Morality Play

by Barry Unsworth

  'How did the Monk come to be there, on the road?' Tobias said.

  There was a silence, then Straw gulped and laughed and it sounded loud there in the barn. He was always sensitive to mood, more than any of us, and always excitable and wavering, like a weather-vane, turning this way and that. 'He would have been out on the Lord's business,' he said.

  I tried to picture the face of the Monk, whom I had never seen, to give him substance, but other faces came instead: Martin's face with the light of his idea on it, the streaked face of the idiot as he named the lost children, the scarred, disdainful face of the Knight as he rode by under his canopy. The Monk, though on the Lord's business, had yet had occasion to note, and to remember, a young woman seen for a few moments on the common land ...

  'How was Thomas Wells killed?' The question seemed to come from the midst of us, it was difficult for some moments to know who had uttered it. But it was Tobias, the practical one, the mender. 'What was the manner of his death?' he said now, with some note of impatience in his voice.

  'We do not yet - ' Martin began.

  'He was strangled,' Margaret said. 'Thomas Wells was strangled.'

  We looked at her as she sat there, her sturdy legs spread below the drab brown skirt. She had combed out her fair hair and tied it with a scrap of red ribbon.

  'How do you know this?' Stephen said, his being the right to question her first.

  'I found the man Flint,' she said, raising her chin at him -there was a sort of defiance often in her movements. 'The one who came upon the boy's body. He is a widower, a mild man enough. He lives alone.'

  There was silence among us for some moments. No one inquired into the means she had used to get this information from Flint. Then somebody — I think it was again Stephen — asked if it had been with a rope and she said no, the life had been taken from him with hands.

  'Flint saw the bruises made by the thumbs,' she said. 'The boy's tongue was hanging out. Otherwise he was lying neatly on his back at the side of the road, out of the way of the carts.'

  'A boy of twelve,' Martin said. 'He would have fought for life. The woman will be strong.'

  'Perhaps she pounced upon him from some hiding-place,' Springer said, and he glanced round the barn as if the place might be there.

  Stephen shook his head. 'There is no hiding-place there near enough to the road. The woodland is lower down, fifty yards off.' 'Perhaps she took him into the trees?'

  'Why would he go with her?' Tobias said. 'And if he did, and she killed him there, why should she bring him back to the road?'

  No one could find an answer to this and again there came a silence among us. Then Martin raised his head and shook himself slightly, as if dispelling some vision. 'So this is the story,' he said, 'at least as far as we know it. The man and woman go with the boy to the village of Appleton and there they sell their cow. The man starts drinking. The mother gives the money, let us say in a purse, to the boy, and bids him go straight home with it and speak to no one on the way. The boy sets off, but he never reaches home. He is seen on the road about three miles from the town by a man gathering wood. The woman is seen on the common land close to where the boy was found. She is seen by the Lord's confessor, who is out on the Lord's business. No one else sees her. This is in the afternoon, not far from the dark. But it is not until early next morning that the boy is found by this man Flint. He has been strangled and there is no purse anywhere about him.'

  He paused, looking at Margaret. 'What was Flint doing there?' he said.

  'He was going out to where his sheep are penned,' she said. 'He put the boy on the back of his mule and brought him into the town.'

  'Later that same morning the Monk learns of the murder. He makes his way to the house where the girl lives, taking with him some of the Lord's people as witnesses, or so I suppose. He finds the purse. The girl is carried off to the prison. In the course of that day and the next she is tried in the Sheriff's court, which in effect is the Lord's court, and she is condemned. She is condemned but not hanged yet'

  He was silent for some moments, looking straight before him. Then, in low tones, he said: 'There must be some reason for that. Everything else was done with such dispatch, even to the burying of the boy. He was laid in earth yesterday, scarce two days after he was found. Still, it serves our purpose, good people. While this is not yet done the interest in our play will be greater. We will be playing under the gallows-tree.'

