by James Meek
‘I ne learned you English that you might talk to me in French words I ne know. What’s “cruel”? What’s “envy”? What’s “rape”?’
‘Cruel is grim. Envy is nithe. Rape is to reave a maid of her maidenhood against her will and steal her of her kin.’
‘I cared for you when you sicked. I brought you water and cleaned you and shifted your linen. It were lighter for me to let you die. Maybe it were of helping you then that I sick now.’
‘I sickened in your bonds, far from home. You beat me before I sicked, and you beat me after.’
‘I beat you to help you that you ne misstep. I offered to wed you.’
‘Why would I wed you, John?’
‘None might live if each day they minded each blow they ever took. You owe to learn to forget. I thought me you forgot. You bore arrows for us at Crécy. I learned you to shoot with a bow when you asked. I said you had a good arm.’
‘Let him go to hell,’ said Madlen.
Will bade her be still.
‘I, John Fletcher, am truly sorry for my sins,’ said Cess. ‘I’ve been a wicked man. Forgive me, Lord. Bring me to you. Will you take these words for your own, John?’
Softly looked at Cess. For a stound a keener light came into his eyes. ‘You ne care if my next house be heaven or hell,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t say so,’ said Cess. ‘I wouldn’t be made to answer your wickedness and hardness with vengeance. I wouldn’t be driven to match your break of my life by speeding your damnation. I would that I might believe you know what you have done, and feel at last the hurt of others, and chose your punishment.’
It was like to Softly ne heard, only beheld her with the new light in his eyes. ‘You ne care how Christ deems me after,’ he said. ‘You’d only have me beg forgiveness of you.’
‘Well?’ said Cess with fresh strength, meeting his gaze without fear.
‘I take your words as my own,’ whispered Softly. Something caught in his throat and the light in his eyes began to fade. ‘Out-take one truth I’ll tell you. Believe me, Cess, and let Christ hear if he will. It’s true I am not wicked through and through. But as I did to you in Mantes, so I would do the same to you again. I’m not sorry that Dickle slew your dad, I’m not sorry I took you against your will. I would have you, and I did. That’s the truth.’
‘It ne lessens your wickedness to know you’re wicked and say so,’ said Cess. ‘Won’t you give me more?’
‘You?’ said Softly. ‘This is for Christ. I shan’t tell nor give you nothing.’
‘You’ll bide on Christ for ever. But that ne tokens you should bide with us no more.’
Cess rose to her feet. She took her eyes of Softly, turned and walked away to the cart. As she went by Fallwell and Miredrum, who bore a spade, she said: ‘Take your fee.’
Softly had shut his eyes. Miredrum bent down and took of Softly’s neck the rood and the key to the score’s strongbox. He held them out to Will, who took them.
‘Is there life in him yet?’ said Will.
Fallwell dight the sharp end of the spade gently between Softly’s lips, then set his right foot on the spade. He shoff his foot down hard, with all his weight, and the spade went clean through Softly’s jaw and neck.
‘No,’ said Miredrum. And when the gush of blood was done, he and Falwell went on their knees with their knives to work out the gold in Softly’s teeth.
Cess, Will and Madlen left them there and went on southward with the one old cart. None spoke for miles, though Will and Madlen rode nigh to Cess, who held herself upright and looked about her.
She broke the stillness, though she ne beheld Will nor Madlen when she spoke.
‘I am Cecile de Goincourt,’ she said.
BERNA CLOSED THE door gently and returned to Laurence’s bedside.
‘Was that the chaplain?’ said Laurence, with effort.
‘He’ll return after noon,’ said Berna. ‘Unless you feel …’ She mightn’t complete the condition.
‘If only it were possible to evade my journey out of this world by concealment from the priest.’
‘We may hide under the bed,’ said Berna.
Laurence’s respiration rasped in substitute for laughter. ‘As Earl Dungeness told his jester when he lay mortally wounded, “Keep me amused till the chaplain arrive, but not so much I die before he get here.”’
