Morality Play (2 page)

'Wait,' I said. 'Let me travel with you. I am not big but I am strong enough, I could help with the scaffolding and the boards when you put up a booth. I write a good hand, I could copy parts and prompt the players.'

Yes, the proposal came from me, the first idea, but I had no thought in the beginning of taking part in their plays, of practising their shameful trade,
artem illam ignominiosam,
forbidden to us by Holy Church. My only thought was to travel with them and this because of the badge the leader wore, which meant that the company belonged to a lord and had the lord's letter of licence and would not be set in the stocks or whipped for vagabonds as happens to those accounted fugitives or masterless men and this has also befallen men in Holy Orders who have no warrant from their Bishop. Also present to my mind was the wronged husband: if he came after me I would find safety in numbers. But I swear it was never in my thought to take the dead man's place. Had I but known the toils of evil this wayside death would lead us into, I would have gone my way with no further syllable and all the haste I could summon.

As yet there had been no answer, though I heard some laughter among them. 'I can hear confessions,' I said. 'I can expound the Scriptures. It is true I have no benefice and I am outside my diocese, but I can still perform the office. I would not ask for wages, only the food and lodging we chance on as we go.'

'Of your expounding we have no need,' the master-player said. 'No more than of your Latin. As for putting up a booth, men will come forward if help is needed and ask nothing but a quart of ale and a ha'p'orth of cheese and that is less expense than an extra belly to fill all along the road.'

But he was looking at me in a different way now, on his face had appeared an expression of considering. He had heard the need in my voice, fear too perhaps - a solitary man is prey to fear, unless the solitude be embraced for Christ. 'A priest can usually sing,' he said. 'Have you a voice for singing?'

'Why, yes,' I said, in some wonder - I did not see yet where he was coming to. And it was the truth, I have been commended for my voice. It is not of great strength but clear and sweet of tone. Along the way, when my money was all spent, I had used it sometimes for profane purposes; out of my need I had sung in taverns and sometimes I had been pelted, but more often fed and given space to sleep.

'Brendan was a marvel in song,' he said. 'He outdid the nightingale.'

'He would sing like an angel,' the flax-haired one said, with that strange, infirm eagerness of expression that belonged to him. 'He would plant his feet and raise his head; it was as if a tree sang with its leaves.'

'His song was like a rope of silk,' Stephen said. His voice was deep and had a drinker's hoarseness in it.

This was the first instance I noted of a habit common with them, of speaking with one voice like a chorus, but yet in turn, so it resembled a scale in music. They had changed, they were sharing with me their knowledge of the dead man. But I could not easily think of sweet airs coming from the throat that was Brendan's now, nor of that poor crooked mouth moving with song. His face was turned to hog's lard in that cold weather. 'How did he come to his end?' I asked.

'Yesterday, walking behind the cart, on a sudden he cried out and fell down,' the fourth man said, speaking now for the first time. This one was older, scant-haired and long-jawed, with bright blue eyes. 'He could not get up, he had to be lifted,' he said.

'From that time he could not speak,' the boy said. 'He had to be taken on the cart.'

'Sounds he could make but no words,' the leader said. 'He was ready of speech before and full of jokes.' He glanced at me and there was a fleeting horror in this glance. I saw that for him the dumbness that had befallen Brendan, singer and joker, was a thing of nightmare. 'Sing something, you,' he bade me.

I should not have obeyed because he had something in mind for me not admissible and I suspected it by now. Playing on a public stage is forbidden to us by Council, first at Exeter and then at Chester, also by edict of our Father in Christ Boniface the Eighth, and so I knew I was placing myself in danger of degradation. But I was hungry and sick at heart.

'Do you want a love-song,' I said, 'or a song of good works?'

'A love-song, a love-song,' Stephen said. 'The Devil take good works.' He said this without smiling. In all the time I was with them I only once saw him smile.

'Good works he will not take, brother, but he will take the rash of speech,' the old one said. The dog sat close to him and listened to his every word. He clapped his hands at me. 'Come, sing,' he said.

