“If any.” Lambert was eager to be gone.
“So when the moon is in Aries I am ready to operate upon your head and your face, or to open one of your head veins. A surgeon must also be an astronomer, you see. Similarly, consider your cod. Your testicles.” Nicholay was now staring at him very earnestly. “They lie in Scorpio.”
“You are wrong, master leech. They always lie in his wife. We must go now, Nicholay.” Lambert cleared his throat, and glanced towards the corpse. “But not without our silver.”
Gunter climbed the stairs to his hall, and returned with five shillings wrapped in a cloth. “May I ask you to carry him below?” The two gaolers were then directed down the stone stairs of an undercroft; in the vaulted space, there were hanging knives and saws and various small instruments. They put the sack upon a slab of marbled stone which was raised upon two thick columns of limestone.
After the men had departed, Gunter cut open the sack with a pair of shears and inspected the body. The smell of the prison was still upon it, so he washed it with a linen cloth soaked in turpentine. The body was slight and thin; it was worn, as Gunter observed out loud, with praying and sighing. Before he could begin his secret ministry, there were two other rituals which he wished to perform. He took a flaming candle from its sconce in the wall, and examined very carefully the eyes of the corpse; no image of the murderer could be seen, but during those moments the parish clerk of St. Benet Fink had the curious sensation of being watched. Then the leech smeared oil upon the thumbnail of the corpse, and scrutinised it closely for images immediately preceding the death. Once more there was nothing visible.
With a sigh he took down one of his knives, a newly sharpened instrument known by surgeons as “Follow me,” and cut into the breast of the body. Then he parted the ribs. One of Gunter’s passions lay in tracing the paths of the body’s spirits. He knew that the natural spirit resided in the liver, the vital spirit in the heart, the animal spirit in the brain; yet he wished to have some physical evidence of their operations. He concentrated first upon the liver. The livers of whales and dolphins smell like violets, little Lollard. How will yours smell?
On the following Sunday Gunter rode out at dawn into the countryside. After six days of work and study, he wished to refresh and recreate himself. He passed the crossroads of Gracechurch Street and Fenchurch Street on his way to Aldgate, where the poet Geoffrey Chaucer had once lived, and then he galloped out through the opened gate to the eastern fields past the Minories. It was a ride to reach them, however, since the road beyond Aldgate itself was marked and pitted by the scars of the horses, carts and wagons which passed this way in endless procession. There were wooden houses on both sides of the road, offering cheap lodgings for travellers, as well as ramshackle inns and dirty cookshops; there were myriad signs of hands, and plates, and flagons, to attract the vast army of wayfarers. The fields closest to the city had also become dumping grounds for all manner of refuse together with piles of stone and heaps of ashes, deep pits and marshy places. Yet beyond them lay the open fields. He rode for a few furlongs, until all that could be seen were the wooden shacks used by those who watched the crops at night for thieves and pilferers. The air was clearer here. He had read of all the gardens in the love visions, but nothing delighted him so much as the prospect of open country. It was quiet now, with only the sound of his horse trotting upon the road.
He heard someone moaning. There was a pony tied to a gatepost by the side of the road, and Gunter reined in his horse. There was a field beside him shielded with trees, but he could make out a figure walking across some patch of grass; Gunter dismounted and walked over to the edge of the field, standing behind a tree so that he could not be seen. There was a young man in the field, with his hands pressed against his face, walking backwards and forwards. When he let his hands drop to his sides, Gunter could see that he was crying.
The physician was successful at his craft because he possessed a sensitive and sympathetic nature; he could tell, from a gesture or an expression, the nature of the illness he was called upon to treat. Now, on the edge of the field, he was consumed by a sadness so intense that it seemed to drive out every other emotion and perception. How must it be to live friendless and alone in this world? With no one sad for your sorrow? He watched the boy for a moment or so longer, but he could not bear his suffering. He no longer wished to ride onwards – there was no more to see. Instead he mounted his horse and returned in the direction of the city. When he came up to the wall he began to sing, “Draw me, draw me near, draw me near the jolly juggler.”
