To Calais, In Ordinary Time Page 26

  Thomas, Longfreke and Madlen would seek Laurence Haket and the lady Bernadine.

  Will said he would go with Madlen, and Longfreke wrathed.

  ‘Would you break your bowman’s oath a second time, and not yet drawn a bow in anger?’ he said in a high steven. ‘You’re sworn into the true and only score of Hayne Attenoke of Gloucester, where I now rightly spell as leader, and by all the hallows, you’ll hear what I bid you. You’re a soldier, and a soldier’s not free to have his will, but works with his fellows at his leader’s bidding, like one ox in a gang. Now bide here till I come again. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Will.

  ‘I’m Master Gilbert to you.’

  ‘Yeah, Master Gilbert.’

  Longfreke, Thomas and Madlen went on their way. Madlen led the horse and as she went she turned and blew a kiss to Will.

  For a handwhile the others were still and there wasn’t no sound but the scrape of Stucken’s spade in the earth and the mild snores and coughs of the priest, who’d writhen himself up like a baby on the grass and fallen asleep.

  ‘Longfreke ne frighted the priest much,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘I ne reckon our Player much frighted neither.’

  ‘How to make men fear your strength when death’s come to town to play the same game?’ said Mad.

  Sweetmouth wrinkled his nose. ‘To call seven men a score, and one of them at grave’s brink, Lord keep him. And why should Will not be with his maid till we leave?’

  ‘Madlen’s my friend,’ said Will.

  Sweetmouth and Mad laughed. ‘We know what you’d get of that friendship,’ said Sweetmouth.

  ‘As Death said to the old man who finished his house on the day he died,’ said Mad, ‘“Better late than never.”’

  The priest opened his eyes and sat up.

  ‘Your man Stucken looks ready to let that one be buried,’ said Sweetmouth, nodding to where the crookback had drawn Ed Sutton’s body to the brink of the pit. ‘Why do you call him Stucken?’

  ‘It’s short for Stuck-in-the-bushes,’ said the priest, yawning. ‘He’s always stuck in the bushes near where the children go to swim.’

  Sweetmouth laughed, then shifted his cheer to one more meetly dismal. ‘We wouldn’t be merry here,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll tell you a thing,’ said the priest. He brushed grass of his clothes. ‘I’ve learned much of our kind these last days. How those who speak most loudly of man’s wickedness as the root of this sickness, they most eager to buy candles and masses and hallows’ likenesses against it, are the slowest to help their fellow when he sickens. How those like Stucken, deemed low and foul and cursed by heaven, found hidden in the bushes with their breech around their ankles beholding young folk, who mayn’t stand straight, stake their lives five times a day handling the bodies of the dead, when no one else would. And how that which seems wondrous may with daily use become stale and old. And how we may laugh even in the midst of this.’

  The priest bent forward to cough. A gobbet of dark spit came of his mouth and he wiped his lips with the back of his hand and went on. ‘Ed Sutton and the other tuckers, when they heard the death was truly come, they knew they had but a short time left to drink. Every night they’d be awake till the ale they drank barely stopped in their bladders long enough to turn to piss. Two days ago we went to fetch one of them of his house, Gibby, dead as a doornail. I aneled him, we wound him in a sheet, and buried him. He was the first to go in the pit. We’d barely walked ten yard of the hole when we heard him yelling he was either in hell or in Heytesbury, and if it were Heytesbury, the town had a priest too many. When we saw him there stood in the pit, his head stuck out the end of his winding sheet, cursing us, we laughed, Stucken and I. We mightn’t help ourselves. He’d drunk so much his wife had taken him for dead.’

  He shook his head and wiped his hands on his kirtle. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘yesterday he died again, for good this time, and that wasn’t so merry.’

  ALL DAY I have been afflicted by perspiration, jugular discomfort, a dolour located in the cranial region and a powerful desire for liquid refreshment. I am percussed by conflicting desires: to proceed rapidly to a private place where I might examine myself and discover the nature of my symptoms, or alternately to ignore the signs of tribulation in expectation of their natural increase and disappearance, like the ordinary febrile manifestations to which all men are subject.

