Grayling's Song(43)

Today is quarter-rent day. My greedy father is near muzzle-witted with glee from the geese, silver pennies, and wagonloads of manure our tenants pay him. He guzzles ale and slaps his belly, laughing as he gathers in the rents. I like to sit near the table where William the Steward keeps the record and listen to the villagers complain about my father as they pay. I have gotten all my good insults and best swear words that way.

Henry Newhouse always pays first, for at thirty acres his is the largest holding. Then come Thomas Baker, John Swann from the alehouse, Cob the Smith, Walter Mustard, and all the eighteen tenants down to Thomas Cotter and the widow Joan Proud, who hold no land but pay for their leaky cottages in turnips, onions, and goose grease.

Perkin the goat boy holds no land either, but pays a goat each year as rent for his grandmother’s cottage. For weeks before Michaelmas, Perkin tells everyone in the village, “I will pay him any goat, but not the black one” or “not the gray one.” William Steward of course hears and tells my father, and come rent day my father insists on the black one or the gray one that Perkin did not wish to part with. My father gloats and thinks he is getting the best of Perkin, but Perkin always winks at me as he leaves. And each year the goat my father demands is the weakest or the meanest or the one that eats the laundry off the line or the rushes off the floor. Perkin is the cleverest person I know.



30TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER

Morwenna says when I have done with writing, I must help with the soap-making. The bubbling mess stinks worse than the privy in summer. Therefore I plan to write abundantly.

First, I will say more about Perkin. Although he is the goat boy, Perkin is my good friend and heart’s brother. He is very thin and goodly-looking, with golden hair and blue eyes just like the king, but is much dirtier than the king although much cleaner than the other villagers. He is sore afflicted with wind in his bowels, so I regularly make him a tonic of cumin seed and anise to unbind his liver and destroy the wind. It mostly does not work.

One of his legs is considerably shorter than the other, so as he walks he seems to be dancing some graceless dance, with his head bobbing and arms swinging about to keep his balance. Once I tied a bucket on my foot so I could walk like Perkin and we could dance together, but my arms and legs quickly grew tired. Perkin must be tired all the time, but it doesn’t make him ill-tempered.

He lives with the goats or his granny, depending on the season, and is mostly wise and kind when he isn’t teasing me. It is Perkin who taught me to name the birds, to know the weather from the sky, to spit between my front teeth, to cheat at draughts and not get caught, all the most important things I know, the Devil take sewing and spinning.

I am frequently told not to spend so much time with the goat boy, so of course I seek him out whenever I can. Once I came upon him in the field, chewing on a grass, saying some words over and over to himself.

“What spell are you casting, witch-boy?” I asked.

“No spell,” said he, “but the Norman and Latin words for apple, which I lately heard and am saying over and over so I do not forget.”

Perkin likes things like that. He would like to be learned. When he discovers new words, he uses them all together: “This apple/pomme/malus is not ripe” or “Sometimes goats/chevres/capri are smarter than people.” Some people have trouble understanding Perkin, but I know always what is in his heart.

My hand grows tired and I am out of ink and Morwenna is sending me black looks. I fear it is the soap-making for me. Am I doomed to spend my days stirring great vats of goose fat when not writing for Edward?

I wonder why rubbing your face and hands with black and sandy evil-smelling soap makes them clean. Why doesn’t it just make them black and sandy? There is no more to say.