by James Blish
An Hendy hap ichabbe yhent,
Ichot from hevene it is me sent,
From alle wymmen ml love is lent
Ant lyht on Alysoun! …
lyht on Alysoun I …
on Alysoun! …
Alysoun, said the Yeo Valley. Alysoun … soun … soun.
Heaving his huge keg of a chest up and down, the horse blew solemnly between his thick mobile lips, and Roger, too, resumed breathing with a subdued start. What was left behind of the world was essence, without sound, motion or life, keeping its slight claim to be real in the rank order of the generation of forms only because it was – least close of all secondary qualities to the primary and real – still bitterly cold. In contemplation of these things as they always had been, it was impossible to believe that Yeo Manse had changed or could change in th’eternalie of the world. Though Heraclitus had never been able to put his foot twice into the same river, he had never been in any doubt about which was river and which was foot (one was cold, one got cold; but how in memory could he trust the order of these events, one being – secondary – used to judge the primary other?); everything changed, but only to remain more and more perfectly the same, like the River Meander which cut new banks and channels every year to maintain that clear, fixed, Platonic word of which the river in flux could never be more than a shadow.
But the shadowy solid horse beneath him, still sweaty after its delicate slide into the valley, trembled and reminded him that this was no ultimate Horse he was riding, he himself no Idea of Man, and Yeo Manse no shadow of some ultimate Estate; they all had names, and things with names pass away. He would have to give this horse-with-a-name (though it be John Blund, or just ‘yon hay-bottle’) a rub before very long or it would come down with the glanders – and though there might be some ultimate Glanders in Plato’s cave, when one hitched it to a horse with a name, one had a sick horse, which was a good deal more serious in this world than any coupling of Sickness with Horseness; and the Heraclitean river – not the Yeo, but a much more drastic Meander – flowed in an underground torrent beneath Yeo Manse, too, as under all things else.
As that river flowed on inexorably, the morning grew older … it must be well after eight already … but for a while Roger found himself unable to move on, urgent though his errand was, and more urgent though the danger grew with each increment of delay. These ditch-guarded pasturelands deep in long brown grass, the vineyard surrounded with its fence woven on close-set stakes, the plough-lands lying humped and frozen in the heatless sunlight, the owl-haunted timber stands, the willow plantation where withies and barrel-hoops were cut, the palisaded orchards where every tree was a boy’s lesson in climbing for the daylight and a well of sharp cider and perry for the evening meal; the voices of the serfs, the shapes of the hills, the blue bend of the sky over the wrinkling Yeo … these were all his home, now most strangely and heartbreakingly hostile in its – absolute, changeless stillness. It had been with bitterness and defiance toward Robert, and an unbrookable, long-swelling passion to be free of Yeo Manse once and for all, that he had left this place to become a clerk, but never with any thought that it would itself reject him in its turn. No, Yeo Manse had borne the Bacons on its breast for centuries, and would always lie awaiting his return, should he deign to make it ….
His shadow, wedded to that of John Blund, slowly lost stature on the earth beneath him. His breast hollow with sullen, helpless loneliness, he turned the horse’s head northward. There was nothing more to be learned here; it was all exactly as it had always been … except that it was suddenly an alien land.
We shall not all die, the self murmured; but we shall all be changed.
‘Us be an old man, Meister,’ Wulf said. ‘Old and cleft a bit, as it mote be said, and most deaf and blind eke, as mote be said, and good for naught. But us remembered thee.’
Old the man was, without doubt nearly eighty, his hairs white, his teeth gone but for a few brown tusks, his skin the texture and colour of bad leather. Even across the splintery trestle table in the Oxen, he stank most markedly, a mixture of sod, sweat and a sour and precarious digestion; yet, curiously, his homespun was sturdy and almost clean, and his filthy ankles rose out of crude but strongly stitched slippers of hide so well and recently cured that the pointed toes still protruded straight ahead – in proud contrast to the points of Roger’s own shoes, which tended to fold under the balls of his feet every third or fourth step.
‘How didst thou know me?’ Roger said, shifting his stone mug on the planking. ‘And how canst thou lurk here away from the manse, morning as well as night? Inns are not for serfs, even such a one as this.’
