At the Edge of the World (8 page)

21

T
HAT NIGHT
, Bear found us a place in an inn. At least what remained of one. Like the rest of Rye it was much despoiled, though the innkeeper—a woman named Benedicta—and her son Luke were laboring hard to rebuild. The inn bore the name of Michael the Archangel—the one who can protect mariners against storms. A charred sign displayed his symbol: a dragon with a sword.

Half the inn’s roof was gone. Stone walls, by God’s mercy, were mostly intact though dressed in soot. Doors were broken. Most of the wine and ale pillaged. The same for victuals.

Worst of all, Benedicta, a widow woman, had one of her two sons slain by the marauding troops. A tall, stately woman, with long black hair in a single braid and black garments, she was severe-looking in her sorrow. There being little custom since the attack, she was willing to have us and our paltry pennies. Despite her great grief, she welcomed us as ones who had no such loss as she, so she could open her sorrow to Bear, who always served as a broad funnel for people’s grief. With so many of her neighbors consumed by loss, the poor woman could find no pity, and she was in sore need of some.

She set a broken table for us, and somehow secured trenchers and some small meat with not enough rot to keep us off. Then she and her surviving son—twice my age and a likeness of his mother—joined us, and talked of their heartache to Bear. In so doing, they struck a friendship. Bear told her that Troth and I were his children and he a widower.

While they talked, Troth and I stayed in a quiet corner and listened. After much discussion of the attack, they spoke of the late King Edward, of Richard the new boy king, the Duke of Lancaster, and the war with France, which had gone so poorly for England of late.

Much land—and many men—had been lost in the Aquitaine, which is where Benedicta’s husband had died two years previous. A truce had been made between England and France, but she said English soldiers had been abandoned in France and they fought on as brigands.

The woman asked Bear to tell his story. Perhaps to gain her empathy, he revealed that he, too, had been a soldier and spoke of fighting in France with the Black Prince. “It was hard and terrible,” he told her.

She asked Bear if he knew her husband, and named the knight with whom he fought.

Bear shook his head. “There were too many.”

“Now you must tell me why are you here,” said Benedicta. “Or do you mean to enlist again?”

“Not I!” cried Bear with alacrity. “We’re only wandering minstrels, hoping to stay awhile.”

“I fear you won’t earn much with your music and dancing here,” she said. “People will cling to what they have.”

Seeing Bear downcast, the woman said, “What say you labor for me in return for food and lodging? I need the help.”

“I’ve not my usual strength,” said Bear.

“I’m sure it’s enough.”

A bargain was quickly made.

Thus commenced a pleasing, even restful time as we stayed on at the broken inn. With a loan from Benedicta, Bear was able to purchase new clothing—breeches, shift, hose—and, at last, some boots. Troth was also garbed, though she refused wimple on her head and shoes. It was appealing to see her mix of solemn pleasure and discomfort in new clothing, a bird with new plumage, though her plumage was but a simple wool kirtle.

For work, Bear was called upon for lifting, hauling, and repairing. While he was not as strong as he had been, he was strong enough. I prayed he’d regain it all.

Indeed, concerned for his state, I kept a self-appointed task of being his—and Troth’s—protector. At times I thought we should go elsewhere, to one of the lands Bear had spoken of, so as to be free of all thoughts of pursuit.

Of this, however, I said nothing, knowing my restlessness was stirred not just by fear, but also by seeing the ships and sea, feeling their allure. For I, who had lived so confined, so closed, saw the sea as boundary-free, a notion I found exciting.

Meanwhile, Troth and I were asked to do smaller tasks—to clean or fetch. She was too shy to talk to others. Only with me would she chatter. Thus she and I, finding more time to be alone, learned more about one another’s lives.

She was much taken by the story of my mother’s secret life, how I had fled my town, my meeting with Bear, and what happened in Great Wexly. For my part, I was held by her tales of life with Aude in the forest.

In truth, just as I had come to think of myself as inseparable from Bear, I now felt much the same for Troth.

Once she suddenly said to me: “Crispin, when you first saw me did you think me very strange?”

I gazed at her, and realized that I considered her differently from how I had at first. Then I surely saw the disfigurement. Now I saw—Troth. Still, I wondered how she wanted me to answer, but quickly decided she would trust me only if I told her true.

