by James Meek
ALL THE OTHER players now turned to Will, who bore an oil-light in one hand and a strung bow in the other. On his back was a cocker with a sheaf of arrows bound with oilcloth below the heads, and bound with tin above the feathers, rubbed till it shone like silver. Will went to an iron firepan that had been filled with kindling and tinded it with the light. He took an arrow of his cocker and held it in the fire till it burned well. He nocked the arrow on his bowstring and set it in line with his mark, a black whirl of pitch on the cerecloth walls of the false castle. The mark was small, not half the width of a bondman’s door, and a good two hundred feet away, and a light wind came and went. He shut one eye. It was hard to see through the flames and smoke that came of the arrow.
He lowed the arrow’s tail, pitching the head two hands over even. He felt the riff of the wind in the feathers of his wings on the left side, and shifted his aim a hand to the left. No sound came of the other players, nor the folk that beheld the play.
Will bode while the wind blew, and stilled, and blew and stilled again. When the wind rose a third time, Will struck and let with his bow hand. The arrow rose, spewing smoke, and flew like to it would go wide. While it sped, the sun came out and made the tin gleam bright as a star. The arrow began to fall, and, as it lowed, the wind took it in and steered it back onto the right way. It smote the mark an inch of the middle and in a stound flames spewed of the cerecloth and oversprad the walls.
The beholders went bare mad, like to Will had slain a firedrake. They stood and yall and hooted and slapped their hands together, and ne stinted while Laurence Haket and Mad led the high-born players in a game of running through the cerecloth walls of the false castle where they had burned away, and making out they helped the lady Bernadine from the false tower where she played at being locked away. When all were clear of the tower, Will shet a second fire-arrow at it, and it burned, and there was some play between whoever Laurence Haket and the lady were meant to be. At last Laurence Haket went over to the much likeness of a rose blossom, folded his arms around it like to it were a maid, and lifted it of its stand. Pavone’s tale-telling ended, and the din of the beholders seemed enough to make all deaf.
WILL ASKED THE other players if the play were done but they ne heeded him, only laughed and made to take his hand and draw him into a ring to hop with them. The high-born folk who’d beheld the show came out onto the field. They beat their hands together and a heap of knaves came alongside bearing wine and ale. Pipers and drummers began to play a quick song.
Laurence Haket let the rose blossom down on the ground and chid some high-born fellows among the players that stood by and laughed at him. The lady Bernadine stood above with her arms folded, some yards of anyone, and proked the ashes of the burned castle with her toe. One half of her long black hair had come loose of the knots meant to bind it in a manlike shape. Will went toward her.
Thunder sounded of the south side of the downs. Will stinted and looked up. The clouds that had hung over the cleeve since the day before had thickened and grown together into one dark roof that overshadowed the field where the garden of love had been wrought.
The hopping and mirth and the din of laughter and yells and song went on, reckless of the thunder, which was still far away, but it was a handwhile before Will saw the lady Bernadine again, for she wasn’t no longer where she’d stood. Three of the fellows in Love’s army had taken her. One went before with his sword drawn and held by his side, that folk ne mark the blade was out; the other two held Bernadine by the arms in a tight grip and walked her. Her feet ne reached the ground but kicked in wrath. One of them thrust a hand against her mouth that she ne shout for help.
Will went to them and bade them set the lady free. But when he neared them he knew them. The two who held her were his lord, Sir Guy, and Anto the reeve. The swordsman who went before was like to the knight who’d sought her at the inn in Melksham.
‘Out of the whoreson way or I’ll spill you,’ said the swordsman. Will stinted and beheld them, Anto and Sir Guy sweating and gasping, the lady Bernadine’s eyes wide with horror.
When they’d gone by, Anto looked over his shoulder like to he hadn’t known Will before and bade Sir Guy see what became of bondmen whose lords let them wander about before harvest. Sir Guy swivelled his head and knew him and bellowed: ‘When I know your deal in this I’ll be wreaked on you.’ They went on between the telds out of sight, and no one hindered them.
