To Calais, In Ordinary Time

by James Meek

  ‘I wouldn’t look so far!’ Madlen ran her fingers over Will’s jaw. ‘As long as the world’s about to end I ne fear nothing.’

  They went back to the others. Cess had made a fire and boiled water. Madlen went to Bernadine and Laurence, and Will to Thomas. Afterwards Madlen came to sit near Cess, and in a while Will came up and sat there too, but a little further away. He plucked at grass and looked at the ground like to he knew he must be there but ne knew why.

  ‘Why do you hate my loveman Will?’ said Madlen to Cess. ‘It wasn’t he who reft your maidenhood and stole you.’

  Cess said: ‘For two years I hoped God would help me from these men who stole me. I listened to the tales Holiday read of his book of saints, of angels who helped the women martyrs. I thought me how an angel might be, fair and strong. One day one was sent like to that angel of my imagination. I guess you ne know what imagination tokens.’

  ‘The lady Bernadine learned me,’ said Madlen.

  ‘Well. So, one day, there he was. Fair and strong. But he ne came to help me. He came to help them. To be theirs. He deemed them bold and handy. He knew what they’d done to me and my father, yet he’d be one of them. He’d be their fair face to the world.’ She turned her eyes to Will. ‘How can they be wicked, folk ask, when they have among them a young man so kind, so like an angel? They ne know. He who does a fair face on wickedness is wickedest of all.’

  IT WAS A hard climb to the downs and a rough road west against the sun along the spine of the hills to the abbey, all but they were above the heat and dust of the lowlands. To the north they could see sprad out the way they’d come along the Stour, and south to the hills that lay between them and the sea, though the sea itself was hidden.

  At the abbey the Vespers bell rang. A heap of folk stood outside and sought to go in. Some were sick, some pilgrims, and some local folk who’d buy beads or candles or holy likenesses. But the gate was shut, and the lay brothers who warded it said none might come in till morning. The lay brothers’ brown kirtles could hardly be seen for the weight of tin saints’ tokens they wore, that shone on them like fish scales in the half-light.

  They wouldn’t let the carts through, for all the lady Bernadine’s asks, until she bade them come to where Thomas lay awake. Thomas told the brothers to give his name to the abbot, and after a while they came again and opened the gates, and what was left of the score came inside to the abbey yard. The sky had darkened, and the light of many candles came of the great windows of the abbey, and the sound of song.

  BERNA SAT WITH Laurence in the hospital. The infirmary was full, but since the arrivage of the pestilence, many lodgings in the hospital had been vacated. It was night and the window was closed. A single candle lit the plain chamber. An iron cross with an unpainted wooden Christ was fixed to one wall. Their words rang against stone.

  ‘You must be very uncomfortable,’ said Berna. ‘This mattress is no more than a double blanket on a board.’

  ‘After a day in the cart on the road, it’s paradise,’ said Laurence. His head was supported by a small square cushion. His voice had changed since morning. It was both diminished and more confident. His skin was dry and colourless, his eyes enlarged, his cheekbones more prominent. Berna combed his savage hair with her fingers.

  ‘I would prefer you maintain a certain distance,’ said Laurence. ‘This malady catches of people like fire.’

  ‘It’s in the air,’ said Berna. ‘Distance is no defence. Even if it were, you mayn’t separate me now, little spouse.’ She kissed his forehead.

  ‘They’ll care for me here,’ said Laurence. ‘My condition improves. You must go on to Melcombe tomorrow and secure passage to Calais. Once I’ve recovered I’ll join you there.’

  ‘I shan’t leave you.’

  ‘It’s my desire and my command that you do.’

  ‘Married a day, and you’d separate already?’

  ‘For your security and mine. For a measure.’

  ‘You’re terribly unjust. Tell me, when you went to France last time, in Lord Berkeley’s entourage, did you know one Lionel de Hammoon?’

