“A cow has stolen a calf away
And put her in the sack.
Forsooth, I sell no puddings today.
Masters, what do you lack?”
The sun was slowly descending, on this last day of August, casting long shadows of the Cross over the cobbled stones.
“How many miles to Babylon?
Eight, eight, and another eight.
Might I come there by candlelight?
Yes, by God, if your horse be light.”
Their voices rose into the air and travelled through the spheres towards the fixed stars, brightness mingling with brightness.
And then there was commotion. The sound of horses’ hooves drowned their singing, amid cries of “Haste! Make haste!” Two heralds mounted the lower steps of the Cheapside Cross and shouted out “Oy! Oy! Oy!” until a crowd had assembled. The sheriff of London climbed to the highest step, from which the proclamations of the city were made, and declared himself bound to the Bishop of London, mayor, under-sheriffs, aldermen with all other spiritual lords and gentles as well as commoners of the city of London. “For as much as full great and sorrowful malice, trespass and wicked conjectures have been procured and done by the nun of Clerkenwell known as Clarice, to the great and perpetual confusion and reproof to the said evil-doer, and the great villainy and shame of all those maintaining her in her said malice, wherefore the nun deserves hard and wicked chastisement and punishment.”
Sister Clarice had been arrested by the officers of the Guildhall and sent to the prison of the Bishop of London; she was accused of starting vexatious reports against the king, and of inciting the citizens of London against the spiritual lords of the city.
It was a dangerous and uncertain time. Henry Bolingbroke had halted with his army in Acton, the king closely guarded, only a half day’s ride from the city. It was widely believed that King Richard’s next home would be the Tower. In fact the aldermen were not particularly concerned with the nun’s prophecies against the king; only a few days before a group of citizens had travelled to St. Albans in order to offer submission to Henry Bolingbroke. They were, however, deeply fearful of her power to incite popular riot and discontent at this time of general instability.
The night before the announcement of her imprisonment, Clarice addressed the citizens and their wives from the site of London Stone. “I am right poor,” she said. “I have ugly sights in my sleep. Now I stand a deadly creature, and every day my body draws to the earth as a child to its mother. Yet I must live to warn you. They say that this is a fair city but among fair herbs creep adders, snails, and other venomous worms. There are nests of these worms among you. You know that I set so little by myself that I have become a finger of the right hand of God, pointing to you the way. Take weapons and shields, therefore, and rise in help to me.” It was not clear, from her sometimes confused syntax, who or what needed to be attacked with weapons and with shields. But the mayor and under-sheriffs believed that it was a call to some general revolt – against the city, against the Church, or both equally. So, on the following morning, she was arrested and taken under guard to the bishop’s prison by Paul’s Bars.
By the time the sheriff was making his proclamation by the Great Cross of Cheapside, however, Sister Clarice was already being questioned in the main hall in the keep-tower of the bishop’s palace; the cells were immediately below. Her interrogators were the bishop himself and a squire, Gybon Maghfeld; he was present by virtue of his position as judge of the county of Middlesex, in which Clerkenwell was deemed to be, and as a member of the parliament house for the same county. His interest lay in maintaining order at all costs.
She stood barefoot upon the flagstones before them.
“I must ask you first,” the bishop began, “if you have any stone of virtue upon you, or herb of virtue, or charm, or any other enchantment by you or for you?”
“I am no conjuror or quack-salver, my lord bishop.”
Gybon interjected, his eyes surveying the wall just above Clarice’s head. “But it is said that you hold nightly conferences with spirits.”
“So a poor woman who speaks the word of God is to be condemned as an enchantress.”
“Let us say, rather,” the squire replied, “that you are a troublous woman who has caused much clattering among the common people.”
“Is it clattering to ask them to confess their sins and to pray for mercy at the fast approaching day of doom?”
“What doom?” The bishop was putting on gloves of white kid, in ritual acknowledgement of his role as disputator. “You are out of your wit, girl.”
“I tell you this, lord bishop. Cleanse your sheep from the scab lest they infect others.”
“You will throw words at me, will you?”
“It is the hurling time.”
The bishop spat upon the cold floor. “I see that your sore is full of matter, nun.”
“My words are fit for a sick body, then.”
Gybon Maghfeld had been watching her carefully. Was she inspired or simply feigning inspiration? But for what purpose? Was she genuinely possessed by prophetic utterance, or was it some Christmas game for children? It was not to be expected that a young nun could stand against the Bishop of London without some inward power, whether of mischief or of bonchief it was impossible to tell. The squire had a further interest in the nun. His senior aunt, Amicia, had claimed prophetic powers in the reign of Edward III. She had worn a white tunic with a black hood, and each week she wore new shoes; she called herself “The Woman Clothed with the Star of the Sea,” and she had specifically foretold the defeat of the French at Poitiers and English control of Aquitaine four years later. Her family had at first been embarrassed and even horrified by her claims to divine grace, but the king himself had congratulated her on her fervour in the national cause. Her brother, Gybon’s father, had taken her into his house at Hosier Lane where, against all the laws and ordinances of the Church, she preached before the women of the ward. “We are all moving towards the light,” she had said, “but we do not know what it is.” Her conduct grew ever stranger. She popped, painted and plucked her face; on Fridays and Sundays she ate only grass and drank only brook water; she was wheeled through the streets in a dung-cart, crying out that the wounds of her sins had rotted within her. Eventually she was judged to be distracted and she was consigned to Bethlem Hospital where she died from an internal tumour.
