by Jim Crace
This was the moment that the woman showed her face. No witnesses are in any hurry to blot out the vision of her rising from the den. She had been hidden and confined below the sacking roof all along, I’m told excitedly by almost everyone who saw it. She is the burning topic for this evening. While her men—no one knows yet what kinship there might be between the three of them—were concealed among the trees, she was evidently sitting up inside her crude dwelling and peering out between the branches and the earthy daub at what I have to call a mob. She will have wondered at the anger they brought with them, their fearsome staves and sticks, the glinting silver of their sickle blades. She will have seen a stocky young man with the stone-green eyes of a cottage cat step forward and bring his clonking stick down on her roof—and on her skull. The face that showed itself was running wet with blood, and her black hair was further darkened with a wound.
The whole encounter was transformed by blood, I’m told. What was a routine stand-off between two sets of men, two sets of armed men, both ready to defend themselves incautiously, had in a trice become an occasion of shame. The woman’s wound was too red and fresh not to take notice of. Indeed, the blood was marking her cheeks, like tears. At once the village women began to call out for restraint. Their men did not attempt those two more steps. They let their weapons fall away into the undergrowth or hang loosely from their hands. Again it was Mr. Quill who didn’t do what he was told. Despite the closeness of the bow, he moved forward awkwardly, pulled aside the topmost branches of their den, put out his hand and helped the bloody woman step into the light.
What were they to make of her? She was not beautiful, not on first encounter anyhow. She had what we might call (behind her back) a weasel face, wide-cheeked, thin-lipped, a short receding chin, a button nose, and eyes and hair as shiny, dark and dangerous as belladonna berries. What caught our women’s eyes at once was the velvet shawl she wore round her shoulders, an expensive lordly weave in heavy Turkish mauve and silver thread. Their instinct was to call out, Mind your cloth. Her blood was bulbing on her little chin and might soon drop to spoil the velvet. Their second thought declared, She’s dressed beyond her station. A woman of her kind could not possess a shawl such as that without first stealing it. Even Lucy Kent, the master’s wife, had never owned a shawl such as that. Indeed, a shawl such as that, so far as anybody could remember, had never crossed the village boundaries before. It’s not surprising, then, that so many of our wives and daughters widened their eyes in envy, hoped to feel the weight of it between their fingers, and wondered what their chances were of wearing it themselves.
The village men were not so taken by the cloth. They noticed it, of course, and how it added a becoming color to the scene. They could imagine making use of it, laid out in the hidden corner of some field, far from their wives. But, as men will, they were assessing her by standards other than her clothes. They surveyed her, hoof, horn and tail. And then they surveyed her two men. What they saw was someone who might happily infect their dreams, a wide-hipped woman who was enthralling to behold in ways they never could explain and all the more so for not being beautiful or statuesque but rather someone within reach, and someone who was defiantly—and irresistibly—proud. She held up her head, flared her nostrils in disdain, pursed her lips, and did not even dip her gaze as she was helped by Mr. Quill beyond the province of her broken home. She’d be, they thought, more than thirty years of age and so it was unlikely (and preferable, of course) that either of the men was her husband. The elder was already gray and balding, her father possibly, though any facial likeness was obscured by beard; the other was a man at least ten years younger than the woman, but equally as black-haired as her. A brother, then. This was a family. And it was safe to say the daughter of the house was still available, despite her age. She was a widow, possibly, with all that implies: she would be seasoned and experienced; she would have an unslaked thirst for company. In a village such as ours, where women die before the men, there are plenty of my neighbors who will have seen at once a tempting opportunity. While the women might have cast her as a subject of their kindom or a partner for their sons and might have nieced and cousined her, glad to have their breeding stock enlarged by some black hair, the men there will have chambered her and nested her the moment that she showed herself. Surely that could hardly count as sin. The local women were like land—fenced in, assigned and spoken for, the freehold of their fathers, then their husbands, then their sons. You could not cross their boundaries, or step beyond your portion. But this one, this incomer, was no better than any other wild quarry on common ground. Like any pigeon, any hare, she was fair game.
