The Clerkenwell Tales Page 8
On the day before his death he had told John Duckling in secreta confessione that he had seen his own mother stifle her newborn child and take its body in a basket down to the Thames. His mother, ever after that time, had beaten and whipped him; he believed that the devil had entered him when he first opened his mouth to scream. He confessed to Duckling that he had only once found contentment in all his life – when his mother sang him to tearful sleep with the song that begins, “Oh one that is so fair and bright.”
More curious still was the manner of Haddon’s departing from this life. When he was lifted out of the stone prison and tied to the hurdle which would drag him from Alder Street to Dark Tower wharf, he opened his mouth and began to sing. As he was jolted along the stone cobbles he sang out, “Oh one that is so fair and bright,” in a strong and melodious voice.
Duckling could still hear the nun singing as he crept from the guest-house and walked quickly through the cloister. It was only after he entered his lodging that he wondered if the monk, Brank Mongorray, had assumed her voice:
“Oh one that is so fair and bright
velud maris stella
Brighter than the day is light
parens et puella
I cry to thee, I sue to thee,
Lady, pray thy son for me
tam pia
That I may soon come to thee
Maria.”
Chapter Eight
The Knight’s Tale
On that same spring evening, even as John Duckling was walking through the cloister of the Clerkenwell convent, certain Londoners might have been seen entering a round stone tower of Roman construction; it stood a few yards north of Castle Baynard near the banks of the river by Blackfriars. It had one great portal, around which were inscribed certain words in Latin which might be translated thus – “I am not open to them that knock as they pass by, but to those who stand and knock.” Each of these evening visitors was greeted at the entry by a liveried servant, and led down a winding stair to a vaulted chamber beneath the ground. Some of those present at the dinner of the Guild of Mary the Virgin, the previous month in the Hall of the Mercers, were also in attendance here; among them, for example, were the knight, Sir Geoffrey de Calis, and the canon, William Swinderby. But they were not dressed in the robes of their degree. Their cloaks and hoods were of some striped cloth; their colours were blue and white crossing diagonally, which to a trained eye were the tokens of time crossed with patience.
A sergeant-at-law, Miles Vavasour, had joined them, together with one of the two under-sheriffs of London. This was a high meeting but curiously enough it was the knight, Sir Geoffrey de Calis, rather than the under-sheriff who called them to order.
He summoned them with a Latin invocation. “Hoc est terra quaestionis . . .” This is the ground of our seeking. This is the ground, the beauty and beginning of all good order. It was not a prayer of the Church, but they knew it well and joined in all of its responses.
After these preliminaries the knight turned to one of them.
“Well achieved, William Exmewe,” he said.
The friar, Exmewe, stepped forward, among the men of high degree, and bowed towards Geoffrey de Calis. “The game is begun,” he said in a low voice. “The oratory was well burned with Greek fire. The death in the cloister of St. Paul’s came by chance, as I believe, but it served our purpose well enough.”
“Who are these people you lead?”
“Broken-down people. The helpless and hopeless ones of this world. There is Richard Marrow, a carpenter who would creep to the cross if he could. Emnot Hallyng, whose head is higher than his hat. Garret Barton, a malignant man who fights the world. There is one of Paul’s manciples.”
“Oh?” Geoffrey de Calis raised his head. “Which one is that?”
“Robert Rafu.”
“I know him to be cowardly disposed. He eats too little.”
“Hamo Fulberd, a marvellously ill-favoured youth. He is marked down for an especial doom.”
“And they know nothing of our purposes?”
“Nothing whatever. They have not the least suspicion of me. They believe me to be, like them, a foreknown one.”
Miles Vavasour raised his voice from the back. “The common report is that your people are Lollards.”
“No matter.” Geoffrey de Calis put his hand on Exmewe’s shoulder. “If Lollers are blamed, so much the better. The Lollards have not hearts or livers great enough to burn down churches, but let them be burdened with the guilt. They will arouse the people. The king will be considered weak and foolish in the face of these violations. If he cannot protect Holy Mother Church, he is the shadowy one who cannot bear the sun. The anointed one will fall. Not even Christ and his holy blood can save him.”
They laughed at the allusion to Christ’s holy blood, for they were neither deceived by nor afraid of the tricks and japes of the Church.
These men comprised a group known as Dominus13 which had been secretly assembled eighteen months earlier, with the sole purpose of dethroning Richard II. In this company were well-known clerics as well as several of the king’s councillors. There were also dignitaries of London, including an under-sheriff and two eminent aldermen. Geoffrey de Calis himself had been appointed by King Richard as Constable of Wallingford and the Chilterns, a sinecure which he had successfully “farmed” for an annual payment. Yet now, as a result of the king’s depredations, their lands and their wealth were not safe; Richard demanded new taxes, and confiscated property on mere pretext. So they were willing to risk all in order to destroy him. It was they who had agreed to finance Henry Bolingbroke’s invasion. It was they who, a year before, had persuaded William Exmewe to establish a group of rebellious ones who would be willing to challenge the pope and the bishops within the city of London; they had decided that outrage and confusion among the citizens would speed their course and the destruction of the king. William Exmewe had by chance found Richard Marrow, in the refectory of St. Bartholomew, and had conversed with him on matters spiritual; Marrow had in turn informed Exmewe about the group of foreknown men to which he was joined. Exmewe eventually accompanied Marrow to the meetings of these men, and soon gained mastery over them with his rhetoric and his piety.
