by James Meek
Accordingly she acquainted me with her misfortunes, that she was fugitive from an odious forced marriage, and that, as she had just discovered, Laurence Haket, the amator on whose protection she now depended, had secretly fornicated with the serf woman to whom Quate was affianced; this in the context of the relevation of Cess’s rape and abduction by the very company Berna had selected to conduct her to salvation.
I would have supposed that this sequence of male atrocities must combine in Bernadine’s mind to create an idea of the world as nothing but the scene of an unequal male–female conflict in which the female was interminably vanquished. I would have imagined her surveying the region for a nunnery. Not so. Her discovery of Haket’s perfidy did not deprive her of emotional power over him, or over her father; to her mind, it simply redirected that power from the romantic’s to the martyr’s pole. She proposed that if Haket rejected her as his lover, she would go to him as that which he could not ignore, a corpse.
I advised Bernadine that suicide as a method for the restitution of a lover’s attention had significant disadvantages. She would gain but a minuscule advance against the satisfaction of his remorse, with the principal entirely lost; and rather than forcing the lover to comprehend the magnitude of his error, the facility with which the demoiselle extinguished her corporeal substance might only confirm him in his previous conclusion that she had been too insubstantial a creature on whom to fix his future.
‘If your intention is to force him to recognise his lack of devotion,’ I said, ‘if you desire to disturb him from his arrogance and have him prostrate at your feet, isn’t it preferable to demonstrate how minimal his power to injure you? Go to the joust and let him see you delighting in the revelry, as if he ne existed.’
‘That is what poor Cess advised,’ said Bernadine.
She pitied Cess, and resented her own capacity for pity, when she so desired pity from others. She resented, too, that she defected from a quality generally native to women of her status, namely the ability to assume common people, like beasts, did not possess mental faculties of sufficient delicacy to permit the injury of an organ as subtle as the mind or heart. That one would no more discuss non-consensual fornication between commoners in terms of rape than when a stallion covered a mare.
‘Will her family ne ransom her?’ inquired Bernadine.
‘Ransom is for nobles,’ I said.
‘Then she has a duty to herself to escape, as I escaped my father.’
‘You’re a knight’s daughter, in your own country, and even you demand protection on your journey. How much more difficult would it be for a solitary female foreigner of low estate to vagabond around without being used more severely than now?’
‘The cart is full of knives. Had it been me I would’ve exterminated my tormentor long ago.’
‘Might it be that she attends the proper moment to act?’
‘What would you know about action? I’m not sure you’ve ever acted. You’ve clearly attained a marvellous perfection in the study and description of a state of affairs from every aspect; and the more aspects you observe, the more content you are with a state of affairs as it is, and the less you desire to change it.’
She silenced me. I desire my defects be obscure, visible only to super-perceptive observers rather than protruding flagrantly, luminous to all. I directed her to Hayne, who alone among us had power over Softly. She went to converse with him, and encountered a silence more impenetrable than mine.
Marc, Judith, have you discerned the nature of my concupiscence? I despise my failure to act decisively, to intervene in the existence of others, and yet had I acted towards Judith as directed by my demons, how miserable the consequences would have been. Yes, an extra cause for self-abomination: only the proximity of the plague forces me to admit to you that I have committed the crime of desire for Judith more times than I can enumerate. With the maximum of humility I petition you, Judith, and you, Marc, for absolution.
ON THE WAY to Melksham, Will would speak with Hab. Hab said he would speak to him later, when they could be alone.
Before they came to the town Will lost sight of him in the dust and when he asked the others if they had seen him they ne knew where he was.
WE TRANSITED THE plain in a nimbus of pulverised soil that irritated every orifice of man and horse. It appeared to me that I was in purgatory, where all colour is attenuated, all motion retarded, all sound strangled, and my destination and that of my companions perpetually receded.
I regretted the conclusion of my discussion with the acute and impatient Bernadine. She distracted me from the violence in Chippenham and from Dickle’s condition. He is indubitably a confederate of Softly’s, whose instinct tells him I am, by my nature, his enemy. How terrible my initiation, should an archer die unconfessed even before we encounter the pestilence.
