To Calais, In Ordinary Time

by James Meek

  His pack was by his bed-sack. Someone had taken the shoon of his feet and left them nearby. Will rose and did on the shoon. He’d go out the door, but a tall lean freke with a rood written on his forehead in blackneedle stood in his way.

  ‘By what right do you behold me?’ asked the man.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ said Will. ‘You stand between my thirst and my whole hope to quench it.’

  ‘Would you go by me?’ said the man. ‘Would you? See how far you go.’

  ‘I wouldn’t strive with a man and ne know why,’ said Will.

  ‘For one, you behold my forehead like to you ne worth the holy rood of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ,’ said the man. ‘For two, your face ne likes me. I would work it to a better shape with the sharp end of my bollyknife.’

  SOMEONE CALLED TO the man in a soft steven and bade him come away. ‘Your wrath were more worthed did you hold it back, my Dickle, that it mightn’t be fare for all, as bread, but doled out in shreddles, as saffron,’ said the soft-spoken one.

  ‘I wasn’t there when they made this gnof a bowman,’ said Dickle. ‘I’d have sent him home to his mother’s lap with his neb slit.’ He shoff by Will into the room where Will had been asleep and shut the door.

  It was Softly John Fletcher who spoke. ‘Dickle Dene’s a fell man with knife, but ever holy,’ he said. ‘He fared the last fifty mile to Jerusalem on his knees, and had the rood written on his forehead in blackneedle that all might know his holiness.’

  ‘I’m ill of head and dry of mouth,’ said Will. ‘I ne know where I am nor how I got here since I drank the Scotch.’

  ‘You drank enough to make you blind,’ said Softly. ‘This is Rodmarton, a morning’s fare from Malmesbury. Hayne bore you on his back.’

  He led Will to a long telded cart, with a ladder hung on hooks on one side, in one hern of the guesthouse yard. The moon had risen and the stars shimmered and cans of fleabane smoked at the doors. A light was lit in the cart and someone went about inside with a sound of clay and iron and thin timbers that knocked against each other.

  Softly called into the cart and a woman brought out a can of ale, which she gave to Softly, who handed it to Will. Will drained the can and they filled it again. Softly bade the woman bring light and the woman brought a flame that gleamed in an ox-horn cup.

  ‘Behold, Cess, Player Will Quate,’ he said. ‘Isn’t he as fair a young freke as you’ve seen?’

  Cess ne lifted her eyes to see. ‘I shan’t behold no other man but you,’ she said.

  ‘She makes a show of meekness for me, but she’s as all French maids, wanton and sly,’ said Softly. ‘Find you her fair?’

  Will said he mightn’t deem the fairness of any woman but his own betrothed.

  Softly laughed. There was gold in his teeth. He put his arm around Will’s shoulder, led him to the board and bade him take an old barrel-half for his seat. He was friendly, and asked Will many asks, and Will answered.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ said Softly. ‘I’ll learn you what’s what, for though Hayne’s leader, him ne likes the other bowmen to know what he knows. He leaves it to each man to choose his way, and if that way ne answers Hayne’s read, woe betide him, in war or frith.’

  ‘What’s war?’ said Will. ‘Is it a fight?’

  ‘War’s all the fights together, and all that betides on the days between the fights, which is the greater deal of soldiery,’ said Softly. ‘A man who lacks but war makes a poor soldier.’

  ‘I lack the sight of the sea,’ said Will. ‘I lack silver for my freedom.’

  Softly nodded. ‘You’re right to seek your freedom in France in wartide,’ he said. ‘The English soldier has such freedom in France as no king ne gets in his own house.’

  SOFTLY JOHN WOULD have Will know he was a God-fearing man.

  ‘I was a seafarer,’ he said, ‘and met a holy man, who gave me a golden rood, but I lost it. The holy man gave it me, for he saw in me an angel-light.’

  Softly had sailed on a ship out of Weston took flour, ale, apples and candles to the holy man, an anchor who lived alone on an island. The anchor wone in a house made of stone and wood he’d gathered of the strand, and sat there all summer and winter, bidding his beads and writing. There wasn’t none more holy, said Softly, though his teeth were rotten and his feet bare and he hadn’t but sea-calf skins to wrap him in. Lord Berkeley was bound to send him goods twice a year, but it ever fell short, and Softly went about the staithe begging stuff of folk for the leave, so the holy man ne storve. When the ship landed and was unladen, the holy man would kiss Softly’s hand and weep and tell him he was a true Christen, and read to him golden tales of the saints from a book, and behest that should he die, Softly might have his golden rood.

