The Outcasts of Time

by Ian Mortimer

  I say nothing. I wonder if my own house at Wrayment is in the same state.

  We walk on, across the frosted grass of pastureland. Clearly, few people take this path nowadays. Lost in our private thoughts, we say little to each other until we are almost in Moreton. There we see the old church. On the west end now stands a huge grey granite tower of four stages in height proudly lording it over the locality.

  ‘That wasn’t there yesterday,’ says William.

  ‘Why did they build a new tower and not a new church? It looks as ungainly as a man in armour riding a pony.’

  ‘It’s a sign to Chagford,’ William replies. ‘Our tower is higher than their tower.’

  The road into Moreton now has three large thatched houses on either side. As we pass, the distant church bell rings, and then a whole peal of five bells breaks the silence with a bronze song. A single bell used to call people to Mass in our day.

  ‘There’s your answer. They built the tower to hold the bells,’ says William.

  Everything seems to have changed in the centre of town. In the square there are wooden houses where market stalls used to stand. Most of the buildings around the outside have been rebuilt in granite with painted shutters and wide oak doors. People are dressed in the strangest clothes. I see a woman with her hair fashioned in such a way that it sticks up like a pair of horns, draped in a fine white cloth. William and I cannot help but stare: is that any way to attend church, looking like the Devil’s sister? Several of the men look just as strange, wearing short tunics that do not reach down as far as the knee. Some of the younger ones have tunics that barely cover their buttocks. An older, portly gentleman with white hair and beard strides across the square in a long black robe and with a hood folded a little like William used to fold his in our day. But even he has sleeves that hang down to his knees, so he has to walk with his hands crossed over his chest to stop himself from treading on them.

  ‘Do you want to go to worship, truly?’ William asks.

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘Everything is too much like a bad dream. Maybe later.’

  More people enter the square, and stare at us. We walk among them, squinting in the bright light, self-conscious. Married women in their wimples and brightly dyed long dresses glance at us disapprovingly. Unmarried girls with their hair flowing, wearing long skirts and bodice-like short tunics, laugh at us surreptitiously. Fathers wearing strangely pointed hats lower the brims. One young woman in a group is wearing a quite plain long gown, shaped around her breasts, with long sleeves, and neat, pointed leather shoes. It is only because she is walking alone behind the rest of the family that I see that she is actually a servant. But even she sneers a dislike of our appearance.

  ‘Have you seen a single pauper?’ murmurs William.

  ‘Not unless paupers have taken to wearing clothes trimmed with rabbit or fox.’

  We walk out of the town on the lane that leads down into the Wray Valley. The bridge over the Wraybrook has been rebuilt, and the fields on either side have been given over to pasture. We pass more people hastening towards the church. Some are clearly country workers – their clothes less shaped to their bodies than those we saw in the square – but even these are of fine cloth. No one looks poor, except us. Our appearance is dishevelled, abandoned and uncared for – like the ruined building up at Butterdon.

  In the valley, the farm at Storryge has changed almost beyond recognition, with many more outbuildings and a linney. Whoever lives there now has thrown out some old crumbs for the birds; a thrush is feeding, and a robin cheekily joins in. From here a lane leads towards my house. Trees have grown up where there were none before, and brambles choke a pathway down to the brook.

  As I walk I am full of anticipation. But when we draw near to the place, my hope crumples. Everything is overgrown, engulfed by the lord’s beech woods. When I finally see the walls, they are partly covered in ivy. They stand a little higher than those of the ruin up at Butterdon but only to head height. The large granite lintel above the doorway has been stolen, and the roots of a tree have split the back wall in two, so that part of it has fallen outwards. It is like a rocky outcrop emerging from a sea of dead leaves and beech mast.

  I put down my travelling sack and enter this place of ruined stone, rooks and roots. One window aperture is still intact, gazing into the leaves of a bush. Many times I have walked over to that of a morning, and pushed open the shutter, letting the first light into the house, and then turned to the middle of the hall to raise the heat from last night’s ashes. I look at a decayed fallen branch that now lies where my fire burned, and where I would sit with Catherine after the children were asleep, drinking the ale she brewed. Maybe she survived and left this place. Did the bailiff force her to remarry? The ruins speak of abandonment and death. Clearly none of our children inherited this house and our four acres.

