To Calais, In Ordinary Time

by James Meek

  Madlen laughed. ‘I met some stern kindly men at Melksham pig-fair last year who learned me things.’ She rolled over on her back and lifted her legs. ‘That this is better, for one,’ she said.

  ‘The hole’s small, and the pintle’s thick,’ said Will. ‘The queen had a pot of sweet grease to slicken it.’

  ‘I’ll be still while you pitch it in,’ said Madlen. ‘I’ll hold my breath.’ Will pitched his pintle in and got deep, and Madlen gasped, but it was tight and dry, like a wet cotter-pin in a cold pinhole, so Will dripped some of the green flask oil on his pintle, and put it in again, and it went slicker. He took Madlen’s hip-bones in his hands and drew her onto him and away and on again while she wielded her own pintle and bade him not to spare her.

  When they were done and still, and the sounds that came of their throats ne rang in their ears no more, Madlen said: ‘The bourne wasn’t never so deep as we go now.’

  ‘We go to the sea,’ said Will.

  ‘I never saw the sea neither,’ said Madlen. ‘I dreamed I were in it, free to dive as deep as it liked me, and to rise again to the light, endless.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘This isn’t no dream.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’ll seek us soon.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Madlen. ‘Let’s play with their clothes once more, and find some fair things to hight my hair.’ She took of her bundle the wedding gown Will had redeemed of Cockle and dight it over her head.

  BERNA TOOK A towel of the pile close to the bed and pressed it between her legs. Holding it there she got up and went to the basin through which pure water flowed. She laved herself, then rinsed the towel, frotting the fabric against the metal of the basin to remove the blood. Unsure where to put it, she placed it flat on a ledge in the privy.

  Laurence coughed and she went to kneel on the bed next to him. He lay naked and uncovered, still resplendent with the perspiration of their coupling, his eyes closed.

  ‘My lord,’ she said.

  Laurence opened his eyes and regarded her.

  ‘I shan’t always call you my lord,’ said Berna. ‘I desired to test it in my mouth.’

  ‘How was it?’ said Laurence. His voice was guttural.

  ‘I prefer Laurence,’ said Berna.

  ‘I meant … I ne intended to be so ferocious,’ said Laurence.

  ‘My injury is incurable, but not serious.’

  Laurence examined the cover of the bed, blinking, and passed his hand over his eyes. ‘Have you soiled it grievously? I suppose it not impossible some corpus royal may eventually touch this linen.’ He coughed again and let himself fall back on the bed. ‘We’re guests.’

  ‘If that is your principal anxiety, I may call Madlen to clean it.’

  ‘Would you?’ said Laurence. ‘In a few moments. I’ve a dolorous head. What a pleasant manner to fatigue oneself. And you have fatigued me. Would you bring me some water?’

  ‘Was it so fatiguing?’ said Berna, searching for a cup. ‘I found it a brief pleasure.’ She discovered a maselin adorned with an ursine motif and filled it with water. ‘I was surprised by the violence of your initial approach, but you tempered your savagery, and I commenced to enjoy it, and suddenly I found you’d completed your labours.’

  Laurence drained the cup and demanded more. ‘My desire compelled me,’ he said. ‘Consider that I’ve pursued you since April.’

  ‘An interrupted pursuit,’ said Berna.

  ‘The interruption only increased my desire.’

  ‘And now the pursuit is over.’

  ‘Gloriously so! And life proper commences.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Bernadine, pulling on her tunic, ‘when you arrive at the end of a chase, and your quarry lies sanguine at your feet, do you proclaim to the beast that thence commences the proper life?’

  ‘Berna, Berna!’ said Laurence, and sat up. The effort caused a fit of coughing. He recovered and continued: ‘Your comparison is unreasonable, even for you. The erasure of virginity isn’t death, or the death of love. It’s a stage.’

  ‘You never see,’ said Berna calmly. ‘I never desired to be the conclusion of no pursuit. Can’t you imagine a life in common where we jointly pursue a joy that rests just beyond our power to apprehend?’

  ‘That sounds more ecclesiastic than familial, my angel.’

