The Outcasts of Time

by Ian Mortimer

  The canon precentor turns from Master Ley to address William. ‘Tell us, if you were here at the time of the Great Plague, what was the name of the rector then?’

  William is now eating a baked apple, the sauce running down his fingers. ‘He was a stinking pig called Philip de Vautort. He was fat and he spoke French, and we all hated him. And now, as I hope, he is burning in the hottest of all the pits in Hell.’

  The canon precentor snaps his fingers at one of Ley’s house servants. ‘Fetch the constable. We want two vagrant plague-ridden thieves removed from here to the gaol in Exeter.’

  ‘The plague?’ I ask, astonished to think that even here, in this remote time, it is still killing people.

  ‘Alas, we yet walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ replies Master Ley.

  ‘Do not encourage them,’ snaps the canon precentor.

  ‘Every seven or eight years it returns. We are still at war with France too. And still suffering the depredations of brigands. Not much has changed since the time you describe as your own.’

  ‘No, Father Ley! How can you say that? Everything has changed,’ I protest, looking straight at him. ‘Who were the leading men of the town in our day? I’ll tell you: John Parleben, Reginald Veysi, William Kena, William Carnsleigh, William Corvyset, John White, William Tozer and Warin Bailiff. Where are they now? Dead, of course. You do not know what they looked like, or what clothes they wore – and that is so even though these two men here carry their names.’

  ‘This is unsupportable,’ declares the canon precentor, who throws down his napkin and rises to his feet.

  I continue. ‘Who can imagine the tenderness of a great-grandmother? Or the fears of a great-great-grandfather? But you should not think for a moment that your ignorance of the past means that nothing has changed. I am sure that the canon precentor is proud of the cathedral in Exeter, but I doubt that he knows the name of a single mason that built it. Well, I can tell you many of the names, and one of them was John of Wrayment.’

  The portreeve and Father Parleben also stand. Colles strides across the room and stops to address Father Ley from the middle of the hall.

  ‘Master Ley, I find your attempts to humour these two men tedious and insulting. If you need me, I shall be at my rectory.’ He goes to the door and opens it – not waiting for a servant to do it for him – and leaves the house. Father Parleben follows him.

  Peter Veysi pauses to address Master Ley. ‘I thank you for this dinner, Master Ley. It was a most excellent spread. I am sorry it has ended in such contumely. I have no choice but to go with the canon precentor. As you know, we need him to agree to the rebuilding of the chancel.’ He bows to Master Ley and departs.

  Master Ley looks down at his trencher, and seems almost to be smiling. ‘You must excuse the canon precentor,’ he says, reaching out for his wine goblet and lifting it to his lips. ‘It can be no pleasure for him to come all the way out here on such a trivial matter as the rebuilding of our church. I am sure he will calm down in due course.’

  He sets down his wine. ‘I assume you’re not actually carrying the plague. You both look well enough. Certainly your appetite, William, suggests no lasting sickness.’

  ‘Master Ley,’ I say, ‘let me ask you something. What does a man need to do to secure safe passage to Heaven? Will the donation of that money and the book be sufficient in my case?’

  ‘Now there’s a change of subject. Why do you ask?’

  ‘We have but a little time to live. Methinks that you, being a man of the cloth, well, you should know.’

  ‘It’s a difficult business. Our masters in Rome tell us that through the purchase of indulgences we can clear our souls of the taint of sin and thereby secure redemption. The canon precentor will tell you much the same thing. However, some of us are less certain. For instance, if you were one of the Satellites of Satan, I would say to you that no gift could redeem your soul. But that does not mean that your soul would be irredeemable. You could, for example, make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and wash your sins away through repentence at the Holy Sepulchre.’

