by Alis Hawkins
Hob flicks a glance at me, then rises to fetch the horseshoe which I laid on top of the canvas above the empty corner. ‘It wasn’t my idea, as it happens,’ he says, sitting again. ‘It was the saint’s.’
‘What are you talking about? What idea?’ My heart is banging my ribs again. How dare he? She is not his saint. He has never even knelt beneath her blessing hand. How dare he declare her the author of his own designs?
‘Look, Martin, you’ve heard what people’ve been saying — they want the Maiden to have a sign. They want to be able to know her by the miracles she’s done.’
‘She has a sign — the white braids!’
‘But they don’t signify a miracle, do they? They just call to mind her kirtle, her name.’ He raises the staff he has been working on and taps the top. ‘When I walk into a village carrying the very shoe the mare cast on the ford, people will know that a miracle’s happened and they’ll want to know all about it.’
‘But Cynryth’s miracles are to do with wells and healing! How will it help to start talking about horseshoes?’
He shakes his head. ‘Those were the miracles she did before, Martin. She’s doing new things, now. You heard them yesterday. The saint did two miracles at Tredgham — one when she caused the mare to throw her shoe on the ford, another when she blessed Beatrice.’
He looks up at me, eyes dark in the gloom. ‘This was her idea,’ he says again. ‘I wouldn’t have thought of it but she came to me in a dream last night. She stood before me. Like this.’ He flicks his fingers into the gap between us, showing how close the saint stood in his dream ‘She was a life-size woman. And in her hand —’ he mimes the saint’s reaching posture — ‘she was holding a horseshoe, offering it to me.’
Fear-hackles rise on my neck. Why did she offer the horseshoe to Hob and not to me? Is she punishing me because I have not spoken of my vision, because I have kept it hidden in my heart like a treasure?
Hob eyes my silence and speaks again.
‘We’ve got wristlets for the hand-miracle. But she knew we needed something to show people the miracle of the thrown shoe.’
He sits in front of me, limbs long and straight, head held high, his cloak fastened so that even I, who know he does not possess one, look to his side for a sword.
Has the saint deserted me in favour of a more fitting champion?
For almost two weeks, news of the saint seems to run along before us. As we follow that long, long hill-line, that wave of land that seems to run along England as the great bore runs along the Severn, travelling long distances without ever losing height, we are greeted everywhere as men who have been awaited. And, everywhere, we find hearts ready to welcome Saint Cynryth and give thanks for her miracles. Parents send their children off to tell aunties and uncles, friends and cousins that a saint is coming who may keep the plague from their doors. We see them, sometimes, dawdling back in the sunshine, full of self-importance and with little bundles full of items sent as thanks. They grin at us and show their white wristlets and one or two of the boys carry little staffs topped with a bent nail or a horseshoe-shaped piece of horn.
White braid about the wrist has become the mark of ‘the White Maid’s children’.
When we stop, I look into the anxious eyes of mothers and I see that, whether they believe in the power of my saint or not, they bring their little ones because any hope of protection, any hand held up against the pestilence, must be grasped.
So they wait for us in villages and at the roadside. They hail us from far off, knowing us as soon as we come into view by the saint who stands proud at the front of the cart, her hand reaching forward to greet them. And they know us by Hob’s staff.
Their speechways fall ever stranger on our ears as we travel further and further eastwards and sometimes a word here and there is foreign to us, springing from a different soil. But we are welcome, that much is always clear. For our saint and Hob’s staff, we are welcome. Indeed, people have begun to speak of the horseshoe staff as a relic in its own right and tales of its miraculous powers have begun to spread, seemingly of their own accord.
The staff is said to jerk in Hob’s fist when there is a village, just out of sight of the track, where we should stop. It is said to dowse springs with uncanny exactness. And it is said that, if a man so much as touches it, he shall be given the knowledge of his own fate under the pestilence.