  ‘You’re impossible.’

  ‘You’re a stranger to reason.’ Laurence gazed at her, but appeared to have difficulty maintaining the fixity of his vision, compressing his dry red eyes as if attempting to draw out their natural moistening humours.

  Berna got up and put on a plain brown gown of one of the royal closets. ‘I’ll call Madlen,’ she said, and went out.

  BERNA DISCOVERED THE rose chamber. The door was closed. She listened for a moment, and pushed the door. It opened silently, revealing the entire chamber to her view.

  Two figures stood with their backs to her, partly illuminated by an elongated diamond of fierce sunlight of the window that traversed their forms and created its own secondary light of the reflection of their garments. On its way to its target the solar ray acquired solidity, like a transparent vessel imprisoning, gilding and setting in motion an infinite number of grains of dust to turn in space.

  They were a young man and a young woman, who were evidently, by their clothes and by the tranquillity and affection expressed in their posture, of gentle birth. He, broad and powerful, with dishevelled blond hair, wore an old-fashioned red tunic and embroidered white belt and parti-coloured hose of black and white. She wore a marriage gown identical to Berna’s, and her hair, dark, long and undulating, was semblable, though her figure was more meagre. Each had one hand around the other’s waist. They appeared to regard their reflection in a mirror in the closet, but from where she stood Berna might not perceive the reflected image of their faces.

  The couple turned to each other with simple grace, and with a movement that was at once eager and restrained, they kissed.

  They turned towards Berna with amicable surprise. Their beauty, as two people and ensemble, and the sincerity of their affection, was irresistible, and Berna smiled.

  In a moment, her smile perished. The gentle lovers of high estate and noble countenance who regarded her with such frankness did so in complete coincidence with the forms of Will Quate, the former bondman who used to dung her father’s fields, and Madlen, the felon sister of the village pigboy. None might simply judge whether the stolen gown lent its splendour to Madlen, or the reverse.

  Bernadine’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. She charged at Madlen and pushed her with such force that Madlen tumbled over. Will, taken by surprise, ne knew whether to assist his amour or to restrain Bernadine, and while he hesitated, Berna hurt his face furiously with the back of her hand.

  Madlen rose, and man and maid regarded Berna. They were peaceful and curious and silent, as if at a marvel, while she defied them, respiring profoundly, her teeth bared, her muscles tensed.

  ‘You’ve been permitted the most outrageously excessive liberties,’ she said, ‘but this charade of gentle matrimony in stolen garments is a violation too extreme for heaven to endure.’ Her mouth trembled, and she departed.

  ‘I barely understood one word,’ said Will when she was gone. ‘Why wrathed she?’

  ‘I ne understood neither,’ said Madlen. ‘Maybe her new husband fell short in the swive.’

  HAVING PROBED THE castellan for information on the fate of the castle’s other inhabitants, without success, I was content to be interrupted by Berna, her face, as usual, disturbed by emotion. Her presence balances our company: it is beneficial to have one less fatalistic than the archers and less inclined than me to repress personal anxieties. All we have sustained should not be received in passive silence, and if I, the miserable substitute for an actual cleric, do not articulate our reactions, we can depend on the dissatisfied Berna to voice our sense of affliction.

  I remembered I had advised her and
her spouse to indulge in sexual congress to validate their spousal contract, and it occurred to me that some related calamity had occurred: Laurence was impotent, or incompetent in the act, or Berna’s hymen impenetrable, or the sanguinary aspect of the transvirginal moment had perturbed her. Or the pestilential circumstances had detracted from the felicity of their nuptials. Certainly my injunction to urgently consummate the marriage was artificial – had they simply declared publicly that they desired each other as man and wife in the present rather than in the future tense, any canon lawyer would accept their marriage as instantly formed. It was a minor deception on my part, and justified. These are amorous young people, naturally possessed by carnal desires, and to legitimise them was no crime. On the contrary, it was necessary. The tension between them required resolution, were they not to suffer permanent alienation.

