The Clerkenwell Tales Read online

  “Oh, that is not the case.” Swinderby grimaced, as if in sudden pain. “He may yet win all.” There was a silver salt-cellar upon the table, in the shape of a chariot with wheels so that it could be passed down the table. Swinderby pulled it towards him as he spoke. “The followers of Henry Bolingbroke are as errant as the moon. And as moneyless.”

  To the sound of a bell the marshal led the procession of servants bringing in the food. In order came the panterer, the esquires and the valetti, bearing dishes according to their rank. They placed them reverently upon the tables, while on the meat-board were piled baked pheasant, goose, wild fowl, pullets and pork. At the high table sat the Archbishop, Roger Walden, and the mayor of London; beside them were the lords and bishops while all the others were arranged by estate and by degree. It was generally assumed that the diners would form pairs; the sheriff, for example, sat beside the prior of Bermondsey. They all arose as the archbishop said grace, and then began that general din of eating and conversation which was known to the speakers of Latin as taratantarum.

  Drago stood silently behind Swinderby; he had been in the canon’s service for six years, and had been instructed in all the arts of courtesy. He was trained to be careful where he spat, and to put his hand in front of his mouth before doing so. If a superior spoke to him, he took off his hat; he did not glance down upon the ground but looked steadfastly into his face without moving his hands or feet. He was taught not to scratch his head, and to ensure that his nails were always clean. He learned how to sponge Swinderby’s clothes, to make his bed and to lace his shoes. He was taught certain other lessons, also.

  On the tables dishes of peacocks with pepper sauce lay beside partridges roasted with ginger; pigs’ ears baked in wine were scooped up with fish served in a green sauce made out of various herbs; a bowl of lobster with vinegar was put next to some small game birds covered with feathers so that they still seemed alive. All the food of the world appeared to be lying here.

  The squire, Oliver Boteler, was in good humour. “Do you know,” he asked, “what the Proctor of the Arches told me this morning? You know that he is lately married. Well, I asked him why he had chosen so little a wife. She comes up to my hip-bone, you see. To which he replied, Ex duobus malis minus est eliendum. That is, to say in English, among evil things the less is to be chosen. Was that not well answered?” There was a flagon in front of him, carved in the shape of a knight on horseback, and he poured some wine into his cup. According to custom, they stopped talking while he drank. “Yet how,” he said, wiping his lips with his sleeve, “does he pierce her?”

  At the end of the meat course a subtlety was brought forth; it was carved from sugar and paste and was in the shape of a man, wrapped in weeds, holding a sickle in his hand. It was not to be eaten but was known as a “warmer” to signal the next course of almond cream, baked quinces, sage fritters and dates in comfit.

  By the time that the salads were placed upon the table, the conversation had returned to the topic of the king. “These are hard times,” the knight said. “Stony times.” He picked among the parsley, fennel and sage, as if choosing the herbs closest to his natural humour.

  “No estate abides.” The squire had gathered up a handful of garlic and spring onion. “It is the wheel. And I am bound upon it.”

  They knew the cause of his complaint well enough. In order to pay for his expedition to Ireland the king had been levying huge fines upon his opponents among the lords and commons; he had instituted a system of payments for legal “pardons,” but he had become cruel as well as greedy. As the verse sung about the streets put it:

  The axe was sharp, the stocks were hard,

  In the twenty-second year of King Richard.

  “The people are stormy.” Swinderby was still inclined to support the king. “I know London well. I know the citizens. They are as indiscreet and as changing as a weather vane. They delight ever in rumble that is new. Now they say that Henry Bolingbroke is casting some plot against the king. Then it is all denied as a deceit. Like the moon they wax and wane. They are full of chattering. One moment it is good King Richard, God keep his neck-bone from the iron. And then it is Richard the ruthless, the inconstant one.”

  “Yis.” The squire sighed. “What may ever last?” At which conventional sentiment, the three men burst out laughing.

