Towers in the Mist

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Suddenly the affair that had begun as a coarse jest turned ugly. Sampson hit the Tinker and the Tinker hit Sampson. The laughter turned to a tumult of shouts and curses. Mine host bore down upon them and with one huge hand plucked Nicolas out of the hubbub as he would have lifted a chestnut from the fire.

  And then somehow the whole crowd of them were out in the courtyard, under the starry sky, and there was a fight on. Sampson and the Tinker, roaring drunk and mad with rage, were fighting each other in the center of a ring of men whose faces were alight with a bestial eagerness to witness blood and suffering that was hideous to see. Now and then they yelled encouragement to the fighters and their cries were animal cries. Lanterns were held aloft that they might see the better, and the stars looked down.

  Nicolas, with the boy who had played Gabriel grave-eyed beside him, stood on the outskirts of the crowd, and he felt sick. He had witnessed fights before, and always with keen enjoyment. He had fought himself, and felt the better for it. He had even attended several hangings and derived pleasure from the titillations of horror that ran up and down his spine on those occasions. But tonight he felt sick. Only a short while ago, on the very spot where those two brutes were fighting, the loveliest story in all the world had been enacted. Only a short while ago, in this very place, he had learned so to love the men around him that they had seemed a part of his own body. . . . And now, because he still loved them, he had to stand here and watch the degradation of his body. . . . “Deus, propitius esto mihi peccatori,” he murmured. The boy beside him looked at him, uncomprehending, but the sorrow in his eyes was an Amen and the stars seemed to press down a little lower, brighter and more pitiful.

  It was soon over. The Tinker was the less drunk of the two, and he got the best of it. A yell came from the crowd as Sampson crashed over backwards, then a sudden silence in which they could hear the voices of the Christmas waits singing far off in the town, and then an outbreak of shocked incredulous murmurings.

  “What has happened?” demanded Nicolas, and pressed a little nearer.

  Sampson was dead. He had fallen with his head on a projecting cobble stone and his magnificent great body was now as worthless as a heap of rubbish. Nicolas caught one glimpse of him, with his head lying in a pool of blood and his sightless eyes turned towards the stars, and then turned away in misery and horror. . . . For he had done this. . . . With a word spoken in jest he had started the whole tragedy. And somehow he had rather liked that coarse bully. There had been something attractive about him; his rage had been swift and splendid, as elemental as a thunderstorm or the onslaught of a tiger, and his twink­ling green eyes had stirred some vague memory in Nicolas that was sweet as it was elusive. He was sorry that the man was dead.

  4.

  They picked him up and carried him away and gradually the sobered crowd dispersed and went home. Loneliness possessed the innyard. There were no lights but the few that shone from the inn and the stars that glittered overhead, no sounds but the soft chiming of the bells and the far-away singing of the waits. But Nicolas still lingered. There seemed nothing that he could do, but he still lingered, pacing up and down over the soiled and trodden snow, his cloak wrapped tightly about him and his heart heavy.

  A touch on his arm made him look round. It was the pretty little serving wench, shivering with the cold, her face white and frightened.

  “Yes?” encouraged Nicolas, but she seemed to have nothing to say, and only huddled herself the closer in the shawl she had thrown about her shoulders.

  “What ails you, my dear?” asked Nicolas again, and turned up her face to the starlight with one finger beneath her chin.

  At this she recovered, and her dimples peeped. “I must tell her,” she confided, “and sure as I live, I’ve not the courage.”

  “Tell whom?” asked Nicolas.

  “Sara. Sampson’s wife. Sampson brought her into Oxford two days ago, for she was taken very bad and he wanted to get the physician to her.”

  “You mean that she is here? At the inn?”

  “Yes. She often comes here to amuse the company with her fortune telling, and so she came here in her trouble and Master Honeybun took pity on her. He’s a kind man, Master Honeybun. We made a bed for her in a part of the stable that we don’t use. The babe died yesterday, and now she’s likely to die herself.”