  ‘THOMAS,’ SAID BERNA, sitting on the rim of a cartwheel opposite the proctor, who had made himself comfortable in the upturned fragment of a ruined arch, ‘I have a troubling matter to recount. I’m obliged to tell you that the archer Will Quate and my maidservant Madlen practise deceit on us.’

  Thomas exhaled. ‘You’re not obliged to tell me anything,’ he said. ‘Especially on your marriage day.’

  Berna was trembling. Her colour was high and her respiration rapid. ‘You are my confidant,’ she said.

  ‘The usual course is for the marital bed to acquire the lease on your confidences, for a year or two at a minimum,’ said Thomas. ‘Surely this is not the moment to concern yourself with the faults of a servant?’

  A tear appeared on Berna’s cheek. She wiped it away and sniffed. She regarded Thomas with great seriousness. ‘The priests say that violations of the divine order are connected to the appearance of this pestilence,’ she said. ‘How may I be silent when I observe such very violations, now that the pest has arrived in England?’

  Thomas narrowed his eyes. ‘Well, offer your complaint against these people. What are the facts of their deceit?’

  ‘They deceive us that they are noble,’ said Berna.

  ‘I ne comprehend you,’ said Thomas. ‘You refer to Will and Madlen? In what manner have they represented themselves as noble?’

  ‘You haven’t noticed?’

  Thomas caressed his chin. ‘Were this a court of law,’ he said gently, ‘it were at this point the case might be dismissed for default of evidence.’

  ‘Is it or is it not part of the divine order that the quest romantic is the preserve of the gentle-born? Consider: since my departure from Outen Green, those two have mocked, imitated and attempted to surpass my every noble lover’s action, in my escape from the manor, in my journey to my paramour, in my appearance in the pageant, in my escape from captivity, in mutual sacrifice between lovers. Did they attempt to dissuade the castellan of his delusion that they were a baron and his consort? No. While Laurence and I enjoyed the initiation of our marriage, they were upstairs, imitating us, abling themselves in rich garments they discovered in those fine chambers. I came across them playing out the roles of earl and countess as if they, too, had just been married. A bondman and a thrall! Will you not agree that this presumptuousness is an affront to order, and a danger to all?’

  ‘I ne judge it such terrible damage,’ said Thomas apologetically. ‘If they can find refuge from this calamity for a little space of play, I ne see no offence. Nor do I comprehend how it injures you, or how at this moment of fulfilment of your desire for Laurence, in the midst of an epidemic, your interest can be diverted to something so trifling. Unless your sentiments towards your spouse have changed. Surely that is not the case?’

  Berna regarded the circle of sky above their heads, surrounded by the castle battlements.

  ‘This place has such a melancholy savour,’ she said. ‘Why does the castellan preserve this refuse? It’s all either useless or unused. And why do the pigeons not move to some more beauteous place? Surely the open sky invites them.’

  ‘Most creatures prefer the comfort of the familiar,’ said Thomas.

  Berna turned her head downwards, clasped her hands and respired deeply. ‘I ne love Laurence Haket,’ she said.

  ‘Incredible that such an extreme transformation in your sensibility could take place so rapidly.’

  ‘It is not so rapid,’ said Berna. ‘It has been plain to me for some time that he is a junior form of the fiancé I took such pains to evade. But it were simpler for me to take comfort in the pretence Laurence and I were habitueés of a poet’s romance did I not have the love of these two commoners to set against it. It were a story I might have cherished for some years, don’t you think – my two escapes, my pageantry, my ravishment – in fine compensation for my loveless marriage, were it not that I’m outdone by my inferiors, grander than me in my own clothes, more noble than the nobles?’

  ‘If they are noble, they are unconscious of it,’ said Thomas. ‘Nothing could be more noble than your sense that there is a nobility in them of which you and Laurence fall short.’

  ‘You are generous to me. I have tried to simulate credence in the idea that people such as Will and Madlen might not, by birth, approach my stature, but I have failed. I wish I were more blind. I wish I ne resented them.’

  ‘You are severe to yourself, and them. It appears to me that you and Will and Madlen are entirely dissimilar to each other except in your desire to put distance between yourselves and your native soil. Now attend.’ Thomas frowned, wrinkled his nose and frot his face with his hands. ‘I advise you to cease these statements of distaste for your situation.’