‘It pleases me to make you laugh,’ said Berna. She caressed his face. ‘I wonder if you appeared as you do now, at once so courageous and afraid, when you faced the French at Crécy. It is like to a grand, terrible power is present, visible to you directly, but to me only reflected in your eyes. I oughtn’t to have imagined you as both a man-at-arms and a courtly lover.’
‘I failed you. Not in the matter of Ness, I mean, not that I avoided to ravish you from your father’s manor … a more general default. That you find me too domestic in my interests, too occupied with material affairs. That you travelled to me and married me because you had no choice.’
‘Have I been so cruel?’ demanded Berna.
‘I ne reproach you. It gives me a certain joy to be the instrument by which you broke open the wells of your courage and escaped your family.’
A tear fell on Berna’s smiling lips as she pressed his hand. ‘I ne comprehend how this may be an end when it appears so like a beginning,’ she said. ‘You are fresh and new to me in your frankness.’
Laurence shook his head very slowly. ‘Too late for frankness,’ he said. ‘I were unreasonable to insist on your honesty now. I were quite content to hear you say you love me now, true or not.’
‘With frankness and honesty,’ said Berna, ‘I say there’s very love between us. Having considered your painful words I’ll tell you its nature. Not the love of gentleman and lady, nor man and wife, nor dreamer and rose. It is the love of one knight for another. Of a knight who loves her comrade because her comrade, despite going astray, is ready to be recalled to his duty, and remains loyal thereafter, in the face of the first knight’s resentment that he falls short of her ideal.’
‘Of a knight who loves his comrade,’ said Laurence, ‘because she’s more courageous than any other, and for all her disappointment in him she ne abandons him, no matter how great the danger. She is his Warm Welcome.’
‘And the Rose …’
‘… is elsewhere.’
‘They quest for it together.’
‘Until the hour she must go on alone,’ said Laurence.
Berna mounted the bed, lay down beside Laurence and embraced him closely.
THE DORSET DOWNS swalled yet and dipped about Will, Madlen and Cecile, but their height wasn’t so much as before. The air was brighter, like to the sun had nighed the earth. The soft warm wind bore an outcome smack of otherness.
‘I would that you ne took that rood for your own,’ said Madlen to Will. ‘I would that you ne wed no life but mine.’
‘We may not love but if we eat,’ said Will.
The two white swaths of the road wrothe and clamb to a height, then fell away. Will stinted his horse. Far away on the brink of sight lay a mighty blue rock that stretched into the sky. Will sat in the saddle astoned. The rock, a kind of great hill, seemed not only to reach into the sky, but to float on it. Beneath the hill, instead of land, lay an endless even field of blue, of almost the same hue as the sky, only a little darker. The mark where the two lines met was misty and the field, like the sky, seemed to have no end.
‘I ne know what I see,’ said Will.
‘The sea,’ said Madlen. ‘It’s the sea.’
THEY WENT DOWN toward the hill and came to the haven of Melcombe. The streets were still and the shops shuttered. An old woman who sat on her doorstep and twisted rope told them the pest had set in a month before, of a ship from Brest, and ne slackened, out-take there were fewer souls left for the Maker to pick.
Will asked were the cog Welfare there, and the roper beheld him with a sour eye and said he wasn’t the first to ask. She told them to look for the shi
p at the haven wharf.
The wharf stank of salt and fish. Great white birds of the muchness of lambs wandered about. Shrill cries came of their beaks. The dark seawater clapped the stones and timbers of the wharf, and the greater sound of the endless sea was in their ears, like the woods threshed by the wind. Many small ships were moored there, and one greater, with a castle at the back end and a thick high mast. All along its upper side were likenesses of great fish and deer and birds and cats dight with spots and bars. A long-haired knave, bare-chested in a straw hat, sat on a board hung over the side and wrought with a brush the likenesses of some grey cattle with much ears and long horns of their mouths. The knave had a gold pin in one ear and an outcome token branded on his shoulder.
Will said he sought the master of the Welfare.
