Morality Play

by Barry Unsworth

  Martin was holding up the purse in triumph. Stephen was making the gesture of indication towards it, which is done with the right arm held at fullest extent. Straw was cowering back in guilt and fear. I had come from behind the curtain in order to make a homily to the people on the theme of Divine Justice.

  Tobias came behind me in the mask of Pieta, wringing his hands and lamenting. The effigy of Thomas Wells lay before us on the wet cobbles, his white mask looking towards the people with no expression either of good or bad. Suddenly, without any sign or warning, Stephen lowered his arm, took two steps towards the people and spoke:

  'Gentles, after deed so fell Why not hide the money well?'

  At once, as if this had been a speech awaited, Straw straightened himself and with a rapid gesture removed his mask and showed a staring face below it:

  'Who knows the riddle, he can tell. What brought the Monk to that place?'

  Pieta, behind me, had ceased lamenting. After a moment he spoke and I heard the tremor in his voice and knew from the clearer tone that he too had removed his mask:

  'For he saw the woman's face.'

  Without any previous agreement among us and without being properly aware of how it was managed, we were all five of us now standing side by side facing the people, and the effigy of the boy lay there before us. And I felt a quaking within me and overcame it and spoke:

  'In cold her face she would not bare

  In winter cold a hood we wear...'

  I saw the ranks of faces before me and the faces looking from the gallery above. My sight was blurred, all these faces ran together, there was noise from the people. Martin was in the midst of us with two on either side. He raised the purse once again and held it high in that same gesture of triumph. But there was a difference now and the difference was terrible. There was blasphemy in it. He played it like the supreme moment of the Mass, holding up the black purse with both hands at the fullest reach of his arms as if it were the Host, and he shouted against the muttering of the people:

  'They only search who hope to find, Where it lay was in my mind ...'

  We had meant to close with a tableau of the execution, but it was clear now to all of us that we had reached the end of the Play of Thomas Wells. We waited a moment longer, then went all together and passed behind the curtain and stood there in silence. The faces of my companions were affrighted, as if they had seen some vision or woken from a dream of misfortune, and I supposed mine to be the same. The curtain that concealed us, though threadbare enough, was a protection. None came to offer us harm. Gradually the noise grew less as the people left the yard. Still we stood there, without moving or speaking. This trance was broken by Margaret, who came with the money. We had taken ten shillings and sixpence halfpenny, more than any could remember taking for a single performance ever before.

  It was money that drew us on, or so at least it seemed then. I remember how we stood there and gaped at it. Time has gone by, it is difficult now to be sure whether it was the money or some other force that used the money as a lure. If the Powers contended for our souls that day, it might have seemed that Avaritia had the victory in the battle for us as well as for the woman. But it was the winter season, there were still some days of journeying on bad roads, with a likelihood of starving in good earnest. It is not surprising that the money was a lure to us. In any case, I dare to say that we were not different in this from the Monk, the Lord's confessor, Simon Damian, as we later found to be his name - he in whose person Martin held up the purse of money as if it were the Heavenly Host at that strange ending of our play. For why was he there, at the castle, in attendance on the family of de Guise, but to secure grants and privileges for his Order, quite undeserved as the monks no longer obey the precepts of their Rule, which commands absence of private property, abstinence from butcher's meat, steady manual labour and strict confinement within the monastic precincts. They own horse and hound and weapons, they eat their fill of beef and mutton, their servants do the work in the fields, they go abroad on business, like this one. Strange to think that, as also with Brendan, I never saw his living face ...

  We were still standing there, all six of us, close together. Straw's eyes were starting from his head and Springer was flushed and tearful. There was sweat on Martin's brow despite the cold, but his eyes shone when he saw the money. 'Now we can put our own shillings into the Monk's purse,' he said - he still held it in his hand. 'Good people, you never played better in your lives.'

  Margaret had taken the box up to the gallery and asked money from people looking down at the play. More than three shillings had come from this. 'The Justice spoke to me,' she said, and in the flattery of this her mask of indifference had melted away, her face looked younger and she raised her head and opened her mouth wider as she spoke. 'He asked me questions,' she said. 'He kept me talking long. He said I was good-looking and should do well.'

  'He knows a whore when he sees one,' Stephen said.

  Below the sunburn of many years, Tobias's face was ashen now and his lean jaws were set hard. 'Brothers, we have started something up here,' he said. 'Let us take the money and go. I knew it was folly from the start.'

  'You were the first to speak for it,' I said, and he glared at me. We were all in that state of exhaustion where an embrace or quarrel seems equally natural.

  'Why did Good Counsel not keep to the play?' he said. 'You were in the playing-space. But instead you ranted out some tale of cold weather and a hood.'

  'I did not rant,' I said. 'It was Stephen that began it with his question to the people about the hiding of the money. Then Straw followed without giving any time.'

  But it was useless to try and deal out blame. Something had entered into us and we all knew it.

  'What questions did the Justice ask you?' Martin said.