  One winter, when they were to go to the island, a snowstorm came, and blew for a fortnight. After the storm had gone they sailed forth. They found the anchor in his house, sat at his writing board as if he were yet alive, a feather in his hand, his eyes open and his skin clear, pale and dry, like to a skin cut for a book before it’s written on. A sweet stink came of him, like to reekles on smoke in church, and when they came to lift him, he weighed no more than a sparrow, for his ghost was so great that when it left him there wasn’t but a shell left. He’d burned his books for to heat him, out-take the book of golden saints’ tales, of which the greater deal was left, and Softly minded the holy man’s behest and took the golden rood, which he’d since lost.

  TWO MORE BOWMEN, Holiday Bobben and Hornstrake Walt Newent, came into the light, sat down and began to play at dice. The dice belonged to Hornstrake, yet it was Holiday who won most throws. Hornstrake was a lank freke, shaved in patches and bald in patches, whose clothes hung loose, and who sat bent, with his head lower than his shoulders, and sniffed and rubbed his nose.

  ‘Hornstrake bought a set of weighted dice,’ said Holiday, ‘but they cheated him. The sellers were so false the dice they sold him were true.’

  All Holiday wore was of the newest and best, like to a rich young knave from a much town, out-take that his kirtle was sewn with hooks and straps and slit with leather mouths for hidden bags. One leg of his hose was red, the other black, and he’d oiled his hair. He had fat whirled cheeks and sharp quick eyes.

  ‘A Player must play,’ said Holiday, showing Will the dice. ‘I’ll lend you sixpence against your first week’s fee if you lack the silver to lay on a game. Or would you be read to from a book?’

  ‘Have you truly a book?’ asked Will.

  Holiday reached inside his shirt and drew out a bundle hung from his neck on a cord. He brought it up to the light. ‘I keep it for Softly,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t read bookstaves, but Holiday learned himself,’ said Softly. ‘It likes me to hear of a saint’s deeds with my ale.’

  Will asked to see the book, and Holiday took the cord of his neck and gave it him to hold.

  It was made of dry, stiff leaves of thin calfskin bound together, with bookstaves written in, and likenesses of men and fowls and worms of many hues around the hem. One hem was burned black, like to it had been pulled of the fire, and the first leaf was spotted with brown.

  Will stroked the first page with his fingertip. ‘I ne know how a man might get words out of these little black bookstaves,’ he said.

  ‘Each staff tokens a littlewhat of a word. The first staff, that’s like to a snake, tokens “s”, as the hiss of an adder. The second, like to a house on two floors, tokens “a”, as comes of your mouth when you fall of the upper floor. The third is “i”, like to a shut eye, the fourth, “n”, like to the house on two floors, but it lacks floors, and the fifth is “t”, like to a crossbow, and like to the sound when the bolt is let. T-t-t. And next comes an empty spot, that tokens the end of the word. Now you read it.’

  Will spoke the letters in their turn. ‘Sss-a-eye-ne-te,’ he said.

  ‘Go at them quicker, like an arrow through five rooks on a branch,’ said Holiday.

  ‘“Saint”,’ said Will. ‘“Saint!�
�’ he said again, and his face was lit with mirth, and he looked blithe from neb to neb around the light.

  ‘“Saint”,’ said Holiday, ‘and the word after it is “Agnes”.’ He could read it, he said, but the pith and marrow of it was that Agnes was a holy young Christen maid in Rome who wouldn’t take the hand of the knave that would have her, and the knave’s father, that was constable there, stripped her naked to shame her in front of the townfolk, but God made the short hair on her head grow long, so all her limbs were hidden from their eyes. So the constable put her in a whorehouse, and bade the men of Rome have their will with her as them liked. But God filled the house with light, that none might see her, and when the knave came to reave her maidenhood, he dropped down dead. And Agnes was dight saint.

  ‘There it is in the book,’ said Softly. ‘See you we know God’s ends better than Hayne?’

  Will showed by his stillness he ne understood.

  ‘There was one,’ said Hornstrake, ‘on whom no hair grew, and there wasn’t no light from our Maker, and God ne stirred himself to kill the reavers. So it was reft, and she wasn’t dight saint.’