‘I gripped it in my fist —’ I hear one fellow say to his companions, ‘and I saw, straightaway, that I wouldn’t die. Saw myself old and grey I did, with strong grandsons keeping me!’
One day, I even hear it said that the Maiden has given Hob a portion of her own power to reward his faithfulness in bringing her to the shrine in Salster. But, at this, Hob shakes his head. ‘No, no!’ he says, glancing sideways at me. ‘It’s Martin who’s bid to take her to Salster. I’m just the keeper of the horseshoe.’ But I know that, whatever he says, the rumour will persist. And no wonder; as he strides along, the miraculous staff in his hand, he is tall and golden in the spring sunshine, like the hero in a story.
Mile after mile, the track beneath the wheels of the cart is the whitish colour of the chalk these hills are made of and we see quarries and scrapes scattered everywhere.
The going is strenuous and the cart is showing signs of hard usage. My running repairs can be seen in the new lengths of rope which weave in and out, lashing sides to bed and re-securing bed to base. In one of the villages, I ask a wheelwright to re-nail the rims and to cast his eye over spokes and felloes. His opinion is that we will not get to Salster without new wheels.
‘Best make your mind up to spending money before you get there. Sooner rather than later, too, if you’ll take my advice.’
But Hob is unconvinced that repairs are needed. ‘The cart’ll be fine. It just creaks — all carts creak.’
So they do. But Hob will say that the cart is just creaking until it falls to firewood in front of our eyes; he wants the money for Salster. The only coin he is happy to spend goes on more silks — and flax which is cheaper — for the braids.
We come across a churchyard, the cross hung with garlands of primroses and stitchwort and violets. Palm Sunday flowers, wilted but not yet brown. It is Holy week.
Invited to lodge in the village for the celebration, we creep to the cross on our knees on Good Friday to confess our sins, we rise at dawn on Sunday for the Easter vigil, we process to church for the great Resurrection Eucharist.
But I am sick at heart.
Every other Easter, when Master William placed the host on my tongue, the knowledge that the bread had become the real body of our Lord, that I had taken his very substance into my own, filled me with wonder and awe.
Now, the taste of the host is the taste of my own death. Only by swallowing and swallowing in a dry throat can I stomach it.
A decision lies a day or two ahead of us. We have been told that, once we cross the river Medway, there are two routes to Salster. One will take us back up on to the slopes of the Down, the other north to the city of Rochester and thence east and south to Salster on a better road.
We have no shortage of advice — everybody has an opinion about the way to take. In other times, it seems, the choice would be easy — the road from Rochester is more direct and better-kept and, as long as pilgrims travel in a group large enough to deter robbers, they are safe.
But the road from Rochester to Salster starts in London. And London is dying.
A day or so before we must look for the river-crossing we find ourselves in a sunlit churchyard waiting for the boy who has been promised a ha’penny to run and find the parson. It has become our habit, when we enter a village, to make straight for the parish church and its priest, drawing villagers to us on the way.
A crowd has already gathered and I can see more figures coming to us along the paths that lead to the church. Yesterday, we stopped in a much bigger village and, no doubt, word of saint Cynryth’s power has travelled here ahead of us.
I watch them c
oming. Saint Cynryth’s army.
Soon, I am the only soul in the churchyard not paying Hob any attention and the parish priest has made it known that he will celebrate a mass and ask for the saint’s blessing on the parish.
At his request, I take the Maiden from the cart and carry her in to the church and, as his assistants swarm about him and pass through to the sanctuary to make preparation, I place her on the waist-high boarding of the rood screen.
Looking through, I see two boys, already scrambled into their white robes, laying fine linen on the stone surface of the altar. They are slapdash, grinning and gurning as they straighten the heavy cloths, one on top of the other, racing each other out to the vestry in a stiff-armed scurry.