  “I have heard talk that Henry Bolingbroke may incline to Benedict. So Boniface writes to the king, ‘Age igitur,’ which is as much to say, ‘Do something.’ ” Geoffrey de Calis was alluding to the Great Schism of recent years, in which two popes had been elected by rival groups of cardinals.9 Richard II fostered the claims of Pope Boniface IX in Rome, while it was rumoured that Henry Bolingbroke would cast his allegiance with Benedict XIII of Avignon.

  “I hear,” Swinderby was saying, “that Benedict wears the hair.”

  “He is nothing but a hedge priest. A waterless cloud.” Oliver Boteler was a firm supporter of orthodoxy in religious matters. “Benedict’s bulls are fit only to cover mustard pots.”

  “But Boniface chases our gold.” Geoffrey de Calis was less orthodox. “They say that he is a blind mole rooting about in earthly muck. The priests – saving your good self, William – bear the king’s gold out of our land and bring again dead lead.”

  Swinderby graciously ignored the knight’s allusions to priests. “The mad nun has been singing a high song on the matter.”

  “Oh?” The knight filled his mouth with mint. “Wherefore?”

  “You must ask Dame Agnes. But I hear that Clarice fell into a fit at the time of vespers and saw in vision a beast with two heads. She prophesied that the Church would fall asunder, and that the crown of Richard would be forfeit.”

  Oliver Boteler was repeating “tush” under his breath. “That nun is the devil’s left hand. Can she not be taken from Clerkenwell and walled?”

  Swinderby smiled at this image of perpetual duress. “For one who thinks her a harlot, another finds her holy.”

  “She is a jangler. Her wit is all away.”

  “I cannot say whether it is this or that. But she moves the citizens marvellously.”

  Tarts of apple and of saffron were placed upon the table, together with nuts and spices coated in sugar. The mawmenee was passed around in great jugs, a sweet wine for a sweet end. Then the archbishop rose from his central seat. He saluted them in order, “in high reverence and obedience” as he put it, and spoke of his incapacity. “Excuse me for my plain speaking,” he told them. “I never learned the arts of rhetoric, and all that I say must be bare and plain.” This was a conventional disavowal and did not at all reflect his ability, in the manner of the oratorical models, to match his voice and facial expression to his words. “The reason for which we have assembled here is a full heavy thing and a high matter, because of the wrong and the wickedness that have been done. We are troubled also because of the great damage that in the time coming may fall out in the same cause. Consider now the evil men of Lollers or Lollards, lewd and open fools fallen into blindness –” there was a general murmur of approval among the assembled Londoners, despite the known fact that the Lollard sect thrived in certain parts of the city. “These poor preachers of Lollardy do act plainly against Christ’s gospel. I can smell them in the wind. They are hypocrites and heretics who have brought fire down upon the precious places of salvation. Their lewd lust must be utterly quenched. These are black things that strike terror into us. It is well known among you that full two years ago the reverend bishops of both provinces petitioned the parliament house for a statute of burning –” again the London worthies signalled their assent. “The damnable blinding by antichrists of Christian people must cease in the flames. These devil’s jugglers who put out men’s ghostly eyes, and who lay Greek fire around our altars, should be put to the death. Now I turn to another high matter.” Archbishop Walden then surprised the company by revealing that “the nun of Clerkenwell” was being questioned by a group of learned clerks to determine whether her visitations
were blessed or cursed; he prayed Almighty God to bring them wisdom. “I say no more but leave you to your dinner.”

  That meal was then quickly completed, with cheese and white bread being cut and put upon the trenchers. The citizens rose in unison, bowed to the archbishop, and left in procession. The other worthies then departed according to their estate. The pieces of bread, cheese and discarded meat were put into voiders, to be distributed to the beggars who were sitting cross-legged on the floor of the stone chamber beside the hall. William Swinderby passed them with a grimace. “Do you have pepper in your nose?” one of them shouted after him.

  Drago followed his master into the London air. He was a tall youth, with hair the colour of wheat; he had mild blue eyes, as if his head were filled with the sky. He was talking quietly to Swinderby as he followed one pace behind. “You have as much pity for poor men as pedlars have for cats, that would kill them for their skins if they could catch them.”

