by James Meek
Will opened his mouth, but before he could speak, cries of ‘Wiltshire!’ and ‘George!’ came of the town.
ONE OF THE lanes that led onto the market ground shed a stream of Chippenham knaves weaponed with mattocks, flails and iron poles. Among them was a priest in a white robe bearing a wooden rood in one fist and a blackthorn cudgel in the other.
There were two or three to each bowman, and it seemed the Gloucestershire men must be overcome. Some of the Wiltshire churls were handy fighters, and they set half their strength on Hayne alone, like to they thought if the giant were felled, the others would sikurly fly. This made it lighter work for the other bowmen to beat their foes. Hornstrake broke heads, kneed bollocks and spat in the eyes of the priest. Sweetmouth and Mad fought back to back, Softly and Holiday shivered bones with each clap of their clubs on Chippenham hides, and Will stood over Thomas, who cowered on the floor with his hands on his head. Two of the Wiltshire knaves would lay hands on Will, thinking to wrestle him instead of smiting, but ne reckoned with the strength of the Cotswold freke’s arms; Will dragged them down, head foremost, pinned them with a knee on each throat, and took of one his weapon, an iron-topped pole.
He saw that Softly was beset by more foes than he could handle. He ran to him with the pole held to one side in both hands, like to he were about to smite a great tree with an axe, and swung overthwart. The iron tip of the pole dung three Wiltshire knaves at knee height and one after the other their legs crumpled, they cried at the smart, and they fell, rolled about in pine and grat.
The last rese of the Wiltshire men ended. Softly went to where the goat had gone back to drinking at the trough, twisted it to the ground, pinned it with his knee, hewed off one of its legs at the shoulder, dipped his fingers in the blood and smeared it on Will’s cheek.
‘Deem yourself christened,’ he said.
Without a word, Will went to the maddened, screaming goat, ended its life and turned his back on Softly.
THE BOWMEN WERE all heal, out-take wems and weals. Softly told Hayne they must spill the town a little that it worthed Gloucestershire bowmen so low.
‘Let’s fire the market, at least, and have some goods,’ he said.
But Hayne bade them go over the bridge again and fare to Melksham. He lifted Dickle, not yet woken, onto his shoulder, and led the way.
Will tarried on the brink of the water-trough with his head hung down, tears in his eyes. Sweetmouth and Mad stood nearby. They beheld each other, and turned to Will.
‘It’s of a knave of Gloucestershire,’ said Sweetmouth, ‘who cropped other men’s fields for a penny a day, till his back ached and each bone smarted. But on holidays he shot with his bow, for he’d be a bowman of the king, and fell the French chivalry like his father, and like his even-English did at Crécy, by the strength of his arm.’
‘And by a wonder hap,’ said Mad, ‘he was taken into the score of Hayne Attenoke, better was there none. But how unlike to the bowmen of his hopes these bowmen were.’
‘Murderers and thieves,’ said Sweetmouth, ‘and one with hell-mouth on his chest in blackneedle. One that wasn’t English, but Welsh.’
‘One that babbled of not but the dern hollows of women,’ said Mad.
‘And when this young knave first saw his even-bowmen fight,’ said Sweetmouth, ‘it wasn’t like to tales of Crécy, but like to when both halves of Stroud play each other at football, only worse, for in football the halves ne break into houses, nor hew the limbs of live goats.’
‘So though this young bowman fought manfully,’ said Mad, ‘he was sick at heart.’
‘But his even-bowmen wouldn’t let him stew in wanhope,’ said Sweetmouth, ‘and besides, he’d sworn the oath. So they told him how it went at Crécy, for they were there, and they fought truly.’
‘THE KING GATHERED us on a hill in ox-shape,’ said Mad, ‘with his son at the head, the king in the body, and Thomas of Durham, bishop, in the tail. And the horns of the ox were thousands of bowmen, dight in two lines of two each horn, meeting at a keen tip, so that were the French chivalry to come at the sides of the host, they’d suffer all the arrows of one side of the horn, but if they came at the head, they’d fall between the horns, and suffer arrow-shot from either side. And that the head of his host might withstand French blows, the king bade his carters shackle their carts together to make a hedge around it, with but a narrow opening at the front, and bowmen dight on each cart.