  ‘Even privily, to you?’

  ‘You may damage yourself in a fashion you appear not to have anticipated. It’s marvellous how you’re so attentive to relations with Laurence that you ne remember what occurs in the world. Can’t you imagine the effect on your conscience were Laurence to sicken now, after you’d openly declared you ne love him?’

  Berna fell silent, the colour disappeared from her face, and her eyes seemed to cease to see. She jumped up and ran into the castle.

  Sir Walter’s voice came of the high tower, proclaiming the arrivage of the carts.

  THREE CARTS CAME to Mere Castle of the west and drove into the yard. One was Softly’s old cart that he got in France. Cess drove it. She had a black eye of a beating Softly gave her that she durst come to see Longfreke die without Softly’s leave. The other two carts were driven by Wiltshire men Softly had found. They were called Fallwell and Miredrum. They’d shown him they knew how to use a bow, Softly said, and he’d sworn them into the score all but they weren’t Gloucestershire born.

  Softly rode a long fair horse with a gleaming black hide, dearly dight with gear of oxhide and brass, and he wore a new red coat and new blue shoon. Holiday had a new horse too, a handy brown mare with a white star on her forehead, but he ne rode it. He lay on his elbow in the back of the old cart, for he’d drunk spoiled ale, he said, and must rest out of the sun a while.

  Will came of the castle in his bowman’s clothes to greet Softly. Sir Walter hopped about the carts, rubbed his hands, laughed and egged them to make fast to load up the king’s goods, for the foe was near the gates. Softly was quick to understand the old man’s madness, and bade Will and his new hirelings scour the castle for whatever was best to take, and load it up, only leaving the rooms where Laurence and the lady Berna would spend the night.

  ‘Where’s the captain?’ said Softly.

  ‘In the lion room,’ said Will. ‘He’s sick.’

  ‘Well, get to work.’

  ‘You ne saw Mad and Sweetmouth on the road?’

  ‘Had I seen them I’d have dragged them here on ropes. Fiend fetch them, they’re weak men. This isn’t no time to be held back, son. This whole land’s opening up for the heal and nimble to take what it likes them to. Over there, that length of walnut: throw it in the cart. That’s sixty-pence worth, and we wouldn’t have the foe get his thieving hands on it.’

  INFORMED OF LAURENCE’S condition, I went to see him. At the
entrance to his apartment I was intercepted by Madlen, acting as custodian, who reported that neither Laurence nor Berna would be disturbed. I was impressed by how confidently Madlen made this statement. Berna had complained to me of Madlen’s presumptuous competition in romance, but here was a different power. Had Madlen increased in authority with the propagation of the plague? In this pestilential period, aristocratic status is conferred on the plebs by the singular virtue of their survival when their superiors succumb. In a mobile community such as ours, the serf may become commander in the absence of those above him; ultimately the slave girl, if she remains when all others disappear, must be queen under God. And if she should have a rival – one, like Bernadine, more superficially suited to the exercise of power – were it not possible that the former slave would triumph, as one more accustomed to adversity? And were experience of adversity to be the rule that determined who flourished in the post-pestilential dispensation, was there not a third woman among us, yet to be permitted a voice by he who subjugated her, capable of exceeding them all?

  Oh, Bernadine! I would never have described the possibility of Laurence being infected did I think it had already occurred. A few hours prior, when they exchanged their promises, he had seemed luminously vital. And if we observed a particular ardour in him, was that not natural in one fervent to possess Bernadine corporeally? And now, in my negligence, I had compounded the misery of her situation. If without my intervention she would have secretly accused herself of desiring his destruction, now I had fashioned the accusation into a damning public one, as if God, so deaf to all pleas for clemency in the face of the pest, would instantly open his ears to a plea for malice.

  I revened to the central area of the castle, where Will, Softly and the new complement of archers, two individuals of desperate appearance, were adding spoils to their carts. I’d intended to collect items removed from my horse when it was stabled, and retire to my apartment, but as I passed Softly’s original cart, I heard Holiday cough and call my name.