The old man smiled dimly, as though recalling some exercise of craft half a century bygonnen. ‘Us knew thee, Meister,’ he said. The gnarled hand closed about a leather tankard but did not lift it. ‘Us saw thee and followed thee when thou wert but a new lamb. Nay, a badger, thou wert, with a girt chest and shoulders, and always at digging and burying. Wold Wulf was proper crofter then with’s boy to lead the oxen, twice as old as thou art and with boys of his own now, Meister; and us good for naught in these years, as mote be said, but for to hold the cot till us be called. Us be’ent missed now that poor son’s a man grown and ploughs and has childer. Nay, wold Wulf may go where us will, as mote be said, and there’s an end to it, Meister.’
Roger frowned, unable to press the question further, but remaining as puzzled as before. Of course the grandfather of a serf’s family would not be missed from the work – he had understood that much of the mystery of the unremembered Wulf the moment he had been confronted by this snaggly sour-breathed ruin; but when his query to the suspicious host had flushed Wulf at last, the old man had been brought from the back of the inn, still wearing a nightcap in the midst of the day, so that it had been made most clear that he was living at the Oxen, which was impossible for a serf; though he be the grandsire of all the serfs that ever were.
The old man seemed to have forgotten that that question, too, had been asked him. He stared with his white-filmed blue eyes at the fire, over which a soup of some kind – from which a faint additional odour of hot mutton fat attested to the early kill at Yea Manse, for under normal circumstances, no mutton could yet have reached so mean an inn as this –was seething in a huge black kettle hanging from an iron chain.
‘Us were a sheep herd, then,’ he said abruptly. ‘Us took they sheep to the uplands for pasture, with Hob that was wold Wulf ‘s dog that died afore thee’d remember him, Meister, and wold Wulf’s boy that keeps the cot now to carry the hurdles. And Tom the steward, that was no older than Wulf’s boy, he told us to mind thee when thee wandered, Meister, as wander thee did till us was blue out of breath. A-diggin’ up and a-buryin’ thee was, and in and out of rafters and trees—’
‘Go thou to the point, old man,’ Roger said, gripping the edge of the table fiercely with both hands. Yet he was sure that he already knew what the answer was to be. ‘Why didst thou write to me? What hast thou for me?’
‘Us shall show thee, Meister,’ Wulf said with a secret smile. ‘Us can’t show thee here, but us has it all, fear thee not. Us took it all, and more. Us made proper fools of they King’s men. Us took away thy diggings, and put thy buryings in they ilke holes’
‘What dost thou mean?’
‘Nay, Meister, glare not so at wold Wulf,’ the serf said, beginning to snivel. ‘They was but bits of trash, as mote be said, like boys ud bury—’
Roger fought back his temper, as best he could. There would be no point in so alarming the old man that he became incoherent.
‘Tell me what thou hast done,’ he said, with a gentleness he was still far from feeling. ‘And hew to it quickly and directly.’
‘Aye, that be what us was doing, Meister, an thee’ll let us. Meister Christopher that was thy father was a gentry-man, could read and cypher, and yonder King’s men be gentry, too, as mote be said. Wold Wulf ud not want his hands snipped off for thieving – or drawn and quartered like a comm
on traitor, they being King’s men. Us thought better to leave summat in they holes, an they King’s men find some writing of Meister Christopher to riddle where they holes be duggen. So us put matter into ’em from thy boy’s holes, that thee made when thee was a-writing precious little, Meister Roger. All the rest us has here.’
The old man looked filmily at him with a mixture of hope and senile cunning, slightly tinged with reproach.
‘All?’ Roger said.
‘Nay, not all, Meister,’ Wulf said. ‘Thee knows a poor serf’s let into no inn free, nay, nor wears new shoes neither – us be not so blind us can still see thee a-looking at oor poor feet. But us be eating of naught but millet porridge and a mite of dredge-corn; thilke ale thee did buy us, and the first wold Wulf’s tasted since us runned away. But all the rest, us has, Meister.’
‘I thank God thou didst not run clean away,’ Roger said grudgingly.
