by James Meek
Without letting her right hand of Will’s leg under his gown the queen set her left hand on his cheek and stroked it.
‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’ she said in a wholly other steven, like to a millstone drawn over a threshing floor. ‘Elle s’est rasée!’ She stood and stepped back, ne far. ‘Defendez-moi!’ She showed her teeth. Four strong fellows in dark hoods sprang of the shadows at the back of the tent, gripped him, one to each limb, and threw him down on the tapet.
‘Depouillez-le,’ said the queen. They plucked the wings of Will, then stripped him of the gown, his breech and his shoon and lay him naked on his back on the tapet. He wrothe but the four knaves were too strong for him. Pavone sang on like to nothing had betid.
‘You’re not Venus,’ said the queen.
‘I ne know who Venus is,’ said Will. ‘I ne made myself out to be no one out-take who I am, Will Quate of Outen Green.’
‘How dare you,’ said the queen. ‘A base villain enters my privy chamber in the guise of Venus, and when he is unmasked, addresses me as an equal. What was your sordid intention? What was it of mine you desired, or did you simply aspire to a spy’s view of the skin royal?’ The queen raised her gown to her knees, then higher, so her legs were bared up to the haunch. ‘This?’ She wore white openwork boots with long heels.
‘I ne understand you, worthship,’ said Will.
‘I desire your comprehension,’ said the queen. She lifted one foot and trod on Will’s thigh. ‘That is your position relative to me. Do you understand that? No?’ She stood on his womb with both feet, with all her weight, and kept herself steady with her hands on the shoulders of her men. He tightened his womb as best he could. Her shoon bit into his flesh. ‘Ne close and shut your eyes, false Venus. I am the queen of men’s comprehension. When Hugh Despenser saw his own guts drawn out, he understood he shouldn’t have come between my Edward and me. There.’
She stepped onto Will’s chest and ground one heel into the flesh till it broke the skin and bled and he cried out.
‘I am high,’ she said, ‘and you are low, and that is all you need to know.’
She stepped of his body that her feet were on the tapet on either side of his head. She gathered her dress about her waist and sat on his neb and rubbed her cunt against his mouth.
‘Lick it,’ she said. Will opened his mouth and licked the queen’s cunt.
‘Put your tongue within. Deeper. Now find the bud that lies above the cleft. Go about it with your tongue-tip like a bee that dances on a daisy.’
In a while the queen came of him and knelt beside him. ‘Lâche-le,’ she said, and the four knaves left.
The queen leaned down and kissed his wound. ‘I ne meant to hurt you,’ she said.
‘That’s not true,’ said Will.
The queen struck him on the cheek and bit her lip. She stood, cast her gown and underclothes of her and bent over the end of the great bed.
‘Now fuck the shit of me,’ she said.
They swived, and it was quick, and in a handwhile Will’s pintle was hard again, and the queen learned him how to fuck her in the arse, as she said it had liked the king to do, and they swived again. When they finished, for all the sound they’d made, Pavone was asleep and snoring. After the queen bade Will fuck her a third time, Pavone woke up, took up his gittern and sang on like to he hadn’t slept at all.
‘Is the play ended now?’ asked Will.
‘It ne ends,’ said the queen, ‘but now we make our own lines.’
They lay naked on the great bed. Hirelings came and let down the cloths between the posts till they seemed alone in a smaller room where golden walls were sewn with grim deer, lit by one hornlight. Will’s hand was between the queen’s haunches. The queen had her hands behind her head and beheld him.
‘Am I older than your mother?’ she asked. ‘I’ve fifty-three years.’
‘I ne know my mother’s old,’ said Will.
‘A nimble answer. We should dight you an ambassador.’
‘I ne know what ambassadors work.’
‘Which makes you perfect. But I would you weren’t nimble. I would that your face and your body were as they are, but that your soul was shallow, and your brain weak, that you were the usual sort of English villainous brute. Do you understand?’
‘No.’