  “Mea culpa.” The cleric’s pale face was suffused with sweat.

  “You are purse proud. Piss proud.”

  “Mea culpa.”

  “You are an ape in a man’s hood.”

  “Mea maxima culpa.”

  “I will enshrine you in a hog’s turd.”

  “Benedicite fili mi Domine.” He turned his head back, and looking imploringly at his yeoman. “Confiteor tibi.”

  “You should be fettered and put in the pit.”

  “Ab omni malo, libera me.”

  They were walking down Cheapside towards the cathedral. A passer-by would only assume that the canon was murmuring his devotions. “A flagello, libera me.” It was clear, from the settled expression upon Drago’s face, that this was some customary ritual; in truth he had been taught his words by the canon himself. They passed through the Little Gate of St. Paul’s churchyard, in the north-east corner, and entered the precincts of the cathedral; they followed the familiar sandy path to the houses built there for the thirty greater canons. As soon as they entered Swinderby’s dwelling the canon took off his cloak and lay down upon the floor of the principal chamber with his arms and legs spread wide.

  Drago locked and bolted the door. “Show me your buttocks, like a she-ape in the full of the moon.” He knelt down and pulled off the priest’s shirt and hose. “Phew! Your breeches are stained with your arse.”

  “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.”

  “You are a lost man.” Drago walked over to a wooden chest, from which he took out a whip of lead. The cleric looked up at him again imploringly, and then closed his eyes. “You are a sack filled with shit.” He raised the whip.

  “Peccavi.”

  He let it fall. “You are a parcel of dirt covered under clothes.”

  “Clamavi.”

  A few minutes later Drago left his master’s chamber, whistling, and went out into the fields for a game of archery.

  On the following Friday the canon preached at Paul’s Cross on the need for a statute de heretico comburendo, so that the Lollards might be burned at Smithfield. Among the crowd assembled before the Cross were William Exmewe and Emnot Hallyng. They avoided each other’s eyes.

  Chapter Six

  The Franklin’s Tale

  Garret Barton, the franklin and predestined man, was walking through the Great Gate to the south of St. Paul’s Cathedral. He could not help but consider how many pilgrims had gone to their damnation along this cobbled path. The air itself seemed rank with their shrill cries, like the putrid smell of other churchyard matter. Garret was one of the most ardent of the foreknown ones who, at Exmewe’s instigation, had written on a parchment “The Eighteen Conclusions.” He had rolled it carefully and placed it in the pocket of his coat. A wrestling match was being conducted in the usual place, an open space just behind the tomb of the parents of St. Thomas Becket, to the cries of “Yis!” and “Nay!” from the spectators. Outside the charnel-house, a scrivener had set up his stall; on a board above him had been painted a hand holding a pen. He stared solemnly at the franklin, as if divining his purpose in coming to this place.

  The clock in the belfry stood at two as Garret Barton entered the cathedral by the west door. It smelled of the stables. All the sounds of the tradesmen and the hucksters mingled in the great vaulted space, and resembled the strange buzzing and humming of thousands of bees; it was a still roar and a loud whisper, much like a sea of voices and of footsteps. Barton could just make out the slow chanting of the pilgrims who clustered around the gleaming shrine of St. Erconwald. This world was nothing but a cherry fair! The barristers stood by their respective pillars, awaiting clients, their scarlet hoods scarcely visible among the press of porters, stall-keepers and priests. Hay had been strewn across the cold and shadowy stone floor of the nave. It would have been a dark place, even in the middle of the day, were it not for the candles and torches blazing upon the images and the painted walls. A broad band of sunlight crossed the nave, but it seemed pale against the glistening pillars.