‘Where ud us rinnen, Meister? Us be full of pain in the bones and good for naught, as mote be said. Here’s a safe enough cozy for wold Wulf that’s as near to his Maker as may be, and knew thee’d nowt but leave us silver penny to buy a herring with till us be called.’
‘Show me what thou hast.’
‘This way.’ The old man got up stiffly and led the way toward the kitchen. On the other side, he admitted Roger into a narrow room so hot, airless and foul even in this weather that Roger could hardly drive himself further once the door was opened. The door itself was fastened with nothing but a staple.
‘Thine host bath doubtless stolen it all in thine absence,’ he muttered, trying to hold his breath and breathe at the same time.
Nay, Meister,’ Wulf said absently. ‘He’s wold Wulf’s nephew-in-law – no slyer ever put green vitriol in vinegar, but won’t steal from us till us be dead. Here, now—’
He rummaged in a heap of filthy straw while Roger accustomed his eyesight to the dimness. There was literally nothing else in the room but a low, broad three-legged stool and an anonymous heap of rags.
Then, grunting, the old man had hauled from the straw a purse of rawhide almost twice as big as his head. ‘Here it be,’ he said, setting it on the stool. ‘Us saved it all for thee, Meister Roger.’
Roger pulled open the mouth of the bag and plunged a hand in, his fingers closing convulsively in the cold, liquid mass of coins. He carried the handful to the door, which he opened slightly to let in a little more light.
The coins were in little the hoard of well more than a lifetime. Anyone looking at them could have told at once that the Bacons were wool-sellers, for nearly every coin of commerce rested in Roger’s fist: English pennies and ryalls, new and old shields of France (the old worth something in exchange if they were real, the new clipped even if genuine), the golden Lewe of France, the Hettinus groat of Westphalia (debased), the Limburg groat (debased), the Milan groat (debased), the Nimueguen groat (debased), the gulden of Gueldres (much debased), the postlates, davids, florins and falewes of the bishoprics of half of latin Christendom (debased beyond all reason). Obviously Wulf ‘s host (and nephew) had much depleted the real value of the hoard by taking from the serf nothing but English money, but this handful of dubious riches could not be blamed on Wulf and the innkeeper alone: Christopher Bacon should have had better sense than to bury foreign coins, or for that matter, to have taken them in payment from William Busshe or anyone else. Probably he had never had any reason to suspect even the existence of the intricacies of foreign exchange, being naught but a farmer all his life long; to him these clipped and adulterated coins with their exotic designs and legends must have seemed mysteriously more valuable than the mere pennies paid him year after year by his tenants – why else would he have gone to the trouble of burying them?
Yet Roger was little inclined to absolve his father for that, let alone Wulf and his nephew. What he held in his hand was all that remained of his patrimony – that and the rest of the trash in the purse – and though it would be impossible to judge what it all amounted to until he had a chance to count it through somewhere in safety, it was clearly far from any sum sufficient for his needs. And for this, this ignorant, smelly old man had buried Roger’s rhombs and his glass and his time-costly measuring tools for the discovery of a pack of raiders!
He swung away from the door in a fury of frustration and hurled the coins at the wall. Wulf dodged clumsily away from the sudden motion, but in a moment he was standing again as straight as his old man’s back could stiffen.
‘Thee must be more quiet, Meister,’ he said. ‘Else thee will properly lose all.’
‘Thinkest thou I have aught to lose, old man?’ Roger said between his teeth. He strode to the stool and jerked the drawstring of the purse tight savagely. ‘Nevertheless, I thank thee for thy cunning stupid drudge though thou be’st. Dost think Will of Howlake will never hear of thee, dwelling here like a freeman after eight decades as a serf? Thinkest thou he’ll not dispatch his men to seek thee out, and ask thee whence thy sudden riches came? Thou shouldst have run till thy bones broke with thy weight, wold Wulf; for traitor they will adjudge thee, and draw out thy bowels, and pull the rest of thy curse asunder ‘twixt four horses!’
‘Aye, us thought it mote be so,’ Wulf said, ‘And thee wilt leave us nothing Meister, but they orts there that thee flung away?’
Roger opened the door and turned back to stare at the serf for the last time. Certes, I’ll leave thee more,’ he said savagely. ‘Dig thou for that boy’s trash that thou stol’st, and give that to thy nephew-in-law for thy meat!’
