Morality Play

by Barry Unsworth

  The Devil's Fool, which part I had taken over from Brendan, should by tradition be a juggler too, but this I could not hope to learn in the time. What I could do I did, and practised hard to improve whenever there was opportunity, so as not to be a cause of disappointment to them, and in particular to Martin, who had been the most concerned in taking me and besides I was drawn to him. There was a tenderness of feeling in him. And he was constant, though with a constancy yoked always to his own will and purposes. I treasured his rare words of praise and uttered them again to myself as I walked with the cart or had my turn, the road being level, to ride for a while with Brendan, and sometimes also in the night when I lay awake. I set my heart on succeeding as a player.

  I learned from them that Robert Sandville, their patron lord, was away in France fighting for the King. They belonged to him and were bound to perform when required in the hall of his castle and at those times they received wages. But of late this had been rarely. Most of the year they were obliged to travel. They had Sandville's warrant but he gave them no money while they were outside his lands. Now, with her lord away, the lady had sent them as a Christmas gift to perform for her cousin in Durham, Sir William Percy. They were hoping for generous treatment there. 'If we live so long,' Stephen said darkly. We were footsore, and progress was slow in the hilly country north of York.

  Then once again Brendan decided our destiny. He had begun to smell foul the day before. Travelling on the cart with him one noticed it more, the jolting moved his body under its covering of red cloth and with these stirrings the smell of his dissolution came dank and unmistakable on the chill air. It grew stronger by the hour and we had no oil or essence we could use to cloak it. There was a fear that before we could reach Durham his corruption would be shed on to the costumes and curtain pieces that were needed for the play. Martin called a meeting to discuss the matter and we sat there at the edge of the road. It was raw weather with a thickening of mist in the air and our spirits were low.

  'It is bad luck to be bearing the stink of death,' Straw said. He looked gloomily at the heap below which Brendan lay. 'It will ruin our play,' he said. He was easily downcast and had a great fear of failing, more than the others.

  'It will not be easy to wash out,' Margaret said. 'Some of the costumes cannot be washed by any means. How would you wash the suit of Antichrist, that is made of horse's hair?'

  'It stinks enough already without help from Brendan,' Springer said. It was this garment that he had been wearing as a shawl against the cold. 'It stinks of vomit,' he said. And he got up and walked away from us in an ill-humour very uncommon with him.

  'Before ever we get there,' Tobias said, 'before ever we get to Durham it will be a cause of offence in the places where we stay.'

  'If you had listened to me,' Stephen said, 'we would not be facing such a difficult thing. It is not too late even now. We need take him no further. Let us leave Brendan here to leak into the ground, as he will do soon or late for all our pains.'

  'The question of what to do with Brendan was settled when we talked before,' Martin said. 'That he has now begun to stink can make no difference. We must have him buried sooner, that is all.'

  This was said with Martin's customary firmness but it solved nothing, and we were sitting there in silence when Springer returned. 'There is a town,' he said. 'Down there below us, not so very far.' And he gestured across to the other side of the road.

  We looked where he pointed but saw nothing. 'It is on the other side,' he said. In a body we went across. We followed Springer up a short slope of rising ground, grassland, cropped close by sheep. From the crest of this, looking westward, we saw a broad valley, well wooded, with a straight river flowing through it and on the far side of this the roofs of a town, wreathed in wood-smoke, with the tower and keep of a castle on a height beyond, the lower part veiled in mist but we saw the battlements and pennants flying. And it seemed to me that some errant light touched these roofs and also the turrets of the castle, like the light that had come when they sang over Brendan. There was a reflection, perhaps of armour, from somewhere high on the walls. We gazed for a time without speaking, at the shine of water through the bare willows, the shrouded houses beyond. And as we looked there came a sound of bells, very faint, like shudders in the air.

