Morality Play

by Barry Unsworth

  Martin laughed at this. He seemed in great good humour now. 'But she did not look at men,' he said, 'if we are to believe the good dames.' And he compressed his lips and made a gesture of the right hand against his cheek to sign blushes, then with both hands the motion of drawing close a shawl, like Chastity in the Morality Play.

  It was all we said on the matter that night. And because in the end he had laughed and made a joke of it, my fear was overlaid. The wildness I had sensed in him, the readiness to transgress, these I found passing reasons for. He was disappointed at the poor custom for our play, he was unhappy at our poverty. Thus I sought to reassure myself. I did not properly know him yet, did not know that everything with him was serious. Perhaps that was why he chose to walk with me that night, one not so familiar with his nature, so that he could talk without betraying his intention. I am sure now that the intention was already there in him.

  I know this from what more I know of Martin now; at the time it was beyond my suspecting. But the foreboding was there. With memory aiding, it is not so difficult to relate events as they follow in sequence. But the dread that comes to natures like mine, that is not so easy to trace, it moves in lurches, forward and back, it catches at new things. That fear I felt in the tavern at the power of human desire, a power for harm or good, I feel it still. The nature of power is always the same, though the masks it wears are various. The masks of the powerless are various also. I remember what was said between us that night and the changing expressions on that lean face of his. He had done already what he could always do with frightening ease: he had passed from notion to intention to strategy as if between them there were no curtain, nor even a screen of mist.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We all attended Brendan's funeral, even the dog - kept close by Tobias on a piece of chewed rope. I had thought at first to stay behind, because of the need we would be under to uncover our heads and I was still with the ragged tonsure of my other life.

  Margaret it was who found the solution - simple enough, though none of us had thought of it, being still fixed on the idea that I should wear some form of head-covering at all times. 'We will shave him,' she said, in the flat tones she always used, keeping her mouth half-closed so that the words came out in a mutter without changing the lines of her face. Margaret had suffered much hardship and degradation of body and was unwilling now to offer the world anything superfluous. In spite of this she had a very deft and gentle touch, which I knew before by the way she handled poor Brendan. With Stephen's razor and water from the pump in the yard I was shorn without a scratch.

  'And if anyone asks why, we will say it is because of the ringworm,' Springer said. Being a fearful and pacific soul he always thought of reasons and excuses; and he knew it was a good answer because he had suffered this affliction himself as a child, and had his head shaved by a barber.

  The church was on a hillside and from the graveyard we could see across the wooded valley where the river ran, to the bare uplands beyond, which had a faint sea-light on them - the land tilted down from there to the sea. This was a country of low hills and wide valleys. The trees were bare now, save for the stubborn russet of the oaks. The slopes of bracken beyond the river were the colour of rust. All was still - the day was windless. The sky overhead was dark, gravid with snow.

  Brendan's last costume was a pauper's shroud. There was no coffin. We watched him lowered into the earth by Martin and Stephen to wait there for the Last Days, that cannot now be long in coming. Our hope and prayer for Brendan was the same as for ourselves, that though his mortal body was lost in corruption he would be dressed again in glory when the graves give forth their dead.

  The frost which had come with night had loosed from the tips of the grass-blades now and they showed a darker green. There was a tidemark of death in this graveyard, a mounded line where the victims of that summer's plague were buried in their common pit The Black Death has returned to these northern parts after a fallow-time of a dozen years. Death is never sated. Now once again in every graveyard we see this tide slowly gaining on the green. Over against the wall of the apse the priest's four sheep were grazing where the grass had grown in shelter and so escaped the frost. Beyond the plague-mound there was a single new grave, very small, a child's grave, with a tarred wooden cross. Beyond it, above the trees of the valley, I saw a heron rise on heavy wings.

  The priest pronounced the final blessing in a hasty nasal and as he did so it began to snow, large soft flakes that paused in the still air and sidled, as if cautious how to fall, unwilling to gash themselves. At the first touch of the snow, the priest began to make his way back to the church with unseemly haste. He had taken his money already in the vestry. So there was nothing now to do, as the snow thickened, but to see the first spadefuls thrown over Brendan and then set out back towards the inn.