  This was a thing only Martin could have said and there was a kind of singleness of mind in it that belonged only to him among us. There were contradictions in him which puzzle me yet. Where it concerned his will he would set all else aside, and that is wickedness, whoever does it. He had no piety. And yet there was great tenderness in his nature, and loyalty to any who gave him trust.

  'Perhaps they are seeking to make her confess, for her soul's sake,' Springer said.

  'I tried to learn whether she had confessed,' I said. 'The one I asked took it at first for jesting, but he would give no answer. There is a Justice coming from York, he was expected last night at the inn. Perhaps they are waiting for that.'

  'Certain it is that he is not the Lord's guest,' Tobias said, 'or he would be staying at the castle.' He hesitated for a moment, then said: 'There is one thing more ... It does not concern this murder, but I heard again the name of John Goody, who it seems was of an age with the murdered boy.'

  'Again?' Stephen raised thick eyebrows. 'When did we hear it before?'

  'This morning,' Springer said. 'We heard it this morning. He was one of those the poor simple man spoke of, the one who came to our fire. He spoke of seeing angels and things too bright for his eyes.' With this he raised his right hand in imitation of the gesture the beggar had used, palm outward, fingers spread, and the face peering behind this screen as at some vision dazzling and enticing. 'He was wild in his talk, except for the names,' he said. 'Those were clear enough.'

  'We have enough to do, without this,' Martin said. He spoke impatiently, but it did not seem to me that these words expressed his feelings fully. However, it was true that there was much to do. We had to make a procession through the town and announce our play while there were people still abroad.

  We did it on foot, not wanting to risk the cart again. We carried torches and went in a body, with no great clamour this time, Martin having decided that we should make our procession a solemn one, as if it were to the place of execution. We had to use Margaret to make up the numbers, though this was consented to unwillingly on Martin's part, as she was not of the company. She wore her usual ragged finery of blue robe with slashed sleeves and on her face the hideous mask of Avarice, cause of the crime. Stephen led the way as God, who sees all things, in his long white robe and tall hat and gilded mask. Springer wore a red dress and the same flaxen wig he used for Eve but his face now was bare, since the condemned must not be allowed any refuge or concealment. Round his neck was a noose and a short length of rope, which dangled before him. Tobias walked behind as executioner, in a sort of helmet with eye-holes that Margaret had made out of some black stuff. He had a drum slung below his chest and with his right hand, as we walked, he struck the drum with a single note, keeping time to the rhythm of our walking. Straw was Death, in a hooded robe, his face whitened with chalk paste. Martin had put on the devil's mask, the one I had worn in the Play of Adam, and he skipped and danced to show that Hell was gleeful at the prospect of receiving this woman. I was Good Counsel, with little to do, since my counsel had been ignored, but make the gesture of sorrow from time to time. I had donned again, for this role, my clerical habit, last worn by Brendan and still, to my senses, bearing something of Brendan about it, though it had hung all night in the barn for airing. So I was a priest playing a priest, dressed for the part in my own dress. The boy, Thomas Wells, we did not show, not having yet decided how we would play him.

  So to this solemn sound of the drum we proceeded, through the first driftings of a new snowfall. The flakes slanted down and spluttered f
aintly on our torches. The gesture of sorrow obliges one to look heavenwards and my face was soon wet I saw that Springer too had streaks of wet like tears on his face and this was because he too, as the condemned woman, had to raise his face towards the sky in order to implore mercy, a gesture which is stronger when done without movements of the hands. The demon danced, Death made sorties accompanied by the gesture of reaping and every so often Stephen stopped and we all stopped with him and he cupped his hands to his mouth and called out the Play of Thomas Wells and gave the hours for next day - the first playing of it would be at noon. And the snow came out of the dark, like a swarm of creatures attracted by our light.

  Doubts must have been drifting and twisting through our minds even then, in the midst of our procession, while we listened to the drum-beat and felt the snow on our faces and paused to listen to God's shout. Only in this way can what happened among us next day be explained.

