Pilgrimage of Death

by Sally Spencer

  The host was beginning to look uncomfortable. He had already made one mistake that day - when he had chosen the doctor of medicine to tell the first tale - and he had no doubt been hoping that the pardoner would deliver a story which would redeem his own reputation.

  ‘Indeed, when God handed out virtue, I was probably behind the celestial throne servicing one of his seraphim,’ the pardoner continued.

  ‘Get to the point,’ growled the host.

  ‘But that is the point,’ the pardoner said, unconcerned by the host’s tone. ‘You must know me for what I truly am, or my tale will lack the power it would otherwise have had.’

  ‘I do not understand that,’ the host grumbled.

  ‘Of course you do not,’ the pardoner agreed. ‘But you will, by the time have finished. Believe me, then, when I say that I am a man without scruple. That I am driven solely by avarice. But do not make the mistake of believing that is how I appear to those who see me standing in the pulpit.’

  The leper had almost drawn level with us. Now, for the first time, I found myself thinking like you, reader, and wondering if he were the same leper as the one who had acted so suspiciously in Rochester.

  He was moving slowly and uncertainly, shuffling, as lepers will, yet I could not help but think that his gait was more an imitation than a physical necessity. He was not looking around him, as the leper in Dartford had, either, but that did rule him out as far as I was concerned, for intelligent men learn by their mistakes - and having seen how he had aroused my suspicions the last time we met, he would have taken considerable pains to improve on his previous performance.

  There was a pothole in the road which – luck being on my side for once - the leper did not see, and putting his foot in it he lurched forward. It only took him a second to correct himself, and only took me a second to decide he was no real leper at all – for a man with rotting limbs could not possibly have saved himself with such dexterity. Besides, as he had fallen forward, his rough gown had ridden up slightly, and I had seen that on his feet he was wearing leather riding boots.

  I stood up and walked towards the road. I had not gone more than three or four paces when I felt the hand on my arm, restraining me.

  ‘Where, in God’s name, do you think you are going, you fool?’ the franklin demanded in an urgent whisper, as his grip on my arm tightened.

  ‘Let go of me,’ I said, keeping my voice as low as his. ‘There is something important I need to do.’

  ‘What could be more important than listening to what the pardoner has to say?’ the franklin countered.

  ‘There is a leper…’ I began.

  ‘What leper?’

  What leper indeed? When I looked at the road again, there was no sign of him, so he had either vanished into thin air or – more likely and more prosaically – had slipped into the village while my attention had been distracted.

  ‘You and I must both listen carefully to the pardoner’s tale,’ the franklin told me.

  ‘Why? What purpose will that serve?’

  ‘We will have an answer to that question when we have heard the tale itself,’ the franklin said, enigmatically.

  The pardoner had finished his ale and had stood up.

  ‘I say again, you must not imagine that my congregations see me through the same eyes as you do,’ he repeated. ‘Far from it, to the fools who come to hear me preach, I am indeed a noble ecclesiast.’

  ‘Is that so?’ asked the host.

  ‘It is indeed,’ the pardoner replied, walking towards his horse. ‘I may well be a vicious creature myself, but there is not another man alive who can tell a moral tale as well as I can.’

  ‘I will say this for you, pardoner,’ the host replied sourly. ‘Of all the men that I have ever met in my life, you are certainly the one least bound and constricted by modesty.’

  ‘Modesty is a virtue best cherished by those who do not know their own worth, nor the worth of others,’ the pardoner told him. ‘Save your censure until I have finished my tale, good host, for though you think me no more than a boastful fool now, you will certainly be forced to change your opinion when you have heard what I have to say.’

  ‘My story is of three rioters who lived in Flanders,’ the pardoner said, as we rode away from the inn. ‘They were the very worst of a bad breed. They gambled, they drank, they consorted with prostitutes of the lowest kind. There was not one sin they would not contemplate, nor yet any sin they failed to re-visit. Daily they made a mockery of Christ’s noble sacrifice. Yea, and laughed at the knowledge that they tore at His flesh by their very actions, just as His persecutors had done by their deeds do very long ago.’

