LITMIR.BIZ

      IT APPEARED TO Berna an over-eager suitor kissed her. She opened her eyes and regarded the salivating mouth of Enker, with Hab beside him. The boar pressed his nose to Berna’s cheek and grunted pleasurably. He was shod and had a sack tied to his back. Hab wore his usual patched tunic.

      The lady was far from home, said Hab, her wedding was soon, and her folk would lack her.

      Berna stood and brushed grass and leaves from her person. ‘Where I travel and fare isn’t yours to know,’ she said. ‘It’s not your place to wake a lady, sleeps she in her chamber or a forest. Who gave you leave and permission to quit my father’s manor?’

      Hab said he sought his sister Madlen.

      ‘I know the names and faces of each of the servants and bound folk on my family’s estate, and even of servants’ servants like you,’ said Berna. ‘You have no sister. There’s no Madlen.’

      There was a Madlen, said Hab, but she was shy, and versed in concealment.

      ‘Were you to have a sister indeed, why would she be here, half a day on foot from her right and proper stead and place?’ demanded Bernadine.

      Madlen had left Outen Green that morning, said Hab. She loved Will Quate and sworn to follow him wherever he went, be it to the ends of the earth.

      Berna laughed. ‘My poor pigboy,’ she said. ‘Your kind hasn’t the time, nor the letters, nor the fineness of mood and sentiment for love. Drink ale with your friends, wed and marry your sweethearts, bear and carry children, the Almighty won’t ask and demand no more of you. It’s only we of blood must endure love’s smarts.’

      Hab’s face crinkled with subtlety, and he addressed Berna with a sudden directness, as if they were of one estate.

      ‘Is it for love you sleep in the wood, instead of being at your father’s side to meet your new husband?’ he asked.

      For a moment Berna was incapable of response. She turned her head in esperance of aid, in vain; they were alone.

      ‘You may not speak to me in that familiar way and manner,’ she said, attempting to give her voice authority. ‘Depart from my presence this instant.’

      ‘In your sleep I took you for Madlen,’ said Hab.

      ‘How is that possible? Your sister mayn’t afford a cloth as rich as this,’ said Berna, holding out the flowery stuff of her marriage gown.

      ‘She stole it,’ said Hab.

      Berna put her hands to her mouth, then to her cheeks. ‘Why, my dear Hab,’ she said with sincere pity, ‘if your sister is the thief who stole my first gown, she’ll rightly be caught and hung.’

      The menace of penalty mortal failed to provoke the proper response. Hab ne trembled nor blanched. He regarded her disdainously. ‘You fear you won’t outshine Madlen unless she’s dead,’ he said.

      ‘Outshine?’ said Berna. ‘You demonstrate a marvellous ignorance of our different natures.’

      ‘Demon-straight a what?’

      ‘You see, pigboy? We scarcely speak the same tongue and language. You’re incapable of comprehending that were your sister to able herself in my gown, it wouldn’t change her into no demoiselle. The qualities that mark and distingue our kinds go deeper than outward seeming and appearance. Her lack of gentilesse, her coarseness of movement, the roughness of her shape, are in harmony only with dull colours and cheap cloth. In my gown, she would become discordant and odd. She would seem still lower and meaner than she already is.’

      Hab beheld Enker and scratched an ear in thought, only instead of his own ear, he scratched the boar’s. ‘You ween Madlen ne look fairer than you, though she wear the same gown? How may you know, if you’ve never seen her?’

      ‘I ne say your sister’s not fair,’ said Berna more gently. ‘A daisy may be wonder fair, and never as lovely as the humblest rose.’

      ‘I saw Madlen in the gown she stole,’ said Hab. ‘She hight herself right winly. I saw her come again of the still water at the foot of the bourne and she seemed to me as fair as any rose. Truly, when I beheld you asleep, I took you for her.’

      Berna coloured. ‘You lack the sense to apperceive and know the clear signs of my nobility,’ she said.

      ‘You’re like to her in other ways. She’s a thief, and you’re a thief, for you stole yourself from your own wedding.’

      ‘I lose all rule by which to measure your offensiveness,’ gasped Berna.

      ‘And you’re like her that you fare for love, Calais-bound. Madlen yearns for Will Quate, and you, I guess, for Laurence Haket.’

      ‘Shut your mouth!’ cried Berna, so furiously that her horse, tethered nearby, reared and whinnied. ‘I shan’t accept no comparison of my fare and journey to no errand of a pigboy’s sister.’

      Hab shrugged. ‘High-born as you are, you’re alone in the wood without friend or kin to help.’

      ‘Ne harm me,’ said Berna, ‘or you’ll be pined and made to suffer.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘I am imaginative,’ said Berna.

      Hab’s demeanour changed again; the familiarity that had so troubled Berna disappeared, and his consciousness of the lady’s superiority seemed to return. Humbly he proposed to accompany the lady on her journey, that she might appear to have an entourage. Together they would attempt to travel under the protection of the archers. Somewhere on the road to Calais, Berna was certain to encounter Laurence Haket; while Hab, if he kept close to Will Quate, would surely catch his sister.

      ‘But Will Quate will know me,’ said Berna. ‘He’ll see I’ve fled my marriage. He will betray me to my father. I already know he’s not to be trusted. I met him as I left Outen Green and he behaved despicably towards me, without honour or worth, like to we were equals – as you did just now, but worse.’

      Hab said no doubt the lady’s face had been veiled; no doubt Will, thinking like Hab that the lady was occupied with marriage preparations in the manor house, had mistaken her for Madlen.

      ‘Another one?’ said Berna. ‘Do I seem so like a low-born woman?’ She examined the backs of her hands. ‘Is it because I’ve let the sun brown my fingers?’

      She could turn it to her advantage, said Hab. The other bowmen would accept her as she was, as the lady Bernadine, but providing she went veiled, Will would assume she was Madlen.

      ‘That Lady Bernadine should pretend to be Madlen pretending to be Lady Bernadine?’ said Berna. She laughed. ‘You’re imaginative.’

      Hab said it was her second usage of the word, but he ne knew what it signified.

      ‘As you may understand it,’ said Berna, ‘it is the sleight of mind that gives the speed to know things not as they are, but as they might be, were God or man to work them otherwise. Have you any food?’