The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling by Peter Ackroyd (40 page)

‘I speak nothing but the truth. I am not proud. We have been taught as Christians to hate the sin of pride. And if you want to hear another truth, then I will tell you this. You have lied. You have said that our rulers have granted you the power of life and death. You can take away only the mortal life. You have no other jurisdiction. So you can be the minister of death. But that is all.’

‘Enough of your impudence,’ he said. ‘Make sacrifice to Jupiter. Then be on your way. I do not care what you say about me. I can endure that like a philosopher. But there is one thing I will not permit. I cannot allow you to speak ill of our native gods.’

‘Oh foolish man,’ she replied. ‘You have said nothing to me that has not been vain and ill-considered. You are an incompetent officer and a presumptuous judge. You might as well be blind, for all the good your eyes are. Can’t you tell that this idol is made of stone? You have announced that a piece of granite is a god. Put your hand on it. If you cannot see it, taste it. Can’t you tell? It is made of stone. It is a shame that all the people will be laughing at you for your foolishness. It is known that the Lord God is in the heavens. Anyone can tell that these stone images are of no use or value. Do you not see that they have no purpose? They are cold. They are lifeless.’

Her words enraged Almachius. He ordered his officers to take her back to her house, and there burn her to death. ‘Bathe her in flame,’ he said. ‘Clean her.’ They followed his orders literally. They placed her in a bath, pinioned her, and then lit great fires beneath her that were fed with logs night and day.

All that night, and for most of the next day, she felt no pain; she remained quite cool, and did not burn. There was not a drop of sweat upon her forehead. Yet she was still destined to die in that bath. Almachius, frustrated of his purpose, sent one of his servants to slay her as she lay there.

He took out his sword and three times he tried to behead her. But this torturer did not succeed. He could not take the head from the body. It was forbidden by law to aim a fourth stroke at a victim, and so with drawn sword he hesitated. He dared not break the law.

So he left her in the bath half dead, her neck badly mangled, and went on his way. The Christian followers of Cecilia then flocked to her house. They brought sheets and towels with them to staunch the flow of her blood. She endured this torment for three days, during which time she spoke and preached to them all.

She bestowed her worldly goods upon them, and blessed them. She left them in the keeping of Pope Urban himself, to whom she spoke these words. ‘I have asked this of God Almighty. I have begged Him to give me three days so that I might commend the souls of these people to your care. And I ask you to turn my house into a church.’ Then she died.

Pope Urban removed the body under cover of darkness and buried it at night in the catacombs with the other saints. Then he consecrated her house, baptizing it as the Church of Saint Cecilia. It stands to this day, a holy place devoted to the honour of Christ and of the saint herself.

Heere is ended the Seconde Nonnes Tale

The Prologe of the Chanouns Yemannes Tale

We had ridden scarcely five miles after we had heard the tale of Saint Cecilia when we came to the hamlet of Blean, a few miles from Canterbury. Just as we entered the forest there we were overtaken by a man dressed in black, with a white surplice showing beneath his gown. His mount, a dapple grey, was so soaked in sweat that we could scarcely credit it. It was clear that he had been riding hard for some miles. The poor horse could hardly go any further; its collar was dripping wet, and its flanks were flecked with foam. His rider travelled light, however, with only a bag of two pouches fastened to his saddle. It was a warm spring, after all. I wondered who this man in black might be, until I noticed that his hood and cloak were sewn together. I knew at once that he was a canon of the Church. His hat hung down his back, from a cord, and he had put a burdock leaf under his hood to keep his head cool and to prevent the sweat from running down his face. He had galloped fast and furiously. It was extraordinary to see the sweat on him; he held as much liquid as a distillery.

When he came up to us he cried out in a loud voice, ‘God save you all! I have come all this way for your sake. I rode as fast as I could to catch up with you. Do you mind if I join you?’

His servant now rode up behind him. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I saw you leave the inn early this morning, and I told my master here all about you. You seemed such a jolly crowd. So he was determined to ride with you. He likes a bit of fun.’

‘I’m glad you told him,’ the Host replied to the boy. ‘It looks as if your master is a clever man. Witty, too. And I bet he has a few stories to keep us all amused. Am I right?’

