To Calais, In Ordinary Time

by James Meek

  ‘I have the right,’ said Cess.

  ‘A bowman leaves this world,’ said Softly. ‘This has not to do with you. The longer you stand there, the worse it’ll be for you later.’

  ‘In France, at the end, the one who dies must forgive and be forgiven,’ said Cess. ‘Are they another kind of Christen here?’ She spoke wonder boldly, with her head up, and looked Softly in the eye.

  ‘Let her be,’ said Longfreke.

  ‘It was the fake priest told her she might come,’ said Softly, showing Thomas with his finger. ‘He’d make this death-time a deem of what was done in France. He seeks to draw it out of our mouths that we were wicked in France and must be pined on earth for it.’

  ‘I ne asked Cess to come,’ said Thomas, ‘but here she is, of her own will.’

  ‘She’s my woman, and she hasn’t no will but as I let her,’ said Softly.

  ‘Longfreke’s is the need,’ said Thomas. ‘He’d have her here.’

  Softly looked round the nebs of his even-bowmen, but none would speak for him.

  ‘It were better for all of you to let me drive her out,’ he said.

  ‘Why did you come?’ said Longfreke to Cess.

  ‘To know if I might see God’s work in your sickness,’ she answered, ‘that the Almighty be wreaked on the wicked, and harm you, as me and my father were harmed.’

  ‘He ne hurt you,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘He fought for you against Softly.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Longfreke. ‘She means I ne fought long or hard enough. She means I was of this fellowship.’

  ‘Is he right?’ said Thomas.

  Cess ne answered, but gazed on Longfreke. She stood next to Will at the foot of the bed.

  Longfreke asked her: ‘Well, see you God’s work wrought in me, in this sickness?’

  ‘Maybe it’s there,’ said Cess. ‘I ne see it. I see a poor soldier with a done-in face dying in another’s bed, far from home, ne knowing who’s to keep his endless soul.’

  ‘I would I’d done more to help you,’ whispered Longfreke.

  ‘Where’s your pride?’ said Softly. The bowmen hushed him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ came of Longfreke’s lips.

  ‘I believe you,’ said Cess. ‘I would that the devils step away and let you fare to a better stead.’

  ‘Bring the rood nearer,’ said Thomas. He bade Longfreke repeat after him: ‘God, I ask forgiveness, and of your mother St Mary and all the saints of heaven, of all the sins I’ve wrought, in work, word and thought, with every limb of my body. With sore heart I ask God forgiveness, and in the lack of a shriftfather, I ask God to hear me, and shrive me of my sin.’

  Then Thomas bowed his head and spoke in Latin:

  ‘God omnipotent, in the profound humility of my ignorance, which exceeds that of any veritable ecclesiastic, I commend the spirit of Gilbert Bisley, alias Longfreke, to your benign clemency. Malificent acts have been committed by the military society of which he was part, yet he was not complicit directly in their commission. He attempted to ameliorate the consequences, and has been absolved by the enduring victim. Reveal to him your grace, and accept him into the territory celestial, and to eternity vital. May I observe, oh Father, that in securing Bisley’s absolution, I incurred hostility from the most violent individual in the society, and I request that you consider this at the moment of my own spirit’s migration, an event I anticipate imminently. In nomine Patris, et Dei, et Spiritu Sancti, amen.’

  Spellbound by Thomas’s bead, the bowmen ne saw Cess slip away. Soon afterward, Longfreke laid his eyes together, and when Thomas held a feather under his nose, it ne stirred. Softly took the rood of Will’s hand and dight it about his own neck.

  IT WAS IN wone among the bowmen to bury their own quickly when they were on the road, the dead man in his fighting gear, in a bare sheet with the ashen rood drawn on it, with his own bow broken in half and knitted into a rough rood with twine. Thomas egged the deacon to let Hornstrake and Longfreke be buried in the graves the bowmen had dug for them in hallowed ground, all but Longfreke wasn’t rightly shriven, and with Thomas’s fair speech and a handful of silver, the deacon said it might be done. Thomas wrote letters to be borne to the priests in the dead men’s home parishes, that their kin might know what had befallen them. By nightfall, Hornstrake and Longfreke were in the ground, and the bowmen drank to them with wine and ate their fill of brad chicken. Afterward they went to sleep, for none would stint in Heytesbury a stound longer than they needed, and Laurence Haket was for setting out at dawn.

