Morality Play

by Barry Unsworth

  'His end was like to mine,' Springer said, and again he pitched his voice high to sound like a child.

  Mankind was close to the yard wall and the light from behind glinted on his sparse hairs:

  'This Monk did send himself to Hell.

  For him we sound no passing bell...'

  But at this there rose shouts again. They were not threatening now but they were confused, so it was hard at first to make out the sense. Then it came to us: 'His hands were tied! His wrists bore the marks of the rope!'

  Stephen took a step forward, still holding his stave. He seemed sobered now, perhaps through the suffering of fear. 'I am Truth, as all can see,' he said in his deep voice. 'Those who tied him hanged him. And so he is paid. Who sheds man's blood, by man will his blood be shed, so it is written.'

  But there was something wrong with this. Into my mind there came again a memory of the Monk as he lay over the back of the mule. A white shift, such as penitents wear. Or those being led to execution. They who had tied his hands had dressed him in this fashion. Could the common people have done it? Anyone might have bound him and hanged him, but to dress him thus ... They had put him in costume, made a player of him, a dancer on the rope. Only those who act in coldness and certainty of power, or who believe God speaks to the God within them ...

  Straw came mincing forward in his robe and wig. 'By hanging him they showed me innocent,' he said. 'Justice gives a voice to the dumb.'

  We could have ended here. The lines made an ending and they were fitting. We were spent. I could feel the trembling in my knees and Straw, for all his mincing steps, looked close to fainting. But some angel of destruction led Martin further. He was still facing the people and it was to them that he spoke: 'It is not justice yet, good people. Why was the Monk hanged? When we know why, we will know who. Everything comes back to the finding of the boy. Thomas Wells was the fifth. He was the one who was found. If the Monk took Thomas Wells, is it not likely that he took the others also? But he was only punished for this one who was found. Was it because he had contrived the finding?'

  Even now we were drawn to follow, we could not let him stand alone.

  'Those who hanged him did it for the finding, not the killing,' Springer said. 'My killing did not matter to them.' There were tears in his voice. A rustle of pity went through the people and some called out that he should not mind because he was in Abraham's bosom.

  'Poor soul, they did not want you to be found,' Tobias said, and his voice too had the quiver of tears in it. He made the gesture of question. 'Who can tell us why?'

  'It is because my body bore marks,' Springer said. He spoke the words as if prompted. And on his white face there was again the knowledge of the ordeal of Thomas Wells.

  'If yours, theirs too were marked, the others.' Straw raised his right hand in the sign of counting, thumb tapping at the finger-ends. 'One-two-three-four-five...'

  Stephen too had shed tears. There were the marks of them streaking the silver on his face. He flourished with his stave. 'Did the mother see the body of her son?' he said.

  'No, she did not,' a woman shouted from among the people. 'She told me they kept her from him.'

  'Who saw the boy buried?' Martin's voice filled the yard. He looked at us as he asked the question and we answered him together in ragged chorus: 'It was the Lord's steward.'

  Again there came his voice, demanding an answer. 'Who did the Monk serve?'

  Again with one voice, as though driven, we answered him: 'He was the Lord's confessor, he served the noble Lord.'

  We had moved close together as we answered, obeying some instinct to form ourselves into a single creature with one body and one voice. We were looking across the yard with our backs to the inn. Martin was standing some paces from us; he had placed himself in such a way that he could keep us and the people in his view at the same time. He seemed about to put another question, but I do not think it would have been to us. His face was set and heedless, the eyes fixed. So he had looked when he came from the dumb girl. And so had the girl's father looked when he prophesied the burning of the wicked ...

  Quite suddenly, as we watched him, the expression changed, sharpened into alarm. I heard confused voices from the people and the clatter of armed men behind me. When I turned they were already in the playing-space, we were surrounded. They had not come by the gate but through the inn. Some were busy already herding the people out of the yard.

  'I am in Holy Orders,' I said to the one who seemed to lead them, hoping thereby to avoid this arrest by the laity.