  But Martin did not come with us at once. He lingered behind and I saw him go and speak to the grave-digger. As we passed along the path that led round the graveyard to the church gate, I fell back and left the others and crossed the frosted turf and the line of the plague-pit and came to the small grave. The earth was freshly dug. There was no name on the cross; there would scarce have been time to cut the letters. When had the ostler said he was found? The day before yesterday, in the morning. Swift justice in this town, as Straw had said. Swift disposing of the victim also. But perhaps after all this was the grave of some other ... I stood for some moments gazing while the snow darkened the earth of the grave, and as I did so I fell into a state of mind familiar to students, at once attentive and vague, as when faced with some faulty or imperfect text. Often it is when one waits without question that the truth of the author's intention comes drifting into the mind. Hesitant, circumspect, like this first snow.

  I was in this state still when I rejoined the others. We waited for Martin at the lychgate, sheltering under the roof of the gateway. I was standing a little apart, just under the roof, at the roadside. For no particular reason I moved forward a little and looked down the road towards the town. The snow made a mist and at one moment there was nothing but this mist and at the next there were dark shapes in it, advancing slowly up the hill, two riders and with them a great black beast whose head rose high as theirs and it had red eyes and above its head there moved with it a shape of red, dark red in the white of snow, and I knew this for the flame of the Beast's breath and I knew what Beast it was and what manner of riders these were and I crossed myself and groaned aloud in my fear, seeing that the Beast had come and my soul was unprepared.

  Hearing my groans the others came round me and they also looked, but what they said or if they spoke at all I do not know to this day; I saw only that Springer fell to his knees, then Stephen, a moment later. My own legs were trembling but I did not fall, I wrestled as best I could with this agony of fear because Christ said that he who overcometh shall not suffer a second death, he shall come into the New Jerusalem. And I knew also that the witnesses in Revelation that were slain by the Beast from the Pit later ascended into Heaven. But they had kept faith and I had not.

  They came on at a steady pace and all my courage was spent to keep them before my eyes and pray to be delivered from evil. But with the Pater Noster still on my lips I saw that the floating shape of red was over the head of the first rider and kept constantly above him as he moved; it was a tent or canopy of some son. And then I heard the voice of Tobias saying that it was a knight and squire with a war-horse and I saw Stephen scramble to his feet and offer to help Springer up, as if his only purpose from the first had been to perform this service.

  Tobias's words were true. What I had thought the eyes were red patches to block the animal's sight at the sides. And after some moments more I saw that there was a long tourney-lance slung along its flank and projecting before and behind. Over the head of the leading horseman there was a cover of some red stuff, perhaps silk, wetted now, very thin - the dull light came through it and fell on the pale face of the rider. The horse he rode was a black stallion,
which lifted its head and snorted at the touch of the snow. The one behind kept his head lowered and the long plume of his hat came over his brow, but as they drew nearer I knew him for the squire who had helped stable the horse - this same restive palfrey - at the inn the night before. He was riding a grey mare and leading the charger on a short rope, this last a huge beast, the one the ostler had complained of, also black. The shield lay on the saddle-bow and I saw again the crest with coiled serpent and bars of blue and silver. But the truly strange thing about the Knight was this square of silk above his head, which I had taken for the breath of flame and which had frightened me so that my heart knocked still against my ribs. It seemed of his own devising, resting on canes attached to the girth trappings of the horse, two before and two behind, and at its forward edge hanging down in a fringe, protecting him in large measure from the snow that came against his face. The silk was darkened with wet and it cast a reddish shade and within this the Knight sat upright on his horse, richly dressed as for a visit - he wore a red velvet bonnet and a sleeveless red surcoat of the kind that is fashionable now, open at the front to show his high-necked white tunic. He was young and his face was calm below the finery of his hat and a long scar ran down the left side of his face from below the temple to the line of the jaw. His gaze swept over us briefly and calmly as he passed by, and we lowered our heads. Then they were past, going on at the same steady pace up the hill. I went out into the roadway and looked after them and the snow lay cold on my eyes. There was smoke rising from somewhere above. It seemed to me that I could make out the battlements of the castle keep but with the snow and the smoke it was not possible to be sure. Knight and squire merged with the haze of smoke and snow, vanished from my sight.

