch that arrow,’ said cloven-head to Will, ‘and if Noster ne shifts your mood, and you may shoot the arrow and hit the moon so it spins about, you can be of our fellowship.’

  Will began to run toward the stump, and while he ran called out ‘How can I hit the moon?’

  The bowmen ne turned and ne answered, and by the time Will had gone up the field, fetched the arrow and come again to the road, all the bowmen were gone, out-take the sweaty man, who sat on a stone, drank from a flask and cursed.

  HIS NAME WAS Noster. ‘I’m done,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be a bowman no more. I’ll go home to the works of Dene. You owe to go home, too.’

  ‘I shan’t go home. I’d learn how I might shoot at the moon with an arrow and hit it so it spins about.’

  ‘Mad was right,’ said Noster. ‘You’re better fit to play a bowman than to be one.’

  ‘Ne unworth me till you know me.’

  Noster’s mouth stirred like to a man who’d smile but had lost the lore. ‘You ween I worth you too low,’ he said. ‘No, you worth us too high.’ He ran his finger down the middle of his neb. ‘Does the sight of Longfreke’s wem ne tell you to shun the life of a soldier?’

  ‘What’s a soldier?’ said Will.

  ‘It’s a French word that tokens a fighting man, who fights for silver, far from home.’

  ‘I’d be a soldier, then,’ said Will. ‘I’d see uncouth lands, and win silver for my deed of freedom. My lord says an English archer in France wins silver as lightly as a knave gets apples of a widow’s orchard.’

  ‘Why so eager to steal of widows?’

  ‘Were it so fell to be a bowman, why are you one?’

  ‘None was there to learn me the truth when I cleaved to the score.’

  ‘If Hayne will take me to Calais, I’ll go.’

  ‘You ne know the shape of things,’ said Noster. ‘Hayne’s a vinter, which is to say the head of one score bowmen. Can’t you tell how far Hayne falls short of twenty? Without me they’re three. They’ve five more to pick up along the way. That’s eight. Where’s the leave?’

  ‘Maybe they fear the qualm.’

  Noster laughed, shook his head and spat and said: ‘There’s one bowman. His name is John Fletcher. He goes by the ekename Softly. In a cart he keeps a stonemason’s daughter, a Frenchwoman he reft of her maidenhood in Mantes on the way to the fight at Crécy. She ne gave it willingly, nor did her kin leave him to take it but that he had to quell them first. Would you have such men as fellows?’

  Will asked where Hayne stood.

  ‘On the side of right,’ said Noster.

  ‘Then I’ll stand with Hayne, and shun this Softly.’

  ‘But Hayne ne hinders Softly. So you fare to France in a body with men who keep a stolen Frenchwoman against her will.’

  ‘Anywise, I’ll go,’ said Will.

  ‘You make your choice,’ said Noster. He bade Will godspeed, and went again the way he’d come, on the road to Gloucester.

  ‘How can I hit the moon with an arrow?’ yall Will after him, but Noster ne answered. Will ne stinted no more and set off on the heels of the other bowmen.

  IT IS TEMPTING to believe, as do the majority of common people here, that this island is immune to the pestilence. This island, that is, of England, Scotland and Wales, but also this island within an island, the abbey. Locally the foundation of hope is the prior. Calamity, it transpires, is the veritable patria of this inconspicuous man, who in normal times resembled an exile – obscure, ignored, uncomprehended. His firm actions give us confidence that no matter how intolerable the onus of authority, he will not fracture.

  In consequence of the preceding period of extreme laxity under the abbot – was there a better example of the clerical corruption that provoked God to initiate the plague? – it was facile for the prior both to assume control from his nominal superior and to curate a restoration of the Benedictine rule, the perfect opposite to the abbot’s discredited ministry: simplicity, humility and traditional discipline. The prior prohibited absolutely the consumption of quadrapeds, except to the genuinely infirm, with bipeds and fish prohibited Monday, Tuesday and Saturday. Fornicators, masturbators and sodomites to be flogged for the prime offence, excommunicated for the second, expelled for the third. Pilgrims to be admitted gratis, but to approach the feretory prostrate. Monks to remit sumptuous vestments to the almoner. Monday and Tuesday, a procession of the fraternity around Malmesbury, with urban clergy and the lay.

  Most significa
ntly: incessant music. The prior has extended the liturgy to its ancient duration. He has constructed a fortress of sacred music, in which psalms, antiphonae, versicules and responses concinnate in aural simulation of the lapidary defences of a castle.

  NB Marc. Many years ago Otto requested that I transmit a petition to Cardinal Roux, and I averred to Otto that I had done so, but I did not, out of some sordid malignancy – envy, I suppose. It is an insignificant matter, certainly, but it appeared important to Otto at the time, and it perturbs my conscience. Inform Otto that I repent sincerely, desire remission, and am prepared to make restitution.

  I had an important question for Judith, but I cannot now remember what it was.

  WILL CAME TO an ale house, a long cot of white stone. Three goats cropped the grass by the pale and Hayne, Longfreke and Mad sat in the yard with food and drink set before them. They ne greeted him but ate and drank like to he wasn’t there.

  Will stood at the yard gate, strung his bow, nocked the arrow and shet it at a board hung over the ale-house eaves. The arrow struck the board with a mighty thock and the board span around twice on its pole before it came to rest.

  The bowmen hearkened to the strike. Hayne rose, reached up and wrenched the arrow from where it was pitched in the board. The arrowhead had throughshove one eye of the likeness of the moon that was wrought there. Hayne smoothed the splintered wood with his fingers, dropped the arrow in a cocker and showed Will a free seat where he might sit with them.

  ‘Sweetmouth found that likeness in France and named his ale house the Moon,’ said Mad, ‘but the One-Eyed Cheese likes me better.’

  The brewster came and put before Will a can of ale and a bowl of eggs and peas. Will said he bore his own bread, for he lacked the silver to buy aught else. Longfreke told him fall to and they’d stand him the fee.

  ‘What did Noster tell you of us?’ asked Longfreke.

  ‘That you’d meet more bowmen along the way,’ said Will. ‘One named Softly.’

  ‘Noster told the youngster all, yet he came,’ said Longfreke to Hayne.