How had I positioned myself so horribly? Was I obliged to go to the cart and attempt to extract a confession from the savage Dickle against his demise? Might he not abruptly recover and see in me an apt object for retribution? If I kept my distance, and he perished unconfessed, he was sure to be damned for eternity, and the culpability would be mine. If I neglected to act till we arrived in Melksham, and he was as close to death as I suspected, the archers would summon an actual priest, and my status as confessor would come under scrutiny. Judith, Marc, do you remember how one night a single phrase of Cicero’s excited us and we debated it with such intensity that only the dawn interrupted us?
THE KEEPER OF the inn at Melksham wouldn’t take them at first when he found one of them sicked. Holiday showed him Dickle’s wound, and said he’d only fallen, and hadn’t no ague; his forehead was cool and dry, his breaths steady.
The innkeeper knew Hayne, and said if he would sleep in the same room as Dickle, they might bide at his inn. So a room with four beds was got for Hayne, Dickle, Longfreke and Softly, and beds would be made later for the other five bowmen in the hall.
The innkeeper withsaid again when he learned that the lady Bernadine was unwed and alone, till Thomas in a strong steven, more like to a stern priest’s than he’d shown before, said he’d speak for the lady’s worth, and gave the innkeeper the names of mighty folk who fared on that road to and from Avignon, who were his friends; and besides, the lady bode for a maid, who must come soon. The innkeeper yielded and gave the shriftfather and the lady good rooms on the upper floor.
Nobody knew of no doctor in Melksham, so Holiday sat with Dickle while the other bowmen ate. Before the meal ended Hornstrake got up, said he was weary, and got a knave to bring him a sack of straw to lie on in the dark hern of the hall where the bowmen would spend the night.
Hornstrake kept dried figs and nuts in his bag, Sweetmouth told Will, and him ne liked to share. Some nights on the road he’d go early to bed, lie alone and cram his mouth with food, which he loved more than cunny, for he wouldn’t never come to the bath-house with them.
When they rose from the board, Sweetmouth bade Will listen. From the stead where Hornstrake lay came a sound like millstones at grind. Sweetmouth said he’d go to see their friend was well. He went to the dim hern, bent down over the still shape that rose and fell with each snore, and came again in a short while. Hornstrake was deep asleep, he said.
Longfreke minded them of the read of the Malmesbury doctor, but they ne heeded him, and Sweetmouth led Will and Mad to the bath-house, and Longfreke came with them anywise.
THE BATH-HOUSE STOOD a short way from the inn. It was timbered of the bigness of a barn. It lacked windows and dimmed with a stream of smoke the sun that set over the roofs of Melksham. The bowmen went inside to a small room where they gave money to a long great-wombed man in a dirty white kirtle. They left their knives and the man gave each a tin token. He let them through to another room where they took off their clothes. Two young knaves took them and gave them linens to wrap about their middles, and would sell them soap, but Sweetmouth shooed them away with his token and they went through a curtain into a dark, hot hall filled wit
h steam.
The hall was floored in stone and lit by grease-lights in glass pots hung on the walls. In the middle of the hall stood a tub of hot water, filled by knaves with buckets who ran in and out from the fire room. Men stood spread through the murk. They washed themselves, let water of dippers onto their bodies, whitened their clefts and groins with soap, straightened their hair under falling water and sat on benches about the side to dry themselves with linen, or sat still, as if asleep, arms on their knees, head bowed. The dippers splashed and clanged against the rim of the tub, water hit the floor, feet slapped on stone. None spoke.
‘Behold the poor sinners,’ said Mad.
They went to the far side of the hall, to where a fellow with a stick and a maid’s face corven of whalebone fastened to his neb instead of a nose made them show their tokens. He unlocked the door for them and they went through. The door closed and they were in darkness. They heard a maid sing under a gittern:
And love is to my heart gone with one spear so keen
Night and day my blood it drinks.
