“You all know the rule,” said the leader. “You have to let the chief have her first. So no grabbing. You’ll get her soon enough. Just cut the others’ throats.”
“My dear sirs,” broke in Master Robert. “You are missing a glorious opportunity. Consider that I was once minstrel chief for the King of Navarre himself, having departed only because of an embarrassing incident I will relate to you another time. We have entertained kings. Surely we could give royal pleasure to the King of Bandits.”
“You don’t look like you could entertain a flea, Master Shabby.” The other men chuckled appreciatively at their leader’s wit.
“Then you have obviously never heard the story of the traveling friar and the miller’s wife.” Little William jumped up, wrapping his blanket about him like a dress, striking an exaggeratedly female pose.
“Oh, really, sir, I dare not!” he piped in a high falsetto.
Master Robert began the routine of the lecherous friar. I’d never seen him do it better. Long Tom jumped up to chase him around as the aggrieved husband. It was quite filthy. The toughs smiled in spite of themselves. Then they broke into guffaws.
“You see?” gasped Master Robert, as he was pinned to the ground by the vengeful spouse. “How could you let your chief miss something this good? I say, let us entertain first. It’s hard to sing with a cut throat.”
“Hmmm. True enough. And there’s little enough value in you anyway. We’ll celebrate at camp.” So off we all went, feeling very glum, but trusting to good fortune and Master Robert’s wits to make things work out.
Why is it that robbers always stay up late? You’d think they would want to get to work early in the morning like other folks, to increase their earnings. But no, they always sleep in late and stay up at night, drinking and telling lies. At least that’s been so with all the robbers I’ve ever seen. So of course the robber chief was not asleep. He was sitting at the place of honor among the robbers, who were gathered around a roaring fire, drinking and telling lies.
“What’s this, new sport?” called out the chief.
“Women,” called the man who led our group. “And some minstrels who know a lot of bawdy jokes.”
“Well, then, we’ll sport. I want that pretty one first,” he called.
“We thought you might, so we saved her. But we want her next.”
The robber chief was large and blond. He had a huge reddish beard and hands like shovels. A scar zigzagged across his face, twisting the bridge of his nose and marring one cheek. He stepped forward in the firelight and grabbed my chin in his hand to inspect my face. I gasped. Even with the scar I knew who it was.
“Brother Will!”
“Margaret? What in the hell are you doing alive?”
“I might ask the same of you. What are you doing out of the army?”
“All right, boys, fun’s off—it’s my long-lost sister.” There was a growling noise from the men. “And I’ll treat you all at Big Martha’s tomorrow.” Still more growling.
“But brother…”
“No buts, now, sister—explanations later. Can’t you see I have my hands full with this lot? Robber chief’s not a sinecure, you know.”
“And we,” leapt in Master Robert gracefully, “will now tell the tale of the traveling friar and the merchant’s daughter. Hand me my drum, won’t you? It’s right at the top, on that donkey over there.” And when the drumming began, we knew that we would most likely see the next morning in one piece.
Late in the night, as we were all rolled up in blankets about the robbers’ fire, Brother Sebastian tapped me.
“Margaret, are you asleep?” he whispered.
“No, Brother Sebastian, I’m looking at the stars and wondering how much longer I’ll see them.”
“That’s not useful wondering, Margaret. You either will or you won’t. But what I want to know is this: Where on earth did you ever acquire a brother like that?” His whisper had a mingled air of curiosity and horror.
“He’s a stepbrother. We’re not related by blood.”
“Oh, that accounts for it, then. You don’t seem very much alike at all.”
The next night at supper the jongleurs played and sang as they would for any lord. Brother Will had seated me in the place of honor by himself, so when music and drink had made everyone cheerful, I leaned over and asked him, “Brother, aren’t you afraid of the sheriff here? You seem to take few precautions, and I fear for your head.”
He threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “The sheriff? Him? Why, we’re working for Sir Giles himself! Why should we worry?”
“You work for him?”
