To Calais, In Ordinary Time. James Meek
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in their gullet, and threw themselves on the ground, merrily slain.
Anto said their lord must send a bowman to Calais, and none might go but Will.
‘I’d go gladly,’ said Will, ‘but I mayn’t. I’m needed at harvest, I’m to wed Ness Muchbrook, and Sir Guy ne deems me a free man.’
‘They’ll crop the fields without you,’ said Anto. ‘You’ll wed Ness next summer, when you come again from France, laden with silver.’
‘I mayn’t go unfree,’ said Will.
‘Your lord deems you free,’ said Anto. ‘I heard it from his own mouth.’
‘Deemed he me free, he wouldn’t offer me no bound acres to farm.’
‘You ne know the stead you stand in,’ said Anto. ‘You’ve no thank for the blessings the Almighty and Sir Guy send. You’ve not but eighteen winter and you’ve two worthy brothers to keep your mother, you’re betrothed to the sweetest burd in Outen Green, and your lord, out of the kindness of his heart, bestows on you a cot and ten good acres to farm when you’re wed. And here you’re offered the speed of a fare to fight in France, such as any bold young man would yearn for, and it’s sikur Sir Guy deems you free. How else might he let you go?’
‘A bound man on his lord’s errand is bound yet, fares he to the brim of the world,’ said Will. ‘Go I to France, come home again and farm those acres, I were still bound to Sir Guy, for I still owed him two days’ work in six.’
Anto’s face lost hue and he no longer seemed to have himself in wield. He asked Will, in a steven like to he was choked, what then he’d have his lord do.
‘Let him give me an inch of hide with the words of my freedom written in ink and sealed with a gobbet of wax, for me to show all kind living clerks, that they believe my freedom true and not a tale I tell. Then I’ll go to France.’
‘You ne know your lowness in God’s read,’ said Anto. ‘You’d threaten all. The higher the ape climbs, the more he shows the filth of his arse.’
ONCE, THE EXCITING friction between the textual accumulation of old wisdom and the vivacious inquiry of a new generation was to be found in monasteries like this. That vigour has moved to the universities now.
‘You have a mind,’ said the prior. ‘Why remain a proctor, and not be a scholar or an advocate?’
‘When Oxford desired me for a doctorate,’ I explained, ‘I expected Paris, and when Paris offered to adscribe me, my finances were debilitated. When I had saved sufficient money, I submitted myself to the preliminary examination of Paris, and was rejected.’
The prior smiled. ‘You are bound for purgatory,’ he said. ‘You are excessively humid for infernal incineration, insufficiently lucid for celestial jubilation. On the margin of destroying humanity, the Deity created a homo novus, and you are the archetype. You are a non-decider. You neither reason nor instruct. You observe without participation. You do not reflect on the sacred mysteries. You comment on action as an alternative to action. You investigate pagan books in the library. You scribble on furtive parchment – and what do you scribble? Is it useful, or to the glorification of God?’
‘Ephemera,’ I said.
THE SERVANT ASSIGNED by Sir Guy to confine Berna to her chamber on her return from church admitted Pogge and closed the door behind her, permitting the cousins their privacy, if not their liberty. Pogge discovered Berna with her face pressed to the narrow ouverture that offered a view into the southern distances. She approached her and placed her hand on her shoulder but Berna ne turned, as if cloyed in the window’s stone surround.
‘Does your father’s emollience not surprise you?’ said Pogge.
‘Have they persuaded you to join their party, in contravention of our bonds of amity?’
‘I shall be loyal to you for eternity,’ said Pogge gently. She sat on the bed. ‘Your father promises to restore your usual liberties tomorrow. He permits you to retain the book in the chamber, for your consolation.’
Berna detached herself from the window. The sun had set and the chamber was sombre in the blue afterlight, Berna an indistinct form pacing to and fro, her hands in constant motion, now on her cheeks, now combing her hair, now on her hips.
‘He considers me a fine animal he has already vended, and desires to maintain in good condition till the purchaser arrive,’ said Berna.
‘You are extremely severe in your judgement of his motives.’
‘This Romance he so generously lends me,’ said Berna, seizing the volume of a table, ‘isn’t even finished.’
‘Berna, I doubt there is another demoiselle within three hours of here who is literate, and would have any non-ecclesiastical reading matter if she were.’
‘This Romance,’ repeated Berna, ‘is not the finished article. Our poor family possesses only the first part, the part by Guillaume de Lorris, which concludes with the imprisonment of the Rose in Jealousy’s castle. The greater part of the book, its completion by Jean de Meun, is absent.’
‘From what I hear,’ said Pogge, ‘de Meun’s so-called completion is a displeasant addition to another poet’s romance, excessively proud in its own ingeniousness, replete with irreligious mockery and the misprizement of women. I have never comprehended who gave him the authority to declare after another poet’s death that his rival’s verse was unfinished, and that he should complete it.’
‘So it is with people,’ said Berna. ‘Some girls consider themselves finished because they’re comfortable with whatever base rewards their parents offer. A Bristol merchant’s daughter may easily be satisfied with an allowance and a merchant’s son to marry when she lacks the imagination to realise how incomplete she is.’
The chamber was still for several moments, save the evening chants of the birds and Pogge weeping. Berna returned to her place at the window, blocking what little light remained.
‘I mayn’t attend my amour no longer,’ said Berna. ‘I shall journey to him.’
‘I know I haven’t your courage and imagination,’ sniffed Pogge. ‘I ne present myself as no example.’
Berna went to the door and demanded a candle of the servant. She took the light and went to sit with Pogge. ‘Pardon me my cruelty,’ she said. ‘My rigour towards you is a sign of my inquietude. Will you aid my escape?’
‘I would prefer to aid you in a change of heart,’ said Pogge. ‘Your severity to me bears a greater resemblance to your real nature than your acceptance of the role of the lover’s Rose. I’m not persuaded by your reliance on poet’s language to justify your strange intentions. To say Love’s arrows have crippled Laurence, to say he is Love’s vassal, has the odour of Guillaume de Lorris, not Bernadine. As I remember, Love possessed a sixth arrow, one he never used.’
‘The arrow named Frankness,’ said Berna.
‘That arrow is more characteristic of you, I would judge. The arrow that issues of a rose with a voice.’
‘I am best placed to judge my own sentiments.’
‘As my mother says, one is often the last to know one’s own roof is on fire.’
WILL SHET TILL the shadows were long. He unstrung his bow, put the arrows in his belt, plucked a cluster of loving-Andrew and went down the hill to town. He went by the fields to the back road and in through the Muchbrooks’ orchard gate. Ness’s deaf eldmother Gert, who when she was young had seen the king ride by at hunt like