The young man whom Thomas Gunter had seen, and pitied, was Hamo Fulberd. He had chosen the field as the place fittest for him. It was known as Haukyn’s Field; there was a brook running upon its southern side, with a copse of trees upon its north. When he was later asked to describe it, Hamo said that “it was just a plain bare field only.” He had come here before the events of the spring, but now for the first time he had disobeyed Exmewe’s command and left the precincts of St. Bartholomew’s. The field had called him, as if to share his misery. He had taken the pony and had ridden here during the night. He had come because he could no longer bear the sight of his familiar world; it seemed to encircle him or, worse, to enter his soul. What if this world were all that is, and was, and ever would be? What if, from the beginning to the end of the thing men called time, the same people merged continually with one another?
Ever since Exmewe had told him that he had killed the tooth-drawer, he had considered himself lost. He had heard no more about the man, and he assumed that any pursuit of the murderer had passed. But, for some reason, that rendered him all the more fearful of judgement. He looked into the night sky, at those stars of the circle which is called Galaxia or Watling Street, but found no comfort there. He had asked Father Matthew, the head of the scriptorium, if there were forgiveness for all. The friar had replied that “no one knows if he is worthy of the love of God.” This also did not comfort him, any more than Exmewe’s belief that he was a predestined one and therefore blessed. Nothing was right or wrong. We are all in the night.
He saw nothing ahead of him but darkness, as if he were trapped in a vaulted space of cold stone. He had an image of God, laughing, as he doled out dooms and destinies. Or was there some overwhelming grief always waiting to seize upon a poor spirit such as his? Would there always be people as sorrowful as he? Or did that grief seize upon one place? Was that why he was drawn to Haukyn’s Field? Did all the forces of the world, which wise men said was round, work together? So in his adopted place, in this small field, he pondered these questions. He looked down upon the ground, since he did not wish to be distracted from his ever increasing thoughts. His head was bowed, as if those thoughts had already grown too heavy. Sometimes he would mumble to himself; he believed that his words were not worthy enough to be spoken out loud.14
He was bewildered by himself. He did not care particularly whether he failed or prospered, but this was worse than all – he could not grasp what was happening to him. He stayed in Haukyn’s Field until the moon appeared above him, and then he rode back slowly to St. Bartholomew. When he arrived there, William Exmewe was waiting for him. “You disobeyed me,” he said. “You wandered abroad.” He struck him across the face.
Hamo did not flinch. Instead he brushed back his hair, and stood more upright. “I must go somewhere. I am mewed up here like a bird.”
“I am protecting you, Hamo, as a nurse protects her innocents. I will soon have work for you. So be steady.” Exmewe said nothing else, and left the barn.
Chapter Eleven
The Monk’s Tale
“Well, there is no new guise that has not been old.”
“True enough. This wide world turns upon a wheel. Ancient things return.” They were conversing in the library of Bermondsey Abbey, surrounded by many old parchments and chained volumes; the dust of the ages seemed to have settled upon them. The sergeant-at-law, Miles Vavasour, and the monk, Jolland, were sitting at a long tab
le with a copy of Expositio Apocalypseos by Primasius before them; they were discussing a sentence by Primasius in which he lamented the greed and hard-heartedness of certain second-century bishops. A casual observer might have wondered why a lawyer of high degree had taken off his white silk hood in order to speak familiarly with an ordinary monk; but Miles Vavasour already knew the Cluniac by repute. Jolland was a learned man who had laboured for many years upon a commentary to Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Brittaniarum et maxime gentis Anglorum, and was considered to be the greatest of all scholars on the early history of England and its Church. But Vavasour had come to test the monk’s faith. He respected him for his learning, and wished to see how far Jolland’s knowledge stretched towards the things of his God. Vavasour, like the other members of Dominus, had no faith or belief in matters that the common people reverenced. Yet the sergeant was an intelligent man, spurred on by curiosity; he was a lawyer, too, and had an infinite zest for debate and dialectic. He was an impulsive and argumentative man, also, who loved dissension. He had a large nose and wide mouth, as if his features were trying to betray his true character. He had come to Bermondsey in order to discover more about certain miracles connected with the history of Glastonbury Abbey, but the conversation had taken another turn. As the monk had said, the events of the world must keep on breaking through.