  We reached a place where streets crossed, one returning leftward to the market square, the other leading out of the town. Here, among a press of people, we were obliged to wait. Liveried servants on horseback barred our way, edging their mounts sideways, blocking the street from wall to wall. We stood there and waited. The people were all round us and I did not know whether they had joined our procession or we had joined theirs. Some voice in the crowd said this was the King's Justice that had come to town.

  After some minutes they came passing before us, looking neither to right nor to left, hooded and cloaked against the snow, so that it was not possible to single out the Justice from among his people. Tobias, who though patient enough in his everyday manners soon chafes at any restraint of authority, struck the drum a single sudden blow and this startled one of the horses so that it shied and the man cursed us, and Tobias struck the drum again and then they were past.

  This had destroyed the rhythm of our procession and mixed us with the people. Besides, the snow was thickening. We took the shortest way back, following in silence behind the more successful procession of the Justice, reaching the inn while their horses were being stabled. The inn-yard was full of bustle but the Justice himself was nowhere to be seen.

  We could not rest as we had now to practise our play. It was to be done in the form of a Morality, using some set speeches that the players knew already, each in his own part, but depending much on gesture and dumb-show, with lines interposed at the impulse of the players. Martin had once seen Italian players in London make a play of this sort, with some of the speeches habitual to the characters and others interposed as seemed fit.

  'If we are concentrated upon the action,' Martin said, 'and with the masks making us more free, we can do much for effect in this sudden way. It comes from the particular moment and the people watching will be taken by surprise, they will not know what to expect. Even if we do some things clumsily, there will still be this surprise in it. But if any of us takes it in mind to change the course of the story, he must make the sign before, so the others will know it and be ready.'

  I did not know this sign and it was shown to me: the hand is turned at the wrist as if one were tightening a bolt and one can do this slowly or rapidly and with the arm in any position, so long as the twisting motion of the hand is evident.

  In the bestowing of the parts we found some difficulty. There were three actions in the Play of Thomas Wells: the setting forth, the encounter on the way and the finding of the money. Six players were needed for this, without counting the Virtues and Vices. Some of us therefore had to double parts. But the main difficulty concerned Springer. Since he was only fifteen and short of stature it was clear that he should play Thomas Wells. In fact he was the only one of us that could do so. But this meant that he could not take either of the women's parts, since both appeared before the people at the same time as the boy.

  'Straw will have to do it,' Martin said. 'He can do the mother without a mask and the guilty woman in two masks - an angel-mask for the deceiving of the boy, and a demon-mask for the killing. We will have Avaritia and Pieta contending for the woman's soul. I will play the first of these and Tobias the second, as we know something about these parts already from doing the Ploughman Interlude. I will play the Monk also. Stephen will play the drunken man in the tavern.'

  'A part very fitting,' Margaret said. Since her disclosure concerning Flint she had gained in the general consideration, and no one reproved her, not even Stephen though he glowered.

  'He will also be the retainer who accompanies the Monk to the girl's house,' Martin said. 'Nicholas will be Good Counsel. He makes a sermon to the boy to persuade him to stay on the road.'

  'You can put some Latin in it,' Straw said, and he turned his eyes upward and intoned in a nasal voice: ‘Hax, pax, max, Deus adimax. What do you mean, stay on the road?' he said to Martin.

  'The road is the way of life, turning aside for temptation is the way of death. We have done this before in Moralities. It is the only difference now that the death threatening the soul is also the death of the body. The woman tempts him with promises and he follows her.'

  'Follows her?' Straw laughed uncertainly. 'But he didn't follow her. It was there on the road that he was found, poor soul.'

  Martin looked at him in silence for a moment or two. 'No,' he said quietly, 'he must have gone with her, do you not see? It was not yet dark when they met together, there on the road. She had come down from the common, having seen the lad, or maybe for some other reason. There were people still about. The Benedictine had gone by shortly before. If it had been a blow, perhaps yes. But to kill the boy in such a manner, on the open road, while there was still light ... No, she took him away to her house and did the deed there.'

