To Calais, In Ordinary Time. James Meek
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passed the foragers and Berna demanded of the children their purpose. The oldest girl, who carried a baby asleep on her back, said they gathered bones for the Thomas’s Day bonefire.
‘You made that stinking smoke once this year already, on John Baptist’s,’ said Berna. ‘There aren’t but small bones here.’
The girl said they’d burned their best bones the first time, and Nack the hayward told them they must have a second fire, for Death bode for a fair wind from France, and must be met with bone smoke. They gathered what they could find. She took from her apron a bird’s skull of an apricot’s bigness. It was small, she said, but they’d been bidden not to come home till they’d got bones to the weight of her baby brother.
The demoiselles continued on their way. ‘Concerning the stories of the clerks,’ said Pogge, ‘is there any doubt of the verity of what they say? In Bristol we’re sure. It’s inevitable. Everyone’s afraid.’
‘Here most people believe it’s a ruse to enrich priests,’ said Berna. ‘And deny such a malady could cross the sea to England. But it pleases Cotswold peasants to pretend obedience. And some do believe. Our hayward, for example, and he has power here. Hence the bonefire.’
THE OLD PIGSTER Dor farrowed Hab, and none knew the sire. Dor spent her death pennies on Hab’s christening, so when God called her forth she hadn’t aught left for the fare, and Hab was left alone in the world, without no gear nor silver. He kept our swine and we kept him. As we to the high and proud, so Hab to us. He was knave to any churl. In winter he bode in Enker’s cot, in summer a wattle shelter in the woods, and was deemed true enough that twice he’d driven swine to a buyer in Melksham, and come again with the silver. He danced naked in the bourne, dark as any eel, and sang and rolled in the mud with the grice.
QUERY: HAVE I been honest? Response: No. In perscribing this commentary I create a substitute for my faith in the continued existence of home.
Today I went to the feretory. Six pilgrims had risen from the pavement to press their noses to the crystal aperture protecting the nail with which the Romans fixed Christ to the cross. I imagine they who buried him cared more for his corpse than for the ferrous fragments perforating it, or for the spiny crown with which his executioners derided him, a part of which is also supposed to be in the abbey’s possession. These are false relics, I suppose; yet I do not doubt that Christ was crucified. So do I not doubt that my villa outside Avignon is securely insulated from plague, even as I create these textual ephemera. The pilgrims would connect with Christ de facto did they remain at home in a state of piety and virtue, in patient expectation of his resurrection and their transmission into paradise. Yet they doubt paradise is their destination, they suspect damnation, and so prefer to frequent sanctuaries, to touch with their hands the luxurious fallacies of the cult of sacred objects.
So it is with me. It is my creed that, as I perscribe this in Malmesbury, the chanting of the fraternity perpetually audible, Judith and Marc move around the villa in Avignon in the chanting of the cicadas, picking basil and lavender, lighting the lamps, setting out wine and a volume of Ovid for my return. This is the paradise I expect. But instead of proceeding there with maximum velocity I retard myself here, perscribing. In the mode of the pilgrims, my horror of damnation intervenes with false objects. My creed is the paradise of home, but the pestilence that has not yet infected England has afflicted Avignon, and my terror is to arrive there to an absolute post-mortal silence, pure nullity, except the accumulation of cadavers, the putrefaction of familiar faces. The terror is not of my own mortality, but the mortality of those I care for, that they might perish before me, and I would be in solitude, like Adam without Eve. Best is to be certain they have not perished. But to be uncertain is better than to be certain that they have.
THE COUSINS AMBLED towards the church. ‘There’ll be free and villain, no gentry, just us,’ said Berna. ‘A place is kept for us, although my father attends mass elsewhere. It’s a mean church, with an indigent curate.’
The church was so full it would have been difficult for the demoiselles to push through the entrance had the villagers not pressed themselves against the walls to let them pass. Some of the better-arrayed free women tried to meet their eyes; the rest acted as if they mightn’t see them, or oughtn’t, save that they stepped aside to open a way through to a bench close to the jube. There wasn’t enough incense lit to cover the scents of sweat and newly laundered cloth. All talked.
In front of the jube stood a group of young men with bowstaves against their shoulders. Among them was Will Quate, who sensed the demoiselles’ regard and turned his face towards them. On perceiving them he lowered his eyes and turned away.
‘His is the second face out of a painture I have seen among your common people,’ said Pogge, ‘although the pigboy’s reminds me of Lust among the sins, whereas Will Quate looks simple and honest. There is some assurance there that all men aren’t inevitably beasts, even among that sort.’
Berna regarded her cousin uncomprehendingly, and laughed. ‘You favour him? He’s no gentleman.’
‘My father says a family that ne breeds in a peasant every third generation grows away from its proper nature.’
‘Pogge, as you see, I converse with one as low as a pigboy, even cherish the boar he guards, but I wouldn’t marry it. Quate ploughs and weeds for a penny a day and lives with his mother. She’s villain-born, and the father free-born, so by his father’s blood he should be free. But his father went to be an archer and died at Sluys, so as far as my papa is concerned, the Quate boy is unfree again.’
‘And does Quate think he is free?’
‘He would be free. My father prefers him to be unsure. He tells him he’s at liberty, then offers him villain land to farm.’
‘Is that a bow he carries?’
‘After Crécy, they all practise archery after mass.’
‘He follows his father.’
‘Papa is supposed to send an archer for the Calais garrison, but Quate is to marry the village beauty, Ness. She lost a child in March, probably his, so he’s not such an angel. Anyway, Quate mayn’t go to France, so that beefy person next to Quate, the miller’s son, he’s going.’
Pogge whispered in Berna’s ear: ‘You should go. You desire to go to France so fiercely, and have already pierced the heart of a man with five arrows.’
‘Par amour, par amour,’ whispered Berna. ‘It was Love that shot those arrows; all I may do is make him apprehend the value of the pain.’
HAB CAME OF the wood at noon and made Enker, by his craft, bide at the lichgate. He came in the churchyard and went to the outer door of the church, which stood open, the inner door wedged wide by us that thrang there. Hab listened a handwhile to the priest through the open doors. The qualm would come to Gloucestershire, the priest said, to pine lewd folk for their sins.
Hab came away from the church door to where the Fishcombe women had left their gear ready to sell their wares after mass. He put the market boards on their trestles under a tree and sang
To whom should I, the wolf said,
Tell of my sins ere I am dead?
Here ne is nothing alive
That me could here now shrive.
The women came out of church with baskets of cheese and orchard stuff. Hab said he’d set their boards under the tree so they’d be in shade and they gave him a garlicle, a thick long stalk with fat red cloves below. He