Jolland had lately heard of a surprising incident in neighbouring Southwark. Joan de Irlaunde, one month old, had been left sleeping in her cradle on the floor of a shop which her parents had rented for the sale of the shoes which they cut and stitched; in the hour before vespers this couple had decided to take a stroll along the high street leading towards the bridge, but they made the mistake of leaving the door to their shop partly open. A pig had entered from the street and, despite the fact that the baby was tightly swaddled, had as Jolland put it “mortally bit the right side of the head.” On returning, the horrified mother had snatched up her child, but had only managed to keep her alive until midnight. The monk knew no more, but the incident rekindled his fascination with the presence of destiny in human affairs. Was the pig prefigured to eat the child? And did the bodies of animals bear the marks of the stars? “It could be said that, even if Venus was compounded with Jupiter, it was still unable to repress the malice of Mars against the pig. As the heavens began to turn, the child was subject to the bad aspects of Saturn that ordained she would be destroyed. Or so it is argued.”
“This is all matter for children.” The sergeant seemed annoyed that so learned a man should speak of such things. “You are like those enchanters who see the future world in a basin full of water, or in a bright sword, or in the shoulder-bone of an ass.”
“I am not so serious as I may seem, sir judge. I only put the case. But there are those who believe that all is prejudged and predestined, even to the number of the souls in bliss.”
Vavasour suddenly put his hands together as if in prayer, and imitated the pious declaration of the predestined men whom Exmewe guided. “Above the world I am. In this world I am not.”
“How do you know that chant?”
The sergeant laughed in order to conceal his confusion. “It is nothing. I have heard it somewhere in the courts. But tell me this, Jolland. How do we find the distinction between providence and destiny?”
“Providence is the governance of all mutable nature as it exists in the mind of God. Destiny is that plan as it is worked out on changeable things in time. We are going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. I would know that Canterbury was our end, but I would not of necessity know the myriad accidents of fortune upon the way.”
“But that is not God’s way, is it? Does not God know the path thoroughly? Has it not been said that God causes a man to sin and to become a sinner? For the man who sins is but conforming his will to the will of God. If that man feels hatred for his sin, he need only remember that God is the antecedent cause. Is that not so?”
“It has been concluded by some, I grant you, but it is a false reasoning. If all were preordained, what would be the use of choosing any one course above another?”
“You know that Henry Bolingbroke has landed in England with sixty followers?”
“What is that to me?”
“He means to kill Richard and take the crown. Will that be necessity? Has God foredoomed it?”
“He has and He has not.”
“And while we await His judgement, the nation wades in blood. Is that it? I merely ask the question.”
The monk recognised the sergeant’s impatience, and took it as the sign of a heavy heart; he realised that his uneasiness, too, was a form of bad conscience. He was happy to augment it, if only to curb Vavasour’s pride. “I have by me a very learned work, Hieronymus his De situ et nominibus, which justly expounds the matter. Let me unclasp it.” He unlocked the chain holding a book, lying upon the shelf above his head, and then with another key opened the clasp around it. Here was a rich volume indeed, illuminated with great coloured capitals through which birds and monkeys ran. Jolland felt the vellum paper with his forefinger. “Every page takes the skin of a sheep. So here we have many flocks before us.” He turned the pages very carefully, in case one of them might crack or tear. “Hieronymus argues somewhere that all comes of necessity, and that our destiny is shaped before our shirt. Now let me read this to you. Ah. Here it is.” He translated from the Latin, as he recited the words. “For some men say, if God has seen all before – since God may in no manner be deceived – then must it fall out that way, even if men had sworn that it would not happen. No other thought, nor deed, can ever be but such as providence decrees. Otherwise we would be claiming that God does not have clear knowledge, but to lay such an error upon Him would be false and foul and wicked cursedness. There is more to this effect.”