  ‘Hammer Hammoon!’ said Laurence. ‘We were of an age. A knight by birth, but he treated me equally enough. Amusing fellow. When I was fresh in the company he sent me to the gunners with a sealed pot of gunpowder. “Ensure it remains level, or it will explode, and you will be vaporised,” he said. I walked to where the ordnance was. It was only a mile, but it took me an hour, I was so cautious. Trembling, I conveyed the pot to the master-gunner’s hand. He took it, regarded it a moment, then removed the cover and drank half the contents. It was wine! Completely valiant, Hammer, knew no fear. Terrible swordsman, excellent taste in clothes. We charged in the same line at Crécy. He had a drum, too, he used to beat. Dancing outside the tent without no women. We were young and judged ourselves the most brilliant warriors a king ever arrayed. That morning, when we buckled up and were mounted, and the knaves ran from horse to horse polishing our armour, and we entered the mist, a train of plumes and steel, facing mortal combat, we were so vulnerable and felt so indestructible. We so desired to make each other laugh – it seemed so proper to be grave and serious. Few of us had fathered children and most of us had lost a parent or two. We were like a family of all brothers.’

  ‘Why not speak to me before of your soldier days?’

  ‘I desired to demonstrate I wasn’t foreign to your terrain – your terrain of gentler virtues, I mean, of flowers and verse and music. For completeness of honesty, frankly, I doubted my power to play the valorous man. I regarded my comrades when they recounted their war histories to their amours, and sometimes recounted another’s story as their own, and I noticed how the same stories altered according to the tellers and the audience. One esquire descrives how he decapitated an enemy, and his amour finds him marvellously courageous; another esquire recounts exactly the same story, and his amour judges him a boaster sanguinary. One knight descrives discovering the corpse of a young page who rode into battle on his master’s mount, and his amour is touched by how this cruel vision must have made the knight suffer; the same knight tells the same story to a second lady, and she’s disgusted he should have been party to such carnage.’

  Berna draped her arm over Laurence and laid her head on his chest. ‘I needn’t know each joint of your battle stories,’ she said. ‘You must have been awfully valorous at Crécy for them to have conferred on you such a generous fief.’

  ‘Oh, the manor wasn’t for my valour at Crécy. I was there certainly, but Berkeley induced them to grant me the manor in the days preceding. They cited my captaincy of the archers at Mantes. I had such a paucity of men, and the city was so damnably difficult to put to fire, my commanders were terribly impressed I managed to arrange as much destruction of French property as I did in so brief a time. Difficult, you know, but not valorous, nor enjoyable. Women and children crying everywhere, old men singeing their beards attempting to extinguish the flames issuing from their houses.’

  ‘I see,’ said Berna, in a diminished voice. She swallowed. ‘I assumed …’

  ‘The fault was mine. I permitted you to assume. I mean it might equally well have been for courage at Crécy. It just arrived differently. That’s war, I’m afraid. One’s enemy isn’t going to give battle unless he feels one’s hand in his pocket, and the pocket, in this case, was the taxpaying citizen of Mantes.’

  Berna commenced to whisper: ‘Might it not have been possible for you …’

  ‘I wasn’t in that place,’ said Laurence testily. ‘I saw they’d stolen a cart, and that was permitted, and it wasn’t until next day I apprehended they’d ravished a woman too.’

  ‘They murdered her papa.’

  ‘A man of fighting age. He owed to have concealed her. I know, I know, it introduces a taint.’

  ‘But …’ Berna ceased. Both were silent for some moments.

  ‘I would that I’d been clearer in my orders,’ said Laurence. ‘I commanded them to show mercy to the church, not to kill w
omen and children, and that was all. I said “Otherwise I ne care what you do.” I gave licence. I owed to know how they would comprehend me.’

  ‘Open your conscience when you confess.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ He clasped her hand so firmly it was clear he judged himself more enfeebled than he was. ‘It’s a cold ritual. My confessions tumble through the priest and on to the Almighty without no return. I’d confess to you. You reply. There’s a frankness to you I ne perceive in others.’

  ‘What would you confess?’

  ‘That I mentioned to you the places I was courageous, and omitted the places courage failed me. I ne know if I had the power to command the archers to release Cess, but I ne attempted the command. How people admire the courage of the chevalier in the field, charging the enemy, when true courage is the knight who defies his friends.’