  “Then need you tell her?” asked Nicolas.

  “Master Honeybun said I was to,” she said, and looked down, twisting her shawl round her fingers.

  “I’ll tell her,” said Nicolas suddenly. She looked up again, her eyes two round “ohs” of amazement, and Nicolas himself hardly knew what possessed him. Afterwards he thought it was his sense of responsibility for the death in the innyard that drove him to make what amends he could.

  The girl was so thankful to have him relieve her of her duty that she allowed him no time to change his mind. She hurried him forthwith across the courtyard to a door on the far side. “In there,” she whispered.

  Nicolas lifted the latch and walked in. He was at the far end of the great inn stable, in a little space partitioned off from the rest by a rough curtain. A lantern hung from the raftered cobwebby ceiling and a small fire in a brazier brought a little warmth into the bitter air. A broad rough bed spread with old blankets and soft hay stood against the wall and in the glow of the lantern and firelight he could see the outline of a woman lying upon it, with another smaller figure curled up beside her. He stopped, his heart beating, aware that death was here too, not the sudden death that had struck like lightning in the courtyard outside but an invisible brooding spirit whose presence seemed to set this little room at a great distance from the rest of the world. For a moment all memory fell away from Nicolas. He, this woman, the unseen child and the angel of death were alone together, enclosed in a little circle of light that hung like a star between heaven above and the unseen earth far away beneath them. When it was shattered the four of them would go their ways to where they belonged, but for the moment they were alone together in a unity so deep that understanding would need few words.

  The hay on the far side of the bed rusted softly and a little gold head popped up. Nicolas, moving forward, found himself looking straight into a pair of blue eyes, a deep violet blue that would turn to the color of rain when sorrow clouded them. . . . Somehow he had thought that this child would have eyes like Joyeuce. . . . He smiled and a merry little answering smile tilted up the corners of the child’s mouth and set sparks in his eyes. He seemed to like this visitor and he turned and poked his mother with his toy lamb that she too might wake up and like him.

  She stirred and moaned a little, a sound that was half-question and half-plaint, and Nicolas came to her side and stood looking down upon her. He had expected to see a rough-looking woman, the feminine counterpart of the man who had died outside, and he was amazed at what he saw. Sara was dying, and sickness had robbed her of much of her beauty, yet even the remnant of it roused his homage. He bowed his head as he looked at the fine bones of her face, showing like ivory beneath the tightly stretched skin, at the mass of night-dark hair and the deep eyes, clouded with mystery, that looked up into his.

  “So it was he who died outside?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” said Nicolas. As he had thought, few words were needed.

  She moved her head a little restlessly on the pillow but she gave no sign of grief. Perhaps, thought Nicolas, she had not loved him, or perhaps she was too near death to have any care now for anything that might happen on earth. But even as he thought this he knew he was wrong, for she turned her head and looked at him as though he himself were of extreme importance to her. She looked at the gallant picture that he made, standing straight and slim in his fine doublet and hose of dark green, the color of holly leaves, with his scarlet-lined cloak flung back from his shoulders. In reverence for her he held his cap in his hands and the lantern light shone upon his crisp dark hair and the face with th
e mocking eyebrows, smooth girlish skin and strong mouth that in gravity could look so lovely. She looked at him appealingly, hungrily, as though he were not only a man who could help her but a symbol of something that she had intensely desired. She put out a hand and felt the fine stuff of his cloak as he stood beside her. “I wanted him to be like you,” she whispered. “That was why I did it.”

  Nicolas did not understand, but he saw that she had something more to say to him and he bent over her, smiling reassuringly into her eyes. He felt no fear, now, of sorrow and death, only desire to succour. “I will do anything I can to help you,” he said, slowly and clearly so that she should understand.

  “Where do you come from?” She spoke so low now that her whisper was a mere breath.

  “From Christ Church,” said Nicolas.