‘Now, in this hour, I’m near to you as I have been to anyone,’ said the queen. ‘I’d touch and kiss each deal of you and hold it mine. Tomorrow, you’ll be nothing to me. I shan’t know you. Should any man say we lay together, I’ll deny it and have that man killed. Were I to see you about to be done to death, for saying you fucked the king-mother or for anything, and you cried out to me for help, I wouldn’t lift a finger to save your life. I’d let you die. Is that dreadful?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re a queen, and I’m a low-born man, without silver nor blood.’
‘You ne need make it so easy for me. If you ne rue such unkindness in me, it tokens you find me a dull and unsightly old woman.’
‘It’s not unkind,’ said Will. ‘You’re of your kind and I’m of mine. I know I mayn’t see you again. I ne know your name.’
The queen sat up. ‘How could you not know my name?’ she said.
‘You ne told me.’
‘But there’s only one king-mother.’
‘I guess so.’
‘I thought me all knew my name. You know the king’s name.’
‘Edward.’
‘And the queen.’
‘Philippa?’
‘And the king’s father.’
Will shook his head. ‘Edward has been king as long as I’ve lived. I ne know about no king’s father.’
‘It was Edward! And his father was Edward before him! How can you be so ignorant?’
‘Then Edward’s father was Edward, and his father’s father was Edward. It’s like to one long King Edward for ever. How would I know of one day to the next behind the plough if one King Edward becomes another?’
‘Consider your ambassadorship rescinded. Isabella! Edward and his wife, Queen Isabella!’
‘Yeah,’ said Will. ‘The priest ne bade no beads for no Isabella, but now you say it I mind tales of her and the king.’
‘Tell me those tales.’
‘Queen Isabella was of France,’ said Will. ‘She came to wed King Edward, but it turned out he ne loved women, only men, so she fetched soldiers of France and took his crown, and he was locked in Berkeley Castle, home of my lord’s lord, and done to death as a badling. And she was queen until her son was old enough to be king. But I thought me she lived long ago.’
‘She did,’ said the queen. ‘She lived long ago, and lives yet. The she is I. Your tales are wrong. I ne had my husband killed. That was done by others. He was dear to me. And I to him. He loved both women and men. Edward loved all, out-take they who ne loved his loved ones as he would have them be loved. He’d fuck anyone who let him believe they would be fucked. Men took advantage of that. Hugh Despenser did.’
‘You use outcome words again that I ne know.’
‘So do you. What is a badling?’
‘What our folk call a man who lets himself be fucked by another man. He who plays the woman.’
‘Think you such men should be killed?’
‘Why, if they ne harm no one? Let Christ deem them.’
‘Have you a wife?’
‘I’m betrothed to a maid of my town.’
‘Is she your true love?’
‘She went with a kinsman of my lord. He got her great, but there wasn’t no child.’
‘Maybe he gave her no choice.’
‘She chose. She made out she did it to drive me to woo her. It’s hard, for the kinsman who swived her is the captain of our score of bowmen.’
‘Do you wish to be wreaked on him?’
‘I find not.’
The queen laughed, took his head in her hand and turned it so they looked into each other’s eyes. ‘My husband knew
himself, at least,’ she said. ‘Ne say you ne understand, for that’s lightly said. Is she fair, this betrothed of yours?’
‘She’s the fairest—’
‘Of course, she would be. You ne care whether you wed her or not. You ne care that your captain had her. All you needed when you were at home was a good wife, but now you’re in the great world, you need a friend. Do you have a friend?’
‘I have two friends,’ said Will. ‘A man and his sister. I fear they both must die soon.’
‘You weep.’
‘I ne weep.’ Will turned on his side.