“And how is this gear to proceed?” Miles Vavasour took pleasure in asking questions.
“I have spread the report among the predestined men,” Exmewe replied, “that there must be five wonders to hasten the day of deliverance. You know the old device of the five circles interlinked?” It was the sign used by Joseph of Arimathea, and a token of the early church. “It has wonderfully impressed itself upon them.”
“So there are three remaining?” Miles Vavasour, as a sergeant-at-law, prided himself upon his quick wit. “The oratory and Paul’s have been first and second.”
“There then follow St. Sepulchre, St. Michael le Querne and St. Giles. At all points of the city.”
They murmured approval. Their voices had the confidence of power, and they were on easy terms with one another. They were jovial, almost careless, in their demeanour; they were frank, and confiding and free. The unstated belief among them would have been that, just as there was nothing before birth, so there was nothing after death. It were wise, therefore, to enjoy this world while you may. Matters of religion were to be used to quell the people and to promote good order. This was a belief that the prelates among them also accepted.
Sir Geoffrey de Calis called them to order once again. “There will be more fires,” he said, “and more destruction. Henry will return to England and summon a great host. If Henry is to defeat Richard, he must be looked upon as the saviour of the Church. The first law of reverence is need. There then follows fear. In the meantime we must be still as any stone. No one must know of our devisings. Not what we do but what we do not do.”
As they left the chamber, some of them stooped to kiss Sir Geoffrey’s ring; it was on the third finger of his left hand, which communicated directly by the nerve to his beating heart.
Chapter Nine
The Reeve’s Tale
The prioress, Agnes de Mordaunt, stood by the principal gate of the convent and sighed. She turned to her reeve, Oswald Koo, with an expression of fury only partially softened by the dimple upon her chin. “On no account give them leave to use our barns. Look at them! Nasty, vile tregetours! They have already pissed on the straw we were about to lay in the church.” She was staring at the workmen who were even then building Noah’s ark upon the green. It was the second day of the mysteries held each year in Clerkenwell, during the week of Corpus Christi, under the guidance and supervision of the guild of parish clerks. A raised platform had been erected near the ark itself, and the painted cloth hung upon it represented the front of Noah’s house. It was depicted as if it were a merchant’s house along Cheapside except for a see-saw, or merry-totter, which had been placed in front of the cloth.
There was much activity behind the stage, as the cast prepared themselves for their roles. Noah and Noah’s wife had performed as Adam and Eve on the previous morning, and had exchanged their white leather costumes for the more familiar gear of smocks and gowns. “Let go, Dick. Let go!” Noah’s wife was played by the clerk of St. Michael in Aldgate; he was laughing as a pair of false breasts was tied to his chest by the keeper of the costumes. “This is so tight I cannot breathe.”
“For a little woman, you cause a great commotion. Put on your hair with your own hands.” The wig of Noah’s wife resembled a great yellow mop, but the clerk of St. Michael raised it reverently above his head.
In the cart of costumes there were several masks, with stars and spangles glued to them, ribbons, hats, jackets and paper streamers as well as various false beards and wooden swords. The parish clerk of St. Olave, who was playing Noah, was leaning against it; he was drinking pudding ale out of a leather bottle.
“If you rut-gut in my face,” Noah’s wife warned him, “you will feel my fist.”
“It is a necessary, good wife. When my stomach is empty, I have no strength.”
The faces of Ham and Japhet were being painted with grease and saffron, while God practised upon his stilts on the bank leading down to the Fleet. Already a crowd had gathered beside the green. Some of them were exchanging jokes with the carpenters who climbed across the ark and were even now raising its mast.
Something indelicate was shouted by one of the players, and the prioress put her hands to her ears. “Oh this sinful life. Aufer a nobis iniquitates nostras.” The reeve blessed himself, and asked if he might return to the cart-house. “Yes. Leave this valley of vanity.” Yet Dame Agnes lingered, and watched as the audience assembled; the wooden stalls were filled with distinguished visitors – among them the knight, Geoffrey de Calis, and an under-sheriff – while the crowd settled down upon the green. And then at nine o’clock, on this last morning of May, she might have been heard whispering to herself, “Whatever is this approaching?”
A man in a tight red costume, and wearing a pointed red cap, had drawn up beside the well; his horse was caparisoned in red, and its saddle sewn with bells. “Oye! Oy!” he cried out, waiting until the noise of the audience had subsided. He was the clerk of St. Benet Fink, better known to Londoners as the pageant master who for many years had organised the Clerkenwell plays. He was known to be a merry man; he was too merry, perhaps, since his evident and inexhaustible happiness left others feeling inadequate and uneasy. “Oye! Oy!” All were still.