  The franklin approached the shrine and noticed with distaste the little limbs, modelled out of clay or lead, which hung there as objects of intercession; a clay penis was swaying beside a crippled leg, in the cool wind of human breath, as the people murmured their prayers to the golden figure of the saint whose alb and mitre were encrusted with bright jewels. He could see the monks peering at the pilgrims from the wooden watching chamber, where they guarded the holy treasures; one of them had fallen asleep. There was a faint smell of urine in the air, together with the smell of old stone and the familiar odour of humankind. A man was fumbling with his leather hose in a corner of the transept. And this was Garret’s thought: What is praying but piss against a wall? He walked back down the aisle among the dogs and pedlars. Three candles for a penny. Two Spanish onions for a penny. Five biscuits for two pennies.

  Yes, there was singing at the high altar. This plainchant was supposed to be pleasing because it copied the music of the spheres; its pattern was precise art-metricke, or geometry. It explored the length and the breadth, the depth and the height, of sound. These voices encircled each other like the heavenly spheres; they passed smoothly over each other as if they were already part of the empyrean, their marvellous moving and wonderful turning combined to create harmony. Then the voice of a boy rose up in the psalm, “Quam dilecta tabernacula tua,” and it seemed to Garret Barton to be the voice of one raised up against the many. It was the sounding of the soul outside the Church Universal. It was his voice, lucid and melodious, until once more it was caught up in the divine machinery of noise. The choir had answered with “Domine virtutum!”

  He leaned his forehead against the stone screen which stretched below the rood displaying the crucified figure of the Saviour. It was said that the rosemary tree could never grow taller than the height of Christ. He looked up at the painted image, scarred and suffering. Could it be true, as the astrologers claimed, that the infant body of Christ was influenced by the planets and the constellations? That his death was prefigured in the stars? That would be strange indeed, if creation could have power over its creator. Yet it was no more strange that, as William Exmewe had taught the predestined ones, God must sometimes obey the Devil. It was time.

  Garret Barton walked out of the north door into the cloister known as Pardon Church Haugh, the walls of which were covered by the Dance of Death.10 The franklin noticed the pope cavorting beside a skeleton. Ah, you, is it you that leads the dance of sorrow? He came out of the cloister and stopped before the Si quis? door, so named because of the notices pinned there by clerks looking for benefices. He took out the parchment of the Eighteen Conclusions, while in his other pocket he reached for the stone and the nails he had concealed there. With a few swift strokes he fixed the parchment to the door.11

  “What do you do here?” The scrivener was standing behind him; he had followed him through the cathedral, and into the cloister.

  “What do I do? I lead you to heaven’s gate.” He still had the stone in his hand and, with a sav
age movement, he struck the scrivener down.

  Then he hastened back through the cloister and across the Dance of Death. He had just entered the north transept and was passing the fresco of the Miracles of the Virgin, when he heard his name. He looked first at the figures upon the wall, glowing in the decorated light, and then he licked the blood from his right fist. He was in fear until he saw Robert Rafu, the manciple, beside a pillar. “Quick, Barton. God is here. Come with me.” Rafu knew the shortest ways, and led Barton towards the newly built south transept where some furriers had already set up their shops. “Did you nail the Conclusions?”

  “Someone was watching me.”

  “Watching?”

  “He seemed to threaten me. I had the stone in my hand, so I had no need of my dagger.”

  “You killed him?”

  “God killed him.”

  “And you were not seen?”

  “Only by the angels. Their wings covered me.”

  They left the south transept, crossed the churchyard, and went out through the south gate into the warren of tumbledown houses and tenements which always seems to spring up in the shadow of great churches.

  “Have you ever considered,” Garret Barton was saying, “how each fresco has its own light? Virtues shine more clearly in them. Like a tapestry.” He scarcely knew what he was saying. All was a dream. They had stopped at the corner of Paul’s Chain and Knightrider Street, beside the Cardinal’s Hat.

  A group of apprentices pushed past them, shouting out “Bonjour!” and “Dieu vous save!” and “Bevis, à tout!” In the inn there was a harper, sitting cross-legged upon a table, waiting to play. The franklin and the manciple walked through the room, and then re-emerged into the street by another door. The Hat was too disordered for their quiet talk. So they made their way down Farthing Alley, where the Bethlem men begged.