‘Stories? He has got a million of them. He is very entertaining, if you know what I mean. I will tell you something else. He is skilled in many ways. He has many talents. He has undertaken work of great importance, too, which no one else could manage. Unless they learned from him how to do it. He may look ordinary enough, but it will profit you to get to know him. I bet you anything that you will gain from acquaintance with him. He is a very wise man. He is one of the best.’

‘Tell me this. Is he a priest or a scholar? What kind of man is he?’

‘He is more than just a priest, sir. I will tell you, in a few words, what kind of art he practises. I cannot let you know everything, even though I do work as his assistant. But I can tell you this about his business. He is a man of such subtlety and skill that he could turn all this ground on which we are riding – the whole route, from Southwark to Canterbury – into gold and silver. I am not exaggerating.’

‘Good God!’ Harry Bailey was astounded. ‘That is a marvel, to be sure. But since your master is such a wise man, and so worthy of honour, can you explain why he is wearing such a tatty old gown? It is dirty and full of holes. It isn’t worth a penny. Where is his self-respect? According to you, he is worth a lot of money. If he can turn this road to gold and silver, why does he not buy a better gown? Tell me the answer.’

‘Why are you asking me that, sir? As God is my witness, he will never prosper. Don’t mention this to anyone, by the way. It is a secret between you and me. The problem is that he is too clever for his own good. When you have too much of a good thing, you can overreach yourself. That is his case, I believe. My master has misused his great gifts. It is a cause of grief to me, I can assure you. God help him. That is all I can say.’

‘Never mind that,’ Harry replied. ‘Tell me more about this work of his. Since you know all about him, you must also know his secrets. I assume that he is shrewd as well as wily. So tell me everything. Where do you both live?’

‘We dwell beyond the walls of a town, in an area full of cellars and blind alleys. It is the haunt of thieves and robbers who must conceal themselves. It is a place for those who dare not show their face by day. That is where we live.’

‘Tell me another thing,’ our Host asked him. ‘Why is your face so discoloured?’

‘God has not favoured it, I admit. I am so used to blowing into the fire that the flames have changed my colour, I suppose. I am not one to preen myself in front of a mirror. I get on with my work, and try my hand at alchemy. But we are always making mistakes. We miscalculate the amount of heat, for example. We can never get to the end of the experiment, and fail somewhere along the way. But that’s no problem. There are plenty of gullible people who will give us a pound of gold – or ten pounds, or twelve pounds – on the understanding that we will be able to double the amount. I know that this may be a false promise, but we still have faith in the technique. We still have hope. The trouble is that the science is so difficult to master. Although we have sworn the contrary to our customers – our patrons, I should say – we never get it quite right. I would not be at all surprised if we became beggars.’

While this young Yeoman was talking, his master came close and listened carefully to everything he said. This Canon, dressed in black, was wary and distrustful of others. Cato has taught us that the guilty man always believes that he is the object of suspicion. That is why the master drew so close to the servant. He wanted to hear everything. Then he interrupted the boy. ‘Shut your mouth,’ he said. ‘Don’t say another word. Otherwise, you will regret it. How dare you slander me in the company of these strangers, and blab all my secrets?’

‘Carry on, young man,’ Harry Bailey said. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him or his threats.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the boy replied, ‘I don’t intend to.’

When the Canon realized that all his threats were useless, he fled in sorrow and in shame.

‘Ah,’ his Yeoman said, ‘now we can have some fun. I will tell you everything I know. He has run away, has he? I hope he goes to the devil. I don’t want to have anything else to do with him, I can promise you that. Not for all the money in the world. He was the one who led me into the false game. Yet I never thought of it as a game. I was deadly serious, believe me, in its pursuit. I laboured. I sweated. I worried. I cried. Yet, for all that, I could never leave it alone. I wish to God that I had the brains to tell you everything there is to know about alchemy. I can only explain a small part of the art. Now that my master has gone, I will do my best. So…’

