by Andy Brown
By mid-morning we were ready to make our way into the church, following the lead of father Harper along the path to life eternal. Harper was an old, distinguished priest, nearing four-score years in age, long in the beard and wrinkled greatly across his brow, like the shell of a seasoned nut. And yet, although now old, he still seemed every bit as robust as when he’d been half his age.
We followed on his heels along the path to church, the way a flock is led to lusher fields by the shepherd.
It was then he was stopped in his tracks. Two eager kinsmen.
The first of them spoke and set an awkward question. ‘Will you speak the Mass today, father, as we’ve always had it, or are we going to get that English stuff you gave us yesterday?’
It was surely the thought on everyone’s minds, though none so far had dared to voice it. From my place in the ranks, I heard father Harper’s reply.
‘In obedience to the law,’ he said regretfully, ‘in English, sons.’
The two men – Underhill the tailor and the yeoman Segar – looked to each other and nodded. The first who’d spoken, Segar, then continued.
‘King Edward’s been enthroned for three years now,’ he said. ‘Just three. And already in that time, against the wishes of his dying father, he’s made these changes before he’s come of age. What does a boy know of our ancient customs?’
His voice and his concerns commanded our attention from the first.
‘What is this ‘Book of Common Prayer’, anyway?’ he asked us, turning from the priest to face his audience. The way he said its name made it seem nothing more than a collection of nursery rhymes, nothing like our blessed breviaries, missals, psalters.
‘We’ll stand by our religion, as appointed by King Henry,’ said Underhill, joining him. ‘Speak the Mass in Latin, today and hereafter, with all the ceremonial as normal.’
We waited nervously upon the priest’s reply. When it came it was carefully measured.
‘Your words are steered by passion, sons and, were I yet a freer man, I’d warm to their commitment. But I am poor already and, if I don’t present English prayers today then, no doubt, I’ll find myself fined my yield and poorer for it tomorrow.’
The priest then bade them move aside, with unrushed gestures.
Underhill, however, wasn’t to be moved and stepped across the priest’s path.
The old man looked him down, but the dissenter continued. ‘Isn’t your faith worth more than your wage, father Harper?’
‘It may well be, master Underhill,’ he said. ‘But it isn’t worth imprisonment for life. Nor loss of all I own. You also might take heed of the Law, my fellows. Those found persuading priests to break the Law will also lose possessions, or be jailed.’
Segar and Underhill looked at each other, an eyebrow raised in hesitation here, a hairline scratched in perplexity there.
But the assembled were now behind the two men’s boldness and, perhaps sensing a greater discord in the air, the priest resigned himself to meet their will, despite his better private judgment.
He retired for some moments to his vestry, to dress himself in his usual Catholic cope. We stood and talked together about occurrences. He soon reappeared, greeted with cheers and hollers of relief.
Things were once again as they should be.
We followed him into the church, where we heard our Latin prayers and Mass, In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto… divine, delightful words we valued highly.
Afterwards we poured back out, exultant and excited onto the green. When the few stray sheep had been cleared, who’d wandered here through some tenant’s broken fences, there followed much by way of entertainment, games and amusements, with Church Ale ladled out by wardens at the Church House and, with it all, a share of spirited debate on matters of faith and Holy rites.
‘That other Mass would have us believe the Sacrament’s no different from any other flaming common bread,’ said Segar.
‘And why should our children be only baptised Sundays? What’s wrong with their birth day as usual?’
The people were stirred into shouting out their grievances at random: Our Holy shrines and rood screens ruined… images of Christ and Mary turned to flames like heretics themselves… I’ll still use my beads, despite whatever ban… I’ll still recite the Rosary for succour… and as the mood intensified, Underhill pulled himself up onto a platform of boards on the back of a cart and commanded the crowd from this makeshift dais.
‘Listen to me,’ he urged us. ‘We’re all, without exception are we not, good Catholics in this shire?’
We cheered and gave him our assent.
‘So what in Hell’s this English Book foisted here upon us? Isn’t Our Lord any longer present in the eucharist? Isn’t the body and blood of Christ present truly in the bread and wine?’