Still, the written law should be obeyed. Our Master Kent, who had yet to show his presence and authority, mounted Willowjack again and brought her forward until he reached the clearing by the den, where the three newcomers and Mr. Quill were standing like skittles, not uttering a word. I sympathize with Master Kent and what he chose to do. He understood that something out of reason had occurred and something out of reason had to put an end to it.
“Put those aside,” he said, indicating the two longbows. “This is not a place for ruff …” He would have called them ruffians had not the woman widened her eyes at him. “This is not a place for rough manners,” he resumed.
She laughed. “Those are the only manners we’ve seen since we arrived,” she said. “What shame is it that you shake sticks at us?”
“I’m not shaking any sticks at you,” the master said. “Nor shall I do so. But you two, sirs”—he pointed at the woman’s men—“must pay for dining out last night on fowl that don’t belong to you … we’ve seen the picked-clean bones … by contemplating better manners in the pillory. Let’s say one week. And let your offending bows be put underfoot and snapped in two. And each of you should have your head shaven, to mark you out as … well, suspicious travelers.”
One week, disarmed and bald? A modest punishment. And one which by happy chance would keep the woman on our land and separated from her men for long enough for every village hand to try his luck with her. She spat at this point, only at the ground between the horse’s hoofs but still a shocking act and one that Master Kent could not ignore without losing face.
“Count yourself as fortunate we do not boast a broader pillory,” he said, not looking at her in case she widened her eyes at him again. “And be thankful that we are too gentle here and careful of our water to duck you in our village pond. But you will lose your hair together with your men. And in the time it takes to lengthen you might consider your disdain for us.”
This time her phlegm reached Willowjack and left a rosary of pearls across her flank.
3
T IS THE EVENING OF this unrestful day of rest and the far barn that has survived the fire is full of harvesters, lying back on bales of hay and building up an appetite on rich man’s yellow manchet bread from Master Kent’s elm platters. We’re drinking ale from last year’s barley crop. Again we benefit from seasons. Lanterns throw out such deep and busy shadows that my neighbors’ faces are hard to place. They are grotesques, but only for a moment. I do not have to count the heads to see that everyone is here. There’s not a soul who’s stayed behind at home tonight. Even the twins’ old mother, who cannot shuffle a single step unless supported at both elbows and lifted like a plaster saint, has somehow succeeded, with the help of a wooden winnowing screen—“my lady’s litter,” as she says—in being carried to the feast. There’re parsley balls, salted offal pumps and stewed giblets. There’s cured bacon too. And the little hand-reared calf, rejected by its mother in the spring and kept by Master Kent in this same barn, has been slaughtered for its pains, skinned in one and shafted on a roasting pole. For us. Its hide is hanging from a rafter beam above the fire, being dried and cured in the smoke and odor of its own flesh.
We ought to be content. The harvest’s in. Our platters are piled high with meat. There’s grease on everybody’s chin. Our heads are softening with beer. Yet I can tell our village is u
nnerved. This morning’s fires and skirmishes hang heavily, especially with the twins and Brooker Higgs but also with the men who far too quickly volunteered to hold the spitting woman on the ground and scissor her. To tell the truth there’s none of us who feels entirely comfortable, who is not soiled with a smudge of shame. Chatter being what it is, I have no doubt that, apart from Master Kent and Mr. Quill, anyone who wants to know who truly took a flame up to the dovecote will have worked it out by now. Secrets are like pregnancies hereabouts. You can hide them for a while but then they will start screaming. So we are all conspirators tonight. We can be absolved only if these three guilty friends pin their valor to their chests and whisper in the master’s ear that the two so far nameless men who are now standing side by side, cuffed, collared and locked in the village pillory at the gateway to the church we never built, enduring the first chill of the evening and a little rain, should be set loose and brought into the feaster’s barn by way of an apology. A cut of veal could be our recompense.