  All three men looked on Will, like to they bode some words of him in answer, but he sat still and beheld the flicker of the candle in its horn.

  ‘I told you he’d be of Hayne’s mind,’ said Holiday to Softly. ‘Now Hayne’ll have five, and we but four.’

  Softly said, in his low sweet steven like to a busy beeskip, that it was the hour for Holiday and Hornstrake to go to bed. The two of them nearhand ran from the board, and Will and Softly were let alone, out-take that at the nigh end of the cart, Cess sat and sewed a glove in the moonlight.

  Will yawned. Softly took a woollen from the cart. He nodded at Cess.

  ‘Would you have her tonight?’ he asked Will.

  Will beheld the ground and ne answered.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Softly. ‘I ne sell her cunt to no one. I’m bound by oath to gut the man who lays a hand on her. I might have left her there but now she’s my burd and burden for ever.’

  Cess murmured something, and Softly bade her go in. ‘There’s nothing worse than pride in a maid,’ he said when she’d gone. ‘It’s the first thing to take of them.’

  He held out the woollen. ‘Take it as a gift,’ he said.

  ‘I mayn’t. It’s too dear,’ said Will.

  ‘I bought them to great cheap of a ship in Bristol,’ said Softly. ‘Take it.’

  ‘It’s warm,’ said Will. ‘Now’s harvest weather. I ne need it.’

  ‘Come winter you’ll sleep in a cold Calais harbour. Take it. If a man withsay a gift a third time, the giver might think himself unworthed.’

  Cess cried out in French from the cart, and Softly turned. Will took the woollen, thanked Softly and went to bed.

  Emerging from the abbot’s house this evening I was asperged with holy water by a trio of masked monks chanting ‘Sicut tabescit cera a facie ignis pereant impii a facie Dei,’ as if the abbot were a centre of evil and I must be instantly isolated and purged in my transition from his location to that of the prior, lest the army of demons encamped outside the prior’s musical fortifications conceal themselves on my person, secretly enter the abbey and destroy it from within.

  NB Marc: In infancy I contrived to attribute culpability for the destruction of a valuable crystal reliquary to my younger brother Gavin, who was, in consequence, gravely battered by our father. In fact it was I who fractured the object. I have never admitted this to him.

  WILL WAS WOKEN by snorks and cratches outside. He got up and went to the window that looked out on the orchard side of the guesthouse. Enker dug there at the roots of an apple tree.

  The other bowmen ne stirred. Will did on his shoon and went out into the yard. The first cock nad sung and the sun wasn’t but a fallowing of the darkness on the dogs asleep and on the wakeman who slumbered at the timber-haw gate, his cheek pillowed on his fist. Will came through the gate and went round the back to see Enker come out through the gap he’d made in the orchard hedge.

  He followed the boar out of town and into a wood, till the first light of morning glimmered in a ridding. There he found Madlen in the lady Bernadine’s gown, sat on a tree stump, at work on her fingernails with a little knife. She looked up when Will came towards her and bent to her nails again.

  ‘Why won’t you let me alone, but follow wherever I go?’ she asked.

  Will sat at her feet in the grass and looked up at her. ‘You’re so like to Hab, God’s bones I’d swear you were he, had I not put my hand in your gown and found tits instead of moss.’

  ‘You nad no right to grip a maid there without her leave.’

  ‘You were full of high French words when we met before. Who learned you?’

  ‘A maid learns by listening,’ said Madlen.

  ‘Where were you when Hab and I were children?’ asked Will. ‘Where were you when we swam in the bourne and caught fireflies?’

  ‘I was there, but you ne saw me,’ said Madlen. ‘Would you keep me with you now?’

  ‘I’m still betrothed to another, and a sworn bowman, and you still wear a stolen gown. Bury it and go home.’

  ‘Is that your last word?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’d truly go to the ends of the Earth alone, rather than have me with you?’

  ‘I have my even-bowmen.’

  Madlen stuck out her lip and plucked at the silk flowers on her barm. ‘Then I’ll leave you for ever,’ she said. ‘But first, while the ridding’s heavenish, and the birds sing and there are pearls on the grass, tell me what kind these bowmen are you go among.’

