To Calais, In Ordinary Time. James Meek
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Название: To Calais, In Ordinary Time
Автор: James Meek
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческое фэнтези
isbn: 9781786896759
isbn:
‘You’re like to her in other ways. She’s a thief, and you’re a thief, for you stole yourself from your own wedding.’
‘I lose all rule by which to measure your offensiveness,’ gasped Berna.
‘And you’re like her that you fare for love, Calais-bound. Madlen yearns for Will Quate, and you, I guess, for Laurence Haket.’
‘Shut your mouth!’ cried Berna, so furiously that her horse, tethered nearby, reared and whinnied. ‘I shan’t accept no comparison of my fare and journey to no errand of a pigboy’s sister.’
Hab shrugged. ‘High-born as you are, you’re alone in the wood without friend or kin to help.’
‘Ne harm me,’ said Berna, ‘or you’ll be pined and made to suffer.’
‘How?’
‘I am imaginative,’ said Berna.
Hab’s demeanour changed again; the familiarity that had so troubled Berna disappeared, and his consciousness of the lady’s superiority seemed to return. Humbly he proposed to accompany the lady on her journey, that she might appear to have an entourage. Together they would attempt to travel under the protection of the archers. Somewhere on the road to Calais, Berna was certain to encounter Laurence Haket; while Hab, if he kept close to Will Quate, would surely catch his sister.
‘But Will Quate will know me,’ said Berna. ‘He’ll see I’ve fled my marriage. He will betray me to my father. I already know he’s not to be trusted. I met him as I left Outen Green and he behaved despicably towards me, without honour or worth, like to we were equals – as you did just now, but worse.’
Hab said no doubt the lady’s face had been veiled; no doubt Will, thinking like Hab that the lady was occupied with marriage preparations in the manor house, had mistaken her for Madlen.
‘Another one?’ said Berna. ‘Do I seem so like a low-born woman?’ She examined the backs of her hands. ‘Is it because I’ve let the sun brown my fingers?’
She could turn it to her advantage, said Hab. The other bowmen would accept her as she was, as the lady Bernadine, but providing she went veiled, Will would assume she was Madlen.
‘That Lady Bernadine should pretend to be Madlen pretending to be Lady Bernadine?’ said Berna. She laughed. ‘You’re imaginative.’
Hab said it was her second usage of the word, but he ne knew what it signified.
‘As you may understand it,’ said Berna, ‘it is the sleight of mind that gives the speed to know things not as they are, but as they might be, were God or man to work them otherwise. Have you any food?’
WILL AND LONGFREKE next came upon their even-bowmen in the cool shade of a wood. Hayne lay stretched on the leaves, eyes shut, the likeness of Christ flat on his chest, while Mad and Sweetmouth made a rope fast to the crown of a young birch, drew it down and knit it to the trunk of an oak.
‘It’s a proud young birchling, and we’ll learn it to know its stead in the forest,’ said Longfreke.
‘We’ll make of it a bow, bound to its lord the oak,’ said Sweetmouth.
‘We haven’t no arrow, and it needs us a true one,’ said Mad. ‘Where in this wood might we get such?’
They turned to Will, gripped him with firm hands and tore the pack of his back. Will strove to free himself but the other two were stronger together and they laid him down with his rigbone flat against the bowed birch.
‘An ill token he ne struggled much,’ said Mad.
‘I ne used but half my strength,’ said Will.
‘A proud arrow that backbites,’ said Longfreke. ‘We’d best found it. Shoot!’
They loosed the knitted rope and let Will go. The birch whipped and Will was flung upwards. He flew through the air and came to earth through a holly tree. He fell on his shoulder and cried out once, then cried no more, but ne rose, and lay still.
‘He flew true,’ said Sweetmouth.
‘He flew crooked,’ said Mad.
‘True,’ said Sweetmouth. ‘I took the holly as the mark.’
‘Crooked,’ said Mad, ‘I took the nettles.’
‘Player!’ called Sweetmouth to Will. ‘You’d best have shielded your neb from scratches, for I need it whole.’
‘How did the world look when you saw it as the birds do?’ asked Mad.
Will groaned and stood up. Hayne loomed over him and said: ‘Would you be a bowman in my score, and come with us to Calais?’
‘Yeah,’ said Will.
Hayne clasped Will’s head in his great hands and looked at it from this side and that like to he’d made Will out of straw and sticks and rags, and would see he’d made him right. He stepped away and bade Longfreke take the oath.
Longfreke took Will’s wrist and put his bowstaff in his hand and bade him swear by the blood and bones of Christ, by their Clean Mother, by St Sebastian and by St George, and by his bow, to be true to Hayne Attenoke and to his even-bowmen of the Gloucestershire score, to do the bidding of the master of the score faithfully and without backbiting.
Will swore it.
Longfreke bade Will say after him:
Feathered tail but I ne sing
I rise high without a wing
I am but a wooden freke
Yet I have an iron beak
As a falcon so my flight
Of my master’s will and might
Ne to think on flying’s end
Free in air to while and wend
Faring far in light and dark
Blind to my high master’s mark.
‘What are you?’ asked Longfreke.
‘An arrow,’ said Will.
‘Who is your master?’
‘The bowman.’
‘And who is that bowman?’
‘Hayne Attenoke.’
‘It is the Lord God Almighty,’ СКАЧАТЬ