‘It rained in the afternoon, but we kept our bowstrings dry. When the French were ready to fight, the sun shone. On his way down in the west he warmed our backs, and blinded the French, who must come at us with the light in their eyes. That light came again to us of the French armour and spears. The French were so many, and their weapons so bright, that when we looked on them it was like to a bourne of silver flowed of the hillside to the valley floor, and in this silver stream, like to amel, floated the banners of the French lords, the four lions of John of Bohemia, blind of an ill doctoring, the silver band on blue of the proud house of Blois, the red fret on silver of the great house of Soyecourt, the banner of the old house of Coucy, that was to token aquern fur, and the black lion on gold of Louis of Nevers, whose lands a man wouldn’t overgo in a week. King Edward rode by before the fight began, to egg us on, and as he went by the shouts of “Edward and St George!” roared like to the sea striking a broken cliff. When the king came to our score, he saw Softly’s gold teeth, and bade the herald call down to the French that they should come and help themselves, for there was a duke’s ransom in the mouth of every English bowman.
‘In the early evening the French sent crossbowmen of Genoa toward us, but they shot their bolts too soon, and they fell short. Our gunners fired the powder in their guns, which as all said sounded like to thunder, but while men did hear thunder only with their ears, they heard the guns with ilk bone in their bodies.
‘At the clap of the guns, we bowmen began to shoot. There were many thousand of us, and all could fetch, nock, aim, strike and loose in the time it took to say it. The Italians were hidden under a swarm of arrows. They fell and their bodies lost their kind, pinned in uncouth shapes, black with wooden shafts and goose feathers. Those that weren’t slain ran away, and the French chivalry cut them down, their own hirelings.
‘The French chivalry began to come. We heard the hooves of ten thousand fighting horses beat the ground, the yells of the French knights and the strakes of their trumpets. The grass of the hillside was oversprad with the blue and gold of their coats and the silver of their spear tips. It seemed to us a handwhile we stood like to deer in a blind slade, made to bide on the hunt come to spill us. The world hadn’t never seen such a hunt, a mile wide and deep of men-at-arms on horseback. All the lords of France full of mirth and thirsty for blood all at once, the foremost row clinching the saddle, spears down, they in the last row so far behind they yet laughed, told tales, wiped the wine of their lips and bade their knaves watch their hounds. And in the rows between, sheaves of ostrich feathers yellow and purple wagged of steel helms, knights shoff to be nearer the foremost, as much to see and be seen as to fight the sooner. Soft hands that two days erer stroked the white wombs of their ladies put on steel-ring gloves and smoothed their horses’ silk coats.
‘They yearned to kill us and win the fight, but like to a hunt, it was their holiday. They ne knew for sikur which were the right end of a hunt, the slaying of the deer, or how they were seen by others as they slew, how the sun shone on their harness, how sweetly their sword arm hewed, and did the bard see it to sing of afterwards? Even a king that wins his fights needs to sing of it, and not only to sing of his winning, but to sing of how he won in some way folk mind always. That under him were killed three horses, or he fought with an axe like to a bound man, or he fought without a helm that his golden hair might show the better.
‘The French chivalry went into that storm of arrows and began to die. Under the hiss of the shafts and feathers in the air the bowmen heard a sound like to hail as thousand on th
ousand needle-sharp arrowheads pitched through the steel of the French knights’ harness. The foremost would shape themselves into right rows, the better to drive and harrow us, but as fast as they made a row, it was broken by the fall of men and horses.
‘Among us were those that had seen great hunts in England, and minded how those heaps of proud folk are so light and easy and well together while the sun shines through the trees, how they behold each other’s dear clothes and falcons and hunting gear and worth each other right high. Then a storm comes up, the wood darkens and the hunters’ silk, leather and feathers are sodden, and the hunters mayn’t find their way, and their horses stumble and cast their riders in the mud, and they as would keep to the hunt go one way, and they as would find shelter go another, and each with his horse’s hooves overtreads the bodies of his hirelings, and the anger of each rises, and all the while the rain beats down. So it was at Crécy, with arrows for rain, and blood the wet that soaked their clothes and harness.