‘You are so far of me in everything, and yet I know you better than you know yourself,’ said the queen. ‘It liked my Edward to spend days and nights with low-born folk like you, ditchers and tilers and thatchers, men strong and nimble with their hands, were they fair, and could well talk and mirth. Maids too, otherwhiles. They were as good wives to him. When I was sent of France to be his true wife I had a bare twelve years. We ne slept together till I was fifteen, and in those first years, when England was loathsome to me, he was my friend, and his men-friends were my friends, and we all danced together, and chose each other’s clothes, and fished together of swan-boats by moonlight, and put foxes in the earls’ rooms while they slept. I learned he was freer with his men-friends than with me; he was nearer them than me. It hurt me to know this, but I were rather a lesser friend than a mere good wife. Despenser came later. Piers Gaveston was my husband’s best friend, and when the earls murdered Piers, it was the friend he wept for more than the man he dight as you did now dight me on this bed. Learn this of me if nothing else: men such as you must seek and keep a friend, and all else comes of that.’
‘My way’s narrow,’ said Will. ‘I’m no king nor earl. I’m not sikur I be free. My lord, Sir Guy, and the folk in town say they deem me free, but my lord won’t give me the deed of freedom unless I give him five pound, and I haven’t five pence to my name.’
The queen stared at him right earnestly. ‘I’m free, that you may be,’ she whispered. ‘How does the bed like you?’
‘Wonder soft,’ said Will.
‘Sleep a while.’
‘I mayn’t.’
‘Then close your eyes, I bid you.’
Will closed his eyes. The queen kissed him on the forehead, and Will slept.
WILL WAS LIFTED of the bed and dropped on the grass. The wind blew against his bare skin. It was day yet, but the cloud over the joust field was dark enough to make it seem near night. Someone threw Will his breech and shoon and Venus gown and he did them on. About him a host of hired men wrought like devils to tear down the queen’s black telds and to pack her goods. While he slept, the field had been stripped of cerecloth, beacons and posts, and the hundreds of bright-clothed folk who’d laughed and drunk and hopped had gone. A line of laden wains went toward the high road. The white sheet he and the queen had lain on was pulled of the bed and billowed out before the hireling got it in wield and folded it into a trim shape for loading.
Venus’s wings lay in the dust. Will bade the hired men take them away.
‘No, Venus, they go with you,’ they said.
A man came to him, leading a horse. Will knew him as the clerk who’d written in the queen’s teld. The clerk wore a broad-brimmed leather hat and a cerecloth mantle like to he looked to fare far through hard rain.
‘I owed to have been on the road long ago,’ he said. ‘Here.’ He gave Will a purse and clamb on his horse. ‘There’s five pound in there. Enough to buy your freedom, my mistress told me. I wouldn’t deem you worth that much.’
Will held the purse on his palm where the clerk had lain it, as if it were a butterfly that would fly away again.
‘It’s light for such a great deal of silver,’ he said.
The clerk beheld him like to he’d lost his wits. ‘It’s gold,’ he said. ‘Fifteen nobles. Eighty pence each noble.’ He held up his fingers. ‘That’s all your fingers twenty and one hundred times, could you tell so far. Five pound altogether. I mayn’t bide no longer.’ He rode away.
Will’s hand shut on the purse. He turned to where the gate had stood at the joust’s brink, where he’d met the bear and its keeper. It seemed that while those that came to play had gone, the heap of hucksters and beggars on the outside were still there, hoping to win of the carters and hirelings as they left.
Will began to run. At first he bore the wings under his arm, but they slowed him, and he dight them on his back again. When the hem of the gown hindered him he bunched and knit it higher. Folk hooted and laughed at him when he went by. He ran to the furze where Cockle had sold sport with Madlen and came upon the bear-keeper and his bear.
‘You lag a little,’ said the keeper. ‘Hie and you’ll overtake them. They go at the stir of the thief, and he’s well lamed.’
WILL RAN UP the line of wains and came on Cockle and Matt on horseback, leading Madlen on a rope fastened to her neck. Madlen halted along with her bruised head high and her hair stiff with dust. She held the rags of her gown together with her hands.
Will shouted at them to stint. They bridled their horses.
‘I’ll buy the wedding gown of you for its worth new, do you let her go,’ said Will. ‘Five pound.’
‘Where’d you get five pound?’ said Cockle.
‘A lady gave it me.’
Cockle snorted. ‘Right.’
‘Five pound gold’s worth more to our lord than a marred gown and a lolled-up thrall.’