  He looked at my stained and dusty habit and smiled a little. 'Priest or player,' he said, 'you will come with the others.' Stitched to the breast of his surcoat he wore the leopard and doves of de Guise. 'The woman we do not take, she is not one of the players,' he said to the men with him, and I saw Margaret thrust aside.

  'Where are you taking us and by what right?' Martin said.

  'I am the Lord's steward,' he said. He took some moments to look at us, at the poor remnants of our illusion, Straw's red gown, Stephen's streaked face. He was no longer smiling. 'You will be guests of the castle,' he said. 'My Lord desires entertainment.'

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Straw was given some time to change and Stephen to wash the silver from his face. The horse and cart, and the grieving dog, were left there. Our masks and costumes we were allowed to take but nothing else. These went on to the back of a mule and it was on muleback that we players travelled the road up to the castle, escorted before and behind, past the church gate where I had been so frightened the day before, when we buried Brendan. There was fear again in my heart now as we went higher, with the light from our torches ruddy on the snow and the mules slipping a little in the steeper places.

  The bridge was down and we clattered over it, past the guardhouse and across the first courtyard with its great wellhead, deserted now, where Springer and Straw had tumbled and sung on that same day and tried to learn more about the murder of Thomas Wells.

  On the far side of this we dismounted and were led on foot through another yard, then up stone stairs that went straight at first and afterwards in a spiral. And so we came at last to the chamber where they would keep us, a square room flagged with stone, with straw laid over the stone for us to sleep on. The Lord had supped and retired for the night, as had his guests, we were told.

  'You are favoured,' the steward said, and he smiled coldly upon us. 'Your room looks down on the tilt-yard. You will see something of the jousting tomorrow. Meanwhile, you had better pray to the god of buffoons with particular fervour tonight.' The smile died on his face and I knew that he would not forgive us for having brought him into our play. I knew also that he would do what his master ordered and see it as virtue, whatever it was. 'You will be brought before the Lord tomorrow at his pleasure,' he said, 'pray that you please him. You have one with you that can lead you in prayer - he is dressed for the part.'

  With this he left us. In spite of my anxious state I was plunged into sleep almost at once, so great was my exhaustion; and I think it was the same with the others. But I woke before it was light and lay staring up through the darkness, going over in my mind the events of these last days, the way in which we had been led ever deeper into the circumstances of the boy's death. We had come to the town for Brendan's sake, or so we thought. I remembered how Springer had led us over the brow of the hill and showed us the broad valley and the town lying in it. The wreathing of wood-smoke, the shudder of the bells, that gleam of light in the battlements of the castle ... The town had seemed to offer itself to us in our need. But it was Death that made this need and sharpened it with Brendan's carrion smell. It was Death that made the appointment for us here. Who then had given us the words of our play? Perhaps we had served Death's purpose now and the play would not be done again. Certainly it was this that we hoped. In the whispered discussion before we slept we had decided to offer the Lord and his guests the Play of the Nativity and the Rage of Herod, as suitable for Christmas, hop
ing we would be given time beforehand to prepare. In this we deceived ourselves of course. Fear is the patron of self-deceivers but he often comes disguised. I did not know what awaited us as I lay there with the first light breaking through the cracks in the casement; but I knew it would not be at our behest or for our sake that things were done. Into my mind there came the last words we had spoken in our play of Thomas Wells: He was the Lord's confessor, he served the noble Lord. They were not the words to end a play with ...

  We heard the horn of the watchman sounding the time of sunrise and not long after a man brought us bread and gruel, for which we were grateful, having eaten nothing since noon of the day before. The door of our room was not kept locked. Outside was a short passage, walled off at one end, with a recess for a privy at the other and beyond that a heavy door locked fast. So on that side there was no means of issuing without someone in attendance. And the window was set high in the wall with a sheer drop below.

