Morality Play Read online

  'There is nothing to fear,' he said. 'I give you my word on it. I will require nothing from you, save only this account.'

  I could only hope that this was true. I had gone too far now to retract or fall silent. 'Then Martin was stricken with love for the girl,' I said. 'It was beyond all reason, he saw her only once.'

  I told him then of our arrest and of how we had been kept for a night and a day, then taken before the Lord and made to do the play, but in a private chamber and before the Lord and steward only, and how Martin had betrayed us.

  'You will be the first players to have set foot in Sir Richard's private apartments,' he said. 'He is fond of music, they say, but not of shows and plays. He is a man of austere life.' This was said with pity almost, as if it concerned some aberration of the spirit.

  'Well,' I said, 'the chamber was austere enough, there was nothing in it but a chair. There was nothing to remark anywhere but the smell of plague as we went by.'

  I had said this as an afterthought but he raised his head at it and fixed his eyes on my face. 'Plague? Are you sure?'

  'I am sure, yes. It is not a smell like any other. Once you have known it, you will know it always again. It came from a room that we passed on the way.'

  'Perhaps the one within was gone already to his Judge?'

  'I do not think so.' I sought to remember, not as myself thinking the matter important, but because of his very evident interest in it. There was the short passage, the suddenly opened door, the veiled and hooded sister with the white cloths draping the sleeves of her habit, the smell of death-in-life that followed us. 'It was only the impression of a moment, as we went by,' I said. 'I think the one in the room was still being cared for in some fashion.'

  He was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded slightly and it seemed indifferently and looked away. 'Yes, I see,' he said. 'Picture it, Thomas. This player, come from nowhere, puts on the mask of Superbia and gives him back look for look in his own chamber. Sir Richard de Guise, one of the strongest barons north of the Humber, with lands that go east from here as far as Whitby, who dispenses his own justice, not the King's, and has his own army and his own court and his own prison.'

  'The man must be mad,' the secretary said.

  'Madness you call it?' His eyes returned to me. 'I had thought love would make a man want to preserve his life, not throw it away.'

  'He is a man who goes to extremes. Besides, he had lost hope that the girl could be saved. He did not know ...' Here I was obliged to make a pause and master myself, as gratitude threatened me with tears. 'None of us knew,' I said, 'that you had come to administer the King's justice and set this foul wrong right.'

  And now his eyes were full upon me, narrowed in a scrutiny that seemed half-amused, half-incredulous. 'The King's justice?' he said. 'Do you know what it is, the King's justice? Do you think I would leave his business in York and come these weary miles in this weather, to this wretched inn where I am served food not fit for the swill-tub, for the sake of a dead serf and a dumb goat-girl?'

  'I did not think there could be other reason for your coming. I thought -'

  'You thought I was one of your company, one of the players, somewhat belated, come to put on the mask of Justitia in your True Play of Thomas Wells. There was the Monk and the Lord and the Weaver and the Knight. And now the Justice, who sets all things right in the end. But I am in a different play. What did you say was your name?'

  'Nicholas Barber.'

  'How old are you, Nicholas?'

  'This is my twenty-third winter, sir,' I said.

  He sat back in his chair and looked at me for a moment or two, then shook, his head. 'I have no sons, only daughters,' he said. 'But if I had one such as you, I would be concerned lest simplicity bring him to folly and thence to grief. You are at the stage of folly already, are you not? You are outside your diocese without licence, you have joined a company of players.'

  'Yes,' I said, 'it is true.'

  'What led you to do so?' He was looking closely at me still, but with an air now of simple curiosity which was somehow more disturbing to me than that former derisive incredulity. 'You had a certain position,' he said. 'You are lettered. You could have hoped for advancement.'

  'I am, or was, one of the sub-deacons at the Cathedral of Lincoln,' I said. 'I was set to transcribe Pilato's Homer for a benefactor, a work extremely tedious and verbose. It was the month of May, the birds were singing outside my window and the hawthorn was breaking into flower.'

  'So simple as that?' He glanced aside. 'No more than an impulse.' His eyes moved over the rich hangings on the walls, the bright blaze of the fire, the silent and attentive secretary. 'Thomas has never done a thing like that, have you, Thomas?'

  'No, sir.'

  'Thomas will sit on the King's Bench some day.' He looked at me again. 'I have never done a thing like that either. I have studied and worked for one part only. If such impulse had come to me, I would have taken it for sickness.'

  He fell silent and for some moments there was no sound in the room but the whisper of the fire. Then he stirred, as if waking. 'Thomas and I have some private business to conclude,' he said. 'I will ask you to wait elsewhere for a brief while. Then we will go on a short journey together. But first I will tell you something about the King's justice, though I do not hope to lessen your simplicity thereby. For a dozen years or more, since I first came close in counsel to the King, we have had trouble with this stiff-necked de Guise. He keeps men under arms in numbers more than needful and they are unruly and oppressive and threaten the peace of the realm, and the dues that are the King's prerogative go to paying their wages. He combines with others to maintain the right of the lords, as peers of the realm, to pronounce judgement on their fellows, thus denying the King's right of impeachment. He takes the law into his hands. Only Royal Commissioners have the power to try cases of felony in the shires, and all fines and expropriations should go to the Royal Exchequer, yet this Lord arrogates such powers of trial to his Sheriff's court and all the moneys go into his coffers.'

