Morality Play

by Barry Unsworth

  It was almost as cold within the house as without. A small fire of wood chips was burning in a brick hearth in the middle of the room and the smoke of it hung in the air. His loom stood close to the single window and his narrow pallet was set against one wall. There was a door beyond, which I supposed gave admittance to the room where the woman had slept.

  The Weaver stood looking at me. There was a high-backed chair in the room but he did not ask me to sit. The frame of his body was big, but he was wasted, either from illness or underfeeding. He raised his hands and flexed the fingers, which were dark red with cold. They were thick, strong fingers - strong enough to choke the life from boy or man. He filled the room in some way, there was a sense in me of not having enough space. I clutched the cloak about me, not wanting him to see Brendan's ragged doublet below it. 'I am sent by my master,' I said, 'to inquire into the facts of that morning when the Lord's chaplain came here to your house and found the stolen money. There is a question as to why -'

  'The Monk found no money here.' The words came unhurried, with that slight hoarseness in them. It was a voice that was used to talking. Without taking his eyes from me he gestured round the bare room. 'Look around you, my young man that is sent by the Justice. Having stolen money and killed to steal it, would you hide it in your own place when there are fields and woods all around?'

  'But the purse might have been well hidden even here,' I said. 'Being suspicious, they came prepared to search.'

  'They came prepared to find,' he said. 'What is the name of your master, the Justice?'

  I had not anticipated such a question, being unused to deceit. 'Stanton,' I said - the first name that came to mind. 'His name is William Stanton.' The pause had been too long but he gave no sign of noticing anything amiss. He continued to regard me in the same lingering manner, but with a strange dispassion now, as one might look at a drifting leaf or an odd-formed cloud in the sky. I was disconcerted by this and I blundered. 'Where exactly was the money found?' I asked him.

  He was silent for a moment, then he said, but quite calmly, 'All this was deposed before the Lord's Sheriff by that devil's scum of a Benedictine. The Justice can see the writings if he so wishes. It is not necessary for a man to come here through the snow to ask me such a question. You seemed uncertain of your master's name. Can you tell me the name of the Monk?'

  I could not answer this, and looked at him without speaking.

  'Simon Damian is his name and God will find him out,' he said. 'You are not come from the Justice, brother, are you?'

  'No,' I said, 'it is true that I am not.'

  'God reveals all lies to me because He is all truth and He dwells within me,' he said in the same tone. 'The Children of the Spirit share in the nature of God. I knew from the first you were not what you said. If I had thought it true I would not have opened my lips.'

  I began to speak but he cut me short. 'I would say nothing to one that came from a justice,' he said. 'The justices are like the priests, spawn of Hell, ravening wolves that harry the sheep and feast on the blood of the poor. But the time will come, the people will turn. I say to the people, be of good heart, do as the wise husbandman who gathered the wheat into his barn but uprooted the tares and burned them.' He looked at me now and his pale eyes had a light in them. 'We know these tares,' he said. 'Let them take heed, let them beware, for the time of the harvest is coming.'

  I was tempted to reveal to him that I was a man in Orders and therefore knew better than he where God makes His dwelling. But had I done so he would have put me out. All the same I was unwilling to allow such heresy to go unreproved. And by arguing against him it seemed to me that I would make more space for myself in that room. The Weaver had a strong presence and he was somehow taking all the air from me.

  'It is not for us to judge who is for burning,' I said. 'God is the judge and He dwells apart. Brother, you did not find me out because God dwells within you, but because I did not lie well enough. If I had been a better liar you would have believed me.' Thus I turned my falsehood to God's service, asserting His entirely separate being. It did not occur to me until later that I might have done better to keep silent and repent my lies. 'Man's nature is corrupt,' I said, 'and has been so since loss of Eden. He may be redeemed, but God is nowhere to be found within him. Our way to redemption is through Holy Church, there is no other way. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.'

  'You talk like that servant of Antichrist who came here and took away my girl and left me with the goats and geese to tend as well as my loom,' he said. 'Have you come from him? Are you too one of the host of Antichrist? You are in borrowed robes and that is a sign of it.' He spat aside and made the sign of the Cross. 'Whoever you are,' he said, 'and whoever sent you, I say again there was no money found here. They hate me because I travel abroad, bearing witness and speaking against the rich and the priests. They know their days are numbered ... They seek to bring me before the judges but they are afraid of rousing the people if they do it without good cause. A spark is all that is needed now. I am one of the forerunners. As tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be at the end of the world, and the wicked shall howl in Hell for ever.'

  'But it is not you who have been taken,' I said. 'It is she, your daughter, who is under sentence of death.'

  'Me? How could they take me?'

  For a moment I thought he was claiming God's special protection. I was about to speak but he raised a hand to stay me - the gesture of the orator postponing interruption, arm bent at the elbow and held up at a slight angle with the palm facing outward. I resolved to remember it. 'You know nothing of it,' he said. 'You are a stranger here. Why do you come asking me questions?'

  Then I told him I was a player, that we wanted to make the True Play of Thomas Wells, and we were trying to find out the true things that happened so as to show them to the people.

  'You would show it in a play?' he said. 'You would make a play of a true thing?'

  'We can show it to be true by making a play of it,' I said.

  It was clear from his face that he thought this a damnable proceeding, which I could well understand as I partly so regarded it myself. He paused for some moments with lowered head, looking sombrely before him. 'And you would show this devil's pander of a monk, this Simon Damian, you would show him ... One of you would play him before the people?'

  'Certainly.'

  'Players are a brood of Satan,' he said in a considering voice. 'We will make a true play of it,' I said, 'as far as we can know the truth.'

  'Well,' he said, 'we set thieves to catch thieves. I will tell you. It was for me that they came. They came to find the money in my house, but I was not here.'