  There was a guidance in it, as there had been in my first coming upon them. What is accident to the ignorant the wise see as design. Springer had flung away from us in a petulance rare with him. He had followed an impulse to leave the road, climb the slope ... The town was there, the castle was there, the bells were sounding. None of us so much as knew the name of the place. A gift of fortune then. But gifts can also be intended for our harm. I leave the judgement to those who read my words to the end, whether this gift of the town was for harm or good.

  There and then we decided. We would turn aside to the town, see Brendan buried there and perform the Play of Adam so as to replenish our purse. Martin kept count of the days and by his reckoning it was the Feast of St Lazarus, so there would be folk at leisure. And we would have time enough still to reach Durham for the day promised.

  The town was some three miles distant on a road that descended by gentle degrees. When we drew near we stopped and came off the road in order to prepare for our entry into the town. We gave the horse oats and water and freed him from the shafts for a while so as to rest him for his hard labour now to come: he would have more than Brendan to draw through the streets of the town.

  The costumes we dressed in did not belong together in one play but were chosen for spectacle only. In the middle of the cart a space was cleared and here stood tall Stephen as God the Father in a long white robe, with a gilt mask covering all his face and a triple crown on his head like the Pope's, made of paper stiffened with glue and stained red. With him was Martin dressed as the Serpent before the Curse, still inhabiting Eden, with feathered wings and a smiling sun-mask.

  The rest of us walked alongside or behind, Springer in a Virgin's gown, girdled at the waist, and a wig dyed yellow with saffron, Straw as a man of fashion in a white half-mask, a surcoat with trailing sleeves and a pointed hood, Tobias as Mankind, bare-faced, in plain tunic and cap. As for me, they gave me the horse-hair suit of Antichrist to wear and a devil's horned mask, and armed me with a wooden trident that I was to jab with as we went along, at the same time gibbering and hissing. It was my first role.

  We put Brendan in the rear of the cart with our clothes heaped over him and the copper thunder-tray laid on top. We hung the can with the red curtains and put red rosettes behind the horse's ears. Margaret led him, steady and slow so as not to overbalance God and the Serpent. She too was dressed in finery, in a frayed blue gown with slashed sleeves, her hair combed and pinned up. As we began to come into the town we made of our progress a drama of sound as well as sight, demons and angels contended with music. Springer played his reed pipe and the Serpent a viol while Mankind beat time on a drum and God marked the intervals with a tambourine. In order to drown these heavenly sounds I had been hung about with a cooking pan and an iron ladle, with which I made a great din, and Straw carried a stick with which he belaboured the sheet of copper below which Brendan lay, making rolls of thunder. At intervals, when harmony and discord were in full conflict and the issue in doubt, God raised his right hand, palm outward and fingers slightly curled in the gesture of silencing, and with this the din of the demons instantly ceased.

  Thus alternating between order and chaos, with the skinny horse lifting its head to the music and stepping lively as perhaps by habit it had learned to do, and the dog, which was tied to the can behind, barking loudly in excitement, in such fashion we paraded through the streets of the town till we came to the market square and the inn alongside.

  I for one was glad when we came there. The suit of hair was hot and close on my body, the mask was made of paper, pressed and glued together, it was thick and airless. I did not see well through the eye-holes and my sight was altogether closed off at the sides. I had
to remember to jab with my trident and hiss while the music was heavenly, also to be ready with the pan and ladle when Straw sounded the signal on the tray, also to keep one eye on God so as to fall silent the instant he raised his hand.

  I was confused by the clashing sounds and by the faces of the spectators briefly glimpsed, some staring, some laughing, some open-mouthed with a shouting that was not separate from the great noise we were making ourselves. It was now that it came to me - a lesson that was to be learned over again in the days that followed - that the player is always trapped in his own play but he must never allow the spectators to suspect this, they must always think that he is free. Thus the great art of the player is not in showing but concealing.