“Of course, sister. He takes a percentage. It’s how he keeps his manor in repair.” Going on in response to my shocked look, he added, “I don’t think you understand, sister. You always were otherworldly and goody-goody. Robbery is in fashion these days. All the best people keep robbers. Why even monasteries, like Rufford and Kirkstall, maintain their own bands. Lots of roofs need fixing these days, Margaret, and good tiles don’t come cheap.” Then he laughed again at the look on my face.
“But, brother, I thought you were in France, being a hero. How did you get into business here?” I asked him.
“Ah, Margaret, I was a hero, for I love war even better than dogfights. We archers entered the battle and mowed down those French grandees! Just shot the horses and then waded in and cut throats where they fell. You have no idea the fun of standing over some big lord, all weighted down in his armor on his back in the mud, listening to him begging to be let off! Then you just slide the knife through the chink in his armor and cut his throat. How they squall! Blood everywhere!” He looked rather dreamy, remembering it all.
“But wouldn’t you know it, I cut a few throats too many. ‘Hey, you, archer, I wanted that man for ransom! Couldn’t you hear him tell you he’s a big man?’ says my lord. ‘Sorry, sir, I can’t parlay voo: I thought I was supposed to kill them all.’ So I got in trouble and almost didn’t make it home. Got back with Rob—it was dull, dull. Nobody’s home anymore. Half of ’em died. The rest moved to St. Matthew’s. Father’s gone, mother’s all right. So Rob stays. Marries that idiot tagalong Mary, who’s now the heiress to everything her family had—but me, I can’t stand it. Village life’s a prison, I say! So here I am, just like Robin Hood and his merry men—except we’re on the sheriff’s side. Now tell me why you’re not dead, when everybody told me you were.”
“My husband left me for dead, with the plague, but that woman there, Mother Hilde, found me and saved me. I still haven’t decided why my life was spared, so I’m traveling with her and those others to make my fortune in London.”
“London, eh? That’s a very fine city. I’ve been there. Not so fine as Paris, but very fine. But you ought to be more careful. The roads are full of robbers, and your party is too small. I’ll tell you what: stay here for a while, until we’ve heard all of Master Robert’s dirty songs, and the next five or six people we rob, we won’t cut their throats. We’ll just send them along with you as an escort.”
Maistre Robert overheard us and addressed Will with a low bow. “Most esteemed Robber Chief and Brother of Margaret, we have found we must temporarily delay our trip to London in favor of a visit to the Sturbridge Fair. We have a need to resupply ourselves with cash before settling into so money-hungry a city as London. So it is, in fact, thither that we need to be accompanied.”
“Well, that’s a trip. But I can start you off right, it will just take longer to collect the travelers going in the right direction.”
So we stayed with the robbers, and things didn’t go too badly, after all. Master Robert sang a number of flattering songs about great robbers of the past, and worked their names into a redone version of the “Geste of Robin Hood.” It kept them quite as pleased as any bloodthirsty lord. But unlike the song there’s lots to be done in a camp full of robbers, even if they don’t keep house like ordinary folk. They had a cook who was always roasting the creatures they shot illegal
ly, and storerooms, and other things that needed tending. They had weyves, female outlaws, who did a lot of dull chores while they were out cutting throats, and who found the greenwood not much of an improvement over the justice they had fled. When Will informed them that I brewed good ale, I was glad enough to do it, for theirs was thin and sour. Some people just haven’t got much talent along these lines. In the evenings the three players put on their masks and did “Reynard the Fox”; the dogs did tricks, and in short, it was no different than the other castles and towns.
It was nearly a fortnight before a half-dozen glum souls, shorn of horses and baggage, had been collected to accompany us. Informing them of his purpose in sparing them, Will had them swear by the cross and then turned them loose with us on the high road, leaving us their arms and some cash in hand to redistribute as he and his men vanished into the forest.
Of course, some people are never grateful for anything. As soon as the robbers were gone, they set to quarreling.