  ‘I ne know how a priest may perceive very repentance, but surely it’s semblable to regret,’ said Berna.

  ‘Cess presents herself more clearly to my conscience when so many others have died. I suppose she desires to return to Mantes. Her people may reject her. Should she suffer to remain, I would you aid her to find some new existence in Calais.’

  ‘I’ll convey your words to her, and aid her as I may,’ said Berna. ‘I pray God will pardon you if she does not. I discover you ne please me less for what you’ve said.’

  ‘I SUPPOSE HAMMER would be a decent marriage for you once I’ve gone,’ said Laurence. ‘He’s nicely provided for in England but he wouldn’t turn his nose up at a manor in France.’

  ‘That wasn’t my reason for mentioning his name. We passed through his land today.’

  ‘Whether I survive this or not, it is essential that you arrive in Melcombe port by Thursday, to secure the manor for us, or to render yourself marriageable to my successor.’

  He was agitated, and his voice trembled, and he began to cough. Berna urged him to rest, and gave him water, and assured him she would ride to Melcombe next day regardless of his condition, and sail to France, and travel to their manor, and insist on her immediate, unconditional occupancy.

  ‘I’ll go first to the priest and make his acquaintance and apprehend the disposition of the people,’ said Berna. ‘He may be suspicious initially, but he can’t dispute our documents, and he must expect the arrivage of the new lord’s tenant from England. We’ll go together to the manor house, and he’ll introduce me to the servants. We’ll go round the house, opening the shutters, permitting light and fresh air to enter, and I shall take an inventory of everything, and ensure each lock has an accompanying key. I shall discover the mews, and the stables, and the kitchens, and the buttery, and the cellar, and the bedchambers, and the dining hall, and the parlour, and how the poultry is maintained, and the pigs, and the quality of the milk. I shall demand fair payment of the people to use our mill, our forests, our river, our fields and our stone. I shall enforce their duties and their privileges. I shall ensure payment of their rents in silver and in services. I shall choose honest men as my principal officers. I shall be just, yet firm. I shall avoid debts and honour the Haket name and livery in our domestic adornment. My initial priority, of course, will be the harvest, and if God sends, the proceeds will suffice for some modest expenditure on plate, costume and the establishment of a mute of hounds for the chase.’

  In the course of Berna’s prognostications, Laurence fell into a gentle sleep. Not long afterwards, they were visited by the infirmarer.

  BERNA FOUND THOMAS in a more comfortable bed in another part of the abbot’s residence, where he was attended by various surviving members of the abbot’s retinue. He sat up with his back supported by a pile of cushions. Flasks of wine and water stood on a table by his hand, and he had his scribal equipment out on his lap. The chamber was brilliantly illuminated by a multitude of candles.

  He had aged, and his face, like Laurence’s and the archers before they succumbed, was desiccated and colourless. He had attained the same stage of the malady as Berna’s husband, of a fragile alertness, of accommodation to physical frailty, of the corporeal surrendering its meagre remaining resources to provide the spirit with powers and senses to conduct its final business in this world. He smiled at Berna and inquired after Laurence.

  ‘He has esperance of recovery,’ she said, ‘but the infirmarer …’

  ‘The infirmarer is excessively disposed to increasing the population of paradise, in my opinion,’ said Thomas. ‘I feel my condition has improved, yet he advised me to prepare for the priest.’

  Berna’s eyes filled with tears. ‘He said the same regarding Laurence.’

  ‘We shouldn’t be too severe towards him,’ said Thomas. ‘He’s lost many friends. He told me he’d observed some remarkable returns from the borders of eternity. If Cess might survive the pestilence, why not Laurence? He’s young.’

  ‘He desires that I travel to Melcombe tomorrow, regardless of his condition. He put it to me in terms of a command. I promised to obey, but how may I?’

  ‘The manor in English France represents your sole security, and paid passage on the ship departing Thursday your sole reliable form of transportation. No doubt Laurence would rather have your company. To demand your separation is his sacrifice.’

  ‘I endured so much to marry him, and now I must abandon him, when he’s dying? I should appear to the world as a sort of monster whose only desire were property.’