  Adding to my disorder of mind was the sense that my mask and the ancient, mangy horse-hair suit were redolent already of Brendan's decay. It came to me that perhaps my mask and suit had lain next to him and I wondered if this same suspicion was in the minds of the others. His odour we were obliged to hide, as we had hidden his body. We brought Death into the town, so much is certain. Death rode with us on the cart, he was there in the midst of our panoply and fanfares while we wooed the staring folk for their custom. Certain too that Death waited for us there, for he can be here and there together at the same time. By God's grace I came out from the town again, Death waits for me still. But time has done nothing to dim the memory of it, the clamour of our entry into the town, the close mask and evil-smelling suit of Antichrist. And the fear of dissolution.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For fivepence we hired a barn, with a cowshed adjoining, in the inn-yard, where we could keep our things and also sleep. Fivepence was a good deal for such a lodging but the innkeeper would not take less. 'Why should I haggle for pence with a band of players?' he said, and he wiped his hands on his greasy apron with an air of being above such base considerations. 'There are cows in the byre, or I would have asked six,' he said.

  This innkeeper was a low-browed, brawny fellow, with one eye turned inward. He was scornful of us and did not scruple to show it, though he would profit from our play because it would be done in the yard of the inn. But he was of those who boast where they despise, as if to justify contempt. 'Others will take the barn if you do not,' he said. 'Why should I haggle with vagabond players when I am preparing rooms for the King's Justice, who comes here from York and is expected hourly?'

  Martin said nothing to this but looked him coldly enough in the eye. He had taken off his angel's mask but still wore the wings. I had kept on my mask, being afraid to remove it because of my tonsure, and through the eye-holes I saw Springer and Straw exchange glances and Straw crossed his eyes in imitation of the innkeeper and wiped his hands on an imaginary apron, doing it however in such a way that his hands were crossed also,

  a gesture very comic in his present dress of fashion, fortunately not observed by the innkeeper. I wanted to ask why the Justice came here at such a time of year, and perhaps would have done so in spite of the muffling mask, but he left us to drive away a blind man who had come into the yard to beg. There was a little ragged girl with him and she had pissed against the wall.

  When he returned we agreed on fivepence and Martin paid it. It was a bare place with an earth floor, but it was dry, the roof was good and there was a stout door to it with an iron bolt and a padlock. This last was an important matter as we had much to fear from thieves. All the capital of the company was in the costumes and masks and pieces needed for setting out the playing-space. These had been added to over the years, some made, some bought, some, for all I knew, acquired by the very means we now had to guard against.

  We changed out of costume and unloaded everything, including Brendan, whom we carried all in a group in his covering of curtain and laid in a corner. Here inside, among smells of dung and straw and trampled earth, his presence was not so evident.

  The inn-yard was busy with people coming and going. There were some soldiers in breastplates talking in the middle. By the arches on the inn side of the yard there was an old woman with a tray of buttons and two young ones with squares of green in their sleeves to give notice they were whores. The blind man and the little girl had returned. There were shouts for service from guests in upper rooms and a serving-man passed along the yard to the staircase that led up to the gallery. An ostler was trying to stable a black palfrey on the other side of the yard but it was high-mettled and made nervous by the noise and bustle, it reared and shied at obstacles that only it could see, and its hoofs clattered and sparked on the cobbles. Slung over the saddle was a tourney-shield bearing a crest with a coiled serpent and bars of blue and silver. A squire in early middle-age, bare-headed, wearing a coat of thin mail under a brown surcoat, came forward and spoke to the horse and calmed it. He was dusty and stained with travel, and on the breast of his surcoat was a badge with bars of the same colours, blue and silver. I heard him call to the innkeeper to have wine sent up for himself and the Knight whom he served.

  All this was like a public show for me. I felt no relation to anything I saw because no one knew what I was. I did not know myself. A fugitive priest is a priest still, but an untried player, what is he? I could breathe and I could see, now that the mask was off. I was set apart, in a different space, as the spectator is always. And I wondered if these people too, who seemed able to move as they wished about the yard, were in truth constrained to behave as they did and were only pretending to be free, as we ourselves had done when we came in procession through the town.

