To Calais, In Ordinary Time. James Meek
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу To Calais, In Ordinary Time - James Meek страница 6
Название: To Calais, In Ordinary Time
Автор: James Meek
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческое фэнтези
isbn: 9781786896759
isbn:
‘If we’re all to die ere Martinmas, as the priest says, those as have sins to sin must sin them soon.’
‘The priest will say aught to sell candles.’
‘Am I not dear to you?’
‘You aren’t so dear to me as you’d like, not nearly.’
Hab narrowed his eyes. ‘I saw you kiss Whichday,’ he said.
‘I kissed him on the cheek when he’d been to Tewkesbury. I hadn’t seen him a week.’
‘So then you may.’
‘When I meet a friend I lack.’
‘My old friend!’ said Hab. ‘I haven’t seen you for so long. Kiss me!’ He dabbed at Will’s mouth with his. Will laughed, curled up like a hedgehog and trendled himself away.
Hab thrust out his underlip. ‘I wouldn’t that you leave our town, and I left alone,’ he said. ‘I’d swim with you again, and dry in the sun with you, my head on your chest.’
‘That’s gone.’
Hab mirthed again. ‘It needs do better than Ness,’ he said. ‘Her eyes aren’t in a right line, and her neb’s whirled like to the full moon. Would you not take me, take my sister.’
‘You haven’t no sister.’
‘I have a sister, and the sight of you gladdens her. Her name is Madlen, and she’d leave town with you and not come again, even to France.’
‘You haven’t no sister,’ said Will again. ‘You haven’t no kin. You bide alone with Enker in the wood.’
‘Madlen’s fair like May morning, and you’ll meet her, and she’ll prove your bowmanship.’
Will said he wouldn’t talk to Hab no more. He left him in the churchyard and went to the green.
THE STIR WAS made by two friars of Gloucester. One drove a cart and the other banged a drum. The priest came to fight them, for none but he had the right to shrive the folk of Outen Green, and he’d rather die than see Christ’s love sold cheap, or for a halfpenny less than he sold it, anywise.
But the friars, unwashed and deep yet bright of eye, came to sell other than forgiveness. Their cart was heaped with wood and tin likenesses of our Clean Mother. They showed us how to fill a likeness with holy water that the water seep from holes in her eyes, and she weep two days on our threshold till spent, and how, were a candle put in the hole in her womb, the tears would shine as jewels to shield us of night-death, and how it was our last hope to get a likeness, for the friars wouldn’t come again. They’d sworn to bide in a hermitry in the Malverns, eating not but dry bread while they prayed to God to forgive mankind. The fee was a bare sixpence, eleven pence for two, and any that took three likenesses, the friars said, might pay but a penny for the third.
Most folk, out-take Nack, reckoned the qualm was a tale the priests wrought up to wring out our silver. We ne thought us Christ so stern as to slay us by sickness when he took so many in the great hunger thirty winter before. But we wouldn’t that the priest weened we unworthed him, so we bought likenesses.
The friars said they had an errand from Hayne Attenoke in Gloucester. Hayne bade them tell town and manor his score of bowmen would fare by Outen Green early on Tuesday, the day after next, and they looked to meet their new man on the Miserden road that same afternoon.
THE MANOR SENT Anto the reeve to Will. Anto found him in the high half of the top meadow, shooting mark arrows at rags dropped by little knaves. When Will hit a rag at one hundred yard the knaves walloped out over the stubble, yall as them thought French knights would shout with an arrow in their gullet, and threw themselves on the ground, merrily slain.
Anto said their lord must send a bowman to Calais, and none might go but Will.
‘I’d go gladly,’ said Will, ‘but I mayn’t. I’m needed at harvest, I’m to wed Ness Muchbrook, and Sir Guy ne deems me a free man.’
‘They’ll crop the fields without you,’ said Anto. ‘You’ll wed Ness next summer, when you come again from France, laden with silver.’
‘I mayn’t go unfree,’ said Will.
‘Your lord deems you free,’ said Anto. ‘I heard it from his own mouth.’
‘Deemed he me free, he wouldn’t offer me no bound acres to farm.’
‘You ne know the stead you stand in,’ said Anto. ‘You’ve no thank for the blessings the Almighty and Sir Guy send. You’ve not but eighteen winter and you’ve two worthy brothers to keep your mother, you’re betrothed to the sweetest burd in Outen Green, and your lord, out of the kindness of his heart, bestows on you a cot and ten good acres to farm when you’re wed. And here you’re offered the speed of a fare to fight in France, such as any bold young man would yearn for, and it’s sikur Sir Guy deems you free. How else might he let you go?’
‘A bound man on his lord’s errand is bound yet, fares he to the brim of the world,’ said Will. ‘Go I to France, come home again and farm those acres, I were still bound to Sir Guy, for I still owed him two days’ work in six.’
Anto’s face lost hue and he no longer seemed to have himself in wield. He asked Will, in a steven like to he was choked, what then he’d have his lord do.
‘Let him give me an inch of hide with the words of my freedom written in ink and sealed with a gobbet of wax, for me to show all kind living clerks, that they believe my freedom true and not a tale I tell. Then I’ll go to France.’
‘You ne know your lowness in God’s read,’ said Anto. ‘You’d threaten all. The higher the ape climbs, the more he shows the filth of his arse.’
ONCE, THE EXCITING friction between the textual accumulation of old wisdom and the vivacious inquiry of a new generation was to be found in monasteries like this. That vigour has moved to the universities now.
‘You have a mind,’ said the prior. ‘Why remain a proctor, and not be a scholar or an advocate?’
‘When Oxford desired me for a doctorate,’ I explained, ‘I expected Paris, and when Paris offered to adscribe me, my finances were debilitated. When I had saved sufficient money, I submitted myself to the preliminary examination of Paris, and was rejected.’
The prior smiled. ‘You are bound for purgatory,’ he said. ‘You are excessively humid for infernal incineration, insufficiently lucid for celestial jubilation. On the margin of destroying humanity, the Deity created a homo novus, and you are the archetype. You are a non-decider. You neither reason nor instruct. You observe without participation. You do not reflect on the sacred mysteries. You comment on action as an alternative to action. You investigate pagan books in the library. You scribble on furtive parchment – and СКАЧАТЬ