fell open. He blenched, retreated and stammered his incomprehension; he was sure Hab had no sister, he said, he ne knew how she might be a maid.
Berna took her chance to mount her horse and ride away southward. The last she heard of Quate was of him crying for her pardon.
‘Is this what happens when we leave the places we were born?’ she demanded of her horse. ‘That a noble lady is deprived of her authority, and a villain transformed from an obedient servant into a savage, senseless beast?’
SOON AFTER THE sound of the horse’s hooves had faded, Will heard song. Four men came down the road from Gloucester in breech, shirt and thick shoon. They were white of dust, with packs and bowstaves on their backs. The singer sang in Welsh and wore a straw crown webbed with reed, pitched with stalks of pig’s parsley. He had long black hair in rings, and a nose like an axe-blade, and a string of onions hung of his belt. Beside him came a short freke, thick of body, with a deep wem aslant his neb, like to his head had been cloven and put back together; and the third was a sweaty man, crooked of his burden, his mouth hung open and his eyes turned down.
The fourth was a giant, as long as two of the others together, in a hide hat under which brim his neb was shaded. Hung from his neck by a thick silver chain was a great rood bearing a likeness of the Lord of Life nailed up. The likeness was hued so wonder like a man, the pale flesh sucked in between the ribs and blood that oozed of his wounds, it seemed Christ might ferly stir and call out to them for help.
They went by Will and ne stinted. Will went after them. He asked was one of them Hayne Attenoke.
‘I,’ said the giant, and his steven was like to thunder in the womb of a hill. His neb was as a rocky hillside, with eyes set deep within it like coves.
‘I’m the man you look for,’ said Will. ‘The bowman of Outen Green. I’d be of your score, and go with you to Calais.’
They ne shortened their stride. It was like to they ne heard him.
‘I’m a free man,’ said Will. ‘Strong, heal and I shoot well.’
The bowmen ne stinted. ‘We shan’t take you,’ said cloven-head.
‘Why?’ said Will. The bowmen ne answered but strode on.
‘I’ve seen one band of bowmen go by already, and I shan’t miss the second,’ said Will. ‘I shan’t go home again but if you show me to be no bowman.’
‘What band of bowmen was the first?’ said cloven-head. Will told them and the Welshman laughed.
‘He mistook the players for us,’ he said. ‘Maybe you were better as a player than a bowman. You’ve the face for it.’
‘I’ll show you I shoot true, and not in play, if you let me,’ said Will.
‘Have you arrows?’ said cloven-head.
‘I ne brought none,’ said Will.
‘The moon,’ said Hayne, who ne slowed, and ne beheld Will.
Still ne stinting, cloven-head strung his bow, took an arrow of a cocker on his back, nocked it, found a mark to his left and shot, all in one swift stir. The arrow hit an oak stump two hundred feet away in the sheep field above the road.
‘Fetch that arrow,’ said cloven-head to Will, ‘and if Noster ne shifts your mood, and you may shoot the arrow and hit the moon so it spins about, you can be of our fellowship.’
Will began to run toward the stump, and while he ran called out ‘How can I hit the moon?’
The bowmen ne turned and ne answered, and by the time Will had gone up the field, fetched the arrow and come again to the road, all the bowmen were gone, out-take the sweaty man, who sat on a stone, drank from a flask and cursed.
HIS NAME WAS Noster. ‘I’m done,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be a bowman no more. I’ll go home to the works of Dene. You owe to go home, too.’
‘I shan’t go home. I’d learn how I might shoot at the moon with an arrow and hit it so it spins about.’
‘Mad was right,’ said Noster. ‘You’re better fit to play a bowman than to be one.’
‘Ne unworth me till you know me.’
Noster’s mouth stirred like to a man who’d smile but had lost the lore. ‘You ween I worth you too low,’ he said. ‘No, you worth us too high.’ He ran his finger down the middle of his neb. ‘Does the sight of Longfreke’s wem ne tell you to shun the life of a soldier?’
‘What’s a soldier?’ said Will.
‘It’s a French word that tokens a fighting man, who fights for silver, far from home.’
‘I’d be a soldier, then,’ said Will. ‘I’d see uncouth lands, and win silver for my deed of freedom. My lord says an English archer in France wins silver as lightly as a knave gets apples of a widow’s orchard.’
‘Why so eager to steal of widows?’
‘Were it so fell to be a bowman, why are you one?’
‘None was there to learn me the truth when I cleaved to the score.’
‘If Hayne will take me to Calais, I’ll go.’
‘You ne know the shape of things,’ said Noster. ‘Hayne’s a vinter, which is to say the head of one score bowmen. Can’t you tell how far Hayne falls short of twenty? Without me they’re three. They’ve five more to pick up along the way. That’s eight. Where’s the leave?’
‘Maybe they fear the qualm.’
Noster laughed, shook his head and spat and said: ‘There’s one bowman. His name is John Fletcher. He goes by the ekename Softly. In a cart he keeps a stonemason’s daughter, a Frenchwoman he reft of her maidenhood in Mantes on the way to the fight at Crécy. She ne gave it willingly, nor did her kin leave him to take it but that he had to quell them first. Would you have such men as fellows?’
Will asked where Hayne stood.
‘On the side of right,’ said Noster.
‘Then I’ll stand with Hayne, and shun this Softly.’
‘But Hayne ne hinders Softly. So you fare to France in a body with men who keep a stolen Frenchwoman against her will.’
‘Anywise, I’ll go,’ said Will.
‘You make your choice,’ said Noster. He bade Will godspeed, and went again the way he’d come, on the road to Gloucester.
‘How can I hit the moon with an arrow?’ yall Will after him, but Noster ne answered. Will ne stinted no more and set off on the heels of the other bowmen.
IT IS TEMPTING to believe, as do the majority of common people here, that this island is immune to the pestilence. This island, that is, of England, Scotland and Wales, but also this island within an island, the abbey. Locally the foundation of hope is the prior. Calamity, it transpires, is the veritable patria of this inconspicuous man, who in normal times resembled an exile – obscure, ignored, uncomprehended. His firm actions give us confidence that no matter how intolerable the onus of authority, he will not fracture.
In consequence of the preceding period of extreme laxity under the abbot – was there a better example of the clerical corruption that provoked God to initiate the plague? – it was facile for the prior both to assume control from his nominal superior and to curate a restoration of the Benedictine rule, the perfect opposite to the abbot’s discredited ministry: simplicity, humility and traditional discipline. The prior prohibited absolutely