It seemed that Laurence Haket ne knew the lady Bernadine had been won again by her kin. Two fellows in black had gone up to him and led him away from his friends toward the great black teld, and his friends, who had mocked him ruthlessly, now looked astoned, while Laurence Haket, who had been wrathful, had a smile on his neb.
Sweetmouth hadn’t seen her taken neither. He was stood by the ropes that marked the brink of the play-field. Will went to him. A good deal of the mirth and stuffing had gone out of Will’s even-bowman, and when Will came up, it was light to see why. Longfreke, Softly and Hornstrake stood on the other side of the rope. Longfreke took a clump of straw of Sweetmouth’s false tits and threw it on the ground. Hornstrake laughed. Softly stared at Sweetmouth, the heel of his hand sat on the haft of his bollyknife, his fingers at work up and down. Further away beyond the rope stood Softly’s cart, with Thomas and Holiday beside it, and Cess up behind the horse. Otherwhiles, Hayne sat on the grass and gazed at the thunderclouds.
Softly saw Will and proked Longfreke, who turned of Sweetmouth.
‘Sworen’t you me you wouldn’t shoot no bow nor play in women’s clothes?’ said Longfreke to Will.
‘Yeah,’ said Will.
‘Why break your oath?’
‘I mayn’t say.’ Will shrugged and beheld his feet. ‘Laurence Haket and his folk would that I did so.’
‘How may we true you in a fight if you break an oath so lightly? I knew you as green, but not as a fool,’ said Longfreke. ‘Hayne’ll deem you.’
Softly ne spoke. He beheld Will in his red gown. His eyes wrought up and down of Will’s head to his toes. He clicked his tongue in his mouth and struck the iron hilt of his knife with the nail of his middle finger. He lifted the rope and showed with a nod of his head that Will should come with them.
‘Venus!’ The men in black who’d led Will of Cockle and Madlen the night before were behind him. ‘You’re called for. Let’s go,’ said the hawkish one.
Softly said Will was theirs, a runaway of Hayne Attenoke’s score.
Will said he wasn’t no runaway.
‘Shut your mouth, Venus,’ said the hawkish one. ‘I know your golden teeth, John Fletcher, and I know the giant who’s your master-archer. This lovester’s in service here today to one the score may not withsay, but you may have her again before dark.’
Longfreke called to Hayne, who stood and came to them. Longfreke said their even-bowman Dickle Dene was barely cold in the ground, and Quate made glee as a maid with a bow for the world to laugh at them.
Hayne beheld Will without speech for a handwhile. He asked Will if he would sunder his bond to the score.
‘I’ll be true to the score till death,’ said Will.
‘He’s the same in a maid’s kirtle as in a man’s,’ said Hayne.
‘He broke his oath,’ said Longfreke.
‘It’s late,’ said Hayne. ‘A man about to be hung ne recks the ache in his shoulder.’ He raised his eyes to the thundercloud and bade Softly rig the cart for rain.
Softly cursed him, and the men in black led Will away.
‘What did that damned giant mean, “It’s late”?’ the hawkish one muttered. He led Will to the back of the black teld, where there was a dark narrow opening, warded by a swordsman in an iron shirt.
The hawkish one took Will’s chin in his hand and stared at his neb.
‘Do you wonder why I behold you so nearly?’ he asked. ‘It’s to mind you well, that I find and kill you do you breathe a word of what betides inside. Understand?’
Will nodded.
Th
e hawkish one took the crown of Will’s head. ‘Better not to wear that,’ he said. ‘If it goes well, you may ask her for something. She can be free. Go.’ He shoff Will in by the swordsman.
WE PERVENED TO the festive location in medias res, the dramatic action having progressed almost to its conclusion. Softly, Longfreke and Hornstrake joined the vulgar spectators at the perimeter of the arena, while Hayne sat on the herbage, apparently preoccupied with the tenebrous nimbus condensing in the direction indicated by our future itinerary. Cess remained in the cart, and it occurred to me that if I moved into proximity with the vehicle, it would be possible to address her unobserved by Softly or his confederates. But whether stationed deliberately by Softly as custodian, or immune to the attraction of the spectacle, Holiday adopted a position that supervised any move I might execute. Even the combustion of the artificial castle, ignited by a flaming arrow, could not distract him from his post.