“And, pray tell, how am I supposed to carry this short sword when he has taken my belt?”
“You don’t seem to have trouble carrying all that fat; I could suggest at least two unmentionable places you could carry the sword.”
“At least he didn’t take your cloak. But of course, now that I look at it, I can see why—the cut’s completely rustic.”
“I, rustic? The way your beard’s cut, I’ve seen better-looking hermits.”
We plodded on in silence, listening to the complaints of our new companions, who were not used to walking.
“My friends,” said Maistre Robert in a cheerful voice, “we should always rejoice in being alive. So said the hare, after he had visited the fox’s den. Now it seems there was this old mother fox…” And so we proceeded in good cheer to our destination.
BROTHER GREGORY PAUSED AND stretched. Having spread the last pages to dry, he stood up to go, but rather carefully, since Margaret’s ridiculous dog had fallen asleep under the table perilously close to his feet. He was actually in a hurry to leave but did not want to show it. There was something he wanted to attend to across town, and he was concerned that Margaret might engage him in frivolous conversation and delay him. Margaret had been winding yarn as she spoke, and with a half-empty basket of skeins on one side, and a full basket of yarn balls on the other side of her where she sat, she looked all settled in. So it was with relief that Brother Gregory saw one of the kitchen maids come in to confer with Margaret.
“Mistress Margaret, the tinker’s come to the back door, and he says you sent for him to mend the pots. Should we let him in?”
“Which tinker is that—Hudd the Tinker? That dreadful old rogue? I never sent for him at all. He’s just trying to get in to see what trouble he can get into…” Margaret excused herself hurriedly and went off to see to the matter, and Brother Gregory happily sauntered off up Thames Street in the direction of the cathedral.
THERE WAS ALWAYS A little crowd about the cathedral at noon that dispersed after the last stroke of the hour. For the cathedral clock, mounted only a decade previously, was a wonder well worth inspecting if one were a visitor to the City. The brightly gilded figure of an angel pointed out the hours, and at noon levers and weights caused the statues of men, “Paul’s Jacks,” to beat twelve strokes with iron hammers. It was astonishing, and if it had not been in a church it might have reminded one of heresy, since it substituted a vain contrivance of man for God’s own timekeeper, the sun.
Mingling with the dispersing crowd of country wives, petty squires, and provincial tradesmen, a tall figure could be seen in animated discussion with a group of clerks. A shorter figure was waving his arms and shouting, “How can you praise a man like William of Occam? He’s a nominalist, whereas the reality of things as created by God…”
The sound of an interesting argument attracted a German pilgrim with cockleshells on his cloak, who added his barbarously accented Latin to the fray. Two gray friars who could not resist anything stormy-sounding were drawn into the knot of babbling voices. Brother Gregory was at his best this afternoon. After trouncing the gray friars with a particularly apt quotation from Scripture, he proceeded to develop the quarrel along Aristotelian lines with the German, who gave him blow for blow. As the little group argued, they bore inexorably for the north transept of the cathedral.
It was there at the north transept door that they met a hubbub even more animated than their own. Several older choirboys, a subdeacon, and some chantry priests were inspecting a piece of paper tacked among the notices of vacant benefices on the door. Voices could be heard getting louder and louder.
“ ‘Quis enim non vicus abundat tristibus obscaenis?’ Ha! That’s very good. Reminds me of Juvenal.”
“Do you really think they did all of that?”
“The bit about simony is understated, if anything, so it proves the rest.” The group of clerks joined the group at the door to examine the object of interest. It was set of witty satiric Latin verses, enumerating some really astonishing sins committed by certain canons and priests of the cathedral. And, very odd for such a civilized piece of work, it was written in large, wobbly, unformed handwriting. Now the noise of the argument increased: the topic had shifted to the precise gradations of sin that were attached to specific varieties of fornication. Just as an extremely interesting observation had been made on a type of sin more common in monasteries than in cathedrals, there was the angry whirr of a gown behind the group, and the hand of a furious, red-faced priest snatched the offending verse from the door.