  In the night Sweetmouth woke Will and bade him follow. Will got up and Sweetmouth led him to the church. Inside folk sat in wake about the body of the priest. Dear candles burned bright and steady at each nook of the board on which the body lay. Sweetmouth went up to the light and Will saw he had all his gear with him, his pack laden, his unstrung bow in his hand.

  ‘A penny candle, brother, for our men,’ said Sweetmouth to a churchwarden. The warden fetched it and Sweetmouth lit it.

  ‘Better say your beads in here,’ said the warden, who saw that Sweetmouth meant to take the light outside. ‘It ne likes folk to have lights and speech among the graves at night.’

  ‘We nad no time for a right wake, like your priest,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘We shan’t be long, and then we’ll come inside again.’

  ‘Mind the pit,’ said the warden.

  Sweetmouth and Will sat on the grass between Longfreke and Hornstrake’s graves and Sweetmouth set the candle on a pewter plate he took of his pack. It was warm and still and the light ne flickered. The sky was thick with stars.

  ‘You owe to fetch your gear,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘Do we leave now we may be in Warminster by morning. I ween this a good time to buy a cheap horse. If we ride hard we may be home again by Wednesday.’

  Will ne understood.

  ‘You wouldn’t be a bowman under Softly, with this death sent to the world?’ said Sweetmouth. ‘Does he live, he’ll turn to thieving of the dead, and drive you to thieve with him.’

  ‘But if you bide, you and I and Mad and the captain are more than they.’

  Sweetmouth shook his head. ‘It seems this qualm’s no tale. I would be near my wife and children now.’

  ‘What of our oath?’ said Will.

  ‘Longfreke’s dead, and Softly wears the rood. If the oath means aught in this tide, why has Hayne forsaken us?’

  ‘To show us we can steer ourselves without him.’

  ‘Ne be wise, Player. Come with me. You’ve a mother and brothers at home, and a betrothed. You’ll go up into Cotswold and plough again, and be wed, and drink on the holidays.’

  ‘I found a friend on the road. I mayn’t leave her, and she mayn’t go home again.’

  ‘Come now. A friend you make on the road’s not like kin. You may always leave them. She’s but a kiss and a swive on the way.’ He took Will’s cheek in his hand. ‘We’re Englishmen. For us the road always goes home again. We mayn’t live in some other land beyond the sea. We go there, we fight there, we swive there if God sends, we make some silver and come home again.’

  ‘I found another road,’ said Will. ‘One that bears me away and ne comes again.’

  ‘There’s no such road,’ said Sweetmouth.

  ‘How might Mad let you go?’

  ‘I haven’t the heart to tell him. He’ll find it hard to bear. I lack the strength to look him in the eye and say I must go.’

  ‘Would you have me tell him?’

  ‘Not if you come with me.’

  ‘I told you, I shan’t.’ Will’s steven broke. ‘It’s right hard after Longfreke to have you go. It’s like to you die too.’

  ‘Then come.’

  ‘No.’

  Sweetmouth stood and pitched the candle in the earth at the foot of Longfreke’s grave. ‘Farewell, Longfreke and Frongleke,’ he said. ‘Do devils take one, the other may go with the angels.’

  The candle cast its light now on the edge of the pit, and both men looked there. Will wiped his eyes.


  ‘She was right fair to look on,’ said Sweetmouth.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Cess. I saw her in the stoneyard in Mantes. I would sorely have others know how fair she looked to me and I must open my mouth and tell Softly. If I hadn’t spoken, hadn’t said how sweet her neb and lickerous her body, they wouldn’t have sought her out.’

  ‘But you weren’t among them that took her.’

  ‘No. I have no guilt for that. I ne did nothing.’ He was still, then said again: ‘I ne did nothing.’

  The two men held each other in their arms a stound and said their farewells. Then Sweetmouth left for Westbury along the dark road, and Will went again to the house.