‘The old master’s buried in the churchyard,’ said the knave. ‘He was my father, God keep him.’
‘God keep him,’ said Will.
‘Thanks that you say so like it were fresh,’ said the knave. ‘I and my brother are the leave of shipmen now, and we share the cog with my mother and my brother’s wife.’ He took a second brush of a second can and gave the cattle eyes. ‘All four of us overlived the pest. We lost my father and two mates.’
‘We lost many.’
‘It ne gives time to mourn for one before it takes another.’
‘Have you bode on us so long as to write these likenesses?’
‘Dad ne let us hight the ship brightly as we would.’
‘May you bear us to Calais?’
‘Why would we?’
‘You’re bound to bear Hayne Attenoke’s score,’ said Will.
‘Not without the tally stick.’
‘It comes.’
‘We sail tomorrow, with you or without you,’ said the shipman. He beheld them over his shoulder and laughed. ‘I see no score,’ he said.
‘I’m the last.’
‘You’re not,’ said the shipman. His eyes looked beyond them.
They turned, and Hayne was there.
‘MASTER HAYNE,’ SAID Will. ‘We feared for you.’ He smiled.
Hayne ne answered. The giant stood still and beheld him without no light in his cheer.
Will took the rood of his neck and gave it to Hayne, who took it and dight it on himself.
‘I thought me I was the last,’ said Will. ‘You left without a word.’ He told Hayne what had befallen the others.
‘You alone overlived to come here before the ship sailed,’ said Hayne.
‘Was I wrong to come?’ asked Will.
‘He means you were wrong not to die,’ said Cecile.
Hayne beheld her like to he ne knew of where came the sound of woman’s speech. He turned to Will again.
‘You would that I take you to France as a bowman,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ said Will.
‘I warned you not to come. I warned you not to leave your town. You knew what my other bowmen had done, yet you cleaved to them like to you ne cared. As if however they’d be damned, you’d willingly be damned with them. Now here you are, heal and well, like to you think yourself better than the others.’
‘Sweetmouth and Mad went away free,’ said Will. ‘They weren’t harmed.’
‘Maybe they were harmed.’
‘By you?’ said Cecile.
‘Ne speak,’ Hayne told her.
‘I’ll speak,’ said Cecile. ‘You drew your men to damn themselves by hurting me and killing my father. You ne hindered them. You led them to their deaths in steadings where they ne lightly found absolution. All this you did in my name, in the name of the deeds against me and my father, the deeds you allowed. And you tell me not to speak?’
‘I work in no one’s name,’ said Hayne. ‘I work for right alone.’
He beheld Will. ‘We’ll go to France. But mind my law. One who’s not guilty will be hurt.’
He grabbed Madlen by the arm and dragged her to him, pinning her to his chest. Will sprang at him but Hayne dealt Will such a blow with his free arm that the young man fell to the ground. While Will gathered his wits and got to his feet again Hayne drew his long knife and made to hew open Madlen’s throat.
The air rushed aside. Two rows of goose feathers were pitched in Hayne’s shoulder. The iron head stood out of Hayne’s shirt at the back. Blood dropped on the stones.
Cecile had taken Softly’s strung bow of the cart, nocked a war arrow and shot it from ten yard away.
‘Who learned you to shoot?’ said Hayne. He let Madlen go. She ran to stand by Will.
‘My foe learned me,’ said Cecile.
‘He owed to have learned you to have another arrow ready did the first miss its mark.’
Will drew his knife.
‘It ne missed its mark,’ said Cecile. ‘I wouldn’t kill you, for I wouldn’t be like you.’
Hayne put his knife back in its belt, went to Cecile, took the rood of his neck and offered it to her. She shook her head.
‘Were I to take it I would throw it in the sea,’ she said. ‘It’s your burden.’
Hayne went to where he’d left his gear and took his great bow, seven foot long. He went to the shipman, who’d beheld from his board without stirring, and gave him the bow.
‘Have you all the hues?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ said the shipman.