It’s possible—no, likely, I will say—that Master Kent will not avenge himself on the twins and Brooker Higgs if they reveal the truth. Tonight they’re family, to some degree. Tonight we all are family. And Master Kent, especially since his wife passed on and left her unattended looms but not a single child to him, cherishes the fellowship we provide. Besides, it does not take a great amount of ale to make him warm and soft. Unlike a lot of us, the more he drinks the more he values harmony. So our merry men—so noticeably quiet, I see, and sitting in a huddle on the furthest bale, avoiding lantern light—could easily and without much fear design an almost-honest version of this morning’s fire and make amends, both to the master and to the newcomers—and also to my smarting palm; I was the only villager they scorched. But they do not. They do not want to risk the truth.
And neither, come to that, do I. Despite what I have seen myself while walking to the barn, it is unjust but sensible, I think, to let the pillory alone. The cup of hospitality is broken already. So far as I can tell, it is not likely that our visitors, once their seven days are served, will want to set up home among us anyway. We’ve not endeared ourselves to them. They’ll fold their sacking and go, the moment they’re set free. So maybe it is wise for all of us to hold our tongues for the time being and let them soak up all the blame. Seven days are neither here nor there with men like that, men who have no land or greater family, men who have no roots but are like mistletoe. Further, there is an account on which I cannot yet confer my sympathy, being absent from this morning’s scene, that says these newcomers are worthy of the pillory anyway, no matter who it was who took the fire to Master Kent’s old beams. No one forgets the two drawn bows, the impudence of telling people they’d better step away, or else.
Nevertheless, we are certainly unnerved. Our pillory has not been used for many years. Its iron bolt key, which Master Kent keeps with a dozen others on a bronze chain somewhere in his parlor, is rusty and has broken wards. Its last frequenters were two cousins—both Saxtons, so related to my wife—who went to war among themselves about the title to a pig. That’s no small matter. I’m not making light of it. Pigs are our backyard brethren, in a way, and worth fighting for. It took half a dozen of our lads to calm them down. To pin them down, in fact. It was an entertaining afternoon. The cousins spent only a night encased, as I remember it, and by the morning they had butchered their differences. They shared the pork out, snout to tail, two trotters each, weighing everything and even dividing the liver and the heart with the care of merchants cleaving an ounce of gold or cutting a length of cloth. Ever since they have enjoyed a reputation as our favorite rascals. They have only to grunt to have us clutching at our ribs. To this day they rarely miss an opportunity to claim, usually within each other’s hearing, that standing in the pillory was not a cruel punishment, though being in their cousin’s company was. And remains so. They’d paid too great a price for pork.
That was about ten harvests ago, during the second or third year of our master’s marriage and his freehold over us. He’s never thought it fit to put the pillory to use since then. It’s been our village cross. We’ve little else. The plot of land that was set aside for a church has nothing on it other than our too many graves, a pile of well-intended but as yet unlaid stones and, somewhere underneath the bracken, sore-hocks and willow herb, a flat foundation block. So far no one has made the time to dig a building trench, select a single flint for our church’s walls or mix a pint of mortar. We do not dare to say we count ourselves beyond the Kingdom of God. But certainly we do not press too closely to His bosom; rather, we are at His fingertips. He touches us, but only just. We work cheek to jowl with breeds that cluck and snort and moo, but never with the Father who created us and them. I’ve yet to sense Him standing at our shoulders, sickle in His hand. I’ve yet to feel Him lightening the plow. No, we dare to think and even say among ourselves, there’d be no barley if we left it to the Lord, not a single blade of it. Well, actually, there’d be no field, except a field of by-blows and weeds; the nettles and tares, the thorns and brambles He preferred when He abandoned Eden. You never find Him planting crops for us. You never find us planting weeds. But still we have to battle with His darnel and His fumiter, we have to suffer from His fleas and gnats and pests. He makes us pay the penalty of Adam. Sometimes we’re thankful that the nearest steeple is a lengthy day away (and so’s the nearest alehouse, come to that!). We can’t afford a living for a priest. We’d prove too small and mean a flock for him. Our umbrage would eclipse our awe. So we continue not irreligiously but independently, choosing not to remind ourselves too frequently that there’s a Heaven and a Hell and that much of what we count as everyday is indeed a sin.