Heere endeth the Prologe of the Chanounes Yemannes Tale

Heere bigynneth the Chanouns Yeman his Tale

I have lived with this Canon for seven years, but I am nowhere near to understanding the secret. I have lost everything I owned, as have many others. Once upon a time I was clean, cheerful and well dressed. Can you believe it? I now use an old sock as my hat! I used to be plump and ruddy-cheeked. Now I am thin and sallow. I am losing my eyesight through all the hard work. Stay away from alchemy at all costs. Where is the benefit in trying to transmute metals? The sliding science has left me penniless and in despair. Nothing good has come of it. I have borrowed so much gold that I will never be able to repay my debts. Let me stand as a warning to everyone else, like a wolf’s head. If anyone were foolish enough to practise alchemy, it will prove to be his undoing. He will not succeed. He will empty his purse. He will addle his wits. But there is worse. As soon as he has lost all of his money, through his stupidity, he will try to persuade others to follow his example and try their hand at the black art. ‘Misery loves company.’ That is the proverb, is it not? Well, enough said. Now I will tell you all about our work.

When we practise in our laboratory we look very wise and learned; we use high terms and rarefied phrases to explain our mysterious labours. Then I blow upon the coals until there is no breath left in my body. Is there any need to explain the exact proportions of the dark materials that we use? There is always the silver, of course. We would normally put in five or six ounces of it. We compound this with arsenic, with burned bones and iron filings. Then we grind the mixture to a powder, and put it in a little earthenware pot. Add a little salt, and some paper. Place a sheet of glass over the pot, sealing glass and vessel with some clay so that no air will escape from it. We can change and moderate the fire at will. Then begins the hard labour, the watching and the calculating. We are supposed to purify, to blend and to disperse all of the ingredients. We use quicksilver, too, which is the name for unrefined mercury. But for all our tricks and devices we never got anywhere. We used lead and arsenic, ground together with a marble pestle in a marble mortar. It made no difference. There was no result. We boiled volatile spirits – again to no effect. We experimented with the residue left at the bottom of the flask. But it did no good. Our labour was in vain. All the money we spent was lost, too.

There are many other aspects of the art of alchemy. I cannot tell you them in the correct order – I am not that learned – but I will mention them as they come to me. I will not be able to put them in their proper categories, of course. Let me see. There is red clay known as Armenian clay, although it does not come from Armenia. There are green verdigris and white borax. Then there are the various vessels that we use for our distillation and purification, some made of clay and some made of glass. We have flasks and retorts, phials and tubes, crucibles and alembics. There is no need to mention all of them. They were expensive enough, but they were all useless. Have I mentioned the red waters or the gallstones of a bull? Then there is sal ammoniac. And the arsenic. And the brimstone. Do you find it confusing? I could go on all day about the various herbs we use. There is agrimony, which smells so sweet; there is valerian, and there is moonwort.

So we toiled over the coals and crucibles all day and all night, with the lamps burning around us. The furnace was at full blast, and we heated the liquids to their various boiling points. We used unslaked lime as a caustic, as well as chalk and the whites of eggs; we had powder ground out of ashes and dog shit, piss and clay; we made fires out of wood and out of charcoal; we sprinkled purified salt and vitriol, and then mixed in alum and brewer’s yeast, the hairs of men and of horses, the grease of a sow and the sweat of a red-haired child. Sometimes the amalgam turned yellow, and sometimes silver white. We would fuse and ferment, diffuse and distil.

Let me explain to you the nature of the four spirits and the seven bodies, as my master taught them to me. The first spirit is mercury or quicksilver and the second is orpiment of golden hue; the third spirit is sal ammoniac, the moisture of volcanoes, and the fourth is brimstone. The seven bodies are as follows. The sun is gold, and silver is the moon; Mars is iron and Mercury, of course, is quicksilver; Saturn is lead and Jupiter is tin. The seventh, Venus herself, is copper.

Whoever practises this cursed art is doomed to failure and ruin. He will sell all his goods and come to no good. There can be no doubt that he will lose everything. So come forward, budding alchemists, and try your luck. If you have money to burn, then stoke up the chemical fires. Do you think that it is an easy craft to learn? Not so. You can be a priest or canon, monk or friar – I promise that you will not have scholarship enough. You can study all the texts, night and day, and still go nowhere. The mystery is too deep. For a layman, it is impossible to unravel. It makes no difference whether he is learned or not, he will fail in either case. Alchemy is too difficult.