  From first light we heard hammering and voices from the yard below, preparations for this day of jousting. The sounds accompanied our talking together - we had begun early to talk about the plays we would give before the Lord and his people, allotting the parts among ourselves and deciding on the intervals for dancing and singing, these last being important in Christmas plays. None of us spoke of Thomas Wells, though the plays we were planning concerned the birth of one child and the death of many. By not uttering his name or referring to him in any way we tried to hold off the knowledge of our danger, tried not to think of what had happened, the violent interruption to our play, the seizing of our persons.

  Stephen affected to see some cause for complacency in this rough haste. 'It is clear that our fame has spread,' he said. 'They wanted to make sure of us before we left the town.' He looked at us and nodded heavily. His eyes were bloodshot, either from drink or his emotion of the night before, when tears had mingled with his silver paint. 'It is an honour they have done us,' he said.

  'Yes, yes,' Springer said, eager to find what relief he could from his fears. 'They were told to bring us, they are only rough soldiers, they do everything in that way.'

  Tobias shook his head. He was Mankind still, and voiced the common thought. 'A strange way to be honoured,' he said. 'If we had kept to the Play of Adam, do you think we would have been honoured thus?'

  We were interrupted in this by a blast of trumpets from the yard below and we crowded to the window and threw the casement open to look down, all save Martin who remained as he was, sitting with his back to the wall and staring before him, lost in his thoughts. White doves, startled by the trumpets, flew up past us with a volley of wings and turned in a body above the yard as if stirred together in a vast bowl.

  It was a scene of great splendour that lay before us. The stands had filled with people while we sat talking and the lists were decked with brightly coloured flags from end to end. Mounted and armoured but with visors open still, the combatant knights were parading in file the length of the yard and their draped war-horses lifted their heads at the sound of the trumpets and champed on their bridles and their riders drew in the reins and made them prance, with a mighty sound of jingling. The sky above was cloudless and pale and very distant-seeming. The snow in the yard was churned and trampled and fouled here and there with horse-dung, but it was white and firm still and the ridges glittered faintly in the light.

  The knights saluted as they rode by and the ladies in the pavilion threw down scarves and sleeves to the ones they favoured. Against the white of the snow the beauty of it dazzled my eyes, the bright clothes of the ladies, the fluttering pennants with which the stands and lists were decked, scarlet and silver and blue, the bearings on the shields and breasts of the knights, the glitter of harness and raised lances and crested helmets.

  We were the people now, in our turn, they the players. And the play was their own valour and pride. I had seen jousting before, in courtyards and open fields, combats of single champions and melees with a hundred fighting, sometimes with weapons blunted, sometimes not It is a spectacle very popular with the people now. They crowd to see it, with great advantage to pickpockets and whores. But now, perhaps because I had become a player myself, as the trumpets sounded again and the heralds shouted, it came to me for the first time that this was the greatest example of playing that our times afforded. We were players by profession and borrowed roles as seemed fitting. The nobility had only the one but they persisted in it, though denounced by popes and kings for the violence and vainglory of it and the expenditure of money which might have been better spent in maintaining those same popes and kings. The Dominicans preached regularly against it, denouncing these jousts as pagan rites, but all their eloquence was of no avail. St Bernard himself thundered against it and declared anyone killed in a tournament would go directly to Hell, but his words fell on deaf ears. Threats of excommunication had no effect. This was the role that had brought them to wealth and power and they must dress for it and cover themselves in signs and emblems, for what are power and wealth without display?

  I was distracted from these thoughts by what, in the language of playing, would be called the Speaking of the Prologue. It falls to the holder of the jousts to announce the rules of combat. He who rose now from his place in the pavilion was the host of these knights and us poor players too, Sir Richard de Guise, and we had our first opportunity to see the man who had caused us to be brought here, on whose pleasure we were waiting. We were too high above to see him clearly. Tall and imposing he was certainly, in the mantle of blue velvet trimmed with ermine that he wore loosely about him. But his face was obscured from us by the brim of his hat and the plume set in it at the side. A long face, seeming narrow because of its length, very pale.