  Then Martin, with Tobias as witness, went to give an account of the death and arrange matters with the priest. There were things for the rest of us to do. Brendan continued to give us labour. He could not be taken to the church in my clerical habit, nor could we deliver him naked. He had to be dressed in his own clothes again - and again by Margaret, who was as gentle with him as before. The habit was hung from a rafter to freshen it as far as could be; it was now become part of our common stock. Meanwhile I wore the high tunic and sleeveless jerkin of Mankind and a woollen cap borrowed from Stephen, which was too large for me and came down over my eyes.

  These things were scarcely done before the same ostler came with straw and sacking for our beds. It was mid-afternoon only, but the light was already beginning to fade. Stephen and I were standing at the barn door. I am inquisitive by nature and talking comes easily to me. I asked the ostler about the squire and the one he served.

  'They stay the night here,' he said. He was young and round-faced and had a simple look of importance at knowing something we did not. 'They have ridden from Darlington today, and that is a good long road,' he said. 'He is a knight with a fief in the Valley of the Tees from what I heard tell. They are either poor or mean. The squire gave me one penny only.'

  'One penny is not bad reward for holding a nag's head,' the sardonic Stephen said. 'I do it hours together sometimes without being paid at all.'

  But the ostler was one with small play of mind, who took everything strictly by the letter. 'There was not just the one,' he said, with the beginning of anger. 'There was also the war-horse to stable, a beast that could back and crush you like a fly if you did not look to it.'

  'True, it is little,' I said. 'Perhaps the fief is small. Why do they come here?'

  'They will have come to take part in the jousting,' he said. 'There is to be six days of jousting lasting till St Stephen's Day. The Lord has sent to knights from many parts. This will be one who travels from tourney to tourney and lives by the prize-money. He has small hope of prizes here, with Sir William taking part, that is the Lord's son and the very flower of knighthood and has never been unhorsed.'

  'Which lord is that?'

  'Why,' he said, with a look of surprise for our ignorance on his simple face, 'that is the Lord Richard de Guise, who holds this town in his fief and the land all east from here to the sea. He is known everywhere for his giving of alms to the needy and his punishing of wrongdoers and his godly life - he would have none such as you in his Hall.'

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p; It was his castle then that we had seen from the road that morning. Into my mind the vision came again: the huddled houses in their pall of smoke, the battlements and pennants beyond, rising into light, that gleam of light on metal from among the parapets.

  He was turning away when I said, for no more reason than idle curiosity, because it had been in my mind since talking to the innkeeper, 'Well, what with that and the Justice that is expected you will be kept busy.'

  The light was failing now from moment to moment, there were brands being lit and set in their brackets along the walls of the yard, and also above in the rooms of the inn there were lights showing. The light from the brands made shifting ripples on the dark stone of the walls and moved on the damp cobbles. I could hear the breathing of the cows behind me. 'Why does he come?' I said. 'What brings the Justice from a great place to a small in the days before Christmas?'

  The ostler's face had been in shadow but as he turned away the light fell briefly on it and I saw that his expression was changed, it had become unwilling. 'I do not know why,' he said. 'The trial has already been. I cannot stay longer, I am called for above.'

  'Better than to be called for below.' This, with a gulp of laughter, was from Straw, who had come up behind us from inside the barn. They had lit a torch inside and his dishevelled hair had a bright halo around it.

  'What trial?' I said. 'Has there been a crime then?'

  The ostler hesitated, divided between caution and the pleasure of knowing. 'God's pity, yes,' he said at last. 'Thomas Wells has been murdered. He was found the day before yesterday on the road outside the town. There is Roger True's daughter found guilty of it by the Sheriff and she is to be hanged.' He spoke the names as if they must be familiar to all.