  Men respond to fear in different ways. I tried to hide mine by talking. 'They will be going up to the castle,' I said. 'There is to be ten days of jousting, so I heard at the inn. It will last until St Stephen's Day. I have never seen a knight ride under cover in that way.'

  'Nor I,' Tobias said, and he spat to the roadway. 'He was afraid that the snow would spoil his bonnet. All their life is in show and gear.'

  Straw uttered that strange laugh of his, that sounded always like a sob. 'And ours is not?' he said. 'They are like us, they are travelling players.' He had been frightened too, I knew it from his laughing air of relief. 'All they need they carry with them, just as we do,' he said.

  Of us all, Springer was the only one who admitted to having been afraid, perhaps because with him fear was always such a close companion. 'I thought for a while it was Antichrist coming,' he said. 'I had rather be a player and make people laugh than go from place to place knocking other folk out of their saddles.' With slight movements of the shoulders and right arm, eyes fixed and eyebrows timorously raised, he mimed a fearful knight at a joust. This was funny because he was also miming his own fear and ours, and everyone laughed except Stephen, who had been as frightened as any but sought to disguise this now by voicing displeasure at our disrespect.

  'They know how to fight,' he said. As a former bowman he had seen knights in battle, which we had not. And he was always a great defender of the nobility, I think through a naturally worshipful attitude towards the rich and powerful - perhaps this was why, it occurred to me now, on his stilts and with face gilded, Stephen was so convincing in the part of God the Father. 'Half a hundredweight of plate armour,' he said, looking with dark disfavour at Springer. 'On a hot day it is like having your head in an oven. They will fight on horseback from dawn to dusk in any weather God sends. I have seen them wounded in half a dozen places, blinded by blood, striking out still. You, Springer, you could not so much as lift a knight's sword, let alone strike with it.'

  'If they couldn't see who they were striking at, it would have been better to go home,' Straw said. 'Flailing about like that, they would be as much a danger to their own people as to the enemy. And in fact they are a danger to everyone.' He was a shifting, veering fellow in his thoughts and feelings, and easily swayed; but he was always constant in Springer's defence. 'Why in the world should Springer want to lift a sword?' he said now. 'I am surprised you praise knights so much when it was one of them that had your thumb chopped off.'

  This reference to his mutilation was offensive to Stephen and might have led to a quarrel, but Martin returned at this moment and we set off together down the hill, our heads lowered against the snow. At the inn a mood of extravagance seemed to come to Martin. We had a thick stew of peas and mutton and dough puddings. We had butter to eat with our bread, and good ale. The dog feasted also, on bread soaked in the broth, and Tobias gave him a mutton-bone. The reckoning for this came to elevenpence, which left us with little indeed.

  Stephen and Tobias were beginning to load the cart but Martin halted them. 'There is a matter to discuss,' he said. 'Let us make a fire - there is wood enough still.'

  We set the brazier at the door and left the door open and sat inside in a half-circle, looking towards the fire and the inn-yard beyond. The snow fell steadily, muffling the cobbles with white. Flakes drifted through the doorway and hissed on the fire. We were well fed and comfortable for the moment, on the straw there, looking at the bright flames. There was a steam of drying clothes about us and there was the smell of straw and cow-dung and the sharp stink of the horse.

  He began by telling us what we knew well enough already: the takings had been poor, we had very little money left and we were still some days' journey from Durham, where the lady's cousin was expecting us for the Christmas entertainment of his guests. How many days' journey it was not possible to say: this snow would make the roads more than ever difficult. 'And we have scarce the pence for two days' feeding,' he said - he kept returning to our poverty.