I feel a world away from them. Though scarcely three months have passed since I did the very same office, I have lived another life in those months. If I were to pass through the screen and take the embroidered altar-cloth in my hands, it would not mean to me, now, what it meant then. Before the pestilence, I fulfilled even the smallest part of the eucharistic ritual in the hope that, one day, I would watch my own assistants doing the same.
But, even if my yearning to be a priest had not been stilled by the pestilence and its aftermath, I would no longer be able to convince myself of my vocation. I lack the essential virtue of chastity, Christiana has shown me that. And not just Christiana but all my thoughts of her — my lusts for her — since we left Slievesdon. Despite everything that happened to us there — the loss of our money, the risk to our lives — I know in my heart that I would do no differently if we were given our time there over again. The sensation of my cock sliding into the warm, slippery embrace of her comes to me now and I stifle a groan.
I drop to my knees before the rood screen to ask for forgiveness before the mass begins.
‘Do you have a wheelwright in your village?’
The man I have asked the question nods. ‘Yes. Thomas Prynk’s son Geoffrey’s a wheeler, he’s at the far end of the village if you want him.’
I thank him and adjust my hold on the saint. I must wrap her safely and lay her in the cart before I do anything else.
Hob strides after me, the linen bag that once held my mother’s needles and threads hanging heavy with coins at his waist.
‘Martin — I thought we’d agreed? We don’t need to waste money on new wheels — chances are, we’re less than a week from Salster. The cart’ll last, I’m sure of it.’
The saint swaddled in a blanket, I turn to him. ‘Well, I’m not. Those wheels are fit to spring their rims and we’ll be going nowhere when that happens.’
‘They’ll last a week, surely? It might be less — four or five days.’
I pull the canvas back, aware of the interest our conversation is causing. ‘And then what?’ I ask, between my teeth. ‘You’re set on staying in Salster and making your fortune there, but I’m not. I don’t know what I’ll do. I may need the cart.’
‘Oh, so I’ve got to part with my money so you’ll have a cart?’
‘You’ve had the benefit of it all this way!’
‘Yes, and the pushing and braking of it up and down half the hills in England.’
People are watching us. I should walk away but I am tired of Hob always thinking he can get the better of me. ‘You didn’t have to come with me.’ I keep my voice low. ‘You could’ve stopped in any of the towns along the way.’
‘I’ll do better in Salster than in any of the little piss-pot towns we’ve passed through.’
‘Fine.’ People are pretending not to listen but I know their ears are on stalks and I slide my words out carefully. ‘But since it’s my cart that’s getting you and your goods there, you can pay half for the wheels. How much money have we got?’
We have been selling braids at a steady rate. Despite the outlay on thread we should have a good few shillings put by.
Hob shrugs, the horseshoe staff in its accustomed position against his collarbone. There are still some braids hanging from the upturned shoe, unsold, and I shiver at a resemblance I have not seen before to the fripperies that hang from the nails on a peddler’s stick.
‘Don’t know,’ he says. ‘I haven’t been keeping count.’
‘What d’you mean you haven’t been keeping count?’
‘What I say.’
I stare at him, convinced that he is lying but unable to account for why.
On the other hand, now I stop to consider, I have never seen him counting the money he has taken in. He weighs the bag in his hand at the end of the day before stowing it in the press, but never has he piled pennies and ha’pennies into shillings.
‘Let’s count it. Then we’ll know how much we’ve got.’
‘Suit yourself. But you can count it — I’ll be out there making it.’
He stalks off and I turn to the cart.
I take the knotted corners of the old shirt in which we keep our takings and lift it out of the press. Seeing that the remnants of crowd have followed Hob, I settle down where I am, in a corner between the lych-gate and the churchyard wall and begin unpicking the knots.
Before I am halfway through counting, I know something is amiss. There should be more money than this — far more; Hob has been selling braids with the scarce, gold-coloured thread for more than the green-threaded ones and I know we made a good number of them — nearly all our silk and flaxen thread is gone.
Even with today’s takings added, what is in the shirt will not buy me one wheel, let alone two.