  BERNA LAY VIGILANT in her bed in the bailiff’s house. The chamber was obscured in the profundity of night. She called out to Madlen, who lay on the floor by the door.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Madlen.

  ‘Are you afraid?’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘You mean afeared? Yeah.’

  ‘Of the pest.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You ne appear afraid.’

  ‘Appear?’

  ‘Seem.’

  ‘I ne understand, my demoiselle.’

  ‘I mayn’t rest. My heart beats furiously and hard. I contemplate and think on my death and mortality over and over. I see myself covered and ended by darkness. But you seem calm and even, like to you are untroubled and unhurt by the possibility of fatal and deadly malady and sickness.’

  ‘Possibility?’

  ‘Let’s say “speed”. Or “hap”. That which may be, or may not.’

  ‘I never had no possibilities, my demoiselle. I have what I have. I mayn’t do nothing about what’s to come. I’m afraid of the pest, that it take my loveman before me, for I mayn’t live without him. Otherwise I’m blithe enough. I’ve a full belly, and a roof over my head, and I’m heal. I have love now, and mayn’t do aught today to shield myself of death tomorrow.’

  ‘Is it of your faith?’

  ‘I ne know aught of God and he knows aught of me. He’s too much else on his shoulders.’

  ‘Ne fear you for your brother, as I fear for my family at home?’

  A curious noise issued of Madlen, like to a sneeze or a suppressed laugh. ‘I fear for my brother least of all,’ she said. ‘He’s one no pest may reach.’

  I WOKE WITH a spasm and a sense of terror. Query: why terror? Miraculously, my state had been transformed from febrile to lucid. My dolour was removed. My humours were restored to their ideal temperament. It appeared possible that I had not suffered from the plague, but from some vulgar, innocent contagion, or had been divinely credited with a corporeal nature resistant to this particular morbidity. I repeat: why terror, in the face of such extraordinary good fortune?

  Because I had provoked Softly. Why had I provoked him, in full cognisance of his violent nature? Because I expected to perish of plague. Now it appeared I would not perish of plague, but by homicide.

  It was dark. A young person’s respiration was audible. I examined my memory. I had been accommodated by the local administrator, apportioned space in a cubicle with Laurence Haket. I had regressed from the interment of the archers exhausted, convinced that I, too, would succumb. The situation necessitated prayer, meditation, a final accounting, a preparation to face my fate with dignity and resignation. Instead I fell asleep remembering my mother clamouring my name when I had concealed myself in some secret place where she could not discover me.

  I became conscious that I had not, as I initially assumed, been roused by an internal stimulus. A figure occupied the doorway, illuminated solely by the lunar radiance from the window. The horrible suspicion that it was Softly caused me to rise, and I was about to wake Haket when I noticed that the form of the intruder was less substantial than my presumed homicide. Inspecting his features more proximately I apprehended that it was the Welsh archer, Mad. Indicating digitally that I should be silent, he conducted me outside, to the area in front of the house by the principal portal.

  ‘THERE’S NO SCORE no more,’ said Mad. ‘It’s no breach of my oath to leave, and I’d go home to Merioneth.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And leave young Will to may alone with Softly?’

  ‘He’ll have Sweetmouth. I can’t bear to tell them. It ne likes me to see a man weep out-take it be of a tale I sing. You speak for me in the morning. Tell them you begged me to bide, but I ne yielded.’

  ‘I would beg you, but I know you won’t yield.’

  ‘That’s right. I go on foot to Warminster, and buy a horse there.’

  ‘It’s a lonely road by night, and thick with ghosts this tide. Bide till morning.’

  ‘I must go. I’m full of song. I’d sing it in Merioneth before I die.’

  ‘What song?’

  ‘The song of the bowmen. Of Hayne and Softly, and how they fell out over a dear gift. How Softly and his men came again to Hayne to fight with him for the king, and each brought a holy thing, one a golden rood, one a book, one a ball of Christ’s breath, one a rood on his forehead and nail-holes in his hands and feet, but none was so fair and holy as Hayne’s rood. How they fought the French at Crécy. How Softly stole the fair Cecile and Dickle slew her father. How Longfreke the bold was cloven atwain and made whole again. How death was sent to the world on the wind, and the bowmen gathered again to go to France, and Softly staked all, for if he lost he would be damned, and if he won he would do as he chose and get the rood. How love came to the world in the shape of two young men, and how one of these men helped the other out of plight, and how love wrought it that they might know each other as man and man and wife and wife.’

