To Calais, In Ordinary Time. James Meek

      He led Will to a long telded cart, with a ladder hung on hooks on one side, in one hern of the guesthouse yard. The moon had risen and the stars shimmered and cans of fleabane smoked at the doors. A light was lit in the cart and someone went about inside with a sound of clay and iron and thin timbers that knocked against each other.

      Softly called into the cart and a woman brought out a can of ale, which she gave to Softly, who handed it to Will. Will drained the can and they filled it again. Softly bade the woman bring light and the woman brought a flame that gleamed in an ox-horn cup.

      ‘Behold, Cess, Player Will Quate,’ he said. ‘Isn’t he as fair a young freke as you’ve seen?’

      Cess ne lifted her eyes to see. ‘I shan’t behold no other man but you,’ she said.

      ‘She makes a show of meekness for me, but she’s as all French maids, wanton and sly,’ said Softly. ‘Find you her fair?’

      Will said he mightn’t deem the fairness of any woman but his own betrothed.

      Softly laughed. There was gold in his teeth. He put his arm around Will’s shoulder, led him to the board and bade him take an old barrel-half for his seat. He was friendly, and asked Will many asks, and Will answered.

      ‘I’ll help you,’ said Softly. ‘I’ll learn you what’s what, for though Hayne’s leader, him ne likes the other bowmen to know what he knows. He leaves it to each man to choose his way, and if that way ne answers Hayne’s read, woe betide him, in war or frith.’

      ‘What’s war?’ said Will. ‘Is it a fight?’

      ‘War’s all the fights together, and all that betides on the days between the fights, which is the greater deal of soldiery,’ said Softly. ‘A man who lacks but war makes a poor soldier.’

      ‘I lack the sight of the sea,’ said Will. ‘I lack silver for my freedom.’

      Softly nodded. ‘You’re right to seek your freedom in France in wartide,’ he said. ‘The English soldier has such freedom in France as no king ne gets in his own house.’

      SOFTLY JOHN WOULD have Will know he was a God-fearing man.

      ‘I was a seafarer,’ he said, ‘and met a holy man, who gave me a golden rood, but I lost it. The holy man gave it me, for he saw in me an angel-light.’

      Softly had sailed on a ship out of Weston took flour, ale, apples and candles to the holy man, an anchor who lived alone on an island. The anchor wone in a house made of stone and wood he’d gathered of the strand, and sat there all summer and winter, bidding his beads and writing. There wasn’t none more holy, said Softly, though his teeth were rotten and his feet bare and he hadn’t but sea-calf skins to wrap him in. Lord Berkeley was bound to send him goods twice a year, but it ever fell short, and Softly went about the staithe begging stuff of folk for the leave, so the holy man ne storve. When the ship landed and was unladen, the holy man would kiss Softly’s hand and weep and tell him he was a true Christen, and read to him golden tales of the saints from a book, and behest that should he die, Softly might have his golden rood.

      One winter, when they were to go to the island, a snowstorm came, and blew for a fortnight. After the storm had gone they sailed forth. They found the anchor in his house, sat at his writing board as if he were yet alive, a feather in his hand, his eyes open and his skin clear, pale and dry, like to a skin cut for a book before it’s written on. A sweet stink came of him, like to reekles on smoke in church, and when they came to lift him, he weighed no more than a sparrow, for his ghost was so great that when it left him there wasn’t but a shell left. He’d burned his books for to heat him, out-take the book of golden saints’ tales, of which the greater deal was left, and Softly minded the holy man’s behest and took the golden rood, which he’d since lost.

      TWO MORE BOWMEN, Holiday Bobben and Hornstrake Walt Newent, came into the light, sat down and began to play at dice. The dice belonged to Hornstrake, yet it was Holiday who won most throws. Hornstrake was a lank freke, shaved in patches and bald in patches, whose clothes hung loose, and who sat bent, with his head lower than his shoulders, and sniffed and rubbed his nose.

      ‘Hornstrake bought a set of weighted dice,’ said Holiday, ‘but they cheated him. The sellers were so false the dice they sold him were true.’

      All Holiday wore was of the newest and best, like to a rich young knave from a much town, out-take that his kirtle was sewn with hooks and straps and slit with leather mouths for hidden bags. One leg of his hose was red, the other black, and he’d oiled his hair. He had fat whirled cheeks and sharp quick eyes.

      ‘A Player must play,’ said Holiday, showing Will the dice. ‘I’ll lend you sixpence against your first week’s fee if you lack the silver to lay on a game. Or would you be read to from a book?’

      ‘Have you truly a book?’ asked Will.

      Holiday reached inside his shirt and drew out a bundle hung from his neck on a cord. He brought it up to the light. ‘I keep it for Softly,’ he said.

      ‘I can’t read bookstaves, but Holiday learned himself,’ said Softly. ‘It likes me to hear of a saint’s deeds with my ale.’

      Will asked to see the book, and Holiday took the cord of his neck and gave it him to hold.

      It was made of dry, stiff leaves of thin calfskin bound together, with bookstaves written in, and likenesses of men and fowls and worms of many hues around the hem. One hem was burned black, like to it had been pulled of the fire, and the first leaf was spotted with brown.

      Will stroked the first page with his fingertip. ‘I ne know how a man might get words out of these little black bookstaves,’ he said.

      ‘Each staff tokens a littlewhat of a word. The first staff, that’s like to a snake, tokens “s”, as the hiss of an adder. The second, like to a house on two floors, tokens “a”, as comes of your mouth when you fall of the upper floor. The third is “i”, like to a shut eye, the fourth, “n”, like to the house on two floors, but it lacks floors, and the fifth is “t”, like to a crossbow, and like to the sound when the bolt is let. T-t-t. And next comes an empty spot, that tokens the end of the word. Now you read it.’

      Will spoke the letters in their turn. ‘Sss-a-eye-ne-te,’ he said.

      ‘Go at them quicker, like an arrow through five rooks on a branch,’ said Holiday.

      ‘“Saint”,’ said Will. ‘“Saint!”’ he said again, and his face was lit with mirth, and he looked blithe from neb to neb around the light.

      ‘“Saint”,’ said Holiday, ‘and the word after it is “Agnes”.’ He could read it, he said, but the pith and marrow of it was that Agnes was a holy young Christen maid in Rome who wouldn’t take the hand of the knave that would have her, and the knave’s father, that was constable there, stripped her naked to shame her in front of the townfolk, but God made the short hair on her head grow long, so all her limbs were hidden from their eyes. So the constable put her in a whorehouse, and bade the men of Rome have their will with her as them liked. But God filled the house with light, that none might see her, and when the knave came to reave her maidenhood, he dropped down dead. And Agnes was dight saint.

      ‘There it is in the book,’ said Softly. ‘See you we know God’s ends better than Hayne?’

      Will showed by his stillness he ne understood.

      ‘There was one,’ said Hornstrake, ‘on whom no hair grew, and there wasn’t no light from our Maker, and God ne stirred himself to kill the reavers. So it was reft, and she wasn’t dight saint.’

      All three men looked on Will, like to they bode some words of him in answer, but he sat still and beheld the flicker of the candle in its