  Straw shook his head. 'That way she risked to be seen with him,' he said.

  'And afterwards?' Stephen said. 'She carried him back to the road in the dark of night?'

  'She would know the ground,' Tobias said. 'All the same, it would be a heavy burden for a woman, and dangerous on the slope, she would not dare to show a light.'

  'Well, it must have been done so,' Martin said. 'There is no other way to think about it. She took him away somewhere. And as we must make a scene of it, we shall say it was her house.'

  This again was something only he among us could have said. In the silence that followed we all looked at him as he sat hunched forward with his arms hugging his knees. It was as if we expected something more, perhaps some word of regret. But the face he turned to us, with its long narrow eyes and the sharp bones at cheek and temple, expressed nothing but its own certainty and indifference. He did not know where the woman had taken the boy; but they were persons in a play now and what mattered more to him than the truth of the place was the truth of the playing. 'To bring him to the road again was a clever thing,' he said. 'It would seem some passer-by had done it. Many use the road and where many are suspected the true culprit may well escape.'

  This was the version we decided upon and this is the way we thought to make our play. We practised late into the night, going over the movements and the words. We were weary when we turned from it, but for long I could not sleep. There were vermin in the straw and I was cold, though wearing the Fool's headpiece and wrapped in Eve's robe over my habit. Martin and Tobias had blankets, and Straw and Springer shared one and slept together under it. The rest of us made what shift we could with what we carried on the cart.

  In the silence of the night the feeling of dread returned to me. I saw in my mind the woman with her burden, demons guiding her through the dark. These nights were starless, muffled in blackness by the snow-clouds. But she had found her way, demons had guided her. The same demons that now were guiding us.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I woke at first light in the bitter cold. The fire was out and I heard Stephen groaning in some uneasy dream. Then there was silence and I felt the hush and knew there was heavy snow lying. I went out to void my bladder in the yard and the dog came with me, whimpering and snuffling as if it expected something from this rising and emerging o
f mine. As I came back to the barn I heard a cock-crow and in the distance the barking of dogs. Two serving-men in leather aprons came out into the yard with broom and shovel to clear away the new fall of snow. There was a stink of horses on the cold air and I saw a white slope of hillside beyond the roofs of the town. Afterwards I remembered these things very clearly, with that longing we feel sometimes to recover a state of life that we have lost for ever, though perhaps that we have lost it is all its value.

  It seemed like peace to me, that cold morning, with the hush of snow lying over the town and all the surrounding country. It is strange that it should have seemed so, because I was in trouble enough already to any outward view, and my sins crowded upon me. I had left the transcribing of Pilato unfinished, I was outside my diocese without permission, I had sung in taverns and diced away my holy relics, I had lain with a woman in adultery, I had joined a troupe of travelling players, a thing expressly forbidden to clerics of whatever degree. In all this I had offended God and given pain to the Bishop of Lincoln, who had been like a father to me. And yet this was a time free of trouble compared with what was to follow upon our acting the Play of Thomas Wells.

  I kept on the Fool's headpiece and covered myself as best I could with Eve's robe and sat inside with my back to the wall as the light strengthened and sounds and voices began to come from the rooms above. It entered my mind that I could get up, leave these scraps of travesty behind and walk away into the quietness of the morning in my proper dress of a priest, as I had been when first I came upon them. My condition was the same: I was cold and hungry and penniless now, as then. But I was confused between the playing of the thing and the living of it; it grieves me to say it but I am resolved to tell the truth, the habit of a priest seemed travesty also, no less than the white robe that Stephen wore as God the Father or the horse-hair suit of Antichrist. Or perhaps I was merely attached to my sin. In any case the moment passed.

  I saw Straw's tousled head rise from the bundle it had been resting on and turn vaguely this way and that. There was no movement from Springer beside him. Margaret lay like one dead under a heap of red curtain-cloth. Then Martin rose from his place and winced and muttered a little in the cold and bade me good-morning. And so the day started.