‘Dight a bar of each on my bow. I ne need it no more. The days of right are over.’ He said to Will: ‘Fare further without me.’ And he walked away northward, as heedless of the arrow stuck out of him as if it were a thorn in his hand.
‘I thought me you hated us,’ said Will to Cecile.
‘I fairly did,’ said Cecile. ‘But Softly and Hayne made that hate. Be it ever so right for me to keep, I wouldn’t have nothing of theirs no more.’
THE NEW WORLD
THE SHIPMEN WOULDN’T let them go up into the cog without the tally stick that showed the fee had been given. The leave tide was at noon next day, they said. They’d bide no longer.
Madlen, Cecile and Will went to the strand and sat there to behold the sea and hear its crash and hiss. Will stripped to his breech and swam in the waves. The water had a saltier smack than any broth. Cecile and Madlen walked in up to their knees. They drank ale and ate dried fish they bought of a huckster, who told them the great hill that stood over Melcombe was called Portland.
They went through the goods in the cart. There were many rich old clothes that Softly had stolen of Mere Castle, a heap of arrows, bowstrings, clubs, wicker shields, iron caps and the strongbox. Will opened it with the key. Cecile told the pennies, for there were too many for Will and Madlen to tell: two hundred and seven.
‘They’re ours now,’ said Madlen.
Will asked Cecile to teach them to tell things greater than a hundred. Madlen said it was a waste of time, and would Will not walk with her, and leave Cecile a while? Will said he would come later. Madlen went to sit by herself near the water while Cecile showed Will how to work arsmetrick with shells and strokes in the sand. Each answer to ‘How many?’ was a number, she said, and Will minded he’d heard the priest and Anto the reeve use the word ‘number’ in Outen Green, but hadn’t known what it meant.
Will coughed and Madlen came again. She laid her hand on his forehead. ‘You’re hot,’ she said. ‘Are you dizzy?’
‘A little,’ said Will.
‘Does your throat hurt?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you weak?’
‘Hayne’s mightier than me, but when he hit me it seemed I went down lightly.’
‘I’ll care for you, loveman,’ said Madlen.
‘You said it made you bold to know all must die soon.’
‘I thought me I’d sicken first,’ said Madlen. ‘Besides, now you sick, I know what I ne knew then, that I wouldn’t never have you die.’
When the sun was low the lady Bernadine rode into Melcombe. She wore a set of Laurence Haket’s clothes, and had shorn her hair short, and sat astride her horse like to a man. Her face was
dirty with dust and dried tears, for Laurence Haket’s ghost had shifted house. They sang for him in the abbey, and would sing and bid beads and burn candles till his brother came to fetch his body. Thomas gave the silver for it.
Will asked after Thomas.
‘He bade me wish you well before he laid his eyes together,’ said the lady Bernadine. ‘He said he was as ready for the next world as a man could be. He was shriven to his bones, they aneled him. He said his farewells. I have his writings in my bag, though I ne know where to send them. When I asked him he said “Avignon, Edinburgh”.’
She told them she wouldn’t fare further as no widow, for she was weary of the way folk dealt with lone women on the road. Until they reached the new manor, she said, she would go as a man, and bade them make out to all that she was Laurence Haket, a noble young man-at-arms, in mourning for his bride, the fair Bernadine. When she spoke these words, ‘the fair Bernadine’, she fell weeping into Madlen’s arms.
They went to the ship. Laurence gave the shipmen her half of the tally stick. They took out theirs and the two halves matched.
Will’s strength held out long enough to help load the horses and cart on board and fill the ship’s casks with ale and water. They gave him a stead to rest in, a straw bed shaded by a stretch of cerecloth against the castle at the back of the ship, and he fell into a long feverish dream.
He dreamed he came to Outen Green at Martinmas, when the trees were black and bare, when the ground and the roofs were white with frost and smoke rose of all the smoke holes. The day dwined and lights glimmered through each shutter, like to even the poorest had found the means and need to burn candles at home before sunset.
