Morality Play (12 page)

To give you life Christ suffered to be dead ...'

But the eyes of the people were not on me. They were on the woman, as she began her miming of delights. And this again had been Martin's idea, for the woman to keep at a distance and make a dumb-show of pleasures, while I still continued with my sermon, so the words of spirit and the gestures of flesh should contend together.

Martin's idea, yes; but Straw had made of it something only he could do. Of all of us he was most gifted in playing. Martin had high skill and a feeling for the spectacle and the whole shape and meaning of the play far beyond any of us. But there was in Straw an instinct for playing, or rather a meeting of instinct and knowledge, a natural impulse of the body, I do not know what to call it, but it is something that can neither be taught nor learned. For the part of the temptress he had devised a strange and frightening way of bending the body stiffly sideways with the head held for a moment in inquiry and hands just above the waist, palms outward and fingers stiffly splayed in a gesture of his own invention. So for a moment, while he made the pause to see the effects of his tempting, he was frozen in wicked inquiry. Then he broke again into sinuous motion, gesturing the delights that awaited Thomas Wells if he would but follow: cakes and pies and sweet drinks and the warmth of the fireside and something more - there was some writhing suggestion of lewdness in it also.

This change from the flowing motions of pleasure to the stiff pose of observing was a frightening thing, even to me who had seen him practise it alone in a corner of the barn. There was complete silence among the people. Looking towards the rooms above, I saw open casements and faces watching us, one of them a white face with a black cap fitting close, and it came to me that this might be the Justice. I was coming now to the end of my exhortation:

'Sin in the beginning may seem full sweet

But the reckoning comes, be you never so fleet.

When you lie in clay ...'

Thomas Wells stood between us in his simple dull-coloured smock, looking from one to the other. His face was wide-eyed and solemn and he turned his body at the waist towards the one he looked at, keeping head and body in a straight line, and I saw the effort he made to breathe deeply enough and I felt his fear in me also, perhaps because of the silence - there was neither babble nor horseplay among the people, they sat hushed.

Straw too must have felt it. He was affected always by currents of feeling and unpredictable in his ways of responding. Now he did something that had not been at all in our practice. His movements before had been lascivious in some degree, and this more for the sake of the people than the boy. But now he moved his hands down the front of his body in a long movement of self-love and turned them to make the arrowhead shape and ran this arrow down the lines of the groin and held it there to show the form of the mons venereal, and he did this for Thomas Wells, swaying his body as he did it, and it was a gesture of pride and power and terrible invitingness. I came to the end of my words as the woman still stood there showing the place of pleasure, and the stuff of the gown was strained over the fork of her body and showed the parts of a man beneath.

Thomas Wells went towards her, he too playing by impulse now, moving like someone between waking and sleeping, stepping high as if under a spell. I turned to the people and made the shrug of sorrowful resignation, with arms half raised. But now, as the boy moved forward, there was a sudden voice from among the people, a cry of anger or distress. A woman's voice -emerging from the silence it had great force. Straw turned to see where the cry had come from and I heard the gasp of his breathing and saw the rise and fall of his breast. I stepped forward and lowered my head and made again the gesture of sorrowful resignation, hoping that this would give time for Springer and Straw to retire behind the curtain and prepare for the scene of the killing. But the woman called out again, and now with words. 'It was not thus,' she shouted. 'My boy did not go with her.' Her voice was loud, though there was the choke of tears in it. She was not looking at us, she was looking at those around her, which was worse. 'My Thomas was a good boy,' she shouted in appeal to them.

Other shouts came now from among the people. There was a movement among them, a rustle of violence. Danger of hurt for players comes like the sound of wind in the trees. Once heard it is never forgotten. The three of us were frozen there. We could not go on against the shouting, we could not retreat or the play collapsed. Then Martin came forward from behind the curtain and he had put on the hood of Mankind, but this he drew quickly back as he faced the people, turning his wrist as he did so in the sign of changing discourse. 'Good people, why did he go with her?' he shouted. 'Thomas Wells was not killed by the roadside.'

This shouting above the people's shouts brought some moments of silence and Martin spoke loudly into the silence. His face was white, but his voice was confident and steady. 'God's pity, not in such a manner as that,' he said. 'She would not do it there, on a road where people might pass.' The silence held still. With the briefest of pauses he turned to me, arm extended in the gesture of indication: 'You, Good Counsel, tell us why Thomas Wells gave you no heed.'