“Sovereign citizens, hither am I sent
A message for to say.
I pray you all that be present
That you will hear with good intent
The message of our play.”
It was a bright morning and the sun gleamed upon the gilded mask of God, who now walked on his stilts before the crowd; he was dressed in a white robe, embroidered with golden suns, and his arms were raised in greeting. He looked straight ahead, above the eyes of the crowd, to the rows of wooden benches where the dignitaries of the city were seated.
“It is my will it should be so.
It is, it was, it shall be thus,
I am and have been ever.”
The clerk of Mary Abchurch, who played this part, was known for his harsh and unyielding temper. He had once accused a child of sacrilege, for playing football in the nave, and had suspended all services within the church for a week; he had brought the boy before the bishop’s court, asking for his excommunication, but the charge was wisely dismissed. In the role of the Creator, however, he seemed to command authority over the hundreds of citizens assembled. He was, after all, playing the angry deity of the Old Testament. His mask augmented and amplified his voice.
“I, God, that all the world have wrought,
Heaven and earth, and all of nought,
I see my people, in deed and thought,
Have pain upon their own heads brought.”
The high chant of God had summoned up a stillness in the audience which was close to fear; but this mood was suddenly broken by the voice of a child crying, “Make room! Make room, masters! Here comes a player!” A boy, riding upon a donkey, advanced into the open area before the ark and the stage.
“All hail, all hail, both blithe and glad,
For here come I, a merry lad,
I am named Japhet, Noah’s son,
My father bad me not speak too long.”
The boy playing Japhet was in fact the courier and messenger at the clerks’ hall in Garlickhythe. He was named “Bullet” and often competed with his colleagues from other guilds – “Slingaway” of the Mercers, “Gobithasty” of the Grocers and “Truebody” of the Fishmongers – in races around the streets of London. “Bullet” was known for his impudence and his quick wit, which he used with such effect in the role of Japhet that it seemed that he was acting out the type of the young city boy. The donkey was now talking to him.
“To smite me now it is shame.
You know well, Japhet, pardy,
You never had an ass like me.”
To which Japhet replied, “Go kiss my arse, ass.” It was only the first of many obscenities passing between the boy and the donkey, culminating in a mock attempt by the boy to penetrate the beast’s rear end. Dame Agnes gathered up some of the nuns watching the performance, and with many threats drove them within the convent gates.
All this time God remained before the crowd, his gilded mask reflecting the sun of early summer. Eventually the boy rode off, to great cheers and cries of “Yas, Bullet!” Then, on cue, Noah appeared upon the raised platform. The parish clerk of St. Olave, Philip Drinkmilk, had studied all the arts of disguising before ever taking on the role of Noah. His father was still a scene-painter for the city’s pageants, and he had accompanied him to the great mummings and interludes that celebrated the cycle of the city’s year. It happened that a group of travelling players had been hired for the entry into London of King Richard’s young bride, Anne of Bohemia, in the early days of 1382; Philip Drinkmilk’s father had then been employed to fashion for them the masks of the various passions. They had been lodged at the city’s expense at the Castle inn in Fish Street, and with his father Philip had visited them in what they termed their “robing room.” He particularly remembered his overwhelming fear when a bear approached him, moaning, and his sudden relief when a man’s face popped out from the skin. “Welcome,” the face said. “If the rats do not slay you here, the lice will do it.”
He became acquainted with this man, a young actor whose only name was Herbert and who, to the great joy of the company, would burn his farts in Fish Street. Herbert showed Drinkmilk the thirteen signs of the hand, token
ing the various feelings, and the eight signs of the face. He also explained to him the mummery of the colours; yellow was the colour of jealousy, white of virtue, red of anger, blue of fidelity, and green of disloyalty. A good actor would wear several of these, and so create a performance of the utmost interest and subtlety. Philip Drinkmilk, under his tutelage, had become a natural mimic; he learned the dialogue of Grimalkin, Our Cat, and mastered the gestures and the expressions within a very short time. In the little vestry of St. Olave, he would perform elaborate bows and intricate dance steps; sometimes he would twirl around in the middle of the room, and sing snatches of the latest songs.
In the role of Noah, however, he adopted the attitude of weariness; his palms were flat, parallel to the ground, and his body was bent sideways. His face had become the mirror of his soul, with his eyes raised upward and his mouth half-open. He was wearing a blue and scarlet gown; he touched the blue as a memorial of his faithfulness, and the scarlet as a token of his fear, while the two colours conjoined were an emblem of suffering. When God turned from the crowd and stood before him, he lay down upon the stage.
In the same rhythmic chant, which seemed to the audience to come from some source beyond speech or song, God commanded Noah to build an ark and to shelter there two of every beast or bird upon the earth. The fact that the ark could already be seen upon the green was of no consequence; past, present and future were intermingled in the small area of Clerkenwell. The audience assembled knew precisely what would occur in front of them, but they were always surprised and entertained by it. They laughed now as Noah addressed God in fear and trembling. It was clear that he was shaking not out of respect for the presence of divinity but out of fear for the wrath of his wife.