  Even if Catherine and the boys outlived me by a few years, they are all dead now. William, John, even little James. All their bones are rotting in the graveyard. A breeze rustles the ivy. I close my eyes and know that, truly, I too am dead. I slowly walk across the floor of what was my home, feeling the sodden ground beneath my feet. Am I a ghost? Are the people in the town who are looking at us so strangely seeing ghosts? What good can a ghost do to save his soul?

  I press my hand against a wall. It feels cold. My hand feels mortal. I cannot pass through walls. If I lift something it rises. I can hear birdsong. When I spoke to the miller at Cranbrook, he heard me. I am no ghost.

  ‘Come on,’ says William gently. ‘There’s nothing here now but sorrow.’

  ‘Where shall we go?’

  ‘I thought you were hoping to do some good works?’

  ‘Damn it, William. In six days? What can we do in that time? I am beginning to think we do not deserve to go to Paradise. It is not a matter of what we’ve done, it is because of what we are.’

  I gesture to the walls. ‘This was my home. Catherine and I lived here happily, and our boys . . .’

  ‘At least you had a home. At least you had a family. You were blessed. Did you see where my house stood, when we were in the square? A new building has taken its place. You’ll find no trace of me in Moreton. But if we were to go to Exeter now, we would surely see your carvings. If we were to go to Salisbury or Taunton, we would see them in those places too. Pinnacles and portraits, kings and prophets. The grace of your soul will move folk forever.’

  I say nothing, feeling the chill of the air. The harsh cry of a crow momentarily fills the valley.

  ‘Listen,’ he continues, ‘we all have regrets. I regret the moment you picked up that child. But a regret changes nothing. Maybe we already had the plague beforehand – maybe we were carrying it in our clothes all the way from Salisbury. I don’t know. But I do know this: no loss is absolute. There is always something left to live for.’

  I look across the valley at the trees on the top of the hill. ‘When one of my sons was upset after dark, I used to lift him up and come out here and tell him to look up. I’d tell him, when you look up into a tree, even at night, you can see some vague outline of its branches. It’s never truly dark.’

  ‘Exactly. Is that not an embodiment of hope, and something worth clinging to? We’ve only each other now. But that is something. And we are not the only folk in the world. Truly, John, a man can find love in a woman’s arms, and in her smile and in her laughter, even though he has spent no more than an hour in her company. You do not even need to touch her – just to see her move and hear her speak can make the troubles of the world seem like nothing. Does that not make your heart feel lighter?’

  I say nothing.

  William sighs. ‘John, I do not know what to say. So let me just say this. When we live our days, one after the other, and nothing changes, we think that each one is like a pebble in the path, as if it’s nothing special. We are shocked when we hear the rattle of death in our own chests, and we realise that that ordinary-looking pebble in the path is the last such stone that we will ever see.
It seems less ordinary then. But in truth, you and I have been blessed. We’ve been allowed to see that every day – every moment of every day – is a gift. Do you not think that, with but a few days left to live, the world is a wonderful place? Is this tree here not a miracle, returning with new shoots each spring, not flinching from the forester’s axe but yielding up its timber for fences and gates? Are you not happy to spend a few more moments of life smelling the damp earth from which all things grow? Are you not content to see a girl’s long hair as it cascades around her shoulders? Are you not proud to notice a young lad’s concentration as he aims with his bow? Do you not feel honoured to be a man when you see a mother attending to her children? There’s so much beauty in the world, don’t close your eyes to it just because you’ve lost your own small patch of happiness.’

  ‘I am lucky to have you as a brother. I should have been here alone, by rights. I have not forgotten how you chose to be here with me.’

  ‘Life in our time would have been unbearable without you.’

  ‘But you wanted to stay.’

  William looks away. ‘It was different for me. In the circle. I did not hear the same things that you heard.’

