To Calais, In Ordinary Time

by James Meek

  Would he not protect me? I inquired. He did not respond. This was characteristic, I discovered. Colloquium with Hayne cannot consist of question and response; all one can do is to move into proximity with him and speak. Statements may issue from his lips, or not; when they do, they may appear to be responses, or not.

  In terms of the events of Mantes, two years previously, said Hayne, he had not been in the vicinity of the house from which de Goincourt (the archers refer to her as ‘Cess’) was abducted, and precise details of what occurred might only be obtained from the archers directly responsible. Certainly Softly had been involved, and certainly none had disputed his control over her person since.

  As an account of what occurred, this is evidently unsatisfactory. Yet as frequently as he failed to respond to my interrogation, he anticipated a question I had not articulated. It had been his intention since the company’s foundation, he said, to select such archers as would benefit from maximum liberty to act in accordance with their consciences. Even though matters had not evolved as he desired, he could not now restrict those liberties, or dissolve the company, without assisting their evasion of the just retribution towards which their actions inevitably led.

  ‘And Will Quate?’ I inquired.

  Here Hayne did respond. He turned his eyes to me; and his attention was so much more terrible than being ignored by him that I regretted my question. He said only that he had provided Quate with the necessary terms on which to base his decision to join the company.

  I remain convinced that Quate’s conscription disturbs him.

  Hayne said that responsibility for the company’s actions were ultimately his; yet this did not absolve the archers of culpability for what they did.

  I trembled. In his crude English diction he had enunciated, unconsciously, the precise paradox that led to my rejection by the magisters of Paris after their initial audit of my capabilities. Requested by them to discuss the contradiction between God’s omniscient omnipotence and man’s liberty of action, I was expected to summarise and comment on the perspectives of Augustine, Aquinas and Boethius. In place of this I questioned, and speculated, and advanced my own peurile ideas. Accordingly I was not admitted to the faculty.

  Marc, in privileging you with the occupation of copyist, and you, Judith, with the occupation of domestic servant, I desired not only to alleviate tedious labour, but to create in our common domicile a miniature form of the scholarly paradise, university, from which my mistakes excluded me. I expected you to alternate between labour and academic discourse to my benefit. I have confessed as much to you previously. I am impelled at this hour, however, to confess a novelty, that in attracting you to my service there was a third factor, your affection towards each other. I confess that I envied it. I could not acquire that love for myself, but I desired to contain it, as a bottle may not imbibe wine, but must satisfy itself with preventing its escape, and protecting it from corruption.

  THE SICKHOUSE STOOD east of the church. In the sickhouse yard, twenty feet from the door, stood a wicker stall with a roof of rough cloth. The stall had four openings, one on each side. None might go in the sickhouse, said the infirmarer, but that they go through the stall first, to be undersought for sickness.

  Afterwards they might come out three ways – one door to the sickhouse, if they might be helped; another door to go again whence they’d come, if they were heal; and the third door for those too far gone to be helped by any doctor.

  ‘What owe those unhappy dogs to do?’ asked Longfreke.

  ‘Seek a priest,’ the infirmarer said, ‘or a friend or kin to comfort them, or at worst a lonely stead where they ne have none near to spread the pest further.’

  Longfreke asked how long the stall had stood, and the answer came, a fortnight.

  ‘Have we missed news?’ said Longfreke. ‘Has the pest reached England?’

  ‘It must come soon,’ said the infirmarer. ‘Too many of our brethren in France and Italy have gone to Christ for me to ween otherwise, and I’d be ready.’

  Each bowman went into the stall, one by one. Within, the infirmarer and two knaves tied handfuls of wool soaked in vinegar to their mouths and noses, groped under the bowmen’s arms and between their legs, pinched their necks and looked at their tongues. They asked each bowman where he was born, and on what day, and wrote it down in a great book. All deemed heal, the infirmarer led them into the sickhouse. He stood them about a board where lay pots of treacles and sheaves of dried worts and glass flasks of many hues. Behind him in the hall were a score empty bedstraws, each made with good clean linen. In the middle of the hall a knave let fall leaves into a smoking fire. The sickhouse stank sweetly of vinegar and rue.

