them with as little comprehension as ducks. I strode ahead, robes trailing behind me. I tolerated their rude manners, their cracked voices that tore the psalms to shreds. I calmed myself with the knowledge that my reward was to read the Divine Office in solitude, tomorrow and every day after it.
I breathed relief. A high Mass such as this took place mercifully few times in the year. And at last, I had my sermon.
For three days, we are a city. The world comes to our hamlet and brings its finery, its marvels, its smells, its terrors, its tragedies. For three days I stretch my eyes wide open and do not close them once, not even to blink. A handful of days, but crammed with a year’s worth of new sights and sounds, fresh riddles and do-you-remembers unsurpassed. These days supply me with every tale with which I’ll entertain myself for the remainder of the year.
The churchyard is too small to encompass these wonders, so the field behind Aline’s alehouse blooms thick as daisies with tents, blankets, fires. Every trestle for five miles about finds its way there; tables spring up and are loaded with bread and cheese. The air is riotous with the scent of bacon, for John the butcher always has a pig fat and ready for the Saint. In return the Saint makes sure his purse is heavy afterwards, and the world carries away the memory of the best pork in the shire.
So tumble in the girdlers, purse-makers, skinners, tanners, cap-makers, smiths, pewterers, glovers and net-makers; behind them the scullions, reeves, nuns and shoe-makers, brewers, cooks, archers, glass-blowers, knights, goldsmiths, silversmiths and gem-polishers.
Next come in the ploughmen, the sailors, the sea-captains, fishermen, pig-men, shepherds, dairywomen, alewives, spinners, weavers, high ladies and low women. Here are the barbers, the saw-bones, men of physic and midwives, wise women and charlatans. We have fools, clerks, schoolmasters, pullers of teeth, bone-setters, knife-grinders, matrons, virgins, peddlers, tinkers and trench-diggers.
It is a small Heaven upon earth: a lion of a soldier fresh from the war comes to thank the Saint for his deliverance and lies down with the lamb of a carpenter come to pray for the soul of his son, who was not so lucky. The crook-legged man upon his wheeled tray prays for the straightening of his limbs. He slumbers chastely beside the beautiful young wife, who aches for her husband’s seed to take root in the parched earth of her womb. For three days no one is troubled by lustful dreams.
Margret and I walk through the crowd. Heads turn, but I am grown enough to know that none of them turn for me. Margret is the lady now and I am the wench dragged in her wake. There is whispering also, and not all of it kind. I catch snatches of it, sticking to our skirts like teasels.
That is John of Pilton’s woman.
A priest’s woman is no goodwife, but a harlot.
You hold your tongue in check, Edwin Barton. You are the bell-ringer. Have some respect. This is the Saint’s day.
Mama, what is a harlot?
I hear it; Margret hears it. When the sneering grows too loud to ignore, Margret stops and stares down the man who called her harlot.
‘Why, Edwin,’ she says, all kindness.
‘Good day,’ he mutters.
‘How fares your mother, Edwin?’ she enquires.
‘Well, missus. Well,’ he mumbles, tugs his cap so hard it slips over one eye. But there’s no hiding from the press of Margret’s courteous questions.
‘And your brothers?’ she continues. ‘How fare they?’
‘All well, to be sure, missus.’
‘The Saint be praised.’
Margret’s smile is so sweet I am surprised butterflies do not alight upon her head and lick her with their coiled tongues. But it is too early in the year for butterflies. ‘Let me see,’ she muses. ‘Tell me if my recollection falters. There’s Arthur?’
‘Yes, missus,’ he says.
‘Bartholomew? Sam? Peter?’
He bobs his head at each name, declares each brother hale and hearty.
‘I have forgot none, have I, Edwin?’
‘Oh no, missus. None.’
‘All of you so different in looks. By the Saint, who would have thought one father could bring to bear a redhead, a black-haired lad, one tall, one short.’
Her face is all concern for the welfare of Edwin’s brothers. Yet I know the truth of their parentage, as does every man and woman here, their mother being an accommodating woman. Edwin grows red in the face, so dark a hue I think he might burst. Margret pauses for a long moment, her eyebrow lifted. Then she picks up the corner of her skirt and folds it over her arm. It is fine kersey, more shillings to the yard than I could hope to afford in a year, and exceeding beautiful. She bows her head politely and Edwin bows in response. She walks on without another word.
I pause for a moment, less time than it takes to pour a cup of beer, but time enough to hear the giggles begin. I watch them, helpless with the need to keep respectful silence within sight of the church door, yet burdened with the equally pressing need to void their laughter at Edwin’s expense. John the butcher chokes on his mirth and must be thumped on the back.
‘She’s got you there, Edwin, and right enough,’ he splutters, to much cheerful agreement.
Edwin smiles as best he can. He is not a bad man. It is only his tongue that runs forward and escapes his mouth. I quicken my pace to catch up with Margret.
I find her within the church, gazing up at the painting of the Saint. He is planted on his knees before the Virgin and wears a look of avarice. Mary is the size of a child’s poppet. She floats on a cushion just out of the Saint’s reach, throwing sticks out of the ends of her fingers and aiming them at the Saint’s head. I know they are supposed to be shafts of heavenly light, but they look like the poles you set up for beans. When I share these thoughts with Margret, she smiles again.
‘Shh,’ she whispers. ‘That is the Virgin.’
‘I do not insult our blessed Mary,’ I hiss, curtseying as I say her name. ‘I insult the hand of Roger Staunton, who imagines he can capture her on a cob wall. He is not as good a limner as he thinks.’
Margret heaves her shoulders up, then down.
‘I hear those words wherever I go,’ she says, and I know she speaks of Edwin Barton, and not the painting. ‘Most of the time, they keep their foul opinions quiet, although I know what they are saying. It is like the sea: however far the tide is out, you can still hear it murmuring, waiting for the hour to turn so it may come back to land.’
Margret was always the poet. I have as much poetry in me as a pound of pickled pork. She shakes herself, as a horse does when plagued by insects.
‘The tide of harsh words is high today, yet I prevail.’ She straightens her back and tips her chin at the wall. ‘I thank you, blessed Virgin, for your blessings.’
‘Blessings?’