We quieted at his thoughts and, in that hush, the speaker rallied.
‘The sacrament’s a sacrifice to God, of Jesus Christ, who’s present in that bread, that wine. This book would have us believe these changes of bread to flesh, of wine to blood, don’t ever take place! They’ll not even let us take wafers, but rather say you’ll receive everyday bread!’
Another cheer rose. Now that he said it like that, these changes were a sham of our convictions.
‘This English Mass is an insult to our faith. Our prayers before communion, our matins and our evensong, these things are nothing when spoken in English. Yes, we love our country’s tongue, but sacraments were made to hear in Latin and in Latin we will hear them!’
‘Oh, right, Mister Underhill,’ a voice called from the back. ‘And what do they mean, exactly, these Latin words, pray tell me if you wouldn’t mind? I’ve never understood them myself…’
The laughter moved among us like a wind through stooks of corn. Moments later we settled.
‘In truth I don’t know the meaning of all the words,’ Underhill replied, ‘but I do know they’re the language of the soul divine and, being so, I couldn’t hope to grasp their every meaning.’
His answer was considered. We applauded.
‘I also know these Holy words are safeguards of our faith,’ said Segar. ‘Take them away and you take away the very grounds on which our lives are built!’ With this, he too clambered up onto the pedestal and joined his partner there above our heads.
‘They don’t even say that marriage is sacred,’ he said.
Beside me stood our village newly-weds, sweet Alford from my Master’s house and Dufflin the blacksmith’s boy. They held each other’s fingers loosely amongst the close-packed crowd.
‘Such ceremonies see us through from crib to coffin,’ he continued. ‘They mark the passing of our lives and give us our Holy Days. Days like today. Days when we can take a hard-earned rest...’
With sentiments like these, they couldn’t fail to win their fellows’ trust. Yet the rest of their speech came at us like a torrent. I wasn’t sure if we were hearing the balanced flow of reasoned thought, or the sound and passion of some waterfall come crashing down around us, meaninglessly on the rocks. There was so much noise by now that all I heard was fragments bashing round like boulders clacking in a torrid stream… no candles at Candlemas,… no ashes on Wednesday… no palms on Sunday… rob you of your hallowed rights as soon as rob your land… the whole thing made me feel unwell and giddy. For steadiness, I filled my mind with thoughts of our Holy Mother and of my own mother.
It was Segar who then rounded his attack on the King’s Law. ‘I tell you now, we will have all such laws as made by the late King and none other. Not til that boy King comes of age!’
The crowd then burst forward and carted their spokesmen around the green, high on their shoulders. Afterwards, the talk burned on and smouldered like the very oil of baptism itself, which these apparent laws would see abolished.
Events happened in some muddle after that.
We saw a play of mummers set in a foreign land. There were two comical kings played b
y the travelling troupe of Manning and Byerd, who came from habit to these parts on festival days. The kings brought down a terrible destruction on their land by their foolish fighting. Then there were dancers and entertainments from a troupe of mountebanks, tumblers and jugglers. There was even a dancing dog who walked around on his back legs in a doublet, ruff and cape like a proud and haughty courtier. I thought of the recent visiting equerry and laughed at the lapdog.
We saw a competition with the bow and arrow and a great deal of hurling was played, with many hobbling from the field, nursing their shins. Sweet Alford and I were ready with a bottle of witch-hazel which, for a coin, we anointed on their wounds with a prayer as a measure for fail-safe healing. It brought us some small profit and harmed no one; the men believed themselves to be in the presence of healers. They also drank a deal of ale and cider, which more than likely numbed their pain more powerfully than our lotions ever could.
Once the playing was over the further talk of the commons was all about the Cornish men’s advance; how they had marched from their lands in the west and were pressing now towards the capital. The gossip went on late into the afternoon, by which time some tempers were fraying.
It wasn’t long, therefore, before the Justices were summoned. They came only late in the evening and tried to keep what peace remained, but all their persuasion amounted to little and the white-livered Justices soon departed in confusion, hoping against hope that the day might end peaceably.