  A wonderful - frightening - thing was happening. As he told his tale, the pardoner’s face began to change, so that soon all the arrogance and bravado were gone, and in their place was the expression of man who suffered with his saviour – who felt Christ’s pain as if it were his own.

  ‘One Sunday morning, when all good men and true were in church, these rioters sat on a bench, dead drunk’ the pardoner continued. ‘And as they sat, they saw a funeral pass by. They asked the name of the man going to his grave, and were told that he was a friend of theirs, and that he had been killed by an infamous robber called Death, who had taken many lives in that area. Fuelled by drunken rage, they set off to find this Death - to do to him what he had done to their friend. They reached a stile, and there they met an old, old man who greeted them humbly. ‘What are you, but a decaying bag of flesh and bones?’ one of the rioters demanded of him. ‘How came you to live so long? Why do you not die now’?’

  The pardoner’s face twisted and contorted it until it became the face of the old man he had just described. And when he spoke again, it was in the old man’s cracked and broken voice.

  ‘“I am old because even though I have travelled as far as India, I have never found a youth who would exchange my life for his,’ the old man said, ‘and so the age is mine still. I am old because I wait on God’s good time, until Death is ready to take me. I cannot help my age, young sir, and you should treat me with some respect, as you would hope to be treated when you are old yourself – if that you should live so long. And now I will be on my way”.’

  The pardoner’s face changed shape once more, and became the arrogant visage of one the rioters.

  ‘“You will not go until I give you leave,’ the young rioter said. 'I heard you speak of Death just now. You are nothing but his spy, sent out to find fine young lads like us to be his victims. Tell us where he is, or we will kill you.” The old man shook his head. “Well, sir, if you must look for Death, I’ll tell you where he is,” he said. “Follow the crooked path to the grove. I left him sitting under a tree, and he will still be there, for he isn’t going to run away from young men like yourselves, however much you shout and rave”.’

  The rioter’s expression melted from the pardoner’s face, and he looked once more like the ‘noble ecclesiast’ he had boasted that he was when he was standing in the pulpit.

  ‘The young rioters rushed down the path to the tree, but under it they found not the robber, Death, but a huge pile of gold coins,’ the pardoner continued. ‘They could not believe their luck at first. They ran their hands through the pile. They threw the coins in the air. Then the wickedest of the rioters spoke. “Brothers,” he said, “with all this money we can live in luxury for the rest of our lives. Yet we dare not take it away now, for others would see us, accuse us of stealing it, and hang us. We had better wait until after dark before we take it away, but in the meantime why don’t we draw lots to see which of us goes into town to buy food and wine, while the other two stay here guarding our gold”?’

  Listening to the pardoner spin his tale with all the skill – and more - that he had claimed for himself before he had begun it, I felt a shiver run through my body. My discomfort was, in part, for the young rioters themselves, who had set out on a course which would inevitably lead to their downfall. Yet part of it was also for myself, as I began to
wonder if any of us are ever the masters of our fates we think ourselves to be.

  ‘The shortest straw was drawn by the youngest of the men, who set off straightway for the town,’ the pardoner continued. ‘And no sooner had he left than the wickedest of the rioters turned to his remaining friend and said, “You know you can trust me, brother, so listen to what I have to say. If we split the gold three ways, we would all have a fortune - but if you and I took half each, we would both have even more.” “But how is that possible?” the second rioter asked. “Our brother knows we have found the gold, and will want his share.” The wickedest rioter smiled. “There are two of us, and only one of him,” he said. “If we wished to, we could kill him easily.” And that was what they agreed to do.’