The performation finished, there was an altercation between the archers I had accompanied via Westbury and those who had come previously, each an actor in the spectacle – Mad personifying Love, Sweetmouth Evil Tongue, and Will Quate Venus, the embodiment of concupiscence.
The sun had traversed the zenith, and, altered not merely by its decline but by the denser air in advance of the nascent tempest, illuminated Will’s candid, decorous young face with a ruby-tinged ardour, as if the solar radiance were reflected onto his countenance through rose-tinged glass. In that moment, in his Veneral tunic, Will appeared to have dissolved his sex into a more maximal, multi-sexual state, to have ceased to be exclusively masculine without sacrificing either the physical traits of masculinity or becoming feminine. Softly was incapable of perceiving this, or of imagining a human who, by a momentary effect of luminescence and complexion, appeared to transcend sex. Possibly he was capable, but resisted the report of his senses. In any case he presented himself solely as observing a male in female vestments.
As I interpret it, the focus of Softly’s ire is Will’s portrayal of a female combined with his public demonstration of the art of archery (it being Will who projected the incendiary arrow). Either action singularly would not provoke offence, the former a masculine joke between those whose masculinity is not doubted, the latter a demonstration of ballistic science that reflects positively on the entire company. What offends Softly is the concurrence of the two, as if the authors of the spectacle posit an organic connection between archery and femininity. Which in a sense they do: for love is the force that operates on man from a distance, a force he cannot resist with counter-force. A man in love experiences a severe diminution in his liberty, caused by the actions of another. The same occurs in physical combat, between two gladiators, for example; but in that case, each gladiator has the power to recuperate his attenuated liberty directly, by the percussion of his arms on the other’s armour.
Love’s victim, like the archer’s, experiences physical suffering and disablement, yet, unlike the man injured by a gladiator, cannot simply batter his opponent. The origin of his injury is remote, obscure, concealed. Is it possible that what is depicted in this English version of The Romance of the Rose is a complex double criticism by the nobility of the common people, embodied by chivalry and archers respectively? That, primo, the archers responsible for England’s victory at Crécy were womanly, in that they made men suffer indirectly, from a distance, from places of security, without exposing themselves to the peril of being injured in return? And that, secondly, the French chivalry’s voluntary exposure of their actual hearts to such actual damage signifies the nobles’ exclusive privilege of romantic love? Is it possible, in fact, that the entire performation was contrived as an act of confession and repentance by the English nobility before their French cousins, their crime being to have secured their victory via the treacherous deployment of vulgar archers on the pure chivalric terrain of Crécy?
It does not diminish the validity of this interpretation that Softly, when he approached me after his confrontation with Will, still incandescent with ire, subjected me to a denunciation of the event more prosaic and direct. In his view the participation of the archers in the spectacle was contrived to humiliate them. Specifically the scene of an archer in the habit of a female attempting to destroy fortifications was to Softly a conspicuous reference to the premature departure of Hayne’s company from Calais the previous year, when the English still contended with the French for dominion of the city. Briefly, he judged the entire spectacle a calumny directed against him and his companions, who stood accused of female conduct, of timorousness.
But Will had destroyed the fortifications, I said, adjusting to his literal interpretations of the drama. It had been difficult to project a flaming arrow over a considerable distance in such a manner as to penetrate the castle exactly where it would ignite; the creators of the spectacle had required an excellent archer; naturally they had recruited a member of Hayne’s company.
The tunic, insisted Softly obstinately. Feminisation. The company had been dishonoured.
He observed me closely. His uncharacteristically exposed ire had acted to make him temporarily oblivious of our different status. Now this momentary oblivion was removed, and he was conscious he had been addressing me as an equal. He smiled, and continued to do so, but now entirely cognisant of the alteration in our relations.
‘WHERE WERE YOU born?’ asked Softly.
‘Leith,’ said Thomas. ‘The port of Edinburgh.’
‘Where’s your home?’
‘Avignon.’