  ‘Why? What did you hear?’

  ‘I cannot tell you. Not now. But I will. Later.’

  We walk back to the bridge over the Wraybrook and I empty my fardel on to a flat-topped boulder nearby. There are the things we took from the merchant and his wife – the purse, book and rosary beads with the silver crucifix. And there are my own things: a spare pair of hosen, a dirty old tunic, two dirty shirts, a stoneworker’s leather apron, seven chisels of varying sizes, a whetstone, an old wooden mallet, an almost-new mallet, two candles, a piece of flint, and my own purse containing five shillings, sixpence and three farthings. Those were my savings from nigh on two months’ work in Salisbury. I was intending to give that money to Catherine, to see the family through the winter.

  William picks up the merchant’s purse and tips the coins into the grimy palm of his hand. There are about thirty and he sets them on the stone, one by one. Half are gold. Apart from these, there are two English groats and three pennies, which I recognise; the rest are foreign silver coins. I examine one of them: it has a picture of a man in a mitre holding a cross on one side, and on the other it shows a cross with what looks like petals or flames coming out of it. There is writing around the edge but it means nothing to me.

  ‘What’s this?’ I ask, handing it to William.

  ‘That’s the Pope,’ he says. He gauges the weight. ‘Each one’s worth about a shilling.’

  ‘So, if all those gold coins are florins and these are worth a shilling each . . . That’s more than three pounds.’

  ‘And that does not include your own money, or mine . . .’ He reaches for the purse on his belt. ‘Curses, I put it in my fardel yesterday. I had twenty-seven shillings.’

  ‘It does not matter. How much can we spend in six days, anyway? Methinks we should donate Lazarus’s money to the church.’

  There is the cry of the crow again – but an agitated call this time, repeated twice.

  Silence follows.

  We look at each other. The bird does not cry out again.

  ‘I have the feeling we are being watched,’ says William, looking around.

  I catch a glimpse of a red tunic moving through the trees on the side of the valley. A moment later I see a man running, and hear more shouting. I tap William and point.

  We quickly put the coins back in the purse, which I replace in my fardel. Up in the woods, someone cries out. It sounds like a child. We hasten back along the road towards my house and take an overgrown path up the hillside. It is steep but the lichen-covered boughs and thick trunks provide good cover for us as we ascend. Further up, we spy the thatch of a cottage. A large fallen trunk gives us a hiding place, from which we can look and listen.

  ‘Why are we moving towards the danger?’ asks William in a whisper.

  ‘You heard the cry. Someone needs our help.’

  ‘Another one of your good works?’

  I gesture for him to be quiet as we hear the child – a boy – cry out again. ‘No, no! Don’t!’

  ‘Just string him up by his hands,’ says a man with a deep voice.

  I look at William. ‘You know what I think? We could spend the rest of our short lives seeking safety, running from one shelter to another. Or we could just do what is right, wherever we go.’

  ‘You sound like an Arthurian knight.’

  ‘No, just an out-of-work mason, nothing more, as you said—’

  Before I can finish the sentence we hear a girl’s scream, which is immediately stifled. I creep around the side of the fallen trunk and continue up the slope to a track, moving between the cover of the bare trees. I hear William following. In front of the cottage there is a muddy clearing. A pig pen and a small sheep enclosure are just off to one side. I see five horses tethered to the fence, their breath clouding in the cold air. One of them is a fine black courser, fit for a lord. Two men, both middle-aged and well built, with swords at their sides, are struggling with a dark-haired boy of about eleven years of age; he is frantically trying to untie the rope they have put around his wrists. Two other men are watching, one dressed in a grey and pale-blue tunic, the other in a leather jerkin with a red surcoat on top. The surcoat carries the design of a white chevron on the breast: the arms of the Fulford family.

  The Fulfords’ seat is across the river, near Dunsford. In our day they were always causing trouble in Moreton, breaking down fences, hunting other people’s deer and stealing cattle – all done in the company of that archvillain, the rector of Moreton, Philip de Vautort. There were no other gentlemen in the area to stop them. The lords of the neighbouring manors lived elsewhere and sent their bailiffs to administer their lands and collect the rents, leaving the Fulfords and de Vautort free to do what they pleased together.