  ‘The leader Hayne is a giant who barely speaks, who wouldn’t take me to France and ne worths me. Yet it was he bore me the last mile to Rodmarton after I’d drunk a flask of strong Scotch wine and went asleep witless, when he could have left me in the wood. And Hayne’s first underling is a free handy gome called Softly John who seems to be my friend, yet keeps against her will a maid he stole in France.’

  ‘Is she fair, the French maid?’ asked Madlen.

  ‘It was too dark to see.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘One of my new fellows learned me to read words,’ said Will. ‘Of a book.’

  ‘How nimble you are!’ said Madlen.

  ‘He learned me a bare five bookstaves, but it was enough to read a whole word.’

  ‘Shut your eyes,’ said Madlen. ‘Bide a handwhile and open them and I’ll be gone.’

  ‘Light as that?’

  ‘Shut your eyes.’

  Will shut his eyes. The grass rustled and feet trod the earth. ‘God be with you,’ Will said. ‘I’ll see you next year.’

  He opened his eyes. Madlen’s eyes stared into them from six inches away.

  ‘It wouldn’t be right for me to go,’ she said. ‘You ne sold me to our lord, when you might have done it lightly, and won of it. This tokens that in the dern hollows of your heart, you care for me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t never sell no man to nobody,’ said Will. ‘That’s my own worth I love, not you. You showed yourself too late to get love of me.’

  ‘Without me, you won’t have no kin to tell of the wonders you see.’ She came to sit by Will and laid her head on his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll come home again and tell everyone,’ said Will.

  ‘You won’t come home again. The priest said so. All will sicken.’

  ‘I told you, the qualm’s a priest’s tale to win silver,’ said Will.

  ‘Oh, loveman,’ said Madlen, and held his cheek in her hand. ‘I ne durst leave Outen Green but that I believe the qualm will slay us, every one. When all must be quelled I ne fear no gallows, for you and I may love and die and go on to the next house together.’

  ‘It mayn’t be.’

  ‘Two nights ago, my brother asked if you would take me, were you and I the last folk left on earth. You ne forsook me.’

  ‘I ne said yeah.’

  ‘You ne said no.’

  The fir
st bell rang in Rodmarton.

  ‘I’m a soldier now, and must go,’ said Will. He freed himself from Madlen’s arms.

  Madlen caught his wrist and bade him give her one kiss before he went as token, but Will wouldn’t. Madlen looked in his eyes, dight her head at his neb like a cat on a mouse, and smote him on the mouth with her lips.

  ‘When you understand,’ she said, ‘I shan’t be far away.’

  ‘I would you were.’

  ‘On the far side of Malmesbury, Hab and I will cleave to you and your bowmen.’

  ‘Ne dare.’

  ‘I’ll wear a cloth on my neb and use French words and make a show that I’m the lady Bernadine.’

  ‘I’ll tell them otherwise.’

  ‘If you do they’ll send me back to Outen Green to be hung as a thief.’

  ‘Won’t you let me be?’

  ‘I may only let you be with me.’

  WILL CAME AGAIN to the guesthouse. The other bowmen were at board, their dishes nigh to empty. Will came up to Hayne and asked to be forgiven his late. He’d risen early, he said, and gone out to see what kind of town Rodmarton was, for he hadn’t never seen it. But Hayne wouldn’t behold him.

  There was a free stead next to Hayne on the bench, and a stead free by Softly, and Softly called to Will to sit by him, and Will took his seat there.

  A maid came from the guesthouse and set before Will a can of ale and a dish of hot collops. He put egg and pig-flesh on the bread with the flat of his knife and fell to as one hadn’t eaten a fortnight.

  Hayne spoke, and it was like to a hill shook. It was his law, he said, that all must be together in his sight at cock-crow, and all must be together in his sight at sundown, and Will Quate had broken this law. When one of his score broke this law by going his own way, said Hayne, those as hadn’t broken the law would be hurt.

  All the bowmen fell still but Softly, who spat on the ground.

  Hayne rose and bade them gather their gear and get on the road.

  THE LAND ABOUT them fell away. Ahead of the bowmen to the south lay a wide flat wold, and at the far brim of their sight, a line of hills. Between them and the wold a great dark blade reached into the sky, like to a giant under the ground had pitched his spear through the world’s hide. Longfreke saw Will stare and told him it was the spire of the church of the abbey in Malmesbury. In all England, he said, only Sarum’s was longer.