  'Why then did we spend so freely on the mutton?' Springer asked, a childish question because he had known the cost full well before but been greedy for the meat. Now, with his belly full, he was reproachful.

  'We must keep in good heart,' Martin said. It is my belief that he spent the money on purpose so as to restrict our scope for choosing. He leaned forward now and reached his palms towards the fire, and this looked strangely as if he were gathering for a spring. Once again I was aware of something wolf-like in him. But only the sinful and devious heart of man could have given his face the look it wore now, haunted with his idea, calculating still the best way to broach it with us. 'There is a way for us that I have thought of’ he said. 'It is something we can do that the jongleurs cannot. But we must stay in this town some time longer in order to do it'

  'Why do you go beating about?' Stephen's dark face was blank for a moment, then I saw his brows draw together. 'What is it you have in mind for us?' he said.

  Martin glanced around at us once more, but briefly. His expression was calm now, and grave. 'Good people,' he said, 'we must play the murder.'

  These words brought a silence to the world, or so at least it seemed to me. There was no sound among us, our bodies were still. Outside in the yard the clatter of hoofs and the sound of voices were hushed also - or I became for the moment deaf to them. When silence falls on the world there is always one small sound that grows louder. I could hear the whispering and sighing of the snow and this sound was within me and without.

  It was Tobias who brought the sounds back again; they came with his voice. 'Play the murder?' he said. On his face was an expression of bewilderment. 'What do you mean? Do you mean the murder of the boy? Who plays things that are done in the world?'

  'It was finished when it was done,' Straw said. He paused for a moment or two, glancing round into the corners of the barn with his prominent and excitable eyes. 'It is madness,' he said. 'How can men play a thing that is only done once? Where are the words for it' And he raised both hands and fluttered his fingers in the gesture of chaos.

  'The woman who did it is still living,' Margaret said. 'If she is still living, she is in the part herself, it is hers, no one else can have it.'

  I had never heard Margaret speak before in any matter
concerning the playing, but Martin did not reprove her; he was too intent on the argument. 'Why should it make a difference?' he said. 'Cain killed Abel, that was a murder, it is something that happened and it only happened once. But we can play it, we play it often, we play also the manner of its doing, we put a cracked pitcher inside Abel's smock to make the smash of his bones. Why cannot we play this town's murder, since we find ourselves here?'

  Tobias was shaking his head. 'There is no authority for it,' he said. 'It is not written anywhere. Cain and Abel are in the Bible.'

  'Tobias is right,' I said. I could not keep silent though it meant going against Martin. What he proposed was impious and I felt fear at it. In this I sensed a difference from the others. They were astounded because the idea was new but they were not troubled in soul, except perhaps for Tobias - though this would come later to all. 'In Holy Writ there is sanction,' I said. 'The story of Cain and Abel is completed by the wisdom of God, it is not only a murder, it has its continuing in the judgement. It is encompassed within the will of the Creator.'

  'So is this one, and so are all the murders of the world,' Springer said, and his thin face - face of the eternal orphan -already had the light on it of Martin's idea.

  'True,' I said, 'but in this one there is no common acceptance, God has not given us this story to use, He has not revealed to us the meaning of it. So it has no meaning, it is only a death. Players are like other men, they must use God's meanings, they cannot make meanings of their own, that is heresy, it is the source of all our woes, it is the reason our first parents were cast out.'

  But already, looking round at their faces, I knew that my argument would fail. They were in some fear perhaps, but it was not fear of offending God, it was fear of the freedom Martin was holding out, the licence to play anything in the world. Such licence brings power ... Yes, he offered us the world, he played; Lucifer to us there in the cramped space of the barn. But the closer prize he did not need to offer, it was already there in all our minds: the people would flock to see their murder played; and they would pay. In the end it was our destitution that won the day for him. That and the habit of mind of players, who think of their parts and how best to do them, and listen to the words of the master-player, but do not often think of the meaning as a whole. Had these done so, they would have seen what I, more accustomed to conclusions, saw and trembled at: if we make our own meanings, God will oblige us to answer our own questions, He will leave us in the void without the comfort of His Word.