Oh, I forgot to mention the acids we use, with the metals and oils. They help in the hardening or softening of the materials. They can also be used to cleanse and purify – you need more than a book to understand these things. No more words now. I have named things that should not be named. I have said enough to raise a fiend, the ugliest in hell.

The object of our quest is the philosopher’s stone, the magic elixir. If we possessed that, we would be safe from sorrow. But our labours have proved worthless. I swear to God that, for all our craft and care, the stone will not come to us. The loss of time and money has brought us close to madness. But still there is that hope, that yearning, which keeps us searching for the key. If we have that, we have everything. So you see that the craving can never be satisfied. It is a sharp spur, always pressing us onward. We will never let go, we will never slacken. The quest is lifelong. In hope of future glory, we are willing to forsake everything else. We can never turn our backs on the metals and the crucibles. Although we may only have a torn sheet to cover us at night, and a rough coat to wear by day, we will still spend everything we have on the pursuit of the elixir.

These alchemists smell of sulphur and of brimstone. Wherever they go, they stink like goats. Their odour is so hot and rancid that you can spot them from a mile away. So you can always recognize them from their smell and from their threadbare clothes. If anyone asks them privately why they look so shabby, they have a simple reply. If anyone knew our identities, they say, we would be killed for our secrets. Hush hush. So they deceive the innocent.

Well, enough of this. I will get on with my story. Before we place the pot upon the fire, my master tempers the various metals. Only he can do this – now that he has gone, I can speak freely – and only he knows all the virtues of the lead and silver. He has a fine reputation among the cognoscenti, believe me, although there have been many times when he has come to grief. How does that happen? There are occasions, for example, when the pot explodes or falls to pieces. These metals are so volatile and violent that they can pierce the walls. We have to strengthen the stones with lime and mortar. They sink through the floorboards, or they fly up to the ceiling. Sometimes they just lie scattered on the floor. The expense is terrible. I have never seen the devil, but I am sure that he is somewhere in that room with us. There could not be more violence, or anger, or strife, or sorrow, in hell itself.

When the pot exploded everyone blamed everyone else. Everyone started to fight. Some said that the pot was left on the fire for too long. Some said that the bellows were not strong enough. Then everyone looked at me, because that is my department. ‘Not true,’ said a third. ‘The metals were not mixed correctly.’ ‘Bollocks,’ said a fourth. ‘Stop squabbling and listen to me. The fire should have been kindled from logs of beech, not logs of oak. That is the reason.’ I could never tell who was right or wrong. I only know that the argument went on and on.

‘Enough,’ said our master. ‘What is past cure is past care. I will be more vigilant next time. I am sure that the pot was cracked. That was the cause of the trouble. Well, let it go. Don’t get depressed about it. Cheer up. It’s not the end of the world, is it?’

Then all the debris was swept up in a heap. We put some canvas sheeting on the floor, and piled the debris on to it. Then we picked through the pieces of metal and chemicals, looking for anything we might retrieve. ‘Look,’ one of our number said, ‘there is some of the metal. It is not intact, but we can still use it again. Things may have turned out badly this time, but we will succeed in the end. We have to trust our luck. No merchant is prosperous all the time. There will be occasions when he loses his cargo at sea, and there will be occasions when he sees it safely landed.’

‘All right,’ our master said, ‘you have made your point. I will make sure that everything is done properly next time. If I am wrong, then lay the blame on me. There was something the matter, I know that much.’

Then the argument began again. One man said that the fire was too hot, for example. Hot or cold, it never worked. We never got the desired result, however hard we tried. Still we carried on with the madness. We were lunatic with greed and desire. When we were all together, we looked on one another as Solomon the Wise. Have you heard this proverb – ‘All that glisters is not gold’? Not every apple is good for eating, however sweet it looks. So it was with us. The greatest fool among us was deemed to be the wisest. The most honest and honoured was in fact the biggest thief. You will learn the truth of this before I leave your company. Just listen to my tale.