To Calais, In Ordinary Time. James Meek

Ness’s forehead and her headcloth’s hem gleam gold. She set the likeness down next to Gert and came to Will. He gave her the blossoms.

      ‘Do you truly go to France on Tuesday?’ she asked.

      ‘Does Sir Guy give me a deed of freedom, yeah. To come again next summer with silver, a free man, and we’ll be wed.’

      ‘Your dad ne came again.’

      ‘I ne go to fight as he did. I go to hold a town already won.’

      The blue leaves of the blossoms shook. ‘If you so yearn for freedom, why bind yourself to me?’

      ‘I need a wife, and you’re the best I know, and the fairest, and go I to France, to Italy, to Jerusalem, I won’t find better.’

      ‘Freedom’s dearer to you than I,’ said Ness. ‘You would I were your chattel, like the silver you hope to win in France.’

      ‘Why so wrathful?’ asked Will. ‘Aren’t you my sweetheart no more?’

      Ness looked into his eyes and smiled unevenly. ‘My heart yearns for sweetness of you, and you ne give it. Last year you ne heeded me, so I went with Laurence Haket, to egg you on with a show of liking another. And Haket was weary of playing the lover to the lady Bernadine, so he hungered for it. But he japed me.’

      ‘I was ashamed to live so meanly,’ said Will. ‘I’d better my lot before I asked to wed you.’

      ‘Laurence Haket sang to me in French,’ said Ness. ‘He told me truelove things, and made me laugh, and I would kiss him; but to kiss him were wrong. And it was like to when I was a little girl. Mum made an apricot pie, and left me with it, and forbade me eat even one deal of it. But I ate one deal, because it needed me a sweet thing, and after I’d eaten one deal, I was already damned, and might as well eat the whole pie.’

      ‘I forgive you all that,’ said Will.

      ‘Am I to owe you everlastingly for forgiveness?’ said Ness. ‘Your forgiveness is but another name for the right my sin gives you to wed me without loving me, to have a wife and freedom at the same time.’

      ‘My brothers told me maids were unkind and dizzy, but I ne believed it before,’ said Will. ‘I won’t burden you no more.’ He went to the gate.

      Gert, who maybe wasn’t as deaf as folk said, got to her feet, pulled the headcloth off Ness’s head that her gold hair glew in the candlelight, and said: ‘Would you leave such a hoard to go to France?’

      ‘I mayn’t take her with me,’ said Will, and went home.

      His brothers were awake. They chid him that he vexed Sir Guy with his proud asks, when the lord had almost forgiven the town for the theft of his daughter’s gown, and was about to feast them all for her wedding. Went Will to Bristol, they said, he’d see the street thick with men of the land who’d gone seeking freedom and found it begging at a merchant’s door. Any dog, they said, was free to starve.

      The stir woke their mother, who saw Will and buried her neb in her hands.

      Will left them, clamb the hill and sat in the top meadow, looking down on the town under the moon. All had lit candles in the likenesses they’d bought, and filled them with holy water, and from one end to another the town sparkled with the bright falling tears of the Holy Mother.

      Feet trod on the cropped grass behind him.

      ‘I know you, Hab,’ said Will, but he ne turned.

      A mouth breathed on Will’s neck, a side crowded his back, and a hand reached inside his shirt, where it lay against his chest.

      ‘How may you know I’m Hab, and not Hab’s sister Madlen, or some other?’ came a whisper.

      ‘I know your walk, and your steven, and the feel of your hand.’

      ‘Hab and Madlen are brother and sister,’ came the whisper. ‘You mayn’t know which I am.’

      ‘It’s one of two?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘You haven’t no sister.’

      ‘Likes you my hand on your skin?’

      ‘It ne baits me.’

      ‘My hand may hold your pintle.’

      ‘Ding you bloody if I feel it.’

      ‘Yeah, were I Hab. And were I Madlen?’

      ‘I’m betrothed.’

      ‘You wouldn’t ding me if I were a maid?’

      ‘It ne likes me to ding no maid.’

      ‘Let there be such a qualm as the priest says, and all die out-take you and I, and we be the only folk left in the world – would you take me then, as you say you would take Ness?’

      ‘Never, so long as you be Hab.’

      ‘And as her sister, the fair Madlen?’

      ‘Look!’ said Will, showing the sky and the town with his finger. ‘Like to the town be a great lake, and all the Holy Mother’s tears the folk have bought the likeness of the stars come again of the water. I would see the sea at night. Dad said the sea’s so great the light of all the stars come of it again.’

      ‘You speak as if the thing you yearned for more than any other were to leave this town. And yet you didder about with Ness and deeds of freedom like to you lack the strength to have your will.’

      ‘Ness said freedom was dearer to me than she.’

      ‘She’s right.’

      ‘I wouldn’t hurt her.’

      ‘Then stint at home. But if you would go and know the world and the sea, you must hurt her, and it were better you hurt her hard and quick than long and steady.’

      ‘I would not.’

      ‘It’s more kindly. Have her and walk away without a word, if you’re bold enough. Let her deem you a wretch, that she ne care so much you’re gone.’

      MARC, EVEN IF this is not humanity’s final hour, it is improbable that you and I will survive the imminent calamity. If these texts have been transmitted to you, it signifies that I have expired; as I perscribe it, you may already be entombed. We here in Malmesbury – the clerics, if not the common people – accept that the pestilence has devastated Avignon, and Provence, and Italy, and must inevitably perflow to this insular location. In the event that I succumb and you survive, transfer these commentaries to the library at Senanque. All other post-mortem instructions are to be invented in my final testament, located in the signed scrine in partition vii of my analogium.

      PS Examine my Latin for errors of syntax and vocabulary and make the necessary corrections. Reject the temptation to edit.

      PPS Purge my debt to the fishmonger – iii sols, as I remember, or the equivalent in candles if he has perished – and apologise to him or his heirs for my intemperate assertions on the quality of his sardines.

      My regards to your wife. I have a presagitation that Judith is secure.

      Thomas

      ON MONDAY, THE holiday, it seemed to us Will had lost everything, for we heard he’d fallen out with his betrothed and his kin, and no word had come from the manor about his proud ask. Folk said Sir Guy would withdraw his offer of land. It seemed Will’s pride would leave him worse off than before, without a bride, without acres, without the speed of a fare to France. He’d lost the freedom he’d always had, in his fellows’ eyes at least, by seeking to get a clerk to write it down.

      All liked Will, but we were glad to see him lowed. We would