  The infirmarer coughed, clasped his hands together, made a steeple of his first fingers and lifted them to his lips.

  ‘The qualm, or as it is rightly called the pestilence, pest or plague, is airborne, as a sickly mist, and spreads from stead to stead when the wind blows from the south,’ he said. ‘Once it lights on a town, it spreads between folk like to fire in a dry wood. It may reach England in two ways: in clouds, blown by the south wind over the sea, or in ships, either from bad air caught in the sails or in the bosom of the ship, or in the bodies of the seafarers. Comes it thus, it’ll most likely be through London, or Bristol, or Kent, or one of the southern havens, Southampton or Plymouth. Where d’you ship for Calais?’

  ‘Melcombe in Dorset,’ said Longfreke. ‘There’s a cog, the Welfare, that looks after us a week hence.’

  The infirmarer shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t overgo the Avon this tide.’

  ‘That way leads to France, and that way we must go.’

  The infirmarer told how they might shut out the pestilence. Sanguinary bodies that were hot and wet, he said, had most to fear, for their sweat-holes were most open, giving the sickly mist of pest a way into the body. Yet even the coldest and driest of them was in plight, were they not to follow the right path. They owed not to work too hard, lest they get hot and their sweat-holes open. Nor should they know women in fleshly lust, or bathe in hot water, or go more than a day without that they purge their bowels. They owed to shun honey, garlic, onions, leeks and hot spices; to eat cucumbers, fennel, borage, bugloss, spinach and sour fruit, to drink water with verjuice or vinegar instead of wine, and season food with strong vinegar. Dung heaps, gongs, middens and like stinking steads of filth must be shunned, and it were well that each one took sweet-stinking blossoms with him wherever he went, to stop his nostrils with.

  ‘When the pest’s nigh, if it be summer, the sky darken by day but there ne be no rain at first, only thunder in the south. At night, lightning, or falling stars. If the wind begin to blow strong of the south, wherever you are, find shelter and be sikur to shut the doors and windows on the southern side.’

  Were the pest to reach them, the infirmarer said, they ne felt it when the foul damp air went into them through their noses, mouths and sweat-holes. It passed through the blood to the brain, the heart and the liver, each of which fought to drive out the evil. Those taken first felt chill and stiff and a pricking in the blood and their head ache. Maybe they coughed and felt sleepy. A hard botch in muchness between a pea and an egg grew under the skin, in the groin if the foulness gathered in the liver, in their armpit if the heart, in the neck or under the tongue if the brain. In some, black marks or spots showed on the skin. Either way, death came in three days.

  In others, the evil took a shorter path. It fastened on the lungs, which mightn’t then cool the heart, and to shield the heart the brain sucked the sickness into itself, but the brain mightn’t win, and the sickness either barst out through the ears with a roar that deafened, or, which be worse, through the eyes. For this hapless sinner died the same day; but while he lived, it were enough for him to behold another and the sickness went from his eyes into the eyes of whoever saw him, and from there into his heart, or brain, or liver.

  ‘Thus,’ said the infirmarer, ‘the first most needful thing when one falls sick
of the pest is to bind a cloth over their eyes, that the sickness mayn’t get out and spread to those who help him, or to the priest who sends his ghost forth clean. Any asks?’

  Hornstrake, whose face had shifted to white while the infirmarer spoke, said he’d know if there were ways to heal those who sicked, or did all who caught it die?

  ‘It gladdens me you asked this,’ said the infirmarer. ‘Though the best weapon against the pest lies in a right life, I, too, with God’s send, may help any man with the will to help himself. Having looked deep into the health of each of you, knowing when and where you were born, I am able to offer you what in Paris is called a course complete of treatment medical and personal, that is, in English, a read of leech-craft good for each man alone, shaped by knowing the stead of the planets and lights when he was born, the lie of his humours, the hue and wetness of his tongue and the clearness of his piss. With the read comes a bag of worts, cunningly minged to hold off the pest with a spoonful a day; a box of Emmanuel plasters, to lower the swelling; and a pot of Bethzaer. Nor is this all. The read also comes with a steel blade, made best for the letting of pestilential blood. And should the sickness be so strong that neither the worts, nor the bloodletting, nor the Bethzaer heal you, I’ll throw in a mouthful of a treacle made for kings and cardinals alone, that has in it violets, roses, sandalwood, pearls, oranges, gold leaf, ground silver, emerald and bone from the heart of a stag. All these things together, in London or Paris, mayn’t be had for fewer than twenty pound; but I’ll give the whole read to any bowman, made for each man’s needs, worts, plasters, Bethzaer, bloodletting blade, king’s treacle and all, for two score English silver.’