  I looked around at the other pilgrims. They too were listening, spell-bound, to what the pardoner had to say, and I realised that, as strong as the tale was in its own right, it carried even more force for being delivered by a man from whom they had only expected cant and hypocrisy.

  ‘The youngest rioter, on his way to the town, imagined having all the gold for himself alone,’ the pardoner told us, ‘not knowing, as all good Christians should, that on the back of such thoughts the Devil finds an easy ride. “Buy poison!” the fiend whispered in his ear. The young man did as Satan bid him, buying from the apothecary a poison so strong that it would cause the death of any living thing in great agony. Next he bought three flagons of wine, and poisoned two, leaving the last for himself to drink as he worked to shift the gold.’

  The pardoner stopped speaking and took a swig from the bottle of wine he carried in his saddlebag. Having drunk, he wiped his mouth and put the flask away, as if totally unaware that he still had an audience.

  ‘Tell us the rest!’ the knight said urgently.

  The pardoner looked surprised. ‘Why should I waste my breath doing that?’ he asked. ‘It all went just as it was intended to. The two rioters killed the third, then drank the poison themselves and died.’

  Yet even as he said the words, his slight frame began to swell again, and I was aware that, in his mind at least, he was once more back in the pulpit.

  ‘Oh what a sinful creature is a man,’ he said scathingly. ‘How he mocks God! How he tears again the flesh that died for him! Yet all is not lost. As foul as you are, your souls may yet be saved. I have in my satchel a stack of pardons from the Pope, through which, if you make an offering, I will sign your sins away.’ He relaxed again, and smiled. ‘And that, good friends, is how I preach.’

  There was not a pilgrim gathered there who had not been affected by his tale. The guildsmen sat open-mouthed. Tears trickled down the poor parson’s face. The reeve shook his head in pity, both for himself and his fellow man. Even I, who should have been the emotionless observer – and who understood what tricks the pardoner had used to create his effect - was touched.

  It was a triumph, yet the pardoner, far from feeling pleased, seemed almost fearful.

  ‘Good friends,’ he said, speaking again, ‘there is one point I did not mention in my tale. Have you considered what a happy chance it is for you to have a pardoner riding with you – a man who can renew your pardons day-by-day? For who knows what might happen as we travel from town to town? Your horse might throw you and break your neck, and should that happen, it were best not to be in a state of sin. And besides my pardons I have holy relics which, if you kiss them, will bring you towards a state of grace. So why not step forward, pay your fee, and receive my blessing.’ He looked around the pilgrims, and his eye settled on the host. ‘You, good host, you should come forward first, since you are the one most steeped in sin. Come, pay your groat and kiss my holy relics.’

  He had laboured long and hard to weave his spell – to enchant us all - and now, with a few words, he untangled it entirely.

  The host was one of the first pilgrims to break free.

  ‘Kiss your relics!’ he roared. ‘I’ll do no such thing. Why, you’d have me kissing a pair of your old breeches which you swore had once belonged to a saint, even though they were stained with your own shit. Kiss your relics! I’d rather cut off your balls and pickle them in a hog’s turd.’

  The pardoner’s face had turned as red as that of his friend, the summoner, and he seemed lost for words. And yet I thought I detected a hint of relief about his expression – almost as if he took pleasure in falling low in the regard of all the pilgrims again.

  The host was still as angry as only a man who now sees how he has been tricked, and made a fool of, can be angry.

  ‘Come closer, you tosspot,’ he challenged the pardoner. ‘Come closer so I can show you what I think of your holy relics.’

  The knight skilfully manoeuvred his horse between the two men. ‘Come, let’s have none of this,’ he said. ‘We should all be friends here. Kiss and make up, I pray you.’

  ‘I’d sooner kiss his shit-stained breeches,’ the host said.

  ‘Kiss and make up,’ the knight repeated, and this time it was spoken with the authority of a man well used to having his orders obeyed.

  And so they did.