So I gave them 'Lenten is come with love to town', singing alone in the clearing, unaccompanied at first, then the boy played the melody along with me on a reed pipe that he took from somewhere about him.

At the end of it the leader nodded his head. Then he turned and went to the cart and found there two rag balls such as jugglers use, one red, one white, and he called me to catch and flung the red one, speaking and throwing at the same moment almost, and I caught it in my right hand and he threw the white one to the other side, high this time and a little wide so I had to take two steps, and this second ball also I caught and held. Someone behind blocked my left heel while I was still off balance and I stumbled but I did not fall.

He nodded once again and said to the others, not looking at me, 'He is quick enough and neat in movement and he sees well to both sides and steps clean. The voice is good enough. He will not be another Brendan, but with teaching he might do.'

This praise, though far from plenteous, gave me pleasure and that is to my shame. But there was something in him, some power of spirit, that made me want to please him. Perhaps, it occurs to me now, it was no more than the intensity of his wish. Men are distinguished by the power of their wanting. What this one wanted became his province and his meal, he governed it and fed on it from the first moment of desire. Besides, with the perversity of our nature, being tested had made me more desire to succeed, though knowing the enterprise to be sinful.

He looked at them now and smiled a little, a smile that made his face young. 'We took Margaret because Stephen wanted her, and a stray dog for Tobias. Why not a runaway priest who may be of use to us all?'

He was the leader but he needed still to persuade them. As I was to learn, everything touching their life as players was debated among them on equal terms.

'He will be known by the tonsure,' Stephen said. The woman was his, she was not for them all as I had first thought. I knew it by the way she kept close and listened to his words. But she had eyes for me too, mocking but not altogether so, and I resolved there and then that if taken into the company I would not return these looks, so avoiding sin. Besides Stephen was dangerous. 'He will be known for a runaway,' he said now, turning his dark face from one to another of them.

'Yes,' the one in the white robe said, 'he is travelling without licence or he would not seek to join us. He can be held in any parish, and then they would close down our play.'

'A hat, let him wear a hat,' the old one said. He had been seeming to take no notice of the talk, pushing at the dog in play, much to the brute's delight. 'His thatch will grow soon enough,' he said. 'Not like mine.' He grinned to reveal a paucity of teeth and passed a hand over his scant grey hair and weathered scalp. 'He is a likely man for a player, priest or no,' he said. 'He wants to be of our company, so much is written on his face. And we are in need of a sixth, now that poor Brendan is gone.'

'In sore need, that is the heart of the matter,' the leader said. 'We have practised the Play of Adam and we begin with that as all have agreed, and we cannot do it without six, and three parts doubling. This man came upon us at the bidding of a thought, as do the Virtues and Vices that contend in a Morality. He came as Brendan died and we will do best to profit from it. That is my word as master-player of this company by our lord's order. And so will we do, with your consent, good people.'

There was silence among them for a short while, then each in turn nodded as the leader looked at him. The woman he did not look at. When all had signified assent he turned back to me and asked me my name and I gave it, Nicholas Barber, and he gave me his, Martin Ball, and he told me how the others were named. The fair-haired one was known only as Straw, and they called the boy Springer, though whether these were their true names I do not know. The old one was Tobias. The woman said her name was Margaret Cornwall.

So with a song and a game of catch that children might play I was elected a member of this company of goliards, and so I accepted the election. Had I refused, had I left them in the clearing there, the dead Brendan in the midst with all his sins upon him, I might have now been a sub-deacon again, with all privileges restored, back among my books in the Cathedral library. However that may be, the terrors that come to me still at night I would without doubt have been spared.

CHAPTER TWO

I
t is the weakness of my case that I can seek pardon only by revealing the pass I had come to.

But this in turn was the result of my own folly and sin. And so I seek indulgence for a fault by revealing faults anterior to it. And there are further faults anterior to those. It is a series to which I see no end, it goes back to my mother's womb.