“Did I think you strange?” I echoed. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“You were different. The way you lived.”

“My mouth?”

“That too.”

“And now?” she asked, gazing at me with eyes that welled with tears.

I reached out and placed my hand on her cheek. “Next to Bear …” I stammered, “I have no better friend.”

She smeared the tears from her face then took from her kirtle the sprig of hawthorn she had carried from the forest.

“Why did you take that?” I asked.

“Aude would bless me beneath that tree. She told me a twig of it would bind me to the ones I love.”

“Then the magic works,” I said.

She threw herself at me, hugged me and wept while I stroked her tangled hair.

Once she suddenly said to me, “Bear has a secret sorrow.”

“How do you know?”

“I see it in him,” she said.

“I think you’re right,” I agreed. “At times he’s almost told me. But I didn’t want to hear.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to think any less of him. Do you know what troubles him?”

“Something he regrets.”

“How do you know that?”

“I see it.”

“Is it very bad?”

“He thinks so.”

I sighed. I said, “Someday I will get him to talk about it.”

When I had a chance, I took to wandering about Rye alone. It was not that I did not wish to be with Bear or Troth, but I enjoyed my freedom.

Rye was not nearly as big as Great Wexly, and its state of devastation had reduced it further. The very smallness of the town allowed me to see the whole of it, to find my way with increasing ease. The rubble from the attacks was slowly being cleared. Repairs were being made. Houses were starting to be rebuilt. Even the church began to be cleaned. There was talk of a town wall for defense.

And for the first time, I came to meet with other boys. In my village of Stromford, more often than not I was shunned. It was rare for anyone to befriend me. In Rye, the boys knew nothing of me, save what they saw. Echoing Bear, I claimed York as my home, and that I was traveling with my father and sister as a performing minstrel.

Not knowing what to expect, at first I was uneasy, but the boys took me at my word—the more so as I often helped them in their labors. What’s more, they envied my juggling. On my part, I took great pleasure in being with them.

Some had been on ships and had traveled to distant places. Others were apprentices learning trades: bakers, masons, and others. Others complained of hard masters and harsh parents, while some had only words of kindness for the same.

All had tales of the attack, speaking with bitter anger of the killing, looting, and cruelty. Family losses were great and awful to hear. Many swore revenge upon the French and Castilians.

But despite their doleful recollections, sweetest to me was their irrepressible, raucous sense of life; their boisterous, braggart ways. Despite their losses, these boys found ways to joke and tease among themselves and did the same to me. To be among them made me feel older, wiser, smarter. I was keen to learn. To have what are called friends, to have boys my age greet me by my true name—with pleasure—was a whole new joy for me.

I even made a particular friend, Geoffrey by name, whose father was a mariner. Geoffrey told me many tales about ships and the sea. Once he confided—bragging I would say—that his father had served on a brigand ship attacking French ports.

Not to be outdone, I told him that
my
father—Bear—had been in a secret brotherhood, but having left it, we needed to be on the watch for them. Such secrets sealed our friendship.

One day Geoffrey took me in a little boat and we went out onto the waters. How amazing to float, to see the land from offshore. When he let me cast a line I caught a fish. As I hauled it in, I could not keep from laughing with delight. That night, Benedicta cooked it and it was fine. My being swelled with pleasure.

I did not let a day pass—sometimes with Geoffrey, sometimes alone, sometimes with Troth—without looking to see what ships had come in. As I learned, before the French and Castilian attack, many vessels had come. Now, though fewer, enough arrived for me to study them.

There were smaller boats used by fisher folk. And once I saw a huge hulc. But the ships that drew me most—perhaps because of their colorful sails and mariners speaking so many tongues—were the cogs, which were the seagoing horses of the coastal fleet.

These cogs were some seventy-five feet in length, twenty-five at the widest. They were built of huge beams with smaller overlapping boards—“clinkered,” as it was called—for a hull. A single tall mast—thick and forty feet in height—set somewhat forward of midship, bore a cross spar from which hung a great, square canvas sail. Rough oak planking made for a deck.