‘Hell harrowed,’ said Mad.
‘Here’s Eden before they crammed their guts with apple,’ said Sweetmouth.
They pushed forward through a heavy sheet into another, narrower hall. It too was hot and filled with steam, yet lit with twice as many lights, and these were beeswax, not grease. The steam gave of sweet stinks as of blossoms and church reekles. On either side of the hall were three tubs, each half hilled with hoods of sailcloth hued with likenesses of fish and sea-elves, half fish, half maid. In the tubs, in water up to their chests, sat naked men, eating and drinking wine of white linen on boards laid overthwart the brims. Fresh water was brought by naked women, who also fetched the food and wine, and who stepped in and out of the tubs, washing the men, laughing with them, feeding them and letting their tits be felt.
A woman came up to the bowmen. She bowed her head and smiled like to she knew them all, though Will hadn’t never been further than ten mile from home, and never to a bath-house. Her hair was bound behind with red silk tape and she wore a silver ring on each finger. Sweetmouth said they’d brought a fresh young bowman and the woman put her hand on Will’s cheek and told him her name was Lisa, and the bowmen had been room-hearted to bring such a featous gift for the girls on their last night. The abbot had told them the house needed to be shut, she said.
Longfreke asked why and Lisa shrugged and said for the same why there were so few on the road.
‘Look how still it is,’ she said. ‘The bath-house in Chippenham’s shut a week already, and it does twice our business.’
‘It’s wearisome how the clerks speak of a thing that’s about to end the world, yet it never comes, till all think it a wile,’ said Sweetmouth.
‘An ill wile for the abbot if so,’ said Lisa. ‘It’s his bath-house, and he loses two pound a week when it stands empty.’
She took them to a tub and they took off their linens and clamb in and women began to come and go with hot water while others laid out a board with wine and dishes of small sweet pies.
They sat and drank and spoke of the fight, and were it Christ or the Fiend sent the goat to smite Dickle, and whether a bowman, Will, might swive a lady, Bernadine, and hope to keep his bollocks. Once the top of the water reached their middles a woman stepped into the tub and sat between Will and Longfreke. She put her arms on their shoulders and turned her eyes from one to the other.
‘Likes you the maid, I’ll stand you the fee, as you’re a green young fellow,’ said Sweetmouth to Will.
‘It’s a false offer,’ said Mad. ‘Sweetmouth’ll seek afterwards a tale of the swive so much longer than the swive itself that he’ll get more mirth of it than you ever might. Sweetmouth likes more to listen and to speak of swiving than to swive. He’s always first to the bath-house, but never yet went with a woman in one. He only has to see a woman naked to have in his mind all he’d do to her in so full and bold a likeness that when it comes to the deed he’s already spent.’
Sweetmouth threw a dipper of water in Mad’s neb. ‘Mad gets wise in the ways of whores by being one,’ he said. ‘He’ll never come out in the evening without selling the whoremistress a song she must buy with her cunny.’
‘No shame to be a whore of song, nor to be a whore who may be bought for one,’ said Mad. ‘Truth is, the swive is less of a fee than the tales they tell me afterwards.’
Will said the woman, whose name was Jul, him liked much, but he was betrothed.
Jul asked Longfreke how it was with him.
‘I was betrothed,’ said Longfreke, ‘but when I came again from France with my neb corven atwain, my burd went to another.’
‘I’ll be yours for sixpence,’ said Jul.
Sweetmouth let a roar. ‘And how much to be Will’s?’ he said.
‘Sixpence,’ said Jul.
‘But that one’s got a neb like an angel, and Longfreke’s is like to a devil on a rainspout.’
‘Owe I to take less from Will, or more from Longfreke?’ said Jul.
‘Nothing from neither,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘Will’s too fair for you to take silver of, and Longfreke’s too wretched.’
‘All men who come to the bath-house are alike to me,’ said Jul.
‘I ne believe it,’ said Sweetmouth.