  He paused, with a compression of the lips. 'You see?' he said. 'No way but force with such a man. And this is not a time for force, with the loyalties of the people uncertain and a Commons always ready to cry tyranny. But I kept him in my view, there was one in his following who reported to me. Then, a year ago, we began to hear stories of disappearing children, those you know of and others, vagabond children about the town, parentless children who came to beg at the castle gates. Always boys. And now this case of Thomas Wells, the one who was found, and finally a path that led to the house of de Guise.'

  He paused, smiling, and stretched out white hands to the fire as if cherishing still the wondrous warmth of that opportunity, and the gems on his fingers flashed in the firelight. 'I have looked very carefully at this case,' he said. 'And I know the truth of it now.'

  'And now you will bring him to justice and serve the King's cause at the same time.'

  He shook his head and smiled again. 'I see well that you have been put to copy the wrong books,' he said. 'Do you think he would meekly consent to be tried? Justice is less easily applied to the strong than to the defenceless. It is the fame of his house that concerns him most. We are fortunate in the nature of the crime.'

  'Fortunate? Thomas Wells would not say so, if he had a voice.'

  The smile faded and his eyes narrowed in the heavy face as he looked at me and I understood what it might mean to be an obstacle in the path of such a man as this. 'What we cannot change we do not waste time over unless we can make use of it,' he said. 'It is time you learned that, Nicholas Barber. The manner of the boy's death is something we can make use of. There are mortal sins and mortal sins. Some might add lustre to a pride like his. But not, I think, the sin of sodomy. No, I will talk to him and he will listen, and he will go on listening as long as he lives.' He paused for a moment and his expression softened a little. 'One thing only was puzzling me and you have shed full light on that. I am grateful to you.'


  'How did I do so?'

  'Later you will know it. You will wait for us now some little while. Then we will take a ride together, and I promise you enlightenment at the end.'

  'To the castle?'

  He rose to his feet and stood looking down at me from his greater height. 'Not to the castle,' he said.

  I was moving towards the door when he spoke again. 'You will come to no harm. Wait for me below, do not run away. After this journey it will lie in my power to deliver the girl from prison into your keeping.'

  'And the others, what of them?'

  'Yes,' he said, 'them too. Have no fear, it will not be too late. Yesterday when you were taken, I sent some lines to Sir Richard, enough to give him pause. That is what I can do for your friends. For you I can put in a word with the Bishop of Lincoln if you desire to return.'

  I would have thanked him but he waved a hand in dismissal and the secretary came forward to show me from the room. I went down the stairs again and out into the yard. Moving quietly and keeping near the wall I made my way to the barn and tried the door, it was chained on the inside. I rattled the door against the chain, not too loudly. There came the sound of a dog from inside, something between a bark and a whine. Then I heard Margaret's voice, thick with sleep, asking who was there.

  'It is me, Nicholas,' I said, speaking close to the door.

  After some moments I heard the key turn and the door was opened wide enough to let me in. Margaret had lit a candle and she held it in her hand. The light was cast upward over her broad cheek-bones and the tangles of her hair. 'Well, you are back,' she said. 'I was going to wait until the morning.'

  I did not understand what she intended by this, but before I could make any reply she gave me the candle to hold and turned and burrowed briefly in the straw. When she stood again she was holding the box in which we kept our takings. 'Another night in this piss-hole I will not stay,' she said. 'There are sixteen shillings and fourpence in this box. That is what is left of our takings. I have had to pay two nights' lodging here. That stinkard would have taken it in kind but I cannot abide him. Hold up the candle, Nicholas, and I will count it out. Half I keep for myself, who do not belong to this company and never did, nor any other.'

  She began to count the coins out into my palm. No word of sympathy for my weary state or inquiry about the others.

  'Margaret, we did not abandon you,' I said. 'We had no choice but to go.'

  ‘It is not that,' she said. 'Wait, or I will lose my count.'

  The money was all in pennies and my hand could not hold so much. 'You can put it in this,' she said, and she found for me the black murder-purse, which I had seen last when Martin held it up before the people at full stretch of his arms, as if it were the Host, i kept it ready,' Margaret said.

  When it was all counted out she sighed and nodded and turned to put her box again in its place under the straw. 'I take half in payment,' she said. 'Other payment I had none. I knew I would be given no share in the playing, but I did things that were needed and no one else could do them and I thought I would have my place in the company, but no place was given to me, except only what served you. I did not want to think it before, but when the soldiers came and took you and did not even bother to take me I was made to think of it and I knew I counted for nothing.'

  'With them, no.'

  'With you either,' she said very simply, as if there could be no argument.

  It seemed to me strange and illogical, and belonging to the unreasonable nature of women, that Margaret should so resent being spared the danger of death and moreover should blame us for it, who had been placed in that danger. 'The others are held still, they are in the castle,' I said. 'They are in danger of their lives.'

  'I do not want to hear of it,' she said. 'They are the players, the play is theirs.'