We had been making merry all day, but such good feelings wouldn’t stay forever. If we’d been wise, we would have seen the portents of the day’s dissatisfactions. But we were mostly drunk as sots and inspired alike by our tipple, as by our faith and devotion. Like cows lying in the lea to keep their patch of meadow dry, we placidly awaited the storm-burst. When the deluge finally came, it seemed to wash away most nearly everything. All we knew of reason was taken off at once in an inevitable flood.
It was the franklyn, Hellyons, from the neighbouring parish, who came to quarrel markedly with those who’d gathered round the rustic stage – one man alone to take the commons on – to quell their rebellious tempers. They say he was, for the most part, an amiable man and a gentleman of respected position, but that day he was largely blunt and boorish. By railing against us he fused us in a common purpose. The crowd was in no mood to listen, but on and on he blindly forged with refutal on refutal.
‘The Commonwealth’s a body,’ he shouted from the platform where Underhill and Segar had so recently prevailed. ‘Feet and hands must work together for the mind to rule. That mind is our King, anointed by God, ruling by his Council, defending the realm with steady heart and constant word. We, the feet and hands.’
We loomed at him with suspicion. He seemed unmoved by our sea of pressing faces, our weighty silence and, so, went on.
‘What you’ve rallied here is plain rebellion, stirred up and guided by sedition. The penalties are harsh. Numerous. When English men rise against their sovereign Lord, we’ll just as soon tumble into civil strife as if the gates of Hell had opened to receive us!’
‘Keep it to yourself, Hellyons!’ shouted Segar. ‘We’re not here to trade in your insults.’
‘The insult’s in the sin you visit on your King,’ Hellyons bellowed.
‘We no more rebel against the King than appeal to his minority. Let’s halt this Prayer Book madness, Hellyons. Let better counsel prevail until he comes of age. This is a loyal throng.’
‘Loyal throng my arse, Segar! Here’s nothing of loyalty! D’you so easily forget the Obediences read to you not two years past in this very church?’
‘This is a lawful protest with tradition and truth on its side!’ Underhill replied. ‘Christ is offered day by day at altars across this land in Holy masses for the living and the dead. This new England, this Prayer Book and Holy sacrament, it’s nothing to those who live by the true faith.’
‘Tradition? Truth? You must have lost your mind! This is pure rebellion. A blasphemy against your country. Against our God!’
‘Don’t speak to us of blasphemy, Hellyons. Look to your own profanity!’
The exchanges then settled into low abuse.
‘The heresy’s yours and yours alone, Underhill. Commotions like this can only spread like plague. The Devil’s instruction. He makes quick work corrupting base and common minds. The rabble you’ve raised with you...’
‘We’ll give you a beating, by St. Agnes’ tits, if you don’t hold your tongue, man…’
‘Go ahead. Threaten me,’ the franklyn said. ‘The beating will be yours and all the rakehells you muster with you. Rebellion will be punished…’
With this rebuke the crowd had heard enough. As if some silent signal had been given, they surged as one at Hellyons and fell on him in a fury. Someone seized him from the platform and, without warning, carried him aloft, shouting all the way to the Church House.
‘You walk the path of anarchy,’ he ranted. ‘How dare you bring the country to this state? What gives you the right?’
His voice faded like birdsong in the rain.
It was then that the blow was struck.
I saw it happen as though the hours of the day had been suddenly slowed, as in unhurried daydreams. Each and every detail stood out to me, pressing itself in my memory to leave a lasting mark behind my eyes, like wooden kitchen tools pressed into loaves of dough.
As I saw it, the billhook fell slowly.
I looked about me, but had lost my friends. No Alford, no John Toucher, none I knew. I found myself quite suddenly amongst a crowd of strangers. Their twisted faces seemed to leer at Hellyons with prodigious malice. One rat-faced man pulled at the franklyn’s hat with a gloved fist, placing the stolen cap on his own head, his mouth wide open in the semblance of a stinking culvert. His simpering companion’s face was like a swollen swede. Behind them, a woman with grey whiskers on her chin, the length of a nanny goat’s, seemed to dribble as if she was spitting frogs. She gawked at the spectacle, spellbound by the spinning gyre of bodies. Where earlier in the day there had been kindly-looking, well-presented folk, with skin scrubbed up and faces washed for mass, now there was nothing but a herd of dirty livestock: scuffed-up, ruddy countenances, screwed-up eyes and gurning mouths, their cheeks inflamed like furnaces with mean little eyes above. The tressed locks of women swung free like biting whips. The men’s eyes rolled like children’s marbles in circles of dust on the road.