  One of the men throws the boy to the ground. ‘Teach him a lesson, Walt,’ he says in the same deep voice we heard earlier. He looks like a friar, in his late thirties, except that he is wearing a livery badge on his brown tunic: this one shows a white chevron on a red background.

  He stamps on the boy’s chest.

  Walt, who has a scrunched-up face, drags the boy along by the rope, over the frozen muddy ruts, first one way and then back, tossing the end of the rope on his return to the nearly bald man, who flings it over a bough and hauls the boy up into the air. The boy hangs by his hands, kicking, struggling and gasping.

  The man in the grey and blue tunic, who is smaller and fair-haired, laughs. He too has the badge of the Fulfords on his breast.

  The man in the red surcoat picks up a stone and tosses it, hitting the boy in the face. ‘A hit!’ he exclaims.

  The cottage door opens. A stocky man dressed in the richest black clothes comes out. He walks over to the hanging boy and pushes him, setting him swinging. When he speaks, his voice has a roughness to it. ‘Now your sister has satisfied me, it is your turn. Where is your father’s money?’

  The boy says nothing as he swings.

  The man steps forward and puts his hand on the shoulder of the nearly bald retainer. ‘Your turn next, John,’ he says. ‘But don’t hurt her this time. I like her smooth skin.’

  ‘Fulford,’ I whisper.

  ‘Ninety-nine years have done nothing to end that family’s villainies,’ William replies.

  Fulford approaches the boy. He rests his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘I am sure you think me a tyrant, and that this is all unnecessary. And you would be right. I am a tyrant – and all this is indeed unnecessary. So tell me where your father hides his money, and then, when we have all had a bit of fun with your sister, we will set you on the ground again, and leave you alone.’

  I cannot stop myself. I could perhaps have resisted the anger rising in me about the treatment of the boy. Maybe I could have resisted responding to the abuse of the girl. But not the two together. I step forward straight into the clear
ing, my heart beating like that of a man in battle. I don’t even think to hide my fardel. ‘Leave him be!’ I bellow. ‘You have no right to hurt these people.’

  Fulford turns to face me. ‘And what have we here? A warrior of God? A rescuer of children? Or one who carries a torch for the girl? Just wait in line. There’ll be some left for you when we’ve done. Even if you do look like you’ve slept under a dungheap.’

  ‘Let him down,’ I say.

  ‘Do NOT tell me what to do, churl.’

  ‘Let him down – or this might be the last day that ever you see.’

  ‘And what are you going to kill me with, eh? Are you going to draw your knife and hold me down and stick me like a pig while my men stand by and watch? Or are you going to fart so much I choke on your wind? If you’re going to threaten me, there needs to be more than one of you, and you should come prepared for a fight.’

  ‘I am ready to fight,’ I say.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With the sure knowledge, promised me last night by the Devil himself, at Scorhill, that I will not die today.’

  I watch Fulford’s frown as he tries to read my expression, unsure whether to laugh or guard against the evil eye. His attention shifts to something behind me.

  ‘He is not alone,’ says William, striding towards the horses tethered at the fence. ‘Today, he has the Devil on his side and I have God on mine.’ He unties the great black horse. ‘Life is full of surprises,’ he adds, as he grabs the reins and climbs into the saddle. ‘If you want this beast back, you’ll have to catch me.’ And with that he rides off down the path.

  ‘Get him!’ yells Fulford, and the men all rush to the other horses. Alerted by the noise, John comes out of the cottage tying the drawstring on his hosen. ‘No, John, Tom, you two hold back, leave it to Rob and Walt,’ orders Fulford. He shouts to them as they ride away, ‘And make sure you drag him back here on his bloody knees.’ Then he turns back to me. ‘As for you, if the Devil is on your side, then he has met his match.’

  ‘What does the boy’s father owe you?’ I say. ‘Tell me, and I will pay.’