  'He asked the place we had come from and where we were going. He asked whose had been the idea to play the murder and how we had learned so much of it in so short a time.'

  'And you, what did you say?'

  'I told him what he asked. Why should I not? I told him the idea was yours and he asked your name and I told him. Where is the harm?'

  Martin smiled. 'There is no harm,' he said. 'You did well to take the box up, Margaret.'

  'And we would all do well to get clear of this town while we may,' Springer said.

  Martin was still smiling. 'Get clear of the town?' he said. 'But we have promised to do the play again.'

  We looked at him as he stood there, smiling in the reddish light that strained through the curtains, with the empty purse in one hand and the box of money in the other. I could see no particular expression on anyone's face. We were beyond surprise, I think, now.

  'Do the play again?' Stephen said. 'How promised? You mean when we shouted it out? Shouting out a play does not make a promise.'

  'We have taken more than ten shillings,' Martin said. 'We will take more tonight.'

  'But we have enough,' I said. 'We have enough already to get to Durham, more than enough.'

  'We could take as much again,' Stephen said, and he made the sign of money, which is done by opening and closing the hand very rapidly. That it should be Stephen to speak so soon in favour of staying was not a surprising thing, at least it does not seem so to me now. He was robust in body but in imagination weak, and coarse in his sensing of things.

  'As much again? We will take twice as much,' Martin said. 'The fame of our play will spread. And in the dark, with the torches set against the walls ...'

  'God pity us, it would make a fine show,' Straw said. Players are strange creatures. Still pale and shaken as he was, he clapped his hands at the thought of it, which was the thought of himself playing in it. Straw never looked much beyond his own part.

  'We will buy good leather and Tobias will mend our shoes so we have dry feet on the way,' Martin said. 'Margaret can have stuff for a new gown. We will have good lined cloaks against the weather, each of us his own, and meat and ale over all the Christmas time. You will have
game pie, Springer.'

  Poor Springer smiled at this, still with traces of tears on his face. Thus once again Martin won us over. But there was more to it than money and I think we knew this already in our hearts.

  'The play is not the same now as it was,' Straw said. 'And we are not the same, the parts have changed.'

  'The Monk would not have seen her face,' Tobias said with sudden loudness. 'Herding goats is cold work, Nicholas was right, she would have worn a shawl or a hood.' And he smiled at me and nodded and we were friends again.

  'Perhaps he knew her from her dress,' Springer said.

  'That would argue that he knows her well,' Martin said. 'How well does he know her, the daughter of a poor weaver?'

  'How well does she know him?' Stephen said.

  'Is that why she came down to the road?' Springer said. 'Not seeing the boy, but seeing the Monk?'

  'There is woodland not far on the other side,' Stephen said. 'I went there to see. It would make a meeting-place.'

  I have said it before, we were possessed. We saw the danger as it came nearer but we could not draw back from this game of guessing, we could not pause from it. I too played my part, I said my lines as the prompter bade me. 'He was riding alone,' I said. 'There was no one with him.'

  'If she came down to see the Monk,' Straw said, 'where then was the boy, where was Thomas Wells? Did he see them together?'

  'We must learn more,' Martin said. 'Then we can make a play they will talk about in this town for ever.'

  His face was pale, the fair skin almost transparent, the mouth with its full underlip compressed as it was in his moods of excitement or exaltation. No one argued further. We were still standing in that close circle, like plotters about to take an oath. Then Straw shivered and clutched at himself. 'It is madness,' he said and I saw Springer take his hand.

  'We must learn more,' Martin repeated. 'We must go out again into the town.' He looked directly at Margaret. 'Can you find the man Flint again, the one who found the boy?'

  'I can ask for him,' she said. 'I know his house.' She paused a moment, then said, 'He saw our play, he paid his penny at the gate.'

  'Can you do again what you did with him before and ask him in return a question?' 'What question is that?'

  'Ask him, when he found the boy, whether he can remember if the body was frosted.' 'Frosted?'

  'Yes, yes,' he said, with sudden impatience. 'Ask him whether the boy's clothes were whitened over with frost and was this a light frost or were his clothes stiffened with it. It was early morning when he was found, not much after first light. All those days the ground was hard with frost. Do you remember when we were talking of what to do with Brendan? We had to bring Brendan here because we could not bury him in that hard ground without mattock and spade.'

  'The reason we brought Brendan here was that you wanted a church burial for him.' Stephen bore grudges long and he had seen an opportunity to give this one an airing. 'Then we had to pay the priest,' he said. 'Then we had to make this play to get back the money.'

  'And have we not done so? Brother, what you say may be true, but it does nothing to change the fact that there was a deep frost in those mornings. If the boy lay all night by the roadside with no shelter but the dark, there would have been ice in the corners of his eyes, the folds of his clothes would have been stiff with frost. If not, he must have been taken there or killed there early in the morning, not very long before Flint came upon him.'

  'Early in the morning? But who would be by the road then?'

