Catherine, Called Birdy (20 page)

I leave in October. Only one month until Stephen!

***

Here ends the book of Catherine, called Little Bird or Birdy, of the Manor of Stonebridge in the shire of Lincoln, in the country of England, in the hands of God. Now I leave it to you, Edward, to judge whether this exercise of yours has indeed left me more observant, thoughtful, and learned. God's thumbs!

The England of 1290 is a foreign country. It would seem foreign even to people who have been to England or live there now. Things might look familiar—the same hills and sea and sky. People, young and old, short and tall, wear clothing we could identify and speak a language we might recognize. But their world is different from ours. The difference runs deeper than what they eat or where they bathe or who decides who marries whom. Medieval people live in a place we can never go, made up of what they value, how they think, and what they believe is true and important and possible.

The difference begins with how people saw themselves. Everyone had a particular place in a community, be it village, abbey, manor, family, or guild. Few people considered moving out of their place. Even people's names were linked to their place—Thomas Baker, William Steward, John At-Wood, Murgaw of Lithgow. Perkin, the goat boy who wants to be a scholar, is unusual.

Our ideas of individual identity, individual accomplishments and rights, individual effort and success did not exist. Family and community and guild and country were what mattered. No one was separate and independent, even the king.

This fixture of place was enforced by people's relationship to the land. When William, Duke of Normandy, conquered England in 1066, he decided that all the land belonged to him. He parceled out large estates to his supporters—barons and counts and dukes and great churchmen. They in turn rented smaller sections to abbots and knights, who let even smaller parcels to the farmers and millers and blacksmiths in the villages. Those on the bottom paid rent to those above, who paid it to the king, and everyone owed protection to those below
them, making a great circle with everyone connected. The king was in cooperation with the lowest landholder, for the small bits of poor land in the farthest village could be traced back to the king, and the king owed patronage and protection to all his people.

Some great noblemen held many manors with many villages scattered all across England. Some, like Birdy's father, held but one knight's fee—that is, enough land to support one knight and his family, for which the knight owed service or the equivalent in money to his landlord. The villagers then rented parcels from the knight, in exchange for work or goods or money or all three.

Although great lords lived in castles and lesser lords in large manor houses, most English people in 1290 lived in villages, in small cottages lining the road from manor to church. A village might seem like a miniature to us, with perhaps thirty small cottages, tiny front yards full of vegetables and chickens, and the fields cut into strips so each tenant would have some good and some not-so-good land.

Time in these villages moved slowly—not in a line from hour to hour, past to future, but again in a circle, marked by the passing of the seasons, the cycle of church festivals, and yearly village holidays. Daily life was marked by the rising and setting of the sun, for there were no watches or clocks, no gas lamps or electric lights, and candles were expensive and dangerous to use in a house of thatch and wood. Most people did not know what century it was, much less what year.

The future, then, to most medieval English meant not next week or next year or 1300, but the world to come, the afterlife, eternity, Heaven and Hell. Since the Church had a say in who went where in the next life, it had great authority in this one. The Church had power, lands, and riches. Church courts could
condemn someone to death for heresy. Blasphemy was not only a sin, but also a crime. Almost everyone loved God and worshipped Him in the same ways at the same times in the same kinds of places. The Church said God hated those who didn't—heathens, heretics, pagans, and Jews—so they were slaughtered in His name. Everyone hoped the world to come would be better than this one.

Children, too, were part of the great circle of life, learning from their elders and passing that knowledge on to their own sons and daughters. Village children lived at home, learning at a young age to help about the cottage or fields, tending animals or those children younger than they. Children in town often were apprenticed to craftsmen or sent to be servants.

Noble children, both boys and girls, were sent to another noble home to be fostered. Once when a visitor from Italy asked why parents sent their children away, he was told, "Children learn better manners in other people's houses."

Boys like Geoffrey served the lord of the manor while they trained to be knights. Girls like Birdy and Aelis went to a wealthy manor, such as Belleford, where they attended the lady of the manor and learned music, sewing, household skills, and manners. They also learned doctoring, since the lady of the manor provided the only medical help most people got. Broken bones, bloody cuts, coughs, and even fatal diseases were treated by the lady with remedies she grew, picked, brewed, and bottled herself. Some herbal remedies were effective, such as the use of poppy flowers to ease pain. Some were not, as when a plant was used for ailments of the heart or liver because its leaf was shaped like a heart or a liver. There were no cures for most illnesses, no treatments for most diseases, no real alternatives to herbs, magic, and luck.

Girls were mostly trained for marriage. Marriage among the
noble classes was not a matter of love but of economics. Marriages were arranged to increase land, gain allies, or pay back debts. Women were essentially property, used to further a family's alliances, wealth, or status. Birdy fought years of training and tradition in opposing her marriage to Shaggy Beard. Most girls would have consented, knowing no alternative.

When looked at from a safe, warm, well-fed perspective, the foreign country of medieval England might seem like a place of hard work, cruelty, and dirt. But the English of the Middle Ages also had a fondness for merriment, dancing, crude jokes, and boisterous games. Many households, such as Birdy's, entertained themselves by the fire with riddles, roasted apples, and music. Villagers put aside their hard, tedious lives to dance around the Maypole, jump the bonfires on Midsummer Night, and share Christmas dinner with their lord and lady.

Can we really understand medieval people well enough to write or read books about them? I think we can identify with those qualities that we share—the yearning for a full belly, the need to be warm and safe, the capacity for fear and joy, love for children, pleasure in a blue sky or a handsome pair of eyes. As for the rest, we'll have to imagine and pretend and make room in our hearts for all sorts of different people.

Books that will help young readers learn about medieval England include Joseph and Frances Gies's series
Life in a Medieval City, Life in a Medieval Village,
and
Life in a Medieval Castle;
Dorothy Hartley's
Lost Country Life;
Madeleine Pelner Cosman's
Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony;
Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell's
A History of Everyday Things in England, 1066—1799;
and Alfred Duggan's
Crowing Up in Thirteenth Century England.

Readers who want to get a sense of the Middle Ages from first-hand accounts are directed to Bartholomaeus Anglicus's
On the Properties of Things; The Medieval Woman's Guide to Health;
The
Travels of Sir John Mandeville; The Bahees Book: Medieval Manners for the Very Young;
and Geoffrey Chaucer's
The Canterbury Tales.

These stories set in or near the Middle Ages may be found at local libraries:

Marchette Chute,
Innocent Wayfaring
Marguerite De Angeli,
The Door in the Wall
Elizabeth Janet Gray,
Adam of the Road
E. L. Konigsburg,
A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver
Norah Lofts,
The Maude Reed Tale
Katherine Marcuse,
The Devil's Workshop
Mary Stolz,
Pangur Ban
Rosemary Sutcliff,
Knight's Tee
and
The Witch's Brat

Karen Cushman has a long-standing interest in history. She says, "I grew tired of hearing about kings, princes, generals, presidents. I wanted to know what life was like for ordinary young people in other times." Research into medieval English history and culture led to the writing of
Catherine, Called Birdy,
her first book.

Ms. Cushman was born in Chicago, Illinois. She received an M.A. in Human Behavior and one in Museum Studies and is now Assistant Director of the Museum Studies Department at John F. Kennedy University in the San Francisco Bay area. She and her husband share their Oakland, California, home with two cats, a dog, and a rabbit. They have a daughter, Leah.