  Master Ley wipes the edge of his mouth with a napkin. ‘Imagine that you are that rare thing, a man without sin. Why should you give a penny for your soul’s redemption? It is already perfect. So how can you be rightfully charged for the redemption of your soul? After all, who among us can truly judge another man’s sin? That is a matter for God alone. If you were a sinless man, an indulgence would be as useless as a shield of straw. Therefore, in answer to your question, I do not believe that anything is now changed by your gift. I am sorry if that comes as a disappointment to you.’

  ‘Is there nothing I can do? Nothing at all?’

  ‘Your predicament, as I see it, is that your principal motive in wanting to perform a good work is the benefit it will bring to your soul, not the good work in itself. If you saw a good woman being attacked by Baldwin Fulford, and you stepped forward to save her, that would be a good act. However, if you were to rescue her purely so your soul would go to Heaven, the good of the act would be secondary to your self-interest. You would be benefiting from her plight. There is no virtue in that.’

  A chill breeze enters by the window. Master Ley gestures to one of his servants to close it. William has drained Father Parleben’s wine mazer and is finishing the canon precentor’s too. I wipe the sweet red sauce off one of the platters with my finger and lick it when there is a knock at the door. Master Ley pays it no attention. But the servant who has just closed the window goes to answer it. A burly man comes in, wearing a great leather mantle over his clothes that reaches down to his knees. He sweeps one part of it aside and reaches up to remove his black hat.

  ‘Master Ley, I am informed that your house is beset by plague-sufferers, liars and thieves.’

  ‘I thank you for taking the trouble to attend, Constable Carnsleigh, but I am afraid you have been misinformed. There was a small altercation between the rector and my guests here over the matter of the late king’s wars. As you can see, they are not suffering from the plague. If they are telling lies then I must admit their untruths be more delightful to me than many a hard fact I have heard of late. I wish you a good afternoon.’

  ‘Seeing as that is the case, Master Ley, I am very sorry to have bothered you. Do send for me again if there are any further altercations.’

  ‘I will indeed, Constable,’ says Master Ley as the servant shows the man out.

  ‘Well,’ he says, turning to us, ‘I have no further subtleties with which to entice you. It is up to you what you wish to do. You no doubt have some other places to go to and things to attend to.’

  William and I look at each other. ‘Truth be told, Master Ley,’ I say, ‘we’ve nowhere else to go. And it’ll be dusk in a couple of hours. If it would please you, I’d happily work the rest of the day in your house, perhaps in your kitchen, to earn a place before your fire tonight.’

  ‘By my heart, you are the strangest folk. You give me money for the church, you tell stories that are either brilliant lies or shards of miracles. And after being treated to a proper dinner, you ask to wash the dishes.’

  ‘It’s John that’s doing the asking, mind,’ says William.

  Master Ley gets to his feet. ‘You are my guests. John, if you want to work, you can help my cook, Will, in the kitchen. Your work will be a blessing upon us all.’

  So we take advantage of the good clerk’s hospitality. William sits by the fire, while I go through to the kitchen, which is a separate granite-built building on the other side of the courtyard. This is open to the rafters but the hearth is set against a wall, not in the middle of the room, and it has a chamber called a smoke box above it, to restrict the drifting fumes. Will the Cook is a bright young man with curly fair hair and a pleasant smile. I help draw water from the well in the courtyard and heat it over the fire in a cauldron on a swinging metal bracket, the like of which I have not seen before. When the water is hot, I help Will and the other servants put the leftovers to one si
de for the pigs who live in a small rough garden called the backside, and then help scour the blackened iron pots with handfuls of coarse straw and potash. The light is fading by the time we finish; we set up rushlights on metal stands by which to see in the gloom. Will feeds the fire well – the servants in this house are probably warmer in the winter months than their master – and then we set about weighing all manner of roots and seeds on the scales. Some of these I have heard of – saffron and pepper, for example, although Catherine and I could never afford them – but others are wholly new to me. Will shows me a pot of aromatic brown seeds that he calls cumins and others called caraways and cloves. In other pots he has sweet dried fruit called dates, and thick yellow sticks of a root called ginger. Pieces of scented bark, called cinnamon, are in one box; in another are large seeds called nutmegs. For a moment, in the warm, fire-lit darkness, surrounded by all these wonderful spices and smells, I have a glimpse of true wealth.

