Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [75]
"Servitude to lord or cleric be against the will of God," bawls the rabble-rouser, "for why else would he have made us all the same on the first naked day, formed of the same dust? So throw down this yoke, men of Cambridge, and seize your liberty!"
Back in her village, Margery was a bondswoman, like half her neighbours, and never thought to feel any shame about it. She worked two days a week for the lord and paid all her taxes, whether to the lord or the priest: she paid the plough-alms and the church-tithe and the tallage, the merchet when she married Roger Starre, and the soul-scot when their child died, and again the best cow as a death-duty when Roger was taken too, by a gripping of the bowels, and then the chevage fine for leaving the estate, the day she set off for Cambridge. She paid all her dues and didn't give any trouble.
She's never regretted moving to the big town, though. Once she'd lived here, breathing free air, for a year and a day, she knew she was a bondswoman no more. There are still taxes to pay, but she works for no master but herself. This is a better life for a widow; she has fresh rushes on the floor, two windows with shutters on them, and a hearth of stone. She eats barley bread instead of pottage; she's better off than she ever expected to be. Why would she be ungrateful? Why would she risk losing all she's won for herself over the years?
The rabble-rouser is waving a torch now, scattering sparks on the hot night. "Men and women of Cambridge, your grievances are sore! Who is this puffed-up Chancellor, that ye should pay him a fee or a fine for every step ye take? The same man who forbids all tournaments and frolicks for five miles around the town, in case the noise might cause nuisance to his scholars at their book-reading! Tell me, who are these masters and scholars, these lily-handed churchmen and bookmen who never worked a day in their lives?"
It's no good defying them, Margery could tell this stranger. Question a cleric, and he'll find laws and precedents enough in his books to make a fool of you. Attack one, and his whole band of brothers-in-the-cloth will back him. In Margery's village, in her mother's time, there was a girl who was found to have falsely charged a rape against the priest, and the church court set her a dreadful penance, that she was to walk barefoot to Rome and back again. She set off all right—the whole village watched her go—but she never came back, Margery remembers.
"Widow Starre!" Its her neighbour, Philbert Carrier, from across the way, gone sixty years old. His tunic is all askew. "Come down to Market Square. The bonfire's started!" He grasps her by the hand.
She shakes him off like a burr.
"Come now."
"You're looters and rioters and fools," she tells him in an unsteady voice. "Are you not afraid of the Sheriff's men?"
His grin is wide and toothless. "They can't clap us all in the gaol, can they? It wouldn't hold a tenth of the town!"
And with that he's gone, stumbling across the Bridge with the rest of them.
A little later comes the sound of men's feet stamping in time to the rhyme they shout out:
Those who can't eat will meet.
Those who can't make will break.
Those who can't read will lead.
Those who can't write will fight.
Margery doesn't go to her bed. She sits bent over on her stool, almost dozing sometimes until she jerks awake with a little choking sound. She holds her eyes shut and waits for the night to be over.
The Widow Starre wakes in a silent town. She puts her head out her door onto Bridge Street, and it's as if all the townsfolk have run away in the night. She crumbles an oat cake in ale for breakfast but can't make herself swallow it.
She knows she's safer in than out, but she can't bear to stay at home any longer. The bridge is half smashed; she has to edge along the rim of it, testing each board with her foot. Below her the weed-choked