  'The one that killed him,' Martin said. In the silence that followed upon this, he looked round at our faces. 'We will go and find out something more,' he said. 'The play we gave was the False Play of Thomas Wells. Tonight we will give the true one. And so we will shout it to the people. And tomorrow, when we leave for Durham, every one of us shall have money enough for a month.'

  Money enough for a month. For poor players that is money enough for ever. It comes to me sometimes again, his triumph as he held up the purse with both hands, in the very gesture of the celebrant priest. How far did he believe what he told us? He talked of true and false but he did not mean these words as they are commonly meant. He wanted a play with strong scenes, one that would disturb the people and send them away changed. Is that a true play? And he wanted money. He won us over, but to win us over was his role. He was prompted in the lines that he spoke, as were we all. Some fascination of power led us to imprison ourselves in this Play of Thomas Wells.

  CHAPTER TEN

  We went our separate ways again into the town. No one said to the others what he would do. I went into the market-place, which was loud with hens and geese and travelling tinkers shouting their wares. The snow was trodden and churned between the stalls and there were piss marks in it and feathers and scraps of kale and carrot. The sky was clear and pale with loose shreds of cloud in it like the clippings of sheep. A man on stilts passed through the crowd shouting that the town bath-house had good hot water. There was a ragged man kneeling in the snow and juggling with three knives.

  I saw the beggar who had come to our fire and spoken of lost children. An egg had fallen and smashed below the stall, where the snow was trodden. The yolk of the egg made a yellow smear on the snow and a raw-boned dog saw it at the same time as the beggar did and both made for it and the beggar kicked the dog, which yelped and held back but did not run, hunger making him bold. The beggar cupped his hands and scooped up the egg in the snow and took it into his mouth and ate all together, the egg and the fragments of shell and the snow. He saw me watching him and smiled the same smile, with the wet of the snow and egg glistening on his innocent face. I remembered then that he had been ready with names, as if in that simplicity of his mind names

  were like a lesson learned, and I approached him and asked him the name of the woman's father. He said it at once, smiling still: 'His name is John Lambert, good master. The father of the one to be hanged is called John Lambert.'

  I gave him a penny and he turned away with the coin clenched tight in his left hand. As he did so, very briefly, he raised his right hand and held it before his face in that same gesture of dazzlement. 'She would tell where the others are, if she could be brought to speak,' he said. Then he went shambling away from me and I lost sight of him among the people.

  She lives on the edge of the common ... Someone had said that, the day before when we were talking among ourselves. Her father is a weaver... I thought he would more probably be abroad on this day of the market, but there was a chance I might find him at home and I had no other idea of what to do. However, it was of no use to present myself to him either as priest or player. Then it occurred to me that I could pretend to be a clerk of the Justice. Quite by chance I had taken the black cloak of Avaritia to wear when we came out from the barn, that being the only thing left that offered any protection from the cold. And I was wearing the round black hat that I always wore abroad to cover my shorn head.

  I made my way out of the market-place and on to the road that led out of the town, going past that meeting of ways where we had been held back by the mounted men the evening before and seen the Justice ride by with his retinue. A path led up from here, skirting the common. Snow lay over the fields, unbroken. The crystals glinted on the slopes as I climbed upward. The skins of the beech trees that ran along the rises at the edge of the common had their silver darkened by this whiteness of snow and the sheep looked dirty against it.

  I remember this walk well. It seemed for the moment that I was free and on the road again, without this incubus of the boy's death. I mounted the slopes quickly and I felt the youth of my blood. I had tied scraps of canvas round my shoes and bound my legs with cloth below the knee, as had we all before setting out, and my feet had so far kept dry enough. I saw the tracks of a trotting fox leading away into the shrub.

  I met a man carrying a bundle of dried gorse twigs on his back, kindling he had raked out from the heart of the bushes, where it keeps dry, and I asked him if he knew th
e house of John Lambert. I thought he looked at me strangely and wondered if he remembered my face from the play. But my cloak was voluminous, as was necessary for Avaritia, it would have covered two of my size, and it was of an antique cut. And the human regard is strange in any case. He pointed higher, to a stone-built cottage enclosed in a timber fence. It was a house with byre and living place side by side and the entrance in the middle. Smoke came thinly from a hole in the thatch. I went through into the yard and geese lowered their heads at me and set up a clamour. I called out and waited there, on the slate flags below the step. The snow had been swept clear and there was a skin of dried blood on the slate where a pig had been killed. After some moments of waiting I heard the wooden bolt drawn back and a tall, gaunt-faced man stood at the threshold looking at me without great friendliness.

  'What is it?' he said. 'What do you want with me?' His voice was strong, with some hoarseness in it, as from much use.

  'I am sent by the Justice that is come to town,' I said. 'He wishes to be satisfied of your daughter's guilt. I am sent to inquire further into the matter and bring back a report.'

  His eyes moved slowly over my person, the hat, the cloak, the scraps that bound my feet and legs. They were pale eyes, almost colourless, as if bleached, and they were set deep in his head. 'From the King's Justice?' he said. 'Well then, come in.'