by James Meek
I bind thee with wounds five
That Jesus was pined by his life.
Holiday took dry worts of a purse on his belt. He bade Softly bring him a stop of hot water, and the others to go out, and he would come later and tell them what ailed their brother.
I USED THE opportunity presented by Softly and Holiday’s absence to communicate with Cess. I did not attempt discourse face to face, but inclined my back against the cart, as if resting, and uttered my salutations in French until I heard her respond through the cart cover, in subdued, fatigued tones.
I advised her that Hornstrake exhibited pestilential symptoms.
Did I expect her to pray for him? she inquired.
Hornstrake had participated in the crime against her, I said, and I mightn’t force her to absolve him. But he now faced the conclusion of his terrestrial existence, and his spirit’s transmission to its final habitation, and her judgement was the difference between his salvation and damnation. I had previously advised him to seek absolution from her, and desired to discover her response.
Hornstrake had come to her, said Cess, and she had recommended he appeal to a cleric. As a victim she had no power to absolve him.
I was convinced, I said, that her personal absolution might save him. Hornstrake was a virtual imbecile, a man of flaccid intellect and tenuous morals, super-persuadable. He was not the instigator of her rape. It had not been he who alienated her from her virginity.
Did I consider, Cess said, that the primary justification for her existence was as a sanctuary for her virginity, and that once the sanctuary was violated and her virginity raped, she became a ruin, through whose fractured portals any man might pass with a pure conscience?
I initiated a response, but she interrupted. It was obvious to her, she said, that I considered myself different from and superior to the archers, because I was capable of imagining the suffering she experienced at their hands. But my powers of representation were debilitated.
I invited her to assist me in a more perfect comprehension of her torment.
She declined. She was capable, she said, of describing to me each instant of her father’s extermination, her rape and captivity, and of conveying to me how it had not sufficed for the archers to use her for their sexual satisfaction, but that they must demonstrate their masculine ability to dominate her according to their will; how it had pleased them to restrict, diminish and confine her spirit to the dimensions of a minute mental cloister, constructed according to the limits of their own malicious reason. She was capable of such description; but would not attempt it, for to do so would be to permit me to imagine myself entering her mind, and consequently, given my intellectual vanity, encourage me to assume I might express her situation more effectively than she. A spiritual violation would occur, subsequent to, and aggravating, her actual rape, in which I would forcibly enter her consciousness, raping her of her experience, emerging to distort it and redescribe it according to my own intentions.
(That I liberally translate her objections into our clerkly Latin should not deflect from the originality and ingenuity of her proposition.)
Irrespective of her attitude towards me, I said, Hornstrake’s immortal spirit was in peril. I urged her to relent, and if, when communication between us was impossible, she should resolve to exercise clemency, she might simply let drop an iron pan by way of a signal.
Were she to absolve Hornstrake, said Cess, she would simply conform to the doctrine of Softly and Holiday, which was that they might commit whatever crimes they pleased in the terrestrial domain, providing they confessed at the final moment.
That opinion was as heretical as the equally incorrect supposition that certain crimes were too grave to be absolved, I said. But she should consider the radical effect her absolution of Hornstrake and the other archers would have. On their post-mortem deliverance to the celestial empire of Christ they would have such gratitude towards her that they would inevitably intercede with the Deity for her own salvation.
Why, inquired Cess, would she be in need of intercession? She had no crime to confess. Her conscience was pure.
She had procured the blankets, I said.
Cess pretended incomprehension.
She had acquired the blankets from a ship in the port of Bristol, I said, at so minimal a price that they might has well have been offered gratis. Which in probability they were, from a deserted ship, its complement of mariners perished of plague.
Cess insisted on her ignorance of the sense of my accusation.
I could readily comprehend, I said, her desire to inflict a fatal justice on those who’d committed such a terrible crime against her and her family. But how could she justify to God the infection of those archers who had not participated in her rape? How could she justify the infection of Will Quate?