‘Do you mind all the arrows you shoot?’ she asked. ‘There are so many, and all the same.’
‘But when a bowman shoots a man in war,’ said Longfreke, ‘the bowman fucks him, and in swiving it’s the man who fucks the woman, not the woman who fucks the man.’
‘In the bath-house, I’m the bowman,’ said Jul. ‘I shoot and shoot and shoot, and all the arrows are the same to me. But to him I wound, there’s only one arrow, the arrow that hits, and he’ll never forget it as long as he lives.’
Longfreke laughed. He took her hand and drew her out of the tub and away.
Another maid began to wash Sweetmouth and talk with him. Mad leaned toward Will and murmured that if he sought the swineherd, he’d find him in the far tub on the other side of the hall.
HAB WAS WITH an old man who wore a gold St Nicholas on a chain nested in his white chest hairs. The old man held a glass cup of wine in one hand and ate hazelnuts from a dish on the board before him. When he saw Will he called to him to come into the tub with them.
Will asked the old man who he was.
‘Jacob. Wool-buyer of Ghent.’ They shook hands.
‘Hab’s a thrall without silver,’ said Will. ‘He’s run of his manor without leave.’
‘A naked arse no man may rob,’ said Jacob. ‘Hab’s my friend, and I’ve silver enough for both of us for a night, and for you too, if you’ll come in the tub with us.’
Hab whispered in Jacob’s ear. Jacob stood up and wrapped a linen round his middle. He smiled at the younger men in turn and bade them be kindly to each other.
‘Ne make me bide too long,’ he told Hab. He went to the door at the end of the hall where Jul and Longfreke had gone.
‘Come in if you ne fear me,’ said Hab.
Will took off the linen and got in the tub with Hab. He sat at the far side.
‘We weren’t in the water together since we played in the bourne,’ said Hab.
‘How’d you know Jacob?’ asked Will.
‘You ne owe to have told him I’m a thrall.’
‘I’ll say and do as it likes me, for I’m a free man, and all the wrong’s on your side for following me wherever you go.’
‘You’d have all folk bide in the stead they were born, out-take you.’
‘Me ne thought she’d run of her own wedding.’
‘Why not?’ said Hab. ‘You ran of yours.’
‘It’s not true.’
‘She ran that she not wed a dull one who’d make children and keep her at home. You’re the same.’
‘Ness is my burd,’ said Will, ‘if she’ll still have me after the unkindness I did her on your read.’
Hab laughed. ‘It’s Outen Green says the fair
est maid weds the best young ploughman. That’s stale old ways. Love you Ness, you must yearn to kill Haket, be wreaked on him for what he did. But you ne yearn to kill him.’
‘How might I kill a high-born man like him?’
‘Loved you Ness truly, you ne recked the how. I see it ne hurt you one grot to learn she gave herself to him.’
‘You ne see into my guts to know what I feel.’
‘I see. I know. You only let as though you care for her. You lie to yourself that you love her for fear to learn the true name of the one you love.’
‘There must be some wise pigs in the wood to learn you so much.’
Hab looked down and grope his pintle and bollocks in his fist under the water like to it were a heap of pond weed.
‘A bondman’s bound to bear his tools all day, but that ne means he loves with them,’ he said.
He slipped off the bench and sat on the floor of the tub. The water came to his shoulders, which were near Will’s knees. He looked up at Will. A woman came and poured in hot water, maffled some words to Hab and went away.
‘We stood in the bourne,’ said Hab, ‘and plight to follow it to the sea. And you dragged me underwater and held me, and our bodies were against each other, and our lips came together. It were like to you’d rather be drenched together than let me go.’
‘We wrestled as little knaves,’ said Will, ‘and afterwards we grew to manhood.’
‘To grow from child to man’s but one way to grow,’ said Hab. ‘You’ve grown from ploughman to bowman, from bound man to free, from Will of Outen Green to Will of the world. Grow again.’
Will laughed and played with his fingers and bowed his head. ‘A lamb might grow to any kind of sheep, but not to an ape,’ he said.