Now the young nun stood before Gybon Maghfeld, her arms crossed upon her breast as a token of resignation.
“You are as quiet as a girl, Clarice.”
“I must suffer as I have done in time past, sir, and so I will do for God’s sake.”
“Straw for your gentleness.” The bishop scraped his left cheek with one of the fingers of his glove. “Put her in irons. Let her not see her feet for seven years. She has blasphemed.”
“If it is blasphemy to speak God’s word, then I admit it. You may hang me by the heels, but it is your world that will be turned upside down.”
“Is your bile not broken yet? What are the causes of your murmuring?”
“What else is there to do but weep in this mortal life? Oh lord bishop, you mock the misery of this world when you say ‘Over the fields of Babylon we sat and wept when we thought of you, Sion.’ I have heard you babbling this in the pulpit.”
“You will be whipped for this insolence, nun.”
“God loves chastisement. God liveth, and I will play before Him in my prison. The Lord has already disciplined me with a loving rod, and my cry is a liking song to Him.”
“You speak of your prison but in these latter days, Clarice, you have moved around the city like a thief in the night.”
“The teachers of truth must be prudent where they speak.”
“Harlotry of the mouth.”
“Take heed, lord bishop, you are of unpower. Yet you cannot weep because you are so barren and sorrowless. The old, foul and thick sins of London surround you. You must be turned to God.”
The bishop
moved forward as if to strike her, but Gybon Maghfeld made a sign to him.
“Take off your veil, Clarice.” The squire asked her this very gently. “Show your face.”
Reluctantly she obeyed his request.
As she lifted the veil they could see that her face was almond white, her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted.
“You can make good cheer, if you wish, with your countenance. Come now. Be merry.”
“Merry?” She replaced her veil, and once more crossed her arms in an attitude which now resembled defiance rather than resignation. “You are about my death. Why should I not be in great heaviness?”
The bishop laughed out loud. “She has imagined against the king, and she claims to be woebegone! Lay her on a roasting iron and turn her. She will cast out oil and grease rather than words.”
“I have said that the king shall die. And so must it be.”
“Clarice,” Gybon murmured. “You should file your tongue.”
“When I am silent, sir, my bones grow old.”
“This is strange English, nun.” The bishop again took a step towards her, but she did not move. “Your words are full dark. You need exposition.”
“I will give you dispositio, expositio and conclusio –”
“Let be! It is an evil thing to see a schoolman in a nun’s habit.”
“You mistake me. Not all the words in the world can paint you the image of my soul.”
The bishop seemed to be growing impatient with her testimony. “Some say that you are inspired with the Holy Ghost, and some say that you are inspired by the spirits of the cellar.”
“It makes no matter what ‘some say.’ ”
“You are a gaud and a trifle. A geegaw. A whimwham.”
The squire interrupted the bishop’s invective. “Clarice, can I tell you thus. You say that you have had a vision of the Holy Church of God in sad ruin, after the death of the king. You have stirred the folk. Much of what you say is perverted and turned into malice. Those who were once your friends have become your enemies. They are like huntsmen blowing your death.”
“I do not know how. Who are these who use such subtle craft against me?”
“The enemies of all good order. Who long for the doom of this world.”
“Yes. I have heard some say, is the world to end at long last?”
“You play on both the hands,” the bishop said. “You hear some say this or say that. You are the spotless lamb born for the sacrifice. Is that your song? You are more like my father’s old mare. You will not go until you are pricked. No one in England can blear eyes better than you can.”
“I open eyes. Some engrave on trees, and some on stone walls. I engrave on hearts.”
“Oh such subtle lookings and dissimulations, nun. You are a limb of the fiend.”
She was silent for a moment, her head cast down as if in prayer. “If I consented to do your will and abjure all that I have said, then indeed I were worthy to be cursed of God.”
“Wherefore abjure?” asked Gybon. “We require only silence and public penance.”
“To carry a wax candle down Cheapside? It is the same as abjuration.”
“You deserve more than the candle, nun. You are worthy to be blotted and spotted, fouled and defouled. I think, Gybon, our work is accomplished here for the time.”
“You have done me wrong, sirs. My tale is not finished. For, sirs, take it not badly that it may not all go as you wish.” The nun unclasped her arms, and held them out before her in an attitude of supplication. She seemed to the squire to become like some statue, wreathed in flowers and incense. Then she began chanting a verse of her own invention:
“Leave your reason and believe in the wonder,
For faith is above and reason is under.”