Cess repeated her denial, but commented that of all the archers, Will Quate was the most repugnant and the most reprehensible.
Before I could interpret this stupendous observation, Softly and Holiday emerged from the barn, and I moved to put distance between myself and the cart.
Judith, now that the plague has come, and I sense, rather than merely imagine, my imminent separation from you and Marc, memories revisit me of another separation – the day I left home, over my parents’ protests, thirty years ago, and never returned, not because of a familial rupture but because I moved far away and always discovered some cause to avoid revisiting. Is it absurd to characterise the epidemic of young people rejecting familial domesticity in favour of mundial ambition as a kind of plague? Not absurd to my parents. They presented my departure to England as a form of mortal calamity.
‘HE HASN’T NO qualm,’ said Holiday. ‘It’s an unorny fever is all. Folk’s armpits swell up that way in a fever. I gave him worts and spelled him a craft. Let him sweat it out in the cart.’
The archers looked at each other unsikurly.
‘I know fevers. I never saw such swellings,’ said Sweetmouth.
‘You ne know aught of sickness but your own when you’re overdrunk,’ said Softly.
‘Here’s what, though,’ said Longfreke. ‘Damp air. A south wind. Six homes without no folk nor cattle. The swelling right like the Malmesbury doctor said it would be.’
‘Any of you ne true my read, go feel him with your own hands instead of standing about like a heap of old women.’
‘Whatever ails your brother, we owe not to leave him here, nor bide here no longer,’ said Thomas. ‘Here there’s no priest, bed nor food.’
Sweetmouth told Softly Longfreke would be their leader in Hayne’s stead, and they bode on Softly’s wrath, but Softly smiled and said he’d gladly yield a handwhile, and then they’d see.
He took the rood of the nail, hung it round Longfreke’s neck and thacked Christ’s legs lightly against Longfreke’s chest. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Our new leader.’ And his smile widened, and would have looked sweet as a girl’s, had his teeth ne been all of gold.
BERNADINE RETRIEVED THE book from the saddle pocket where she kept it and turned the pages to ensure they hadn’t suffered no damage in the rain. She went in search of Laurence and discovered him on the far side of the village, sat on a log placed in such a manner as to survey the plain to the south, towards Imber. He regarded the view with his chin cupped in his hands, his elbows on his knees. Berna approached and touched his shoulder. Laurence instantly rose and attempted to embrace her. She pushed him away.
‘Your persistence in denying me the reward of intimacy when I have proved my love for you in perilous action is very annoying,’ said Laurence, his voice high and impatient. ‘I commence to doubt the vigour of your sentiments towards me.’
‘Hold my hand,’ said Berna. ‘You have demonstrated a care for me, and though I would have preferred it done without violence, Mama liked to say Papa would have benefited from a simple bleed when the planets were in their proper house.’
Laurence accepted Berna’s hand, drew her brusquely to him and attempted to kiss her. She ave
rted her face and he sat miserably down again.
‘Be patient,’ she said. ‘I require to accustom myself to the magnitude of my dependence on you.’
Laurence took Le Roman de la Rose of her and regarded it closely. ‘This is probably quite valuable,’ he observed. ‘It’s not a grand dowry, but it adds to our substance.’
‘You speak as if our future were settled.’
‘I would you concede it is.’ Laurence sat close to her and clasped her hands in his. ‘We’ll be married by the next priest. We’ll journey on to Dorset and embark at Melcombe for Calais, where my manor house and enfeoffed estate lie vacant, in anticipation of my arrivage. It’s a fine estate, with forests and a mill and part of a river, and the house has chimneys, with mews for horses, dogs and falcons. The local curate is mine to appoint. We shall employ servants. My English companions will join me and we’ll go on the chase together. Our villainage will labour in our fields and we shall be enriched. We’ll create a new English line there. I’ll be made knight, rise in the favour of earls and the king, and when time has passed and we and our French cousins are amicable again, we’ll invite our families to Calais, and visit Paris together. May I suppose you at least partially satisfied by this vision?’