‘Scottish and French is the two kind of men who most ne like me.’
‘You and I are Christen folk, wherever we are born or bide.’
‘I ne worth no Christen but an English.’
‘Learned folk mayn’t be learned if they bind themselves to one deal of Christendom. In Scotland they learned me to read, and in France they learned me to live.’
‘You ne learned aught in England, then.’
‘I learned to work.’
‘Better if you’d learned to fight.’
‘I bode on you to say “laugh”.’
Softly took Thomas by the wrist and drew him toward the cart. ‘Folk would have you hold me wicked, that I’d spill you lightly, go you against me,’ he said. ‘It’s not true. I’d be your friend while we fare together. I see how nimble you are in the ask. You were sly to make out Dickle answered you when he was already dead.’
‘I swear, he lived and answered.’
‘Hush, hush. Ne fear. We do as we must. We’ll be friends, you and I. Would you work your asks on me?’
‘I mayn’t shrive you out-take when there’s no priest about and you’re at death’s door.’
‘Not that!’ Softly laughed. ‘I wouldn’t take shrift of you. No, for what you write of us on your calfskins. Ask me what you will.’
Thomas bethought him a handwhile, then asked: ‘Why left you Calais before the work to take the town was done?’
‘For her sake.’ Softly nodded at the cart. ‘The others called her a witch. Send her away, they said, or she goes as smoke.’
‘The others in Hayne’s company?’
‘The others in the king’s host. His thousands. They bleated that Softly John Fletcher stole a French maid of her folk in Mantes and since then the fight against the French was cursed. They heard I’d sought to wed her, and they’d seen her fetch our arrows, and it ne liked them. Let him fuck her as his prize, they said, but not be his even-archer. They bleated to their lords, and their lords wrathed to Laurence Haket, and Laurence Haket said we must either send her away or go back to England. Laurence Haket would that we send her away, but Hayne held to go home.’
‘I ne understand,’ said Thomas. ‘Who was your leader, Hayne or Haket?’
‘Laurence Haket is our captain, Hayne’s our master. That’s how it’s wrought in war. Laurence Haket bids the what, and Hayne bids the how. We answer to Hayne, who answers to Laurence Haket, who answers to the Berkeleys, who answer to the king.’
&n
bsp; ‘You mean Haket was with you through the fighting year in France? Crécy and Calais?’
‘And before. From the day we gathered in Lechlade, took boats down the Thames, and fared to France two winter ago. Laurence Haket had the captaincy of two score, Hayne’s and Tolly Whistler’s score of Worcestershire. We ne saw him often. He’d ride up and bid Hayne lead us here, stand there, burn this town, that mill, and ride away again.’
‘In Mantes?’
‘I mind his words. I stood with Hayne when he spoke them. “Wreak the town with fire,” he said. “Spare the churches, the clerks and the nuns, ne spill no women nor children, otherwise I ne care what you do.”’
Thomas ran his fingers over his chin. ‘Hayne ne wishes you well,’ he said.
‘Maybe.’
‘He deems your take of Cess was wrong.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Why not make you give Cess up?’
‘Then he wouldn’t have his wish.’
‘What is his wish?’
‘That I burn in hell for ever.’
Softly clapped his hands and shouted at the cart. Cess showed her neb and Softly bade her set out three stools and bring ale.
‘You’d speak to her,’ said Softly.
‘There’s no need,’ said Thomas.
‘They told you I’d spill the man who spoke to her. It’s not true. I’m not so hard as they say. Come, have a can with us.’
‘Truly, there’s no need.’
‘May I call you Tom?’ Softly cupped Thomas’s cheek with his hand and stroked it with his thumb. ‘I’ve seen you behold her like to you wonder what she knows. Come now. Ne shift my mood by unworthing me.’
They sat on the stools. Cess, in a heavy headcloth that hilled the lower part of her neb, gave them wooden cans and ladled ale of a tub. Thomas bade her drink with them and she sat on the third stool with a can held in both hands and beheld the ground.
‘Do you have the French?’ said Softly to Thomas. ‘Ne speak it here. Speak to her in a tongue I understand.’