  Longfreke and Madlen were silent adjuncts on alternate sides as we ambled through the vill, Madlen conducting the horse. Surreptitiously I observed their faces for signs that they, too, experienced febrile symptoms whose existence they would not admit.

  Longfreke requested that Madlen distance herself from us, as he had personal matters to discuss with me; and Madlen, increasing her pace, separated from our company.

  We continued in silence for some moments. I am so accustomed to the profound cicatrix dividing his face that it no longer prevents me detecting other indications of change in his appearance. Our eyes coursed over each other’s features for signs of inquietude, and our lips trembled, as if each recognised something risible in our vulnerability, as if only respect for the surviving inhabitants of Heytesbury prevented us from collapsing in uncontrollable laughter there in the way.

  It occurred to me that, as a military man, he was well acquainted with situations when not only he but all those around him perceived the limits of their mortality.

  As if my ruminations were transparent to him, he said he would prefer to die in combat. He said he desired to conduct the archers at least to the littoral, that they be securely transmitted to France. His conscience was the clearer, he said, for our previous conversations. And as if to re-examine his actions for malificent qualities he had failed to perceive, he commenced for me an account of the origins of Hayne Attenoke’s company.

  HAYNE FIRST GATHERED his score ten year before, said Longfreke, after the French burned Portsmouth, and the southern havens lacked walls and men to man them. When Hayne set up in the George and Worm in Gloucester and called for bowmen, he told them it was to help the folk of Hampshire, who might seem like outcome churls, but were as English as they were. He told them a tale of how grim the French and hard-hearted, how they slew the guiltless, stole English folk as thralls, reft maids of their maidenhoods and burned whole streets to blue ashes. Hayne would lead bold men to shield the Hampshire havens, to ward the weak and old and children of the wicked French. He made it sound as if his score would fight with a red rood on their chests against an un-Christen foe, like to Englishmen in Palestine two hundred year before.

  Longfreke nad five and twenty winter then, a cooper’s son in Gloucester, and Dickle and Softly young Bristol knaves who wrought the Severn ships and hung about the George between fares. None knew who Hayne was or where he came from, and if folk said he’d fought the Scots at Halidon, and fought for the king’s father against his queen and Mortimer, it was they said it, not he. What drove them to cleave to Hayne were his fair words. Dickle and Softly had clean hearts then. Them thought Hayne might lead them to be great fighters in another’s song, a song folk would sing long after they were fallen.

  Hayne led the score to Southampton. The burghers of the town wouldn’t hire them and bade them leave, but on the day they were to go home again, the French landed and burned the town. Hayne and the score fought to shield Domus Dei sickhouse of the foe, and Softly, with a wonder shot, killed the French captain who led the other side against them. Afterwards, when the French left, folk in the town showed their thanks to the bowmen in silver and gave Hayne the rood he always wore on a chain about his neck. Softly said the rood should be his, for he shot the arrow that slew the French captain. But Hayne wouldn’t yield it, and Softly ne forgave him never.

  When the score came together again eight year later to fight for the king in France, the fight that ended with Crécy and the take of Calais, Hayne was the same, and Longfreke ne thought himself shifted, but Softly and Dickle had become other. Softly had his gold teeth a
nd Dickle had the rood on his forehead and the marks of nail-wounds on his hands and feet, and each of them had a devil in him. It had been in the gleam of their eyes. On the way to Crécy and Calais the score burned French towns and took French goods. All King Edward’s men did that, as they were bidden by the king, and the king’s captains. It was war. It wasn’t no sin. But Softly and Dickle also killed the guiltless, and ne worthed no Frenchwoman’s soul higher than a fly’s.

  ‘Cess,’ said Thomas, ‘and her father.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Longfreke.

  ‘Why would Hayne take such a man as Softly with him to France now?’

