At a word from Perryn they stopped, and the reeve came on alone the last dozen yards to make a deep bow equally to the nuns as well as Master Naylor, saying, “My ladies. Master Naylor. A boon, if you would be so good.”
‘A boon?“ Master Naylor did not try to hide his surprise. ”For what?“
‘The folk want that Sister Thomasine be the one to cut the harvest home.“
Master Naylor made a startled movement. To cut the last of the harvest was an honor vied for among the girls. For it to be offered away… He and Perryn both looked to Frevisse, Master Naylor slightly shrugging to show he left the say of it to her, Perryn saying, “By your leave, of course, my lady.”
But it was not her leave they needed, and she turned to Sister Thomasine to ask, “Would you do this?”
Sister Thomasine gazed away from them toward the waiting villagers, seemed to consider, and then said softly, “If they want it and you see no reason I shouldn’t, then yes, in God’s great mercy, I’ll do it.”
Watching her go away across the stubbled field at Simon Perryn’s side, a slender, dark-clad figure beside his broad one, the children gathering to her as she went, Master Naylor said, “That’s never been done before.”
Nor would it likely be done again, God granting there not be another year when so many mercies were needed. Mercy from plague, mercy from hunger, mercy from the corruption of secret murders. But given the mercies there had been, it was a gesture of thankfulness to choose one of God’s virgins for this.
Across the harvest-cut field, hazed golden in the long slant of setting sunlight, Perryn, Sister Thomasine, the boys all merged into the waiting villagers. There was a breathing silence, poised with waiting, and then, at last, the cheer and the triumphant shouting and the flash of sickles thrown high and caught as they came down, flashing, in the sun, and the harvest done. There would be no famine this year and maybe with God’s grace the next year would be as good, too, and the year after that and…
Author’s Note
For the curious (or the doubtful), yes, English village government was much as it’s shown here, only far more complex. The villagers themselves ran daily matters, governing themselves in much the way of New England town meetings (whose self-governing skills probably developed from these medieval roots) while dealing with the complex bureaucracies of lord, church, and central government. The cases that come before the village court in Chapter One are all taken directly or derived from actual cases in medieval village court records, down to some of the names remaining the same.
Two books I cheerfully recommend if you want a more detailed, nonfiction look at everyday village life are the scholarly but readable Life on the English Manor, by H. S. Bennett, and The Ties That Bound, by Barbara Hanawalt.
The mesels are of course today’s measles, though the word was not applied exclusively that way until well after the 1400s but was used for several different ailments, ranging from measles to leprosy. Mesels as we think of it was considered a children’s version of smallpox, less devastating than the adult kind but potentially lethal nonetheless. My own memory of being horribly sick with them in prevaccine days stayed with me darkling enough to be used here-as well as inspiring me to have my own children inoculated against them as early as I could.
Since rashes were-and still are-difficult to tell apart, it was useful that the rash that went with some of the worst forms of plague did indeed form rosy rings, as Mistress Margery observes, and the next time you hear “Ring around the rosy, A pocket full of posy, Atchoo, atchoo, All fall down,” know the sweet little game in a circle with everyone collapsing at the end is hypothesized to be a reenacting of the Black Death. Apparently the familiar “Ashes, ashes…” is a variant that came in when the meaning of the whole thing was being generally forgotten, but sneezing was one of the possible symptoms of the plague, and the posies were herbs and flowers hoped to give protection against it. Children, being devastatingly realistic, showed how effective they thought that to be.
And by the way, to be pedantic, no one ever died of the Black Death in the Middle Ages. They died of the Great Pestilence, the Great Death, the Great Plague, but the term “Black Death” seems not to have been used until several centuries later.
Margaret Frazer
Margaret Frazer was a finalist for an Edgar Award for Best Original Paperback for both The Servant's Tale and The Prioress' Tale.