But the old man no longer seemed to be listening, as though he had known what the answer must be. He was on his knees, patiently picking over the filthy straw for the discarded, debased, fugitively glittering coins.
It had been no part of Roger’s intention to strike out for Oxford again without so much as a night’s rest, nor with the same horse, either, but the dead weight of the knobby purse impelled him to triple caution; now, surely he dared not risk search, let alone recognition. He risked only a long meal for himself and John Blund and then struck out during the afternoon sleep, not daring to hurry while he was still anywhere in the valley, but thereafter driving the horse at a merciless gallop until it began to sob and heave.
In a small, forest-bordered meadow, which did not look tended enough to belong to any farm, he dismounted and tethered the horse after watering it from a tiny stream, little more than a runnel. Here he risked a fitful nap, standing with his back against a tree and with his hand on his sword. He had intended no more than an hour, but somehow he fell asleep even in this position and dreamed that a ring of bowmen with the heads of foxes had tied him there and were stuffing eleven pounds three and a half shillings Fleming into his mouth one red-hot penny at a time.
He awoke with a start which nearly toppled him – for his knees, which had bent somewhat, ached horribly, and he was stiff throughout his body with cold – to find the sun almost touching the hills to the south-west, and someone on horseback sitting above him hardly more than ten paces away.
He had the sword only half out, with a creakingly ugly motion which would not have been fast enough to discourage a boy with a quarter-staff, when the fox-head dissolved back into the nullity of dream and he saw that, in fact, the rider was a girl. Furthermore she was smirking at him with an infuriating disrespect.
‘Well then,’ she said, ‘tha be well overtook, by Goddes bones. Art going to run a poor maid clean through the butter-milk? Tha’ll first needs be friendlier with thy girt feet, boy.’
Roger ground his teeth in exasperation and forced his aching muscles to pull him into a more human stance. He looked about for John Blund and found him, munching brittle grass with his eyes half closed, which made him look at once maidenly and vacuous – an expression which, for some reason, infuriated Roger all the more. ‘
‘And who beest thou, lip-kin?’ he said, glaring up at the girl. She was, he saw now, probably about fifteen: a good, bouncing year for a peasant girl, though she did not talk qui
te like a serf’s daughter, despite her West Midlands dialect. The horse, a small sturdy cob, was not any serf’s draft animal either. Her hair was cut short – which was good sense for peasant girls looking to provide as few handholds for rapists as possible – but the stray curls of it that came out from under her black woollen wimple were little flames of dull gold. He felt his glare dimming a little, entirely against his intention.
‘Tha can call me Tibb, an I let thee,’ she said. ‘Tha’lt better clamber on thy bulgy-eyed dray there, afore some coney kicks tha in thy ribs. An tha’rt faring somewheres, at least I know the roads.’
This sounded like the best advice, unpalatably though the spoon was being proffered. He picked his way cautiously to John Blund and untied him from his stump.
‘Whither farest thou, then?’
‘Nowheres that that’d know, by the looks of the,’ she said, swinging her own horse around. ‘I’m to my uncle’s inn, with whey and buttermilk – didst think I was jesting? Well, certes I was then – from Northover parish. An tha past money, tha canst find lodging there; otherwise, tha’lt find it a cold night outside our very door.’
‘Thou dost not sound so cold in the heart,’ Roger said.
‘Softly there, boy. I’ve a needle in my girdle, shouldst tha need stitching.’ She looked back at him, still smiling. ‘The mast not draw before me; that tha’s shown every owlet in Rowan Wood already.’
‘I molest no one,’ Roger said stiffly, ‘tie childer nor animals.’
‘There’s a light oath,’ Tibb said. ‘Naytheless, ride closer then, and work the cement out of thy sword-elbow. I was fond to stop for thee, this is a bad hour; canst tha strike if we be beset?’
‘Fast enough,’ Roger said. ‘No man becomes a master by his wits alone.’
This outrageous lie passed between his teeth before he was quite aware of it; yet he was disinclined to correct it. The day, in particular, and the journey, in general, had cast a false air around everything, and around his own bitterness, a tatterdemalion motley.