To Calais, In Ordinary Time. James Meek

in the sun when he must be on the highway to France that afternoon.

      ‘I mayn’t go till I hear from my lord,’ said Will.

      ‘Thinks you he comes out to the field in the sun to make his ends known to a hired man?’ Anto turned and went again to the manor house, fetching dust of the ground with his busy steps.

      Will stood still and beheld him, tools hung from his hands.

      Over his shoulder Anto called: ‘Would you be a free man and go to Calais, or sweat a scarecrow’s steading in the corn?’

      Will ran after him to the manor house. The knaves followed and banged the pots, and the girls held up their barmcloths filled with blossom heads, but they stinted at the bridge across Sir Guy’s ditch, while Anto and Will went through the gate.

      THEY WENT THROUGH Sir Guy’s hall, through laths of sunlight that came in through the narrow windows. The hall looked sluttish still after the masons of Coventry came the year before, took Sir Guy’s hearth off its old stead in the middle of the floor and set it under a brick pipe they called a chimney. A wonder gin it would’ve been had they fulfilled it, and two more chimneys at either end of the manor, but they went away when Sir Guy stinted the silver, to buy his daughter’s gown that was stolen.

      Anto bade Will leave his tools outside and led him through the new door at the west end of the hall and into a room. It hadn’t no stead for bed nor dogs nor food-stuff, only a board and chair and chests and a cherrywood rood with a likeness of our Maker pined by his own weight. Sir Guy called it his privy chamber, chamber being room or cot or steading, and privy being that none of his household was to go in out-take him. When we’d asked Anto why Sir Guy would make a room to be alone in, if he ne slept there, Anto said he read the leaves of books, of which he had three or more, and wrote letters, and drank wine with the priest, and played dice with the high-born, and hid him from his daughtren.

      Sir Guy sat on the chair at the board in hunting gear with one hand on his morning wine-crock and the other on the neck of the old alaunt, Canell. Nack the hayward stood on one side of him and Anto went to stand on the other. Will stood before them with his hands clasped, and bent and lifted his head. The three mole-hued greyhounds, Fortin, Pers and Starling, crope about like to one dog with three tails. Behind Sir Guy was a window scaled in glass and iron and at his left hand a brass box.

      ‘Ruth to lose a good ploughman ere harvest,’ said Sir Guy. ‘Worth it yet, do the French learn a Cotswold man can draw a bow as deep as any. The English archer’s the best on God’s mould, all be one in two a thief, and one in ten a murderer. You need to be quick, though, to be on the road by afternoon.’

      Will said, always calling Sir Guy his lord, that he mightn’t go without a deed of freedom.

      Fortin squatted and laid a turd in the nook and Sir Guy got up and went to him and pressed the dog’s nose to it. ‘Is that my thank for the rabbit liver you get of your master?’ he asked.

      Anto said if Sir Guy would yield to Will’s ask, the fee mightn’t be less than five pound. The Muchbrooks nad paid the two pound owed by Ness, the lord’s bondwoman, for lying with Will when they weren’t wed; and to wed her Will must then pay his lord another pound for the loss of the bound children she wouldn’t never bear the manor.

      Sir Guy straightened and pulled his lip. ‘The kind bonds that knit men together should rather be meted in love than ink and silver,’ he said. ‘The old wise me liked, when the lord feasted his men and shielded them with his sword arm, and they wrought the lord’s land for faithfulness alone, like the bond between father and son, when each was thankful to the other, and each gave the other worthship.’

      Anto said Will was a thankless churl. The world was up-half down, and kind wit ne need look far to see what drove God to loose the pest.

      ‘Man ne owes to deem his maker,’ Sir Guy said.

      He sat and opened the box. He took out a calfskin scrow, a feather and an inkpot and laid them on the table. He set the feather at Will.

      ‘Anto was wrong to say five pound was the fee for your freedom,’ he said. ‘You may hear me say you’re free for nothing. But ink and wax and calfskin is law, and law costs silver. Do you have five pound?’

      Will said he hadn’t.

      ‘How then might you buy the deed?’

      Will said he couldn’t buy it, and would go back to weeding Sir Guy’s field, and Hayne Attenoke would lack one bowman.

      ‘I hope you’re no stirrer,’ said Sir Guy. ‘That’s the shortest way to the gallows.’

      Will said he ne stirred aught but the salt in his peas.

      Sir Guy gave a kind of laugh, like to a pig found a fresh acorn. ‘I mayn’t give you the deed shot-free, but I’ll send it to my kinsman Laurence Haket, who’s been enfeoffed near Calais. Enfeoffed, understand? They gave him land. I’ll give you a letter for him, to bid him give you the deed once you’ve earned enough to buy it. You’ll find five pound and more in France. An English archer in France gets silver as lightly as a knave getting apples of a widow’s orchard.’

      He held out his hand to Will and Anto bade Will kneel and kiss it and Will did as he was bidden.

      Sir Guy said to rise, and lifted him, as if it were Will’s wish to bide on his knees. ‘Do me one errand on the way,’ he said.

      He took a mouthful of wine and opened the box and dalve in it, but couldn’t find what he looked for. He went to the window and turned a key and the scales of glass set in iron swung out like a door. There was a garden beyond with green grass cropped short and a spring-well. Sir Guy’s younger daughtren played there with Bridget the housekeeper and the lord’s nift Pogge. Sir Guy called out to Bridget and in a handwhile a wench put through the window a stitch of cloth that gleamed where the sun caught it.

      Sir Guy laid it on the board. On a white field were sewn scarlet roses and white lilies in silken thread. One hem was sewn in gold, and golden blazes ran through the field.

      ‘It was of such cloth my daughter’s gowns were made,’ he said. ‘The gown that was stolen and the second, that she’ll wear for her wedding. Keep your eyes and ears open, and get you tidings of the stolen gown, send word back to Outen Green, and we’ll muster men, fetch the thief and hang him.’

      They sent Will out and in a stound Anto came to him with the letter, folded to the muchness of a hand and sealed with a grot of wax. Anto thacked him on the shoulder and said it was done, and he must be on the high road for France in three hour, and to gather his gear and ready his sins for church.

      NACK STINTED US at the church door and let Will in and the priest’s knaves stripped him naked and washed him with holy water while the priest sang Latin and swung a crock of smoking reekles.

      On the eve, Nack had gone to our women and told them we owed to see Will geared such that we not be shamed if he went forth, for whatever weird bode him in the south, in him wasn’t his worth alone, but ours. Now Nack came in with fresh clothes the women had sewn for Will, a shirt and breech with rood stitch on the hem, a grey kirtle, red hose and a red hood. We cleaned his shoon, that he’d bett with thick leather under-halves for a far fare, and we thrang into church.

      Each of us was there. Even Sir Guy and his folk, that took their mass at Brimpsfield Priory, were in their stead by the south wall. We lacked only the lady Bernadine, who, us thought, would rather hight herself for her wedding, and Hab, who minded the pigs.

      The priest came away from the altar and we kneeled for the confiteor. The priest called Will near and Will kneeled at his feet. The priest bade him clasp his hands together, bent to whisper in his ear and listened while Will whispered in his. We’d hear Will’s sins, but couldn’t, for he spoke too soft. He got shrift, and was shriven clean, and came