  ‘Where does he obtain such exotic things?’ I ask, as Will starts chopping almonds. ‘Does he send to London for them?’

  ‘We stock up when the fairs are held here – in Bovey, Okehampton and Chagford as well as Moreton – and the grocers in Exeter keep stocks of spices. If I buy eight ounces of nutmegs for the master they’ll last all year. Even at the rate that he consumes them. He likes a little ground nutmeg in his wine with sugar.’

  ‘Sugar? You have sugar? Never have I tasted it.’

  ‘It was in the red sauce that accompanied the roasted turbot.’ He reaches a brown cake down from a shelf and shows it to me. ‘You can buy it in all different forms: pot sugar, red flat sugar, white flat sugar, Cyprus sugar, sugar candy, syrup, and so forth.’ He cuts a small piece off the brown cake with a large knife and passes it to me.

  It tastes as if God had made it simply to make us smile. The sweetness fills my jaw so much that I cannot help but grin. I want to share this sublime taste with Catherine, and that loss swells into a regret. This wonderful new taste makes me think of my whole life. Tears come to my eye. I keep the sugar in my mouth as long as possible, and feel it dissolve. But even then the taste lingers.

  In this way the rest of the day passes. We weigh spices and we grind them, we talk about food and we sup ale with honey and herbs. Later, one of the servants comes through and says that Master Ley would like a small supper to be served to him and my brother. Will prepares a dish of oysters simmered in wine with their own broth, with milk from blanched almonds, powdered dried ginger, sugar, maces, and something called flour of rice.

  ‘But how does Master Ley afford such luxuries?’ I ask. ‘He told me he has but a modicum of the income from the rectory – a modest stipend.’

  ‘The master is no fool. When the canon precentor first came here and took a view of the glebe, his flock amounted to twenty-four sheep. That flock is still twenty-four sheep strong. Master Ley, however, has acquired a flock of more than three hundred. When men go off streaming for tin on the moor, Master Ley takes on their leases for the land they no longer use, including their meadows and their rights to pasture their animals on the common. That is why so many of the woolsacks around here are filled with his wool. He is a local man through and through. That’s why the parishioners are all on his side and against the canon precentor, whom they see as a thieving foreigner.’

  When supper is served, I note that Will and the two servants eat in the hall with Master Ley. The shutters are now closed, and the fire burning merrily. Four or five rushlights illuminate our tables, and, as we eat, our movements cast huge shadows on to the walls behind us. After the meal our host serves us caudled wine with nutmeg, sugar and cinnamon. William and I tell stories, and after a while Master Ley himself joins in. He tells us jokes about stupid men cuckolded by their shrewd wives, and pretty young women seduced by lustful men who promise to marry them with rings of clay and straw, which of course fall apart, and foolish monks deceived into parting with their abbot’s money on account of their ungodly ambition.

  At the end of the evening, we are provided with straw mattresses to sleep on, blankets to keep us warm, and a log each on which to rest our heads. I prefer to rest mine on my fardel. Will and the servants depart to sleep in the kitchen. All but two of the rushlights have burned out.

  ‘I suppose there’s a very good chance I will not see you in the morning,’ Master Ley says, before he leaves the hall. ‘I have enjoyed discussing things other than over-prized sheep and lost souls – or over-prized souls and lost sheep.’ He pauses. ‘John, if I were you, I’d not worry too much about trying to save your soul. The thing you seek to do can only come from you naturally. You cannot make it happen. No matter how many days the Lord has given you to live, they will be enough. Goodnight, and may God’s blessing be upon you both now and always, in your travels, and in your eventual homecoming.’