  ‘I’d know more of what you sing in your song.’

  ‘Then come with me to Merioneth, forget you can read and write, and learn Welsh.’

  ‘I guess I’m not in your song.’

  ‘No. I ne sing of no Latin writers.’

  ‘Ne fear you to fare alone and die unshriven on the way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You too are of this score. You ne hurt Cess as Softly did, but ne helped her neither.’

  ‘I’m but the bard. I mayn’t be in my own song.’

  ‘Then all that betides is stuff for the song?’

  ‘Only in Merioneth are true things. Only there is the world true and for ever. Here, or in France, everything is a tale. All shifts. Everything haps once, no more, and then it’s gone, out-take that some bard like me minds it.’

  ‘And if a writer like me writes it down?’

  Mad waved his hand and blew a puff of wind. ‘It’s not the same. Your written words are but ash-to-be.’

  ‘What is it about Merioneth that makes it true?’

  ‘Folk there mind everything, and everything has a name, each stone and tree. All know what all are, and who they were, and who their kin were and their forefathers. Nothing shifts and all that seems new is another side of what was there before.’

  ‘And that’s why you ne need shrift. Your everlastingness is there.’

  Mad ne answered, and it was too dark to see his cheer. They bade each other farewell. Mad went away into the darkness and Thomas went to bed again.

  JUDITH, I AM a solitary man. What may my desire for the security of your unconditional love be except the desire of an exile to be restored to his original state? How ridiculous I was, liberating myself from the love of my family in Scotland only to attempt to recreate that love two months’ journey away in France, with the difference being that while in both places I expected unconditional love, I sought to exchange my submission to their authority for your submission to mine.

  LAURENCE HAKET WAS wrath in the morning to find he had three bowmen left of the ten behest, and more run away than dead. Yet he was drawn to some other care the bowmen ne knew of, and Softly outdid him in anger, cursing Mad and Sweetmouth as chicken-hearted sons of bitches and, which was worse, women. He fingered the
rood about his neck while he spoke.

  ‘Why did you ne wake us when Sweetmouth came to you?’ he said to Will.

  Will ne answered. He was stricken by the loss of his friends.

  ‘And how might Mad walk out without that no one saw?’

  None spoke.

  ‘Captain,’ said Softly, ‘let me go with Holiday and Player to Westbury and I swear I’ll bring you those harlots on a rope, and if not them, two better bowmen. We’ll meet in Mere tonight.’

  But Laurence Haket wouldn’t be left without one bowman. So they read that Will would go with him to the castle at Mere, where the captain knew folk, and Softly and Holiday would seek the runaways.

  It was early. The sun was barely up. Softly led Will over to the cart, away from the others, and showed him where he’d knit two loops of rope on one side.

  ‘New masters shift old ways,’ he said. ‘Marked you how Hayne ne learned you no bowmanship?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Will.

  ‘Under me you’ll get the lore. It begins of strength in the arms. Let’s see how strong your arms are. Put your wrists in those loops.’

  Will did as he was bidden and Softly and Holiday tightened the ropes. ‘See if you can heave the cart over,’ said Softly.

  Will hove with all his might. The cart rocked a little but he ne might throw it over. He would draw his hands of the ropes but they were held fast.

  ‘Good,’ said Softly. ‘You’ve learned you aren’t as strong as you thought. Now I’ll learn you another thing. You mind how if you broke Hayne’s law, one without guilt would be hurt? That wasn’t no good, for you shamed us in Edington by going about as a woman, and you shamed us again by letting Sweetmouth go. Under me, if you break my law, I hurt you.’

  Holiday took Will’s shirt and bared his back. Softly took a whip of the cart and struck Will athwart the back with it, leaving a wale a foot long. He struck him twice more, then Holiday threw a stop of water over him, and they set him free.