First there was the shame, to cause distress to my Bishop, who had given me the tonsure, who had always treated me like a father, because this was not the first time I had left without permission but the third, and always in the Maytime of the year at the stirring of the blood. This time the reason was different but the stirring was the same; I had been sent to act as secretary to Sir Robert de Brian, a noble knight and generous in his benefactions but not of discerning taste in letters and in short a very vile poet who set me to transcribing his voluminous verses and as fast as I copied them he would bring others. All this I endured. But then in addition he set me the task of transcribing Pilato's long-winded version of Homer. The birds were singing with full throats, the hawthorn was breaking into flower. I made up my pack and walked out of his house. It was December when I met the players, the flowers of spring were long withered. Misfortunes had come to me. I had lost the holy relic that I had kept for several years and bought from a clerk newly come from

Rome, a piece of the sail of St Peter's boat. I lost it at dice. And then, that same morning that I met them, I had lost my good cloak, leaving it behind in my coward's haste. I was chilled to the bone when I came upon them and hungry, and discouraged by these blows of fate. I wanted to be in community again, no longer alone. The community of the players offered shelter to me, though they were poor and half-starved themselves. This was my true reason. The badge of livery was only an argument I used for myself.

To make my transformation complete I had to wear Brendan's stained and malodorous jerkin and tunic and he had to be dressed in my clerical habit, there being no alternative to this exchange except the outlandish scraps of costume on the cart. It was the woman who undressed Brendan and put my habit on him. The others would not do it, nor would they watch it done, though men for whom travesty was common enough. But I watched, and she was deft and tender with him and there was kindness in her face.

When it was finished Brendan lay in his priest's garb, a man who in life had been impious and full of profane jest. And there stood I in the garb of a dead player. But now an argument sprang up among us. Martin was for taking the dead man with us on the cart. 'Brendan died unshriven,' he said. 'We must bury him in hallowed ground.'

'The horse is slow enough as it is,' Stephen said. 'The roads are bad and there is snow coming. We have lost time already, with the broken wheel. We are sent to Durham for Christmas to play there before our lady's cousin. We cannot fail in it and still keep favour. The first day of Christmas is- eight days from this one. By my reckoning we are still five days' journey from Durham. Shall we travel with a dead man for five days?'

'The priest will ask for money,' Straw said. He looked round at our faces with that strange, febrile eagerness of expression. As I was to learn, he never stayed long in one state of mind but was led always by some vein of fancy all his own, gloomy and exuberant by turns. 'We can bury him in the forest,' he said. 'Here in the dark wood. Brendan will sleep well here.'

'The dead sleep well enough anywhere,' Margaret said. She looked at me and there was provocation in her look but no malice. 'Our priestling can say the words over him,' she said.

'Margaret has no voice in this,' Martin said. 'She is not of the company.' He said these words directly to Stephen, whose woman she was, and I heard - and surely the others did also - the tremor in his voice of feeling barely held in check. His right hand was clenched and the knuckles had whitened. 'You would leave him here?' he said. For me, who did not know him then, this passion was strangely sudden and strong, as if not only his plan for Brendan was being questioned but with it some cherished vision of the world.

No one answered at once, such was the fierceness in him. I think Stephen was making to answer but Martin spoke again, in a voice that had deepened. 'He was like all of us,' he said. 'While he lived he never sat at his own hearth or ate at his own table. Pot and jar he needs no longer, but he will have a home properly made in the earth for him, deep enough, and a roof over his head at last.'

'Brendan had his habits, he would not have denied it himself, and too much ale was one of them,' Tobias said. 'But drunk or sober he played the Devil's Fool better than anyone you ever saw.'

'To make his grave what would you use?' There was contempt now in Martin's voice. 'Adam's spade and Eve's rake that are made of wire and lath-wood? The ground is hard with the frosts of these last days. We will labour till dark to make a grave and it will not be deep enough to keep the crows from picking his eyes.'