Not one of them seemed to understand what was actually happening. Some were screaming at Hellyons. Others simply laughed as though this were all some new outlandish game, some further entertainment.
When the billhook struck, it cut straight through Hellyon’s neck and shoulder in a heavy slice. He never saw it coming, but I saw, within his frame, the gory meat of his body, just as I have seen the insides of pigs and sheep butchered in the yard on slaughter day.
A great arc of blood jetted over the heads of those standing closest. They didn’t seem to feel it as it streaked them, nor hear his pleas, his pitiful cries. I’ve seen pit dogs gathered round a bull calmer than that.
So it was that Hellyons was slain and, under father Harper’s orders, buried with haste in the shaded corner of the churchyard, where the great yew overhangs the shaky wall, his mangled body lying north to south – an outcast from the church, a heretic’s grave – and only there in sacred ground at all by way of some contrite apology.
The lucky die to lie in hallowed ground, attended to by friends who close their loved ones’ eyes with coins and keen them to their graves; who shroud them in blankets and tributes of flowers. Not so for those with luck like Hellyons. These are times of cruel disposal.
II
Like any great tree that gives us fruit worth waiting for, the roots of my story go back much further, into the stony ground of last winter.
I woke, the first of January, to find the country frozen and drawn in. White. Close. A gauze of fog floated across the sky before a muted, glowing sun, like a drape of musli
n held in front of a slow burning candle. Each and every blade of grass stood crusted with a rime of frost, as delicate as a gentleman’s lace ruff. Huge skating slabs had formed in the rutted gateways. Along the lane, the cart tracks from the season’s drives were filled with heavy rods of ice. The air was biting and a freezing fog hung in the air all day until sundown. In the lee of each hedge, the frost remained until late afternoon, where the warmth of the low sun couldn’t reach to melt it by day.
Now that I remember it in meditation, my home is the most beautiful of places.
I rose by five that hoary morning and made my humble bed. My Lord and Lady wouldn’t be rising til eight, giving me time to start my many household chores. What dreams I would have had given the chance, but once, to sleep upon a bed of down with feathered pillows, as my Lord and Lady slept at ease each night. My own bed has never been anything but a mattress stuffed with straw, laid on top of a wooden pallet beneath the great hall table. A sack of chaff has served me for a pillow. The dreams I’ve dreamed upon it have seldom been sweet and, when they have been heavenly or pleasurable, always too short. No sooner has my head gone down, than it always seems to be time to rise and work again, though why complain at this, the servant’s lot?
After lifting myself from bed, I combed my hair, put on my shift and made the sign of the cross, readying my hands in morning prayer.
‘Lord, set a watch before my mouth, a guard at the door of my lips. Let my heart not incline to the evil of wicked deeds or thoughts...’ I heard some creature, mouse or rat, stirring in the corners of the kitchen, going about his own wicked business and pushed my truckle bed beneath the bench to chase the vermin out with the bristles of my broom. No sign of him, save for some nibbled crusts behind the baskets.
My prayers complete as always, I set the first fire of the day in the grate and went outside to fetch in milk from the dairy.
My breath plumed in the cold air like smoke from a demon’s snout. My boots skated over the iced-up cobbles on my way to the cattle barn, past the leafless orchard. The loam crunched beneath my heavy winter boots as I crossed the garden plot, past the stock-still duck pond and the dovecote topped with its bonnet of ice. The pond was frozen solid; the dovecote empty. Winter has always been the time for its repair and a time that brings the natural end for many of the birds on my Lord’s dining table, other meats being as scarce at this time of year as common acts of kindness. When new birds later take up their residence in the dovecote, their droppings make a rich and copious dung for the garden and provide for the household’s vegetables. In this way, those generous birds serve us twice.