I knew I must answer this quickly while we could be heard. I spoke the words as they came to mind: 'Alas, good sir, man lives after his pleasure ...'

Now, under Martin's eye, Springer made a memorable conquest of his fear. He took some steps forward, making as he did so the gesture that accompanies the confession of Adam: 'The woman tempted me and I did go with her,' he said. As he spoke he turned towards Straw and fluttered the fingers of his right hand very briefly and rapidly, concealing this with his body from the view of the people. This sign I did not know at the time, but it is the one that asks for a thing to be repeated by him you look at. 'With her body she did me tempt,' he said.

Straw drew himself up. The sun-mask of the Serpent regarded us and all the people with its unfaltering smile. With the same sinuous movement as before the temptress caressed herself, made the arrow shape at the place of lust, swayed her shoulders in power and pride. And the silence among the people was again so complete that I heard the wings of a pigeon as it rose above the roof of the inn.

Now at last we were able to withdraw, all save Thomas Wells, who had to remain while Avaritia and Pieta prepared themselves to struggle for the woman's soul. And so we had been saved, and by our own exertions. But these same exertions, this narrow avoiding of disaster, set something free among us that had before been caged.

The first to show it was Springer, left alone there before the people. There is a sort of desperate boldness that comes to the fearful when they have gone beyond their fears and this it was perhaps that impelled Springer now. He had been intending, in order to lighten the mood of the people before the acting of the murder, to do the old mime of the thief of eggs whose eggs break inside his clothes. It was this that he had practised and he had made us all laugh with it in the barn. But instead he began to speak directly to the people. Standing there together, we heard his voice, high-pitched and clear, still with something of a child in it. We heard him ask a question which, simple as it was, had not occurred to any of us.

'Read me a riddle, good people,' we heard him say. 'How did the woman know I bore the purse about me? Did some demon whisper it to her? Did I toss it up and down as I walked along? If I did so, would she have seen what it was from where she stood on the common at the close of a winter day?'

Stephen bent his large frame to peer through the parting in the curtain. 'He is walking back and forth before them, tossing up the purse,' he said in a hoarse whisper. His dark eyes looked larger than usual, more prominent in his face.

'Go out and speak to him, Stephen,' Martin said, 'before they turn to anger again. Say what comes into your mind to say. Then Tobias and I will come out for the scene of argument.'

Stephen was less able as a player, but he had a quality of hardihood that stood him in good stead now. He was in full command of his voice and his nerves as he advanced on Springer. Even without God's gilding he had a dignified presence, and this despite his ruffian's nature. 'Thomas Wells, you boasted of it,' he said in his deep voice. 'You boasted to the woman of the purse...'

We heard Springer make the crowing sound of false laughter, then a voice came from among the people, a man's voice, harsh and loud: 'Fool player, what brought her near enough to hear the boy boast?'

But now Avaritia and Pieta came forward with the woman between them and they walked slowly back and forth, halting to speak the lines, then resuming. The Battle for the Soul is usually done with the players always in the same place and speaking in turn. But Martin had wanted more movement in it and had practised Tobias in this walking and halting.

So we proceeded for some time, keeping to the way we had practised. But we were not the same people as those who had practised ... Straw's changing of the masks succeeded well and was very startling to the people. He did it behind the backs of Avaritia and Pieta, who came forward and stood side by side together facing the people and spread their cloaks, white for the Virtue, black for the Vice. Then they drew aside to left and right and the woman was revealed with the demon's mask and she raised her hands and hooked the fingers and hissed at the people and some hissed back. This was to show that the Evil One had triumphed. The sun-mask she hid in the waist of her gown.

The strangling of Thomas Wells was done in dumb-show. Straw did it alone before the people, without the boy. It was decided thus among us in whispers behind the curtain. Martin was for keeping it as we had intended, with the boy strangled in full view, as it made a strong scene, and this mattered more to his zealot's soul than the danger. But the rest were opposed - we were unwilling to rouse the people against us for a second time. So we passed directly to the bearing of the effigy back to the road and thence to the finding of the money.

