To Calais, In Ordinary Time. James Meek
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stood and righted his clothes and put on his pack.
‘Likes you my cunny?’ asked Ness. She bustled to him on her knees and put her arms about him.
Will ne spoke. He shoff her away roughly. His neb was red and he might not meet her eyes with his.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Ness. ‘How did it ne like you? Won’t you say nothing? Won’t you say you care? Won’t you say goodbye?’
‘I must go,’ said Will. ‘I’ll come again next summer.’
He turned and went away. Ness might not see his tears, for he ne looked again, and she might not hear how he wept, for she sobbed so loud herself.
WILL FARED TO the high road. He wiped his eyes and nose with his sleeve. He looked one way and the other. Flies stirred about his head. He sat by the wayside, pitched a twig in the dust, looked up at the sun and made marks near the twig the length of its shadow. The shadow nad crope to the first mark when a pig grunt in the trees behind him.
Under an elm stood Hab. He wore a high-born maid’s gown, made of the cloth Sir Guy had shown Will, gold and white and sewn with blossoms, and a maid’s white headcloth. By his side the boar Enker cast his snout about balefully. The pig was shod for a far fare.
‘You’ll hang,’ said Will.
‘You greet a maid roughly on the first meeting,’ said Hab.
‘You’re no maid. You’re Hab the pigboy and you wear a wedding gown you stole of the lady Bernadine.’
‘You mistake,’ said Hab. ‘Hab’s not here. I’m his sister Madlen. My brother gave me the gown and went away. Ne deem you me winly in silk and gold?’ He spun about with his arms stretched wide.
‘I’ve woned in Outen Green as long as you. You haven’t got no sister. You’ve got Hab’s neb, Hab’s steven and Hab’s shape. You’re Hab.’
‘We’re alike,’ said Hab. ‘So alike man can’t know one by the other. Hab speaks high for a man, and I speak low for a maid, so we meet there. But my brother hasn’t no tits, and I do, as you see, good ones.’
‘You stuffed it with moss to make it seem you’ve got them.’
‘If you ne true them, feel them,’ said Hab.
Will reached with his hand.
Hab thacked his wrist hard. ‘Ne be so bold, you know me but a handwhile,’ he said.
‘For the love of Christ, take it off and hide it in the wood before you’re seen, or you’ll be lolled up by morning.’
‘I go out of Outen Green today,’ said Hab.
‘What for?’
‘I go to Calais.’
‘You mayn’t go and you know it.’
‘Why may you go and I not?’
‘I’m a free man and you’re bound to the manor.’
‘I ne came into the world with no chain about my neck. I’ll come with you to Calais. How might you go so far without a friend? Tell the bowmen I’m your wife.’
‘I’m bethrothed to Ness Muchbrook.’
‘She’s all arse and tits. I saw you ride her and I saw it ne liked you. You were like to the woodpecker makes fast to peck a hole in a tree only so he might rest the sooner.’
‘You were wrong to bid me fuck her and walk away without a kind word,’ said Will. The tears came of his eyes again. ‘Now my heart’s sore, and so is hers, and the guilt’s all mine.’
‘I ne bade you do nothing,’ said Hab. ‘I’ve never met you before. That must have been my brother.’
‘Fiend fetch you, you’re a liar, and besides, you’ve no right to behold while I do to Ness what’s lawful in God’s sight.’
‘If I ne beheld, who would? God has better things to do than see a Cotswold churl and his burd go five-legged in the woods.’
‘Who learned you to deem the swive of others?’
‘Hab,’ said Hab.
‘To learn his own sister how to swive, there can’t be no sikurer way to the fire.’
‘So you own he has a sister,’ said Hab.
‘There’s no Madlen, you’re Hab in the likeness of a maid, and if you dare follow me, I’ll ding you and fell you and leave you to lie for Sir Guy’s men to find.’
He reached for Hab, like to he’d snatch the headcloth of his head, but Hab stepped back and said in a sharp steven: ‘Your bowmen are coming.’
Hab ran back into the woods, Enker behind him. Hooves rang on the road.
A SCORE HORSEMEN rode toward Will. The sun found the gleam of harness in the dust they made. They rode long grey horses, tall, lean, right-boned men with fair faces, clad in grey shirts and white kirtles marked with red roods. Swords hung of their belts and each second man bore a bow on his back. They ne spoke and their eyes rested on the road ahead, like to their only longing were for the fight to come. Among them was one horse without a rider, and behind them, at the same great speed, came a two-wheeled cart hued with the likeness of St George and the worm, driven by a knave with blue eyes and a golden beard, who stood upright, gripping the reins.
Will stepped into the road and lifted his bowstaff. The bowmen ne slowed. Neither the horsemen nor the driver of the cart looked at him as they clattered by and Will must press back against the hedge not to be struck by hooves or a wheel. Will picked up his pack and ran after them, calling into the dust that he was the bowman of Outen Green who was to go with them to France. He stumbled and fell. When he was on his feet again the riders had gone behind a crook in the road. The noise of hooves and harness and the chirk of axle wasn’t to be heard no more.
BERNA CONDUCTED HER horse from the forest. She hadn’t had time to assemble no baggage for the journey when she escaped from the manor. She possessed a saddle and harness, a blanket, and the clothes she wore when she departed.
She apperceived Will Quate by the roadside. He regarded the distance with visage dolorous.
‘Quate,’ she said, ‘you attend your archers, I suppose.’
He stared at her. She wore a white wimple, a veil covering her face, and her marriage gown, gold and white and sewn with flowers.
‘I would you ne looked at me in that way and manner, Quate,’ she said. ‘How I choose to go about my kin and family’s land is not for you to deem or judge. I bid and command you not to tell no one you meet on the road that you saw me here.’
Will Quate approached her, closer than a villain had ever stood, so close she took a pace back. At first, when he saw her, he’d appeared surprised, but now there was menace in his eyes.
‘Get away from me or I’ll have you beaten,’ she said. But Will Quate paid no attention.
‘Thinks you,’ said Will, ‘you might as well be hung for a horse as a gown?’
‘How dare you address me as an equal?’ said Berna.
‘First you steal a gown, then you steal a horse, then you steal the tongue of the manor. You took their words to make yourself sound like a high-born. Or was it your swine taught you to say “equal” and hack your speech into trim gobbets?’
‘You’re a lunatic,’ said Berna.
‘I