  *

  The host had had time to cool off and now, as men will when they know they have been forced to back down, he began to act as if the incident between himself and the pardoner had never occurred.

  We must have another tale, he said. Would the good dame of Bath be willing to supply us with one?

  The good dame said she would, but before she began it I signalled to the franklin that we should pull a little away from the rest of pilgrims.

  ‘What possessed you to make the pardoner change his tale?’ I demanded of the landowner, when we were out of earshot of the others.

  ‘Is that what I did?’ the franklin asked innocently.

  ‘You know it was,’ I said. ‘He was all set to tell a dirty story, and that is just what he would have done had you not challenged him to tell a moral one. What was the reasoning behind your action?’

  The franklin hesitated for a moment, then he said, ‘If I am to trust anyone, I suppose that I must trust you.’

  ‘Trust me with what?’

  ‘We are here to catch a murderer,’ the franklin said, with the hint of a rebuke to his tone. ‘Or have you forgotten that is our purpose?’

  The rebuke was justly deserved I realised with some shock, for, caught up in the pardoner’s tale of the rioters as I had been, I had lost some sense of our purpose for a moment.

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Our best chance to apprehend this murderer is if he tries to kill again,’ the franklin explained.

  ‘That is true,’ I agreed.

  ‘And we must do our best to put opportunities in his way.’

  ‘I am not sure that I follow your logic,’ I confessed.

  ‘I sometimes think you are as stupid as the knight,’ the franklin said disdainfully. ‘Very well, I will explain it slowly. There was violence in the miller’s tale and violence in the prioress’s. Had I allowed the pardoner to tell the tale that he was intending to tell, there would have filth enough to fill a sewer, but perhaps no violence at all. I needed him to tell a tale of death, and it is rare for a moral tale to be without one.’

  ‘You have selected the pardoner as the murderer’s next victim,’ I said, astounded.

  ‘Why use a worthy man as bait, when a unworthy one is on hand?’ the franklin asked.

  ‘You expect the murderer to try to kill him this evening?’

  ‘Unless one of the other tales we hear this day shall concern death, too. But I will do all I can to prevent that,’ the franklin said confidently.

  I myself was not sure that his confidence was well placed – not convinced that he could order events so easily to suit his purpose.

  For had not the three rioters in the pardoner’s tale been sure that they held their fates in their own hands?

  And had they not learned, to their extreme cost, that this was not so?

  *

  If I had been inclined to disbelieve
the knight’s assertion that his son had lain with the wife of Bath, then her tale – or rather the long preamble to it - would have been more than enough to sway me to the old warrior’s way of thinking.

  Her patter (dubiously backed with many instances from the scriptures and other learned sources) purported to be no more than a justification of her decision to marry five times. In fact, it was nothing of the kind. As she described her marriages – omitting no details, not even those private ones of what occurred in the marriage bed itself – she was doing no more than attempting to market herself as goods which were both willing and available.

  It was when she had dealt with the story of her last husband, a lad of only twenty summers (she leered at the squire at this point) that she announced that she was ready to go on to her actual tale.

  ‘And not before time,’ the friar said. ‘I should have died of melancholy if I had been forced to hear more of your tedious husbands.’

  ‘Be quiet, you animal!’ screamed a voice. ‘Don’t spoil our fun with your grumbling, or you’ll answer to me.’

  The man who had spoken those words in the woman’s defence had been, incredibly enough, the summoner.

  What had caused him to be so uncharacteristically gallant, I found myself wondering.

  Could it be – could it possibly be - that he had taken the woman’s words to mean that she was so liberal with her favours that even someone like his scabby self could have a share in them?

  The friar looked far from pleased at the rebuke, for not only was it insulting, but it had been delivered by a man he considered to be far below him on the social scale.

  ‘I’ll be quiet now,’ he said, with a menacing edge to his tone. ‘But later, when it is my turn to speak, I’ll tell you good folk some tales about summoners which will amuse you.’