What has Hob done with the rest of the money?
I knot the shirt again and lay it in the press. By now, he must know that I have discovered his treachery. What lies is he hatching as he stands amidst the little crowd of people by the churchyard cross?
I rest my back against the cart and watch him. Now he smiles, now he laughs, now he speaks earnestly, his head thrust slightly forward as he tries to explain something to one of his would-be customers. I know his patter. The braids are no mere trinkets, he will be assuring them, they are reminders to prayer, solemn oaths that the blessings received by the kneeling supplicant will be acknowledged daily and the saint’s intercession sought.
When we started out with the saint, we had nothing but her, he will tell them. But people were avid for tokens — ‘how will we remember her when you’re gone?’
So closely am I watching Hob that I do not notice a fellow approaching me until he speaks.
‘I hear you’re wanting a wheelwright?’
I turn to the speaker. An older man, maybe thirty-five, he is wearing a tunic that has seen better days and boots whose soles are bound on with strips of rawhide.
‘Yes. Are you Geoffrey Wheeler?’ I hope not, for if a man’s prosperity announces his competence then this man is unhandy at best.
‘No. Geoffrey’s my brother. That’s him —’ he turns and points — ‘standing over there with your friend. The tall one. Want me to introduce you?’
‘No. Thank you. Let him finish his business with Hob, first.’
He gives a mirthless grunt. ‘He won’t be doing any business. Not Geoffrey. He’ll just be watching other fools parted from their money. He’s the tightest bastard west of the Medway.’
I wait in the shadow of the lychgate for the wheelwright. If he is mean with his money, he is unlikely to be easy-going in other respects and I am loath to deprive him of whatever entertainment he is getting from watching Hob.
As I wait, I steadily bank down the rage burning in me so that it cannot consume my wits. I need to think what to do.
If I confront Hob, he will deny that he has taken any money from the press. I need to think where he might have hidden it.
Where could he put a quantity of coins so as to be sure I would not happen upon them? Not in the press or in the flour chest with the beans and peas. Not amongst any of my household goods, for I am often in there hunting for something.
No. He must have them somewhere about himself.
I stare across the churchyard. In the s
un’s warmth, he has doffed his tunic and stands there in his shirt and hose, feet apart, chin up. The tunic will be in the cart somewhere, quickly rolled up and stowed out of the way. His cloak, however, is never hastily wadded; he always folds it with care and puts it where it will come to no harm, well away from ember-basket and butt, near the saint at the front of the cart.
He wraps himself in it at night, preferring it to an over-tunic, and it is the only item of his clothing I have ever seen him take a needle and thread to; he pulled the hem down by standing on it when he was getting up from the fire. Straight away, he asked if I had any thread finer than the stuff we use for the braids and I gave him what remained of my mother’s thread — the same stuff my father used to fasten his shroud. And a ridiculous time he took about it, too, thinking about it.
The cloak’s hem.
I see, now, what Hob has done. He has taken as many pennies as he can and has sewn them into the hem of his cloak. Made of such a quantity of good-quality weave, it is heavy with its own weight — the addition of a few ounces of silver would make no great difference to the way it hangs and swings.
I turn to the cart. The mare, thinking my sudden movement means that we are on the move, raises her head from her cropping and I rub her withers as I go past. ‘No, old girl, you munch on.’
Quickly flipping up the canvas, I reach for the cloak. Hob has folded it inside out, so that the surface everybody sees is kept away from the charcoal dust that still works its way from the willow-weave of the cart’s sides. I unroll it and shake it out so that I can get to the bottom hem but, as I do so, a small stain catches my eye. I look at it more closely, bringing the fine woollen weave up to my eyes. It’s a darkish brown and is only visible deep into the weave, most of it having been worn away by contact with Hob’s tunic.
I touch my tongue to it and, as I work up spit in my mouth and move the taste from the tip to the rest of my tongue, I taste its familiar tang. Blood.