  ‘To pine him for his pride,’ said Longfreke. ‘And Softly the same on his side. Hayne thought to bring Softly to a land rotten with qualm where he would die with all his sin unshriven and be damned in hell for ever. But Softly thinks he won’t die. Him thinks he’ll show Hayne how God loves him, and always meant for him to have the rood. Softly would that Hayne see how he may reave a woman of her maidenhood, kill her father and steal her of her kin, and instead of striking him down, God speeds him and helps him win. Softly would that Hayne see how he, Softly, go over the qualm-lands without hurt, and go unshriven, day after day, and ne fall sick, but go him rich to Bristol, and have a great shrift at home when he is old and ready.’

  ‘Why did you come?’ said Thomas.

  ‘I’m a soldier, and Hayne is my master.’

  ‘But what said he to you when he came again of Bristol, after he saw Softly about this fare to Calais?’

  ‘The same as he said to Sweetmouth and Mad,’ said Longfreke. ‘He said: “I go with Softly and his woman and his friends to Calais. I would you come with me, but it were better for you that you ne come.”’

  ‘And yet you ne heeded his warning. You came.’

  ‘I’m a follower,’ said Longfreke.

  They reached a great house that might only be the bailiff’s. They stinted by the gate. Longfreke furrowed his brow. He looked down and shook his head. ‘I held Hayne a right handy man and good,’ he said. ‘I ne know why he’d leave us now, when we’re in plight.’

  THE BAILIFF OF Heytesbury had gone to visit his lord, who had his residence at a different manor a journey away, and Berna and Laurence were received by the bailiff’s wife, Matilda. She interrupted their explanations by offering chambers in her house for the night. She was a long, powerful, red-cheeked dame in a rude white apron and kerchief, constantly in movement as she attempted to rally the village against distress, issuing orders to servants and villagers, then commencing execution of the very action she demanded of them in the same instant, which obliged her servants to press on in rapid imitation – measuring infusions of feverfew, dispersing rue and vinegar, arranging search parties in houses that appeared deserted, delivering supplies to sufferers, consulting with the priest, registering vacant properties in the manorial record book, praying, chanting and lighting incense. Matilda ensured that orphans were placed with families to nourish them and abandoned beasts were transferred to heritors. She had converted part of the stable into an infirmary for those with none to care for them.

  All afternoon, Laurence and Berna attended in Matilda’s hall to hear that the priest had attained the leisure to marry them. With Madlen’s help Berna laved and adorned herself and Laurence, too, found clean garments, while Madlen put away the marriage gown in favour of a lamentable old smock that had been the property of Matilda’s sister. Matilda’s surviving servants, her cook having perished two days previously, were occupied with their mistress’s endeavours to combat the effects of the pestilence. When Thomas arrived, he went immediately to rest, and Longfreke only remained long enough to report that Hornstrake would soon receive the final sacrament, and that the remaining archers had found lodging in an abandoned house by the church.

  Outside it rained. In the hall, hung with poorly fashioned Flemish tapestries, Madlen came and went on the duties assigned her by Berna and Laurence, which consisted principally in shoe-cleaning and the carriage of water. A mutton roasted on a spit over the fire. Every so often Laurence gave the spit a turn. As the meat browned he cut slices and laid them on a wooden platter on the grand table in the centre of the hall. He and Berna had already consumed more than they desired.

  In the distance they heard the sound of the priest’s bell. As if roused from sleep, a woman in the stable who had fallen silent recommenced her piercing lamentation. She appeared to be pronouncing a name, but they couldn’t perceive whose it was.

  With tender care, Laurence cut a large slice of mutton of the thigh and held it up to demonstrate to Berna how it wasn’t no denser than a piece of cloth.

  ‘I was inducted into the art as a page at my lord Berkeley’s table,’ said Laurence. ‘I may cut it meagre like this, or in pleats, or in gross morsels, or daintily for ladies. But usually I had a trencher to cut onto. I ne comprehend why they ne carry bread of another village.’

  Berna raised her face from a basin of warm rose water infused with cloves and zedoary.

  ‘I marvel you may view the mutton to cut it in this sombre light,’ she said. ‘What did they say when you went out for candles?’

  ‘I was addressed with considerable impertinence and familiarity by a peasant of the village,’ said Laurence. ‘I shall not repeat the terms the insolent beggar used.’