‘Otherwhiles, out of the seethe of dying chivalry, a ragged row of knights would shape and rese toward us, only to melt before it reached us. Those few that overlived to ride between the rows of bowmen and in at the gate of the hedge of carts were slain by the English knights there.
‘Had the English chivalry stood its ground, and let each row of French be winnowed by our arrows before the scattered leave fall to the Black Prince’s men, the fight might have ended sooner. But the English high-born mightn’t bear to stand by and let a heap of lewd churls with bows and arrows steal the worth of winning the fight. They must rese out of their haven and set upon the French in the open field, where the foe was stronger. And once the English and French chivalry fought together shield to shield, spear to spear, sword to sword, we must let of shooting, that we ne butcher the followers of our own king. Blind King John, the French king’s friend and best of all their chivalry before he lost his sight, had himself and his horse knit to two of his knights by ropes, that he might be led into the fight. He mightn’t see the foe but whirled his sword about him like to a windmill. Afterwards it was said he was throughshove with English iron by one of the Prince’s high-born followers, but others said he was found with arrows in him. The truth was that none looked after a king’s death in a fight, be the fight ever so great, and the high-born on either side couldn’t bear to think them that a low-born churl had done the slaying. But none of the high-born would take the death on himself, so they told each other he’d died fighting another of the chivalry, and the name of his foe wasn’t never spoken.
‘Without the sikurhood of the carts and bowmen, the Prince and his followers ne withstood the French, and were thrown back. But when the French went forward, they laid themselves open, and the bishop came from behind with men from the hindmost deal of our host, and smote the French in the side. And the French broke and fled. It was all but night, and by the light of the moon and stars and an on-blaze mill King Edward had bidden be fired on the hilltop, we saw the gleam of steel of many thousand helms and sets of harness as the living crope away, and saw the shadowlike rough lumps of the dead and wounded they left behind, like to the sea that ebbs and leaves on the strand empty shells and the timbers of drowned ships.’
ABOVE BERNA WHEN she opened her eyes was a ham, black except where a morsel had been cut off. Three flies were busy about the rosy cut, like to they played a game: if one lighted on the ham, the other two must be in the air. Next to the meat hung an iron pan, a bunch of garlic and a cleaver. All were suspended from one of the wooden hoops that supported the cart’s sailcloth cover. There was an odour of oiled tools, spilled ale and stale bedstraw.
Berna rose to her knees. Cans, bundles and handles shifted under her. In a basket lay a knife, its greased iron blade worn hollow by long grind. She took the knife in her right hand and let the fresh weight of the blade rest on her wrist. She replaced the knife and took out her bloodletting blade. She removed the veil from her face, rolled it into a ball, pulled up her sleeve and, with her tongue stuck out in concentration, added a fresh cut to the existing array. Attentively, like an infant studying the movement of ants, she regarded the line of blood course into the veil.
When she had finished, the bleed staunched, the cut compressed with tape and her sleeve rolled down, Berna crawled to the front of the cart. The shafts rested on a patch of bare earth. Between the shafts, in the shade, Cess washed men’s shirts and breeches in a tub. Her grey coverchief came down to her eyebrows and up to her chin. She could not have been much older than Berna. She had prominent cheekbones, a gap between her front teeth and lines under her eyes.
‘I’m thirsty,’ said Berna. ‘Fetch me something to drink.’
Cess ne looked up. She said she wasn’t the lady’s servant.
Berna swung her legs out over the end of the cart and allowed them to dangle.
‘Es-tu Franaise?’ she demanded.
Cess let a stream of French of her lips. Though Berna knew some of the words she couldn’t interpret the whole. ‘I thought me I knew your language, but I ne comprehend you,’ Berna said. ‘Perhaps it’s because you’re a servant. My French suffices to read Le Roman de la Rose in the original. I suppose you’re unfamiliar with the text. I suppose you haven’t your letters.’
Cess regarded her. She saw the sanguinary veil in Berna’s fist. She got up, dried her hands on her apron and gently touched Berna’s arm where a spot of blood had coloured the tissue of the gown.