‘Gold? You’d spend ten winter breaking your back in Outen Green and not get a sniff of gold.’
‘Would you have it or not?’
‘And have him go free, a thief? How’s that right? Let’s see the hue of your gold.’
Will took a noble of the purse and gave it to Cockle. Cockle and Matt looked it over nearly and bit it and muttered to each other.
‘Show us the leave,’ said Cockle.
Will told four more nobles and bade them let Madlen go. Cockle unknit the rope and Will took it of Madlen’s neck. The skin was nesh and red where the rope had rubbed against it. She sank against the ground. Her head fell between her knees. Will told five more nobles.
‘Give me the gown,’ he said.
‘That five pound owed to have been mine,’ said Cockle. ‘I should have been the bowman and tinded the players’ castle and been worthed by a lady. It was the town’s behest that I should go to Calais.’
He threw down the gown and Will gave him the last five nobles.
‘Redeemed you your deed of Laurence Haket?’ asked Cockle.
‘Another day,’ said Will.
‘You were better to buy your own freedom than this queed’s. What’s he to you?’
‘My friend.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘Calais.’
‘With him? What shall I tell Ness?’
‘Tell folk I’ll be home again next summer.’
‘You may come again. But Hab mayn’t show his neb in the Green without that he be hung.’
‘Tell folk I’m well, and I mind them in my beads.’
Cockle and Matt rode on. Will kneeled by Madlen and asked her if she might walk. Madlen ne stirred nor spoke.
Cockle rode up again. ‘I would you came with me to Outen Green,’ he said. ‘You’re lacked there and there’ll be a wedding feast. You may ride with me.’
‘I’m sworn to go with Hayne’s bowmen to Calais,’ said Will. ‘Besides, you wouldn’t bear my friend.’
‘Am I not your friend?’ said Cockle. ‘What is it in him makes him your friend, not me?’
‘I wish you no harm,’ said Will.
‘Come home again,’ said Cockle. ‘I know why all left the joust so early. The qualm’s in Dorset.’
‘They only fear the storm.’
Cockle shook his head, spat on the ground, turned his horse and went on his way.
Will raised Madlen, put her arm around his shoulder, held her about the waist, took up the gown and set off with her to seek
the score. When they’d gone a short way there was a thunderclap nearby and lightning flashed on the cleeve. It began to rain.
A brewster had reared a house of reeds by a bourne to sell ale to those that came and went of the joust. She’d left so quickly, her stake and bush still stood. The roof and walls were strong enough to keep the rain of the inside. Will set Madlen down on the straw on the floor and fetched her water of the bourne in a broken can. Madlen drank and Will went and came again of the stream till she’d had enough.
‘Are you heal?’ asked Will.
‘Bring me more water that I may wash my neb,’ she said.
Will went to the bourne again, and when he came back, Madlen wore the lady Bernadine’s gown. She washed her face of blood and dirt and they sat together.
‘Where did you find the gold to free me?’ she said.
‘Where did you find the silver to buy your maid’s dress in Melksham?’
Madlen laughed and bit her lip. ‘We mayn’t reach Calais as lovers but that we go as whores.’
‘I’m no whore,’ said Will. ‘I fucked the king-mother at her bidding and she gave me a gift.’
Madlen laughed harder and shook her head.
‘They beat you and left you thirsty and now you mirth like a girl,’ said Will.
‘I mirth that you found what I always knew, that you’re my loveman.’
‘I’m not your loveman. I’m your friend and I lacked you.’
The rain beat on the reeds and the walls swayed in the wind.
‘We mayn’t stay here,’ said Will. He began to take the wings of his back. Madlen stayed him with her hand.
‘Keep them,’ she said. ‘It likes me to see you winged.’
‘We mayn’t stay,’ said Will again. ‘We must find the others before night.’
‘We go on together?’
‘Yeah,’ said Will. ‘As friends together.’
Madlen looked to one side, as if it needed her to mark something there. ‘You may buy me of a gnof like Cockle for gold,’ she said. ‘To keep me you must spend more dearly.’