‘The dubious conceit of partial satisfaction is a lamentable statement of your sentiments towards your future spouse. The estate pleases you – but you were just as pleased had they offered you a different one, quite similar. The mill in a different place, the forest perhaps less filled with beasts of venery, but the river more fishous. Is this not the case?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I sense that your sentiments towards me are similar. That you find me perfectly acceptable, even pleasing, but not uniquely so. As one estate or house or horse is as acceptable as another, so you are content to marry me, but were equally content to marry any of a thousand others, should they have presented themselves to you.’
‘I consider my desire to pass the remainder of my life with you to be sign sufficient of absolute love.’
‘Were that sufficient, you would be a younger and more attractive figure of the odious Sir Hennery.’
Laurence would reply, but they were interrupted by Madlen, who brought them a little bowl of pottage she’d made of scraps found in the empty houses. Longfreke and Thomas arrived, and Longfreke told them that while Hayne ne returned, he would lead the archers.
Before he could complete his report, Laurence hushed him. He stood and pointed down to the Westbury road. A band of mounted men, their arms reflecting the sun, travelled towards the crossroads. They were a mile distant.
‘The lady’s father has found more men,’ said Laurence. ‘I reckon twenty of them.’
‘Mother pure, defend me,’ said Berna.
‘You may outride them,’ said Longfreke.
‘It’s too late,’ said Laurence. ‘Your bowmen must shield the town.’
Longfreke flinched. ‘We mayn’t, captain,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t be outlaws in our own land.’
THE BOWMEN SAW the horsemen come and guessed they came to take the bride Laurence Haket had stolen. They readied their gear to go, and bode on Longfreke’s bidding.
At the meeting of the roads the horsemen turned and made for the town where the bowmen stood.
‘The captain will give her up,’ said Holiday.
‘He’ll fight,’ said Softly. ‘No man worthy of the name owes to steal a woman if he won’t fight for her.’
‘If he fights he loses,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘They are many and he is one. They know the maid’s here. You may see her gown a mile away. They were better to outride her father’s men.’
‘They’re right to come for her,’ said Holiday. ‘A maid owes to do as her father bids.’
‘Five to one they ride away,’ said Sweetmouth to Mad.
A horse ran out of town with the lady Bernadine on its back, her white dress throwing in the wind of her flight. She rode to the east of the horsemen, back toward Imber, where a smit of smoke still darkened the air.
‘Fivepence to me,’ said Sweetmouth.
‘How so? She goes alone,’ said Mad. ‘He would give her up, but she’d rather be free.’
‘She’s more man than him, Fiend fetch their bones,’ said Softly, and spat.
‘She hasn’t no hope,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘She must go by them to go beyond them.’
In going by the riders, the lady Bernadine dight a stretch of rough thorny ground between her and them, and they must come of the road and climb to overtake her.
‘They near her,’ said Sweetmouth. He turned to Will. ‘How well does your lady ride?’
‘I would she got away,’ he said.
Longfreke came up to them and bade them go. They’d fare athwart the road, he said, while the riders were led astray.
‘Astray?’ said Holiday.
‘Pick up,’ said Longfreke, and the bowmen began to walk. Holiday led the cart.
Thomas’s and Laurence Haket’s horses swung out before them, but while Thomas rode his horse, Laurence Haket led another rider on his, a knave wrapped in a woollen.
‘Who rides the captain’s horse?’ said Will. ‘Where’s Madlen?’
‘Take this,’ said Longfreke. He gave Will a littlewhat of calfskin folded and bound with cord. ‘There’s your freedom deed. That was what you yearned for, was it not? Come on! Step it up!’
‘I ne gave no fee for this deed,’ said Will.
‘Another gave it for you,’ said Longfreke.
He who rode Laurence Haket’s horse turned her head. It was the lady Bernadine in her Warm Welcome clothes. ‘Your sweetheart spent dear to buy your freedom,’ she said to Will.