  She made a little motion of her head towards the boy beside her. “Then take the child with you. Take him back where he belongs,” she said, and sighed in relief and weariness as her eyes closed and her head rolled weakly back into the dented hollow on the pillow.

  “Where?” asked Nicolas, but even as he asked he knew it was no use. Her dark lashes, lying on the dark hollows below her eyes, trembled a little and then lay motionless. He knew that they would not lift again. He put his fingers gently on her wrist and felt the tiny flutter of the pulse, and even at his touch it was still.

  He straightened himself and held out his arms to the little boy who was kneeling up in the hay staring at him. He had thought there would be tears and protestations, but there were none. Grave-eyed and obedient the child too held out his arms, his lamb clasped by a hind leg in one hand, and let himself be lifted across his mother’s body.

  As Nicolas with the boy in his arms, lifted the latch of the door, he could have fancied that he heard the flutter of dark wings. The little circle of light in which the four of them had hung above the earth was shattered now and they were going their different ways, two to death and two to life.

  The girl was still lingering in the courtyard and Nicolas paused only to send her inside to Sara before he made tracks for home. Now and then, as he strode down Cornmarket and across Carfax into South Street, he looked down at the boy. The little face looked very pallid in the starlight but there was always the flash of an answering smile when Nicolas looked at him, and his golden hair shone like a gallant cap of gold. His bare feet and legs were cold as ice and he was shivering, but he made no complaint. Nicolas, who had thought he did not care for children, held the little body close to his own to warm it and tucked his cloak round more firmly. He had no doubt at all as to where to take this child. . . . To Joyeuce, for a Christmas present.

  5.

  And meanwhile Joyeuce sat in front of the parlor fire with the children grouped around her, and her father and Great-Aunt in their big chairs one on each side, and listened to Faithful laboriously reading aloud from Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs.” It was long past the children’s bedtime but they had not wanted to go to bed and she had let them stay up. Even the little ones felt the sorrow that hung over the house, this first Christmas after Giles’s death, and they shrank from their dark cold bedroom. It was more cheerful in the parlor, where the log fire sparkled and crackled and a most extravagant array of candles shone all round the room.

  But even then it was not particularly cheerful, for Great-Aunt, who had the indigestion, kept heaving great sighs, their father sat with his head sunk on his breast, rousing himself heroically now and then to make forced cheerful remarks that were more depressing than silence, and Joyeuce stitched away at her embroidery with a sort of desperation, as though she dared not let herself think. Grace, the boys and the twins stared sadly and a little sullenly into the fire, for they felt that happiness was their right at this season and they could not but feel bitter against the fate that had snatched it away from them. Diccon sat curled up on the floor at Joyeuce’s feet, his curly head resting against her knees, and was still a prey to his secret sorrow, his poppy mouth drooping and his green eyes staring mournfully at the tips of his little pointed scarlet shoes. All the rest of the family were in black but he wore elfin green, with the scarlet shoes and a knot of cherry ribbons at the breast. Sitting there in the middle of them, so bright and fair to see, Joyeuce thought he was like the spark of unconquerable hope at the heart of sorrow. It did her good to look at him, even though he was so sorry a little boy.

  All the time, muted by the closed windows and the drawn curtains, they could hear the bells ringing and the waits, bands of poor scholars who were allowed by the Vice Chancellor to sing and beg at the houses of the rich, singing as they passed up and down the snowy streets. Sometimes a band of them passing up Fish Street would stop and sing under their window, and then their singing was hard to bear. “Unto us a Child is born. Unto us a Son is given.” Tonight the words seemed nothing but a mockery.

  6.

  It was after one such visitation that Faithful decided he had better read aloud to his adopted family, and fetched his beloved “Book of Martyrs.” It had accompanied him through all the many changes and chances of his own life and he had always found it an unspeakable comfort. Not only was the example of the martyrs so uplifting but it was really impossible to think of one’s own woes when absorbed in blood-curdling descriptions of other people being burned alive. There is nothing like the troubles of other people to distract one’s attention from one’s own.