The front of the boat—they called it a bow—was sharp and poked up. The rear of the boat was higher and called a “castle.” At the castles highest point was a great steering oar—a rudder they named it—so heavy it took a strong man to shift it.

A cog could carry all manner of goods, mostly in barrels—they called them tuns—for trade. They carried people, sometimes soldiers and horses. The attacking soldiers had come in cogs.

Not only did the ships hold my fascination, they fed my fancy of becoming a mariner.

One evening Benedicta told us about the death of her husband in France. “It was at a siege,” she said. “Or so I was told. I don’t know where. Nor how.”

Bear said he had taken part in more than one such siege, which was something I had not heard before. “For the most part they can be tedious,” he said. “But then they turn brutal.”

“Like the French?” asked Benedicta’s son.

At a loss for words, Bear ruffled his beard and shook his head. “I don’t like to say.”

The room was filled with a painful silence, after which Bear stood up and left the room.

Later that night, when I realized Bear had not come to sleep, I went outside. Bear was sitting with his back to a wall, staring up at the star-filled sky.

“Is something wrong?” I said.

“No,” he said curtly.

“Bear,” I said, “why don’t you say what happened when you were a soldier?”

He did not respond.

“Why won’t you tell me?” I asked.

At first he did not speak. Then he said, “It is hard to tell myself”

“What do you mean?”

“Crispin, war is another world. To be a soldier is to be another person.” He was breathing painfully, as if it were hard to speak. “I sinned much. In my heart I cannot even ask forgiveness for what should not be forgiven. I can only pray that my Lord will have mercy on me.”

“What did you
do?”
I asked, much troubled.

“Go to sleep, Crispin,” he said with weary irritation. “I don’t wish to speak of it.”

I returned to the room where we slept. As I lay down I heard Troth say, “Crispin, is something the matter?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and told her of my conversation. After she had listened, Troth said, “Aude used to say there are places
in
people we can’t see. But they are there.”

I thought for a while and then I whispered, “Troth, once, when Bear was ill he talked about a chained bear that was kept in captivity—as if the links of the chain were his sins. He told me he took his name from that bear. And another time he said, ‘To love a man, you must know his sins.’”

“Crispin,” she said, “you know Bear. You know he’s good.”

Lying there in the darkness, I thought: is that what it is to be older—to know there are things you are afraid to know?

22

W
HILE BEAR WORKED
at the inn with Luke, Troth and I spent much time together. We often wandered about Rye, looking upon its world.

Troth was like a chest that had become unlocked. There was so much she wished to know. For her, Rye was a vast place full of new things. I marveled at what she noticed, wondered, and asked about. Though I wanted to appear knowledgeable, I could not always supply answers. “Ask Bear,” I often had to say.

As we wandered, there were times Troth hid her face—for people would stare, point, and even call her names—which made her shy. She was never so with me. My friends soon accepted her.

In the evenings, back with Bear, who talked expansively to Benedicta and Luke, Troth and I found in exchanged glances all the talk we needed. Sometimes we communicated with the hand signs that had become our secret language.

I talked freely to Bear—or at least tried to—but since that time when he would
not
talk, I was much aware there were things in him he did not want me to know. It grieved me to see how he had changed: no longer the boisterous believer in his own bigness, when even his rebukes made one smile, when his jests taunted all, when his very being could embrace the whole world.

But when Troth and I talked, we were equals. I could say anything to her, and she to me.

“If God could give you what you most wished,” I once asked her, “what would it be?”

“Aude.”

“And if not her?”

“To be with Bear … and you,” she replied.

After a moment she asked me the same question, and I replied, “To be with Bear and you.”

“Then it’s the same prayer,” she said, “and therefore perhaps the stronger.”

Then I asked, “If you could
be
anything you desired, what would it be?”

She replied: “Ordinary. And you?” she asked.

“A man.”

A man. “Like Bear?”

I was about to give a quick
yes,
for I did so admire and love him. But I found myself hesitating and unsure of my words, except to think, I was not him. I must be myself, Crispin.

“No,” I said quietly, cautious to speak so. “I think … I want to be different. Perhaps a mariner.”

So it was that as often as I could, I took her to look upon the sea, sitting on the high bluff near the large castle tower that survived the attack. Most often we sat in silence and did little more than stare upon the sea’s great expanse.