  'Where will you go?'

  ‘I will go to Flint. He came at noon today to ask for me. The twice we were together pleased him. He wants to take me into his house. He will take the dog, too. He says it is young enough still to be trained for sheep. The innkeeper says he will look to the horse, he is hoping that no one comes back to claim it.'

  I did not think that the dog would come up to Flint's expectations and I was not altogether sure that Margaret would, but I naturally kept silent on this score. 'Well,' I said, 'I wish you good fortune with all my heart.'

  At this she smiled a little but without much softening and after a moment she came and kissed me. 'Go back to your Bishop, you were best,' she said.

  'Well, that is doubtful,' I said. 'As for this question of being admitted to the company and having a part to play, you can take comfort from the story of the Devil and the Player, do you know the one?'

  She shook her head and yawned, in a manner not encouraging. Nevertheless, I persisted, because I thought there might be consolation in it for her.

  'It took place before there were players, if we can imagine such a time. The Devil was casting about the world and he came upon a man of very virtuous life and sought to tempt him. He tried all manner of blandishment, the lusts of the flesh, the treasures of the world, fame and dominion. All of these the man steadfastly rejected. The Devil was at his wits' end and could think of nothing more but to offer to make him a player. The man saw no harm in this and agreed and so he lost the bout and his soul was forfeit because a player borrows bits and pieces from the souls of others and in this pastime his own soul loosens and slips away from him and it is an easy matter for the Devil to scoop it up. And this has been the case with players ever since.'

  Margaret's response to this story confirmed me in my view that women have no head for abstract thought.

  'If Stephen escapes hanging,' she said, 'tell him Flint is big and strong and has both his thumbs and plenty of gristle in them.'

  I promised to do this and she lay down again to sleep. I sat on the straw with my back to the wall and tried to think of what the Justice had told me. The Lord must already have had the message, perhaps it was somewhere about him while he sat watching our play. Martin had mocked him in the mask of Superbia and sought to bring him into the Play of Thomas Wells. But that note, which I had not read and never would, had forced on him a part in another play, that in which the Justice was a player and the King also, a larger play in which the suffering of the innocent was of no importance except as a counter to bargain with. And as my eyes grew heavy with sleep I wondered if there were not some larger play still, in which kings and emperors and popes, though thinking they are in the centre of the space, are really only in the margin ...

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I was roused by a voice at the barn door, Margaret too, but I rose and went out quickly before she was fully awake. There were a dozen men in the yard, several of them clad in mail and armed. The Justice was in the midst, with a group of hooded men about him, among whom I made out the lantern jaws of the secretary. These were on horseback but there were others with mules and two of them had spades slung across the saddles and coils of rope. When I saw this I began to suspect the nature of this journey. But there was no time for question: a mule was ready saddled for me and I mounted.

  The moon was high now, riding in a clear sky, and there was light enough as we rode through the town, though several carried unkindled torches. We took the road that led upwards to the church, riding now not so much together, with those of us on muleback strung out behind and the open country on either side. In the hollows and lower slopes of the land and up against the stone walls that ran across, the snow had drifted and heaped to make shapes that seemed unfinished in that pale radiance of moonlight, shapes of animals and men not yet formed into being, with blunt heads and limbs, folds where eyes might one day be, pocks and dimples waiting to be moulded. The snow was softening at last, the hoofs of the mounts in front cast up a dust of white that rose to their knees.

  Moonlight silvered the grass of the churchyard and glinted on the snow that lay over Brendan's grave, so newly dug but seeming already to belong to a time remote. The bo
y's tarred cross still stood there, marking the small plot where his body lay, and it was here they began digging, using at first a long-handled pick as the ground beneath the snow was still frozen hard. And now the torches were lit and the reddish light of burning hemp engorged the light of the moon, so that beyond the flames there was only darkness.

  I stood within the circle of the torchlight, on the edge of it, watching. The earth below the frosted surface was loose-packed still and made no resistance. Some muttered words were exchanged between the Justice and one of the hooded men who stood close beside him. After this there was only the waiting and the torchlight and no sound but the scrape of the spades and the spill of earth.

  Then came the striking of metal on wood and a man got down into that narrow space with ropes and the coffin was brought up and laid near the grave and the same man forced open the lid.

  My impressions of what followed were confused and they have always remained so in memory. The men who had been digging fell back. Two of those who had been standing with the Justice moved forward and with them one bearing a torch. I saw now, as the light fell on them, that both these men wore masks of some dark stuff over the lower part of their faces, covering the nose and mouth. And as they leaned down to the coffin I saw that they wore dark gloves. There was a smell like that which had come from the chamber in the castle, but fainter. The two who were hooded and masked were busy about the body but I did not see clearly what they did. Then the Justice turned and looked towards me and motioned me to join him. He was nearer to the body but not so close that he could have touched it. I came as he bade me and looked at what they were doing and I saw the true face of Thomas Wells, who had worn Springer's face before and then the cloth face of the effigy with holes for eyes where the straw poked through. And this face was less real than either, it was lost in death. The smell was stronger now. They turned his naked body this way and that and his arms and legs trailed in the snow.