  But tonight, knowing Joyeuce to have a squeamish stomach and Great-Aunt’s indigestion to be by no means a thing of the past, he concentrated upon the milder stories of Master Foxe. Finally he read them the account of the riot in Saint Mary’s church at Oxford in the year 1536, when Bloody Mary sat upon the throne of England and persecution was at its height. A certain poor heretic, a Cambridge M.A., was sent to Oxford that he might recant openly, bearing his faggot in the church of Saint Mary the Virgin upon a Sunday, in front of the whole congregation of Doctors, Divines, Citizens and Scholars. It was felt, apparently, that to make a fool of himself before Oxford University would, for a Cambridge man, be the final humiliation; it was thought, too, that it would give pleasure to Oxford to see him do it, and would be a great warning to such of the scholars as might be heretically inclined. . . . The church was packed to the doors and in the middle stood the Cambridge heretic with his faggot on his shoulder.

  But no sooner was Doctor Smith, the preacher, well away into his sermon, denouncing the poor heretic with the full force of his lungs, than from the High Street outside came a cry of “Fire! Fire!” Somebody’s chimney was on fire, it afterwards transpired, but the crowded congregation had but one thought; sympathetic heretics and demons had fired the church. “Fire! Fire!” they yelled, and in the space of five minutes, pandemonium had broken out, the panic-stricken congregation fighting like wild beasts to get out of the church. “But,” said Master Foxe in his narrative, “such was the press of the multitude, running in heaps together, that the more they labored the less they could get out. I think there was never such a tumultuous hurly-burly, rising so of nothing, heard of before, so that if Democritus the merry philosopher had beholden so great a number, some howling and weeping, running up and down, trembling and quaking, raging and gasping, breathing and sweating, I think he would have laughed the heart out of his body.”

  Now “in this great maze and garboyle” there were only two who kept their heads, the heretic himself, who hastened to cast his faggot off his shoulder and bring it down hard upon the head of a monk who stood near by, breaking the head to his great satisfaction, and a little boy who had climbed up on top of a door to be out of the way of this seething horde of lunatic grown-ups.

  Sitting up there on top of the door the little boy wondered what he should do, for though he was not frightened, he thought that it would be rather nice to go home. Then he saw a great burly monk who was fighting his way to the nearest exit with more success than most. He wore his monk’s habit and had a big cowl hanging down his back and he was
coming quite close to the little boy. The urchin waited until the monk was right underneath him and then he slithered down from the top of the door and “prettily conveyed himself” into the monk’s cowl.

  The monk got out and made tracks for home, and being a very burly man, and the little boy being such a very tiny little boy, he did not at first notice anything out of the ordinary. But as he turned from High Street into Cornmarket it struck him that his cowl felt heavier than usual, and he shook his shoulders in some annoyance. . . . Then there came a little whispering voice in his ear. . . . Terror seized him like an ague, and he was more frightened than he had been in the church, for he had a guilty conscience and he had no doubt at all that one of the demons who had fired the church had jumped straight into his cowl. “In the name of God and All Saints,” he cried, “I adjure thee, thou wicked spirit, that thou get thee hence.”

  But there was no crashing of thunder, no searing of blue flame as the demon took his departure, only a little voice that whispered, “I am Bertram’s boy. Good master, let me go.” And then the long-suffering cowl suddenly gave way at the seams and the little boy fell out and ran away home as fast as his legs would carry him.

  7.

  It was a cheerful story and everyone felt the better for it except Diccon, and Diccon most unaccountably began to cry. He did not roar and bellow, he just sobbed noiselessly in that devastating way he had when his heart was breaking. Everybody was most upset and gathered round to soothe and comfort, while Joyeuce, pressing his curly head against her knee, implored him to say what ailed him.

  “I want that little boy,” he whispered at last. “I want that little boy. I want him now.”