Once she asked, “Crispin, what lies beyond the sea?” She was pointing to the farthest line of ocean—where water and sky met,

“In faith, I don’t know.”

“Is there
anything?
Or
is
that the edge of the world?”

“I suppose what you can’t see,” I replied,
“is
always the edge. And fearsome to look over.”

“Aude often spoke of the edge of the world.” Then she said, “Could it be Nerthus’s world?”

“Which is?”

“The land
beyond.
Where … I hope Aude
is.
Crispin, shall we stay in Rye?”

“I want to be free to see the world.”

“Even to the edge?”

“Aye.”

She said, “I’d go with you.”

“I would like that.”

It was some twenty days or so after we arrived, on a late afternoon, the dark already descending, when Benedicta sent me to the miller for some flour. As I was wont to do, I took the long way about to the highest point, near the castle, so I could look upon the sunset sea which I found endlessly beguiling.

“Crispin!” I heard.

Taken by surprise, I turned. It was my friend Geoffrey, who had run up. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” he called. His face was flushed.

“Is something the matter?”

“That brotherhood,” he burst out.

“What do you mean?”

“You told me your father was being pursued by some brotherhood. Three men have come to town. They have been asking for your father.”

I thanked him then fled back to the inn and found Bear, Benedicta, and Luke hauling a beam upon their shoulders. Fearful of speaking too openly, I ran to find Troth. She was in the courtyard, sweeping with an old straw broom.

“Troth!” I cried, “they’ve come.”

She turned pale. “The men from Chaunton?” she cried.

“No, ones seeking Bear. You must gather our things.”

She dropped her broom and followed as I ran back to Bear. In the interval the beam had been set it its proper place.

“Bear,” I said. “I must speak with you.”

“You’re free to do so.”

“I … I think it best,” I stammered, “that it’s only for your ears.”

“Come now, we have no secrets from our friends.”

I looked from him to the innkeeper. Deciding there was no time to argue, I blurted out, “They’ve come.”

“Who’s come?” said Benedicta.

“Ball’s brotherhood.”

Bear’s face stiffened. “How do you know?”

“A friend told me three men have come to town and were asking for you. I did not see them”

“Sins of Satan!” Bear swore. He slumped against the wall, defeat in his face. It was shocking for me to see him so, but it confirmed what we had to do. “I was hoping it would be otherwise.”

“Bear,” I said, “we
must
leave.”

He shook his head. “Crispin, they would only follow,” he said.

“We can take a boat,” I said. “Sail away from England. Go to one of those places of which you spoke.”

Bear bowed his head. “Let them come, Crispin. We’ll be done with them.”

He looked up at me with weary eyes. To my dismay I saw him willing to accept defeat. “Bear,” I pleaded, struggling to find a way to move him, “there are three of them. If you can’t fight them off, what would become of me? And Troth?”

That touched him. He looked at Benedicta, as if he was asking her.

“Rye is a small place,” she said. “It will take only a short time before you’re pointed out. Crispin’s right. You best go.”

“There are two cogs on the quay,” I quickly said.

Bear turned to me. “How do you know?”

“I look every day.”

Bear studied his hands as if to measure their strength. Then once again he turned to the innkeeper.

“When it is safe,” she whispered, “you can return. I’ll be here.”

Bear took in a great breath. “God grant it. Very well. Crispin, gather our things.”

“Troth has them,” I replied.

Benedicta turned to Luke. “Go with him,” she said. “I’ll stay here, and deal if necessary.”

“Can you?” asked Bear.

“As God knows, there’s little fear left in me.”

She and Bear embraced one another. As we were leaving, the innkeeper handed Bear some coins and a bullock dagger. “Trust in God and this.”

“Can you spare it?” asked Bear.

“I can.” She turned back to Luke. “Take them down and around the western cliff,” the innkeeper advised. “Are you sure there were cogs?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“Make sure you bring them to the one that’s leaving soonest,” she said to her son.

Luke nodded his understanding. For a moment Bear and Benedicta gazed at one another. There was great sadness in their faces.

“Bear,” I cried, “we must go!”

Thus we quit the inn, all but running.