  Will would bide, but Longfreke took him by the wrist and led him away.

  LONGFREKE, WILL AND Sweetmouth sat at board. A knave brought them fish pies and ale and small hard sour green apples. While they ate, Mad came and sat with them. He told them he’d taken the infirmarer’s stead among the singers.

  ‘You haven’t no Latin,’ said Sweetmouth.

  ‘Credo in Deum patrem omnipotentem, et in filium eius unicum,’ said Mad.

  ‘What’s it mean?’ said Sweetmouth.

  ‘Dum-diddle-dee, dum-diddle-day,’ said Mad. ‘I tell them I ne know why it needed God to make Latin when there was already Welsh, a better and an older tongue. Latin’s as green to Welsh as English to Latin yet they ne dream to sing to God in English. But I tell them I’ll sing for them in Latin if they will, if they give me the words. And they say even knaves with quick young minds take days to learn a psalm by heart. So the songmaster gives it me, and I sing it back to them word for word, and they behold me like to I’m an ape in a mass-hackle, but they mightn’t withsay me, so I cleaved to them and sang a spell.’

  ‘You ne wrought a full shift,’ said Longfreke.

  Mad drained a can. ‘I mayn’t sing for them no more,’ he said. ‘I feel the Latin carve shapes in me, like to it takes the rough ridges of my heart, where seeds might take root, and smooths and edges them to floor a church. How was the sickhouse?’

  ‘England’s doctors have slain more folk than England’s bowmen,’ said Longfreke.

  ‘It’s the same, priests, doctors, stars,’ said Mad. ‘If they’d know the true wellspring of this qualm, they owe to know the story of Branwen, daughter of Llyr, and how her brother Bran fought for her worthship in Ireland and lost, and bade Pryderi cut off his head, and how Pryderi did his bidding, and Pryderi’s men drank in Harlech for seven years, and for four score years in Penfro, with the head beside them, then went to London and buried the head under the White Tower, with its face toward France. As long as the head be kept underground, no evil may come from that side.’

  Sweetmouth said they were weary of the story of Bran’s head.

  ‘I haven’t heard it,’ said Will.

  ‘We’ve heard it a hundred times,’ said Longfreke. ‘Ask we Mad who dug up the head and when, he says there’s no when, when is for clerks, and as for who, he ne knows, maybe King Arthur, but it must have been a giant, for Bran walked to Ireland through the sea, and the water came no higher than his shoulders.’

  ‘No qualm won’t come,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘It’s a tale.’

  That night Will mightn’t sleep. He rose and went out of the guesthouse in the half-light of the early summer morning. Hooves drummed on the high street and a score horsemen rode by on black horses, and with them 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. They went north on the Gloucester road.

  Will went again to bed and in the morning said he’d seen the players go again the way they came, like to they’d gone home ere their work was done; but his even-bowmen told him he’d dreamed it, for they’d heard nothing.

  NEXT DAY THEY left the abbey and overwent the Avon early, when there was dew yet on the wayside leaves.

  ‘I ne gave a leek for the monks’ song when I was in the abbey,’ said Sweetmouth, ‘but now I’m without it, there’s not between me and the eyes of all the devils aroam in Wiltshire.’

  They looked over their shoulders at the spire and town of Malmesbury on its hill above the stream. Though it was in Wiltshire, it marked the south edge of Cotswold, couth to them, and now their road was through uncouth land, flat where theirs was hilly, cow-land where theirs was sheepy, rid of trees where their woods ran for miles without a ridding.