We do, though, have our wooden cross, our neglected pillory, standing at the unbuilt gateway of our unbuilt church. It’s slightly taller than a normal man, oak built. The two hinged boards which form its wings and provide two stations for its prisoners are wider and a little longer than its upright. That makes our cross more muscular and far reaching than the usual, narrower crucifix. The orifices which in a crueler place would more regularly provide a fitting for the necks and wrists of miscreants have lately been a useful space for us to hang prayer rosaries or love chains made from flowers. It’s here that Master Kent conducts our marriages and baptisms, where he delivers eulogies to those who have departed—my wife and his were celebrated on this spot—and comforts the bereaved. It’s here we gather to consecrate our seed corn and give our harvest thanks and bless the plow.
So earlier this evening it was for me an unhappy and infernal sight to see the two men and their hanging heads and hands, secured to the village cross and left to sag for seven days. Up till that moment I’d witnessed only their smoke and heard about these newcomers, their defiance and their bows, through the vaunting, colorful reports of my brave neighbors, mostly John Carr and Emma Carr and the widow Gosse, with whom, in all honesty, I have of late established an occasional attachment. From her nettling description, I was expecting rougher men. All I could see from a cautious distance, passing by on my way toward the smell of veal and bacon, were the inoffensive tops of two hastily shaven and humiliated heads, as newly reaped as our great field, one ghostly gray, the other already darkening with tar-black stubble. The elder was the shorter man. He was on tiptoes and in evident discomfort. If he stood flat, he would be throttled by the wooden vice that bolted him in place. I decided then to find a flattish log for him to stand on when later I returned that way.
Master Kent is standing now, and drawing expectant smiles from us. These feasting times are when, fueled by ale, he likes to recall for his soil-bound guests the life he led before his happy coming here. His are embroidered tales of a strange and dangerous world: imps and oceans; palaces and wars. They always leave my neighbors glad they’ll not be part of it. But tonight his mood is clearly not a teasing one. Instead, he has invited Mr. Quill to join him at the makeshift dining board and both of them have clapped us quiet. Is this a moment we should fea
r? “Here is my good acquaintance, Philip Earle,” he says, taking hold of Mr. Quill’s elbow and pushing him forward for us to greet and inspect. “You will have met him yesterday, and you will see him hereabouts for one more week. He has come to us in my employ to make a map of all our common ground and land. We will prepare some raw pauper’s vellum for his task from that veal skin which is hanging now above my head. He will take note of everything and then draw up petitions for the courts. What follows is—with your willing, kind consents—an organization to all of our advantages. Too many seasons have been hard for us …” As this point Mr. Earle (as we will never think of him) unrolls one of the working charts he has prepared and asks us to come up to see our world “as it is viewed by kites and swifts, and stars.” We press forward, shuffling against one another to fit within the lantern light. “These are more complete than yesterday,” says Mr. Quill, but once again we only see his geometrics and his squares. His mapping has reduced us to a web of lines. There is no life in them. Now he shows a second chart with other spaces. “This is your hereafter,” he says.
“Yes, our tomorrows will be shaped like this,” adds Master Kent. That “Yes” is more uncertain than it ought to be. He pauses, smiles. “I will be exact …” he promises. But not, it seems, for the moment.
Say it, say it now, say the word, I urge him silently. I don’t have to be a swift or kite to know about the world and how it’s changing—changing shape, as Master Kent suggests—and to hear the far-off bleating of incoming animals that are neither cows nor pigs nor goats, that are not brethren. I know at once; I’ve feared this “Yes” ever since the mistress died. The organization to all of our advantages that the master has in mind—against his usual character and sympathies, against his promises—involves the closing and engrossment of our fields with walls and hedges, ditches, gates. He means to throw a halter round our lives. He means the clearing of our common land. He means the cutting down of trees. He means this village, far from everywhere, which has always been a place for horn, corn and trotter and little else, is destined to become a provisioner of wool. The word that he and no one dares to whisper let alone cry out is sheep. Instead Master Kent presents a little nervously a dream he’s had. He hopes that if he can describe these changes as having been fetched to him by a dream, then we will understand him more and fear him less, for dreams are common currency even among commoners. Surely, we are dreamers too.