  ‘They have their troubles,’ said Berna.

  ‘I’m quite sensible that their suffering is terrible. It’s no reason for them to treat their superiors with less than the proper reverence. If one of them fronts up to me like that again he’ll receive the flat of my sword on his back.’

  ‘I demand of myself whether I ne owe to aid Matilda in some manner. Like a Christian.’

  ‘Like a saint?’ said Laurence. ‘Lave their plaguey feet?’

  ‘Like a saint before she were a saint,’ said Berna cautiously.

  ‘You owe to not go out,’ said Laurence. ‘Our best defence is to not respire the same pestilential air the poor spirits of this village are accustomed to. These maladies must course through the poor like a forest fire, and the tall trees go untouched.’

  ‘You heard what passed in Imber, and now half this village has perished and one of your own archers is in his final hour. Can’t you comprehend the grandeur of this change? For all we know half of England has already departed.’

  Laurence came to her, cupped her chin and wiped away her tears with his thumbs. ‘Outen Green is far to the north, and high, and the air is pure there. Your family is secure.’

  He attempted to kiss her. She pushed him away.

  ‘When we’re married,’ he said.

  ‘When we’re married,’ she said, and smiled at him, her eyes red and moist with grief and fear.

  Madlen returned with fresh water and Laurence demanded a melody English, that the lady ne be tormented by sounds of suffering. Madlen stood by the window and sang:

  When the nightingale sings,

  The woods wax green,

  Leaf and grass and blossom spring

  In April, I ween

  And love is to my heart gone

  With one spear so keen,

  Night and day my blood it drinks,

  My heart does me wring.

  I have loved all this year,

  That I may love no more.

  I have sicked many sicks,

  Loveman, for your ore,

  Me ne’s love never the nearer

  And that me rues sore.

  Sweet loveman, think on me

  I have loved you yore.

  Sweet loveman, I bid you,

  Of love one speech.

  While I live in world so wide

  Other ne’ll I seek.

  With your love, my sweet love,

  My bliss you might eke

  A sweet kiss of your mouth

  Might be my leech.

  Madlen respired for a new verse. She was interrupted by the entrance of Matilda, a group of her attendants, and a man in rain-soaked travelling clothes carrying an
infant in a blanket. The man, a gentleman by his appearance, laid the infant on the table. It was a boy aged three or four in a fine white linen shirt, his face pale, his eyes half open. He coughed and called for his mother. The man who had carried him in bit his knuckle and caressed the boy’s cheek.

  ‘Mama,’ said the boy clearly, opening his eyes wider, and the gentleman murmured in his ear.

  Berna aided Matilda in making the boy comfortable, arranging the blanket underneath him and positioning a cushion to support his head. The boy was Robert, nephew of the lord of Heytesbury, and the gentleman his father, the lord’s brother Alan, who held a manor on the Warminster side.

  ‘I heard you people brought some sort of French doctor with you,’ said Alan to Laurence. He had a silver beard, fine lines at the corners of his eyes and an air of one who considered it generally accepted that not only his but humanity’s patience was exhausted.

  ‘I regret …’ said Laurence. ‘Thomas is ordinarily resident in France, and erudite, and possesses a marvellous amount of Latin, but he’s no doctor in no sense medical.’

  ‘Is he a doctor or not?’

  ‘He’s a proctor, not a doctor,’ said Berna.

  Alan insisted that Thomas be summoned, and he came, more uncertain and absent than usual, his sombre clothes creased.

  ‘D’you know aught of medicine?’ said Alan. ‘They say you aren’t no doctor but I suppose with your Latin you’ve gained some science of the ancients.’

  Moving rigidly, as if suffering some discomfort, Thomas went to the boy and lifted his open hand over him. It appeared he’d touch him, but he hesitated and moved his hand away. ‘No ancient ne endured this malady,’ he said. ‘If you’d comprehend the course of the pest you should make your demands of the dame who invited us. I’ve only just arrived. She’s resisted the disease here since its first appearance.’