  ‘If your primary concern is for the world’s opinion, of course you must remain.’

  ‘Why are you so horrible to me? Does the fact my husband is departing this world offer me no protection of your moral judgements? Let me savour these hours with him. And if, God save him, the worst— What would become of his memory and remains without me?’

  ‘I compose my final testament,’ said Thomas. ‘Do I survive, I’ll ensure he’s cared for in your absence; do I perish, I shall ensure the abbey adopts the duty. If necessary, I shall endow a chantry, at the expense of my estate. I have no heirs.’

  ‘You are generous. Pardon me my acerbity. I know your condition is as severe as Laurence’s and I am touched that you should remember him when you must compose yourself for the same journey. And here I am, as ever, with my confidences. If my most noble and courageous course is to obey Laurence’s command and abandon him prematurely, I confess to an ignoble lack of courage. I have already disgraced myself by pretending to imagine with him my arrivage in our new domain, as if I cared about anything except his condition.’

  ‘It took more courage to commence your journey than most knights display in combat,’ said Thomas.

  THE MATINS BELL sounds. Avian chorus, solar light. Aqueous blue permeates my quarters. My temperature is elevated. I have no strength to write, yet my mind continues to generate sequential phrases. I am a sheet of Italian paper in the process of inscription, kept from igniting only by the fractional cooling power of the ink. The retention of lexical capacity signifies the persistence of vitality. New clauses form with the regularity of a pulse.

  The excessively young student, Hugo, has returned. The abbot placed him at my disposal yesterday. He has already completed his first year at Oxford. The abbey sent him there, hoping to secure for itself a portion of the fruits of the new scholarship, but it has simply equipped him with the means to categorise the disadvantages of the monastic life.

  We speak in a curious dialect, the locution, I suppose, of the privileged young of the south of England, in which popular English and the French-English of the gentry is augmented by liberal use of Anglicised Latinisms.

  ‘The archer Quate came to pay his respects while you were asleep,’ says Hugo.

  ‘He departed?’

  ‘He promised to pray for you, and light candles for you in France, and expressed the hope you would remember him.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘They left, except the lady Bernadine and her husband. She bade her maidservant to travel with the rest, and she would join them when she could.’

  ‘And Softly?
The sick archer?’

  ‘They took him, against the advice of the infirmarer, who said he wouldn’t suffer a journey. His woman, the Frenchwoman, insisted on his being carried with them.’

  I experience a sense of solitude and abandonment. I am deprived of the conclusion of their journey. And yet I would not endure another moment in the back of a cart.

  ‘Who is the French prisoner?’ asks Hugo.

  I narrate the history of Hayne’s company. The clauses issue from me of their own impetus, and I feel the history expand into a chronicle composed as much of interpretations and imaginings as facts.

  ‘I ne understand,’ says Hugo, when I describe the reformation of the company for the Crécy campaign, ‘why this Hayne would be reunited with such criminals.’

  ‘There was in Softly’s insistence that he merited the precious cross some element profoundly repugnant to Hayne,’ I say. ‘Softly’s pride, his rejection of Hayne’s supremacy as creator of the company, made Hayne decide to transfer punishment into divine hands. He perceived, in the assurances of the clerics that England’s war was just, an opportunity to tempt Softly to transgress beyond the boundaries of what was permitted. His preference was not a secular penalty, but that they be damned to hell of their own volition.’

  ‘I doubt such brutes as these archers are capable of such fine moral reasoning,’ says Hugo.

  ‘The journey to France with Hayne became a contest. Softly would prove to Hayne that he was God’s favourite, that it was his destiny to possess the cross and survive the pestilence. Hayne would demonstrate to Softly that his pride was misplaced, that in the final hour he would attempt repentance, and be humbled, and cry for mercy in Hayne’s hearing.’

  Hugo’s face expresses disgust and fascination at once. ‘What was the result?’ he asks.

  ‘Dickle died unconfessed of a demonically possessed goat. Hornstrake perished of the pestilence, having pleaded for Cess’s mercy. Holiday caught the plague, but was murdered by Softly before he could die of it; and Softly’s condition promises imminent misfortune.’