This scene of the finding did not play so well as we had thought. Some things have better success in the practising than in the playing. Martin as the Monk did what he could, hunting here and there, holding up the purse triumphantly when found, while Straw, still in his demon mask, cowered back against the wall. Despite this there was a lack of force and all of us felt it. It may be that what happened next was due to our sense of this lack and our wish to make it good. Or perhaps it was because Martin had to conceal the purse in his sleeve until it was found, there being nowhere else in that bare place to conceal it. It was Stephen as the Monk's servant that began it, and this too in a way was surprising because, though truculent in debating, he was the one least likely to undermine the form of the play once this had been agreed on. Being shouted at for a fool may have rankled in his mind, though he never admitted this. When he spoke it was in rhyme, and so it was with all of us, and the rhymes came easily, unhesitating, unforced — we were possessed.

Martin was holding up the purse in triumph. Stephen was making the gesture of indication towards it, which is done with the right arm held at fullest extent. Straw was cowering back in guilt and fear. I had come from behind the curtain in order to make a homily to the people on the theme of Divine Justice.

Tobias came behind me in the mask of Pieta, wringing his hands and lamenting. The effigy of Thomas Wells lay before us on the wet cobbles, his white mask looking towards the people with no expression either of good or bad. Suddenly, without any sign or warning, Stephen lowered his arm, took two steps towards the people and spoke:

'Gentles, after deed so fell Why not hide the money well?'

At once, as if this had been a speech awaited, Straw straightened himself and with a rapid gesture removed his mask and showed a staring face below it:

'Who knows the riddle, he can tell. What brought the Monk to that place?'

Pieta, behind me, had ceased lamenting. After a moment he spoke and I heard the tremor in his voice and knew from the clearer tone that he too had removed his mask:

'For he saw the woman's face.'

Without any previous agreement among us and without being properly aware of how it was managed, we were all five of us now standing side by side facing the people, and the effigy of the boy lay there before us. And I felt a quaking within me and overcame it and spoke:

'In cold her face she would not bare

In winter cold a hood we wear...'

I saw the ranks of faces before me and the faces looking from the gallery above. My sight was blurred, all these faces ran together, there was noise from the people. Martin was in the midst of us with two on either side. He raised the purse once again and held it high in that same gesture of triumph. But there was a difference now and the difference was terrible. There was blasphemy in it. He played it like the supreme moment of the Mass, holding up the black purse with both hands at the fullest reach of his arms as if it were the Host, and he shouted against the muttering of the people:

'They only search who hope to find, Where it lay was in my mind ...'

We had meant to close with a tableau of the execution, but it was clear now to all of us that we had reached the end of the Play of Thomas Wells. We waited a moment longer, then went all together and passed behind the curtain and stood there in silence. The faces of my companions were affrighted, as if they had seen some vision or woken from a dream of misfortune, and I supposed mine to be the same. The curtain that concealed us, though threadbare enough, was a protection. None came to offer us harm. Gradually the noise grew less as the people left the yard. Still we stood there, without moving or speaking. This trance was broken by Margaret, who came with the money. We had taken ten shillings and sixpence halfpenny, more than any could remember taking for a single performance ever before.

It was money that drew us on, or so at least it seemed then. I remember how we stood there and gaped at it. Time has gone by, it is difficult now to be sure whether it was the money or some other force that used the money as a lure. If the Powers contended for our souls that day, it might have seemed that Avaritia had the victory in the battle for us as well as for the woman. But it was the winter season, there were still some days of journeying on bad roads, with a likelihood of starving in good earnest. It is not surprising that the money was a lure to us. In any case, I dare to say that we were not different in this from the Monk, the Lord's confessor, Simon Damian, as we later found to be his name - he in whose person Martin held up the purse of money as if it were the Heavenly Host at that strange ending of our play. For why was he there, at the castle, in attendance on the family of de Guise, but to secure grants and privileges for his Order, quite undeserved as the monks no longer obey the precepts of their Rule, which commands absence of private property, abstinence from butcher's meat, steady manual labour and strict confinement within the monastic precincts. They own horse and hound and weapons, they eat their fill of beef and mutton, their servants do the work in the fields, they go abroad on business, like this one. Strange to think that, as also with Brendan, I never saw his living face ...