Vavasour shifted uneasily in his seat. “There is a stone laid upon a tomb in the nave of Paul’s. It has an inscription carved upon it. ‘Now I know more than the wisest of you.’ Is that not just?”
“You may be sure of it.” The monk was still intent upon the book. “Here is the argument of the learned father. It is not necessary that things happen because they have been ordained but, rather, that things that do happen have indeed been ordained. It is a subtlety worthy of a great clerk, is it not?” The sergeant, who was accustomed to the legal sophisms of Westminster Hall, gave the remark his professional approval. If the world were words, then the more erudite the better. “Hieronymus has another exposition. If a man were to sit by that trestle table, it would be your opinion that he had indeed sat down?”
“It would.”
“Two types or forms of necessity are here in operation. One, for him, is the necessity of sitting. Two, for you, is the necessity of truthful vision.”
“No no, Jolland. Ignotum per ignocius. You cannot explain the unknown by the more unknown. What is this necessity of sitting? And how are we to peer into divine things by means of a trestle table? Your God cannot be known.”
“My God?”
“The God who shapes all our destinies. He is invisible.”
“The nun tells a different story. She talks to Him.”
“Oh, the nun. The witch. She is the whore of the people.” Once more the monk recognised the extent of Vavasour’s thwarted passion. The anger was alive within him. “She decks herself with her false faith and deludes the fools whom she is leading over the abyss.”
“Yet the good doctor Thomas tells us that the soul has a faculty of its own for apprehending the true and that it may reach towards God with will and understanding. Could that not be her case?”
“The good doctor is mistaken, Jolland. God is beyond our will. Beyond reason itself. Reason pertains to matters belonging with this world, not to the things of God. Let me put an example. Self-murder is right if it is commanded by God.”
“Oh no. To be damned perpetually by God Himself?”
“Who is to prevent it? Can you prevent a pig eating a child?” Vavasour quickly rose from the table, and walked to an oriel wind
ow which overlooked the mill-house and bake-house of the abbey. “Why do you suffer yourself to sit here so long, sir monk? It is a miserable mouse that hides in one hole.”
The monk took no offence; he had been trained in humility. “I find peace among my parchments, Sir Miles. You are in the world of men and of affairs, and cannot in your cell fantastic imagine any other life. But there is a book lying in my chest which tells me of angels and patriarchs walking over the face of the earth. Why, you and I –”
There was the sound of loud argument in the courtyard below, and Jolland joined Vavasour by the window. Some four or five beggars had somehow passed through the gate, and were now crowding around the bake-house calling for bread. “They are so poor,” Jolland said, “that they will put anything in their mouths. Their meat is commonly grasshoppers.” The monks of the bake-house were throwing them horse-bread and gruel-bread, at the same time beseeching them to leave in peace. “They have had purgatory enough in this earth. They will rise into heaven.”
“They are so poor, monk, that they scarcely care what will happen to them. Heaven or hell. It is all the same if your place of rest is some stinking stable on the highway.”
“‘Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beast, out of thy stall!’ ” It was clear from the sergeant’s expression that he did not recognise the monk’s text. “I sit solitary in my thoughts, Sir Miles. You spoke of a mouse in a hole. I am more like a hound. When a hound gnaws a bone he has no companion. These old books are my bones.” There was now silence in the yard outside, broken only by the clatter of the watermill against the current of the stream which ran towards the Thames. “We were speaking of eternity. Did you ever hear anything concerning the dancers of St. Lawrence Pountney?”
The Clerkenwell Tales Page 10