“Away, all of you, this instant!” he shouted, as he tore the paper into a thousand bits. The choirboys scattered. But it was too late. Already the verse had been surreptitiously copied on a wax tablet and safely hidden up the subdeacon’s voluminous sleeve. By the evening, set to a scandalous secular tune, it would be sung in all the clerical watering places of London. And such are the virtues of a universal language, that in a few weeks it would have traveled through half of Europe.
As they drifted away from the door, Brother Gregory’s face was seraphic.
“Whoever did that was certainly well acquainted with Juvenal,” commented Robert the Clerk, the one who supported realism against nominalism.
“That narrows it down to half the clerks in London,” answered Simon the Copyist.
“Ugly handwriting that fellow had,” observed Brother Gregory calmly.
“But excellent Latin, and therein lies the paradox,” announced the German.
“We may resolve the paradox by assuming that it was someone with excellent Latin, who knows Juvenal well, and who purposefully wrote in large, wobbly letters,” stated Robert the Clerk, glancing at Brother Gregory.
“That still only narrows it to half the clerks in London,” responded Simon.
“But the very nature of the verse itself proves one thing,” said the German.
“And just what is that?” answered Brother Gregory, raising one eyebrow.
“That the English are a turbulent race, unfit for higher spiritual discipline,” answered the German, rolling his eyes heavenward as if to exhibit his own superior powers in that direction. With the silky, pale blond hair that surrounded the little circle of his clerical tonsure, and the extreme pallor of his skin, the German had acquired that sort of milky, translucent look that seems to bespeak extreme spirituality. It was clear even from the hushed, habitually rapturous tone of his voice that he was a Seeker, a real Seeker. Brother Gregory envied him the pallor and wondered how he might manage to look that way himself. The voice would be more difficult, but it might come on by itself after a really superior vision.
“You’ve had Visions?”
“Rapturous ones. I am constantly propelled from shrine to shrine by supremely ecstatic visions, which occur when I pray all night in holy places. At Compostela, for example, I was visited by St. James himself, wearing a handsome green velvet gown set about with jewels, and surrounded by perpetual light and the singing of angels. I have also seen the four Evangelist
s, carried by a host of angels on four identical golden litters, each holding in his hand a book of the Gospel written in letters of fire.” Seeing that the group was interested, the German went on.
“Having paid my tribute to the milk of the Virgin, the blood of St. Paul, the hair of Mary Magdalen, and Our Lord’s knife here at the cathedral, I now go forth to experience unspeakable revelations when I have completed my pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. I have been delayed only by my holy poverty, and only a small amount of additional financial support will send me on my way….”
The clerks looked at each other. Then they looked at the church door. A knight had just left, but he didn’t appear promising. Then an elderly lady, accompanied by her daughter and attendants, could be seen, dabbing her eyes on her sleeve as she departed the cathedral. The clerks stood aside to expose the German to advantage. He leaned on his pilgrim’s staff and extended his hand as she passed.
“Pray for me, pilgrim,” she said, with a troubled look on her face, and pressed some coins into his hand before she passed on. The German inspected them to see if they were genuine, biting one to make sure, and then dropped them into his purse, where they made a heavy chink on the coins that were already inside.
“As I was saying, when I pray at the shrine of St. Thomas—”
“Then you have not yet seen the Mystery of Mysteries?” inquired Brother Gregory.
“Ah,” said the pilgrim. “A lifetime of Seeking for this lowly worm, lower than the dust, will scarcely suffice. But the ultimate Vision, the Vision for which I am preparing myself, awaits, without a doubt, at the end of my pathway of purgation and self-denial. God’s shadow, I feel—I feel it strongly—is over me, and He will not forever withhold from this most humble of His lowly servants the blinding and glorious light of His presence.”
“It has been revealed to me that we have not yet had dinner,” said Robert, patting his stomach. Brother Gregory looked at him with a wry grin. All except the pilgrim looked in their purses to see if between them they had enough.
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