‘I find a gentle purge to be of assistance in balancing my humours,’ said Berna hesitantly.
Silently Cess took the veil from Berna’s hand, plunged it into the tub and began to frot it clean.
‘Are you familiar with Paris?’ said Berna. ‘I wished to go there. I have heard it is rather large compared to our London. All my favourite poets found their voices in that city. It must be a marvellous place. I think it is a terrible pity the French king is our enemy at present.’
Cess attended more to the lavendry than to Berna. She poured the water from the tub and began to wring out the clothes and hang them to dry on the arms of the cart shaft.
‘I suppose I mayn’t journey to France no more,’ said Berna. ‘I imagine I shall probably expire as a suicide.’
A trace of a smile passed across Cess’s face.
‘It is ungenerous of you to mock me without taking account of the exceptional gravity of my position,’ said Berna. ‘You haven’t suffered as I. You haven’t such cause to consider self-murder. I chose love over marriage to my father’s choice, a dull old man, only to discover, with my course already set, that my paramour is false.’
Cess finished hanging out the clothes and commenced to mingle hashed leeks and green cheese in a bowl.
‘My cousin judged it risible that I couched my tenderness towards Laurence in terms romantic and poetic,’ said Berna. ‘I was very affected by the Romance. But how else, except by presenting to my senses a distant person towards whom I was attracted, might I create in myself sufficient courage to depart my family? Had my father possessed in his library the story of a demoiselle who escaped a hateful marriage to prosper and be content in a grand city far away, I dare say I would have adopted it with pleasure. I might only cultivate my imagination with the materials at hand.’
Cess regarded Berna and addressed her with that familiarity, so uncomfortable from the common people to the gentle, that Will and Hab had employed. ‘Why kill yourself, when you may see a man suffer your feigned indifference?’ she said. ‘Would that I had such liberty.’
‘You are unmarried?’
‘We all have our troubles,’ said Cess.
‘What are yours?’
‘They came to my father’s house looking for valuables and wine,’ said Cess. ‘They killed my father and ravished me, and afterwards took me with them by force.’
‘Who?’ demanded Berna. ‘Who did this?’
‘The archers. Who else? Softly was the first, and treats me as his property now.’ She pointed to the clothes drying on the shafts. ‘Loo
k,’ she said, ‘I wash his shirts.’
WHEN WILL CAME again to where they’d left the cart, he saw the lady Bernadine there in her wedding gown; he knew her by her neb. Hab told him she had fled her wedding and come of Outen Green all alone.
‘Where’s Madlen?’ asked Will.
‘When she saw the lady Bernadine come,’ said Hab, ‘she ran away. I ne know where she went.’
WE DEPARTED CHIPPENHAM with Dickle Dene still unconscious in the cart. Lady Bernadine had recuperated sufficiently to remount her horse, but had experienced a severe emotional injury. A rigidity and lack of sensibility to all that occurred around her was substituted for the inquisitiveness and nervous excitement that had animated her previously. She had removed her veil, and although I had not observed her face before, I perceived that her skin was pallid and her eyes no longer possessed the same lucidity. The contrast between the lighter skin of her face, her black hair and the carbon darkness of her eyes created an interesting and attractive effect, an effect of which she was possibly cognisant. How easily the young may transfer reverence between those terrible manifestations of the supernatural they will encounter in life – from love, that is, to death.
We alone of the company had our own mounts, and were closer in station to each other than to any of the archers. The propriety of our association – I, a person of uncertain marital status and she, a virtually unaccompanied, unmarried female – was secured by the implied ecclesiastical quality I had acquired. It seemed natural that she should turn to me for spiritual advice.
After a brief exchange of formalities and platitudes, Bernadine interrogated me as to my confessorial bona fides, at the conclusion of which, having satisfied herself that I would protect her secrets (she required that I adjure to this) and that my method was both informal and flexible, she said she would confess everything. By this she did not intend the totality of her sins in the eyes of God, but the narration of her history. She required not so much to demonstrate remorse and receive absolution as to create a channel by which her recent experiences, venemous when confined within her, might flow out and be dissolved in the more expansive containment of two. In brief, she required confidence in me.