  In the hush of respect his rising had occasioned his voice came up to us, clear and deliberate. He was saying things that those listening already knew, but he spoke with solemn dignity, observing his pauses, as Martin might have said. Only blunted lances, or those fitted with a protective coronet, were to be used. If a jousting knight was struck on head or breast he was deemed to have lost the bout. If unhorsed, he forfeited his horse as a prize to the victor. A knight who had fallen was to be helped up only by his own squire wearing his device ...

  His voice went on, sounding sonorously. I thought about his son, the Lord William, and my eyes wandered over the company of knights as they sat astride their chargers, their squires on foot behind. The arms of de Guise were nowhere to be seen among them. I wondered again what sorrow of love it could be that kept the young lord from the lists. But perhaps he intended to fight later in the day, or on the morrow ...

  My eyes came to rest upon a knight with a helm of very extravagant design. It was in three parts or tiers, the visor being surmounted by a crest of silver filigree and this in turn by a piece in the shape of a cup with fluted sides from which rose the red and white feathers of the plume. It seemed to me that there was something familiar about the squire that stood behind this knight, though the man's back was to me, as was his master's. Then I recognized the arms on the banner of the lance and on the fan-crest of the horse, a coiled serpent with bars of blue and silver, and I knew him for the Knight who had stayed at the inn, who had ridden up through the snow beneath his canopy of silk, putting me in fear of the Beast. And it seemed to me entirely in keeping with what I knew of this young knight that he should have paid his armourer a goodly sum to fashion him a helm unlike anyone else's.

  Sir Richard came to the end of his discourse, seated himself and made a sign to the heralds. The trumpets sounded again, and again the doves rose and wheeled above us. The names and lineage of the first combatants were loudly shouted and the devices in their bearings explained at length, the emblems acquired through marriage, the badges denoting seniority of sons, honours gained in battle and by feats of arms, a process taking much time and one that I found tedious. Straw evidently did so too. In spite of his fears - or perhaps in flight from them - he fell to mocking these announcements, opening his hare
's eyes wide, gesturing and mouthing with exaggerated courtesy. 'Lords and ladies, here is the valiant Springer,' he said. 'Lord of no acres, victor of no battles but with starvation and that a victory not conclusive. But I wager he can kick higher than any of you, and spin faster on his heels.'

  Tobias, as was usual with him, took a more sober and practical view. 'You see that these champions bear the emblems of their armourers also,' he said. 'They are paid good fees to do it. The makers of chain-mail and plate armour get good custom by these means.'

  These interruptions were a source of irritation to Stephen, who had been listening intently to the heralds and exclaiming from time to time in admiration and wonder. 'Shush,' he said. 'That is the second son of Sir Henry Bottral. His father married into the Sutton family - you see he has the Sutton arms impaled with his own.'

  Meanwhile the knights danced their horses and turned their iron masks from side to side and stretched out their silk-clad legs below the hem of their armoured skirts for the benefit of the ladies.

  Then the visors were closed, the lances levelled and these first two rode against each other at a slow canter and met with a heavy shock of lance on shield. Both were jolted back in the saddle but neither was unhorsed, so it was a bout with honours even. This encounter, the heart of the play, took less time than saying the first three words of a Miserere.

  So it went on through the morning, the trumpets, the shouts, the pounding of hoofs slightly muffled by the snow, the resounding clash as the two heavily armed men hurtled together. I was waiting to see the Knight of the canopy and the scarred face. Roger of Yarm was the name the herald gave out. He had fought in the Holy Land and also in Normandy. At his first encounter he bore himself well, changing the tilt of his lance at the last moment so that he struck his adversary on the right shoulder, above the shield, sending him clear over the horse's rump, with his left foot still caught in the stirrup so that the squire had to run forward to free him. In the space of a few moments Roger of Yarm had won the prize of a war-horse, worth fifty livres at least, and he need not have fought again. However, whether led by the desire for glory or gain, in the afternoon he elected to do so and was matched with an older knight, a veteran of Poitiers, who had come from Derby to fight here.