  I settle on my mattress and hear him climb the ladder to his chamber above the buttery. I shuffle a little, trying to make myself comfortable, and hear the rustling straw beneath me as I do so.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ whispers William.

  ‘Why could we not have had a priest like Master Ley in our day, instead of de Vautort?’

  Only one rushlight is now burning and that is nearing its end.

  ‘What do you think tomorrow holds?’

  ‘Another freezing seventeenth of December. But this time in a different year. The canon precentor said that the siege of Calais was in the year of Our Lord one thousand three hundred and forty-seven. We caught the plague the following year, and ninety-nine years have passed, so we should wake up on the seventeenth of December one thousand five hundred and forty-six.’

  ‘Do you think it will be any different from today?’

  ‘Yes. Undoubtedly.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll eat more lamb. What with all these sheep.’

  ‘Not in December they won’t. It’ll still be Advent.’

  ‘Curses. Why could we not be spending our last days in July?’

  The last rushlight goes out and now there is only the glow of the fire to light the hall. I roll on to my side and stare into the redness of the burning logs. A few sparks drift off. The hall is silent.

  ‘I think you should not tell people the truth about where we come from,’ says William. ‘They do not recall the reign of King Edward the Third. It is incomprehensible to them. And men do not like what they do not understand.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Say that we are travellers from places where no one has ever been. Like India. Or Muscovy.’

  I lie there for a few slow minutes, on my side, looking into the fire.

  I wonder if any of my children lived long enough to taste sugar.

  Chapter Four

  My eyes are not yet open but I am awake, my leg pressed bruisingly hard up against a heavy piece of furniture. It is dark; there is no sign of light at the window. Nor is there any trace of heat from the fire by which I went to sleep.

  I hear a snuffle and the rasp of a snore.

  ‘William?’

  Another snore.

  I think back to the previous morning. That miller at Cranbrook used words I did not understand. He said his dog was fussocky. What does that mean? Can our way of speaking change that much in ninety-nine years so that I can hear things in my own home town that I do not understand? If houses are so different, and the clothes and the food so altered in quality, what else might change? How should William and I stop ourselves looking out of place and avoid questions about where we were born?

  The snoring stops.

  ‘The sound of your thinking is so loud,’ says William, ‘it has awoken me. What is on your mind?’

  ‘New raiment, brother. The further we are from our own time, the stranger we’ll appear, and the more questions we’ll be asked.’

  ‘We need a tailor.’

  ‘If we were to order new sets of clothes, how long would it take to make them? At best, a tailor would say, “Come back and collect them tomorrow,” which would be no good for us,
as by then we’d be another ninety-nine years further on in time.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘We need someone to sell us some old clothes. Perhaps the owner of this house? At least, he might know of a local man who has died recently, so that his widow might part with his unwanted garments.’

  There is a thump in the darkness, as if someone had struck one of the beams of the hall roof. I hear the sound of footsteps on floorboards, directly above us.

  ‘I was wondering,’ William says, ‘whether we are ghosts.’

  ‘The thought has occurred to me too.’

  ‘I’ve decided that we are not. The living are afraid of ghosts. But we are afraid of the living.’

  ‘Maybe they are the ghosts then,’ I say. ‘Everything that we see and hear is the ghost world and we are the only living folk in it.’

  ‘That, John, is a grievous thought.’

  I get to my feet, placing my travelling sack on the table. I wonder what happened to my sword – and then remember leaving it in the passageway. I remember the whitewashed stone walls of Master Ley’s hall and move in the direction of where the door stood but I bump into a wooden cupboard of some sort, sending a metal plate clattering to the floor.

  ‘You are keen to meet our hosts, then,’ says William.

  The embers of a fire are glowing faintly on the side of the hall. I step closer, and bend down, hoping to find a poker with which to rake the ashes. My searching hand touches nothing suitable. So I stand up again and, as I do so, I bash my head on a piece of overhanging stone. I curse, and rub the lump.