The squire still watched her carefully. Sometimes she constrained and shrank herself to the common measure of men, and sometimes it seemed that she touched heaven with the height of her head; like that of his aunt, her voice had wings.
“You know, nun,” the bishop was saying, “that it is within my power to exclude you from the threshold of Holy Mother Church?”
“I know it.”
“You are one who has knowingly and willingly sworn falsely by those things most sacred. May the one God curse you. May the Holy Mother of God curse you. May the patriarchs and prophets curse you. May the martyrs and the virgin saints curse you –”
“The virgin saints will lift my heaviness –”
“Oh, do you think you can hop into heaven?”
There was a rapping upon the great door. A messenger came in with a blazing torch, walked over to Gybon Maghfeld, and whispered in his ear. The squire turned to the bishop, knelt and kissed his ring. “Pardon, my lord bishop. I am summoned without delay to the guild hall.”
The messenger had informed him that Henry Bolingbroke had arrived at Westminster two hours before; he had despatched the king to the Tower for his own “safety” against the supposed wrath of the London populace – or, as Henry’s representative would later tell the parliament, “for the great cruelty that he beforetime has used unto the city.” The mayor and the aldermen were now gathering to consider their policy for this unsettled time. They were meeting in the guild hall close to the bishop’s palace, and Gybon walked there with the messenger through the darkening streets.
It was the hour before curfew, and the wardens of the gates were blowing their horns; the people beyond the walls were being warned to bring in their animals. Six hundred armed men had been called this night to keep peace in the streets, and there were many guards at the gates of the city; Gybon Maghfeld could sense an air of excitement and of impending change. It was as if the city were bracing itself for a fever. There were citizens moving about from street to street, or from lane to lane, with intense looks of fear and amazement. He observed their faces as he passed them, but he recognised none of them. He was then struck by a curious possibility. What if these figures were created out of panic fear, out of the anger and excitement of the city itself? They might emerge at times of fire or of the death, a visible group of walkers in the night. They might appear on the same London streets through all of the city’s history.
As the squire passed, wondering, along Silver Street and Addle Street, the bishop of London and the nun of Clerkenwell were raising cups of wine and congratulating one another on a drama well staged.
Chapter Eighteen
The Man of Law’s Tale
“Say me where was God when he made heaven and earth?”
“I say, sir, in the farther end of the wind.”
“Whereof was Adam made?”
“Of eight things: the first of earth, the second of fire, the third of wind, the fourth of clouds, the fifth of air whereby he speaks and thinks, the sixth of dew whereby he sweats, the seventh of flowers whereby Adam has his eyes, the eighth is salt whereof Adam has salt tears.”
“That is good. Very good. Whereof was found the name of Adam?”
“Of four stars by the name of Arcax, Dux, Arostolym and Momfumbres.”
“Of what state was Adam when he was made?”
“A man of thirty winters.”
Miles Vavasour was catechising his young man of law, Martin, on their way into Westminster Hall; he had explained, to all his pupils, that a thorough knowledge of biblical matters was a necessary accompaniment to the study of all codes and constitutions. He was, in appearance, a pious man. “And what length was Adam?”
“Of eight feet and six inches.”
“How long did Adam live in this world?”
“One hundred and thirty winters, and afterwards in hell till the Passion of our Lord God.”
“And tell me this, Martin. Why is the sun red at evening?”
“He goes towards hell.”
“Hell. Yes. Never trust a red-faced man, Martin. Now draw on my gear. It is more than time.”
So the man of law dressed his teacher and employer in a mantle of green cloth furred with black lamb; this ceremon
ial coat was embroidered with vertical stripes of mulberry and blue, so that it could be distinguished from the mantle of diagonal stripes granted to the outer barristers who were there to examine but not to plead. Miles also wore the round cap of white silk, or coif, as a token of his rank as sergeant-at-law. He was led from the chamber of the robes to the court of the king’s bench by an official holding a wooden staff tipped with horn at either end, and he stood behind the Bar in his appointed place. This was God’s world. Three courts were being conducted simultaneously in the Great Hall. The court of the king’s bench sat at the dais in the south end of the hall, close to the court of chancery, while the court of common pleas met against the west wall. So at once Miles was surrounded by the familiar mist of voices variously rising and falling, calling and pleading, chattering and whispering.
“Furthermore I marvel that you have not come to the point.” The judge on the king’s bench was addressing a barrister.
“The point, sir, is like a quintain. Hard to hit.”
The judge acknowledged Miles’s bow before continuing in the same peremptory manner. “No more. That dance is done.” The barrister then whispered to him, to which the judge replied, “God forbid that it should so follow. As David says in the psalms, Omnis homo mendax. Every man is a liar.”
“You will quote David, will you?” Miles murmured under his breath.
The sergeant-at-law did not admire this judge, who was now shouting to the prisoner at the other end of the Bar. “It is lex talionis! Like for like! I am not contented with you, I promise you!”
Miles turned to his man of law, who was standing on his right side. “The learned judge will soon be finished with his prey. Bring on our witnesses in all haste, Martin.”
The Clerkenwell Tales Page 16