Forthright, Will began to run. The bowmen beheld him lengthen his stride on the way to the meeting of the roads, for he took the straightest way to Imber. He lagged far behind the pack of horsemen, who’d all but overtaken the maid in the wedding gown. All now understood that maid was Madlen.
‘She overheard Laurence Haket talk,’ said Longfreke. ‘She said she’d lead them away, did Laurence Haket but give Will Quate his freedom.’
Thomas offered the two high-born folk his horse, that they dight more miles the sooner between them and they that hunted them; he might walk, he said, as far as Heytesbury. Straightway and thankfully the lady Bernadine sat on Thomas’s mare and Laurence Haket took the saddle of his own horse again. The captain bade Longfreke lead the bowmen and the proctor safe to the far side of the downs, and they would meet in Heytesbury that afternoon. And they rode quickly on ahead.
The bowmen found a rough way for the cart along the side of a great hay-meadow. As they went they kept an eye on Madlen’s hight to outrun the riders and Will’s hopeless work to overtake them.
‘She stints,’ said Mad.
‘They have her,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘Why ne rides she on? Is the horse lamed?’
They saw far away by the Imber church how Madlen clamb down of the horse and stood beside the bonefire which now no longer made no smoke. They who hunted her were right near.
‘She knits her arms around the horse’s neck,’ said Mad.
The riders rode up and gathered round Madlen, hiding her of the bowmen’s sight.
‘Now they’ll know they’ve been swiked and their quarry’s elsewhere,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘They will take it out on her, poor little maid.’
‘She wasn’t but a thief,’ said Holiday.
A VIGOROUS GALLOP put Bernadine and Laurence out of view of those who would arrest them. They reined in their horses and continued at a more gentle pace.
‘Low thief though she be,’ said Berna, ‘it troubles my conscience that my servant so endangers herself to my benefit.’
‘She ne acted to aid you, but to please him,’ said Laurence. ‘His actions reflect ingratitude. He won’t enjoy the liberty she presented him for long if he attempts to defend her. He’ll be cut to pieces, and her sacrifice lose all value.’
‘You confuse sacrifice with a payment for a service.’
‘On the contrary, I have sacrificed a document priced at five pounds, you have sacrificed a fine horse, and the material consequence is that once again you have escaped capture.’
‘Laurence, can you sincerely compare your renunciation of a future payment with a woman’s exchange of her life for her lover’s liberty, and her lover’s immediate rejection of that liberty in favour of an attempt, certain to fail, to rescue her? Didn’t you observe how instantly, without calculation, each of them acted, guided by love?’
‘If by “love” you mean the noble sentiment that inspires us, it were ridiculous to credit such people as your father’s thralls and villains with its possession. They act as they do because they lack the power of anticipation. They are moved by the desires of the moment. And ne assume I intend base desires. A good peasant is like a fine dog – loyal, brave, honest, delighting in serving his master till he dies, but constantly distracted by corporeal desires. The dog would chase a rat, but his head is turned by a mutton bone, and again by his master’s affectionate caress, and again by a passing bitch. So he chases the bitch, inflamed by his natural passions. And what does she pursue? Some strange scent entices her, alluring but beyond her comprehension. It is the gown she stole of you. She stole it in desire to resemble you as if the gown, rather than your blood, were the source of your nobility, and now she suffers all the fever and delusion of the paramour without any of the measure and regard to the grander course of affairs by which we gentle people moderate our hearts.’
IT WAS IDLE for Longfreke to bid the bowmen go more quickly, for they mightn’t draw their gaze of the cluster of horsemen in Imber, and the struggle of Will to reach them. When the horsemen gathered round Madlen, the riders were still. All at once, like to each had been stung, the horsemen started. They pulled wildly at their horses’ harness. The stots reared and the sound of their frightened neighs reached the ears of the bowmen over the fields. The horsemen turned as a body and rode again the way they had come as if the Fiend and all his hinds snapped at their heels. The white shape of Madlen stood where she had, as before, her arms around the horse’s neck.