  In the fields by the road the crops were nearly ripe and bondmen and their wives bent to the weeds, hilling their heads with straw hats, and their children, half storven while they bode on the new bread, lay in the shade with their mouths open and their tongues lolling like dogs in the heat, lacking the strength to cast stones at the birds as they owed to.

  The bowmen went as before, on foot with Cess driving the cart, out-take that now Thomas the shriftfather rode among them on a lean brown mare, gazing at each of them in turn, like, said Mad, to a glee-master picking which piper would best play first at the hop, for all must play, but he’d open with a lively one.

  Dust rose of the road as they went, and in fields further of the stream the ribs of the cattle showed clean under their hides, and the grass they cropped ne greened the hard pale earth. Far away, in another cloud of dust, the sun shone on a thing of gold, and Will, whose eyes were keenest, saw a heap of folk bearing a likeness of the Clean Mother to the stream. The bowmen read whether it were a going against the pest, or against drought. Longfreke and Holiday spoke of the hunger of their childhood, when there wasn’t no harvest three year, and the priests made all bring each child to mass, that folk might know no man kept his kin alive by butchering the least of them.

  The road was mostly empty of folk, but after an hour’s fare two came up to them from behind: a young swineherd driving a great shod boar, and, on a fair black horse, a maid in a dear white gown, with a white headcloth that hid her hair and her neb.

  THE MAID SAID she was the lady Bernadine Corbet, daughter of Sir Guy Corbet, a knight of Cotswold. Will Quate, she said, had wrought her father’s fields.

  All turned to Will, whose neb reddened. He bowed his head, and said he knew her by her steven.

  Lady Bernadine told the bowmen she was on the way to the joust at Edington, but the men her father had hired to shield her on the road, together with her maid, had fled for fear the qualm had come to Wiltshire. Her only help was a faithful swineherd, who drove a boar as a gift for one lord. She asked if she might fare with them as far as Westbury, that she be kept from harm along the way.

  Hayne said she might ride with the shriftfather if she would, had she the silver for her own bed and board in Melksham, and ne hampered the bowmen, and minded they were their own men and not hers to bid.

  They went on together. Lady Bernadine rode alongside Thomas, and Hab and Enker wandered behind. Sweetmouth came to Will and upbraided him that he ne heeded the doings of his own town well enough to know the lady from Sweetmouth’s tale of two days before.

  ‘She’s too high-born for me to have
her, but she’ll be drawn to you, a sweet crumb blown of her dad’s larder, and I shall know of you how it feels to run your rough ploughman’s hand down her bare back, that’s known but feather beds and sweet oils,’ he said.

  Will smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Ne spurn this godsend, you thankless dog,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘We’re on the road, and the road lies between the end of one life and the beginning of another. That life where you were a filthy Cotswold rat-fucker, up to your neck in your lord’s dung-heap and behest to some cross-eyed hagspawn witch with two sheep farts and a bent penny for a dowry, that’s two nights behind us, and the life of a soldier in Calais is yet to come, and on the road between you’re a free man, who leaves his bed at night to seek cunny, and ne comes again till breakfast.’

  ‘It’s not so,’ said Will.

  ‘So, so, right so,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘As I mayn’t learn the smack of high-born cunt, you’ll know it for me, and tell me be it as I dream: like to the sweetest, ripest cherry about to burst on the bough, like you take the tip of your blade near and it ne reaches the mark before the cherry cleaves of its own tightness and a narrow slit opens up, and spits a drop of sap onto your tongue.’

  Will laughed and said it wouldn’t be.

  ‘No?’ Sweetmouth pilt Will in the ribs with his elbow. ‘Look, she comes.’

  QUATE SPOKE WITH another bowman, who grinned and winked and sprinkled spittle in his talk. Berna told this other she’d speak to Quate alone, and he bowed his head and fell back. It seemed to Berna she saw him of the corner of her eye flicker his tongue vilely at Quate, or at her.

  ‘Are you glad to see me?’ she demanded of Quate, in what she took for a common manner of speech, as a sister of Hab might employ.

  ‘What should I be glad about?’ said Quate. ‘Each time I see you you’re deeper in the mud, and when you sink, you’ll draw me and your brother with you. First you steal a gown, then you steal a horse, now you make out you’re a lady.’