  'Where were you?'

  'I was at the house of friends in the hamlet of Thorpe, three hours' walk from here. I stayed the night there. There were Brethren of the Spirit come from far - they had come from Chester. We stayed together in the house, praying and bearing witness. There are many who can vouch for this. I told it to the Lord's Sheriff but it availed my daughter nothing; the Monk denied that it was for me he had come.'

  'So when he came, there was only your daughter in the house?'

  'Yes, only my daughter.'

  'And he did not know this?'

  'How could he know it? If he had known it he would not have come.'

  'But that takes us in a circle,' I said, offended in my sense of logic.

  'Listen, master-player or devil's messenger or whatever you are. They have wanted to take me for years past because I speak against the monks and friars and especially against the Benedictines, most slothful and debauched of all. This Simon Damian is a minister of Hell, he serves the Lord and helps him to live delicately on our labours and goods. We starve while they feast, we groan while they dance. But they will groan in their turn when the day -'

  'What will be done with them?' I said.

  'They will burn,' he said. He stared before him as if he saw the flames already there. 'They will be put to the fire, with their hounds
and horses and their whores that they feed and clothe from our labours. Also the Jews will be put to the fire, who crucified Christ and live by breeding money. Also the clothiers and merchants of cloth will be put to the fire, who fix the prices among them and deny to the weavers the fruits of their labour. Why would he come only for the girl, and she afflicted? How does that serve his turn?'

  'Afflicted?'

  'I have work to do,' he said bitterly, and he gestured towards the loom.

  'When the Monk found the money, he still believed you were there somewhere in the house or nearby?'

  'If he had not believed so, he would never have found it.' Again I felt my mind bruise against the rock of the Weaver's logic. Everything came round in a circle back to him. He was privy to all schemes, the Monk's for convicting him of murder, God's for the punishment of the rich.

  'By then it was too late,' he said. 'Someone they had to take, the money once discovered.'

  'Is your daughter also a Child of the Spirit?'

  'She cannot bear witness,' he said. 'She came sometimes with me to meetings of the Brethren.'

  I turned to go. 'What is her name?' I said.

  'Her name is Jane.' His face had softened with the uttering of it. 'It was also the name of my mother,' he said. 'My wife and one son died in the Plague and my older son died two years later in the famine of that year, when we all nearly died. More here died of want than of disease.' His voice quickened and the lids lifted from his eyes as he stared at me. 'My curse on him that took her and left me alone,' he said. 'May he die in blood. My curse on them that feast and plunder the people of God and pay us by the piece instead of letting us sell our own cloth. The Reckoning is coming, the time is near ...'

  At the door I glanced back. He had not moved. I met his eyes and I seemed to see the glint of tears in them. But his voice was the same, practised, hoarse with much speaking. 'She cannot bear witness,' he said. 'But I know her. She would hesitate to kill a mouse, or a wasp that had stung her, let alone a human child.'

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I went back through the snow, thinking about the Weaver and his words. A wind was springing up, whipping the loose snow into drifts. I was intending to return to the inn and so took the way through the market, this being the shortest. The bells were ringing and some of the travelling people were taking down their stalls. It was not yet dark but the light was fading and the air was turning colder. I saw Martin standing below the platform of a man selling cures. He did not see me until I was there at his shoulder, being quite absorbed in listening. 'We could learn something from this fellow,' he said. 'Look how he speaks and moves and keeps his pauses. He has the people in thrall to him, he persuades them they can buy immortal life for twopence.'

  There was some quality of excitement in the way he spoke, more than belonged to the subject. 'Since we have met thus,' he said, 'you can go with me.'

  'Go with you where?'

  'We are going to see the woman,' he said. 'We are going to the prison, Nicholas. Come, we can go now. The bells have started.'

  And as we walked back through the market he told me. There was an overseer of the prison and two keepers. The one whose turn came now Martin had spoken to and for a shilling he would admit one person, allow him to enter the cell and talk to the woman, so long as he himself was present at it. And he would say nothing of it to anyone.

  'That last promise we can trust,' Martin said. 'It would be more than his place is worth to speak.'

  'A shilling?' I said. It was a week's wages for a jailer. 'Out of the common stock?'

  'Yes, yes, a shilling,' he said with sudden angry impatience. 'This is not a time for counting pennies. What should I do, seek you out and hold a meeting?'

  He stopped there at the edge of the market and turned to me. 'Did we not all agree?' he said. 'We sat round and every man had his say. Did we not agree and set our hearts together in good accord that we should make the true play of the boy's death?'

  I nodded, but he was wrong to say there had ever been rational assembly among us. Certainly we had agreed. We had entered upon it - like entering a walled place and not finding again the door which would let us out.

  'It is a shilling well spent,' he said. 'We shall get the girl's account of it.'

  The wall of the prison was blank on the side facing the street. An alley ran alongside and there were steps leading up to a heavy door. Above the lintel, carved in stone, was a coat of arms, a leopard couchant and three doves in diagonal line. We sounded the iron knocker and waited and after some moments the ill-favoured face of the jailer looked at us through the small grid that was set in the door. He smiled at the sight of Martin and opened the door to us.

  We passed down a passage and crossed a walled courtyard with empty stables down one side and a sun-clock in the middle. Then there were again passages and finally steps leading down to the dungeons below ground where prisoners were kept. A voice and a rattle of chains came from the dimness as we passed.

  'Who are these kept in here?' I asked him, feeling horror at the damp and darkness of the place.

  He held up his lantern, grinning at us, showing a mouth of ruined teeth. 'Guests of the Lord de Guise,' he said. 'This house is his. They are two that left his lands without permission. This is done now on every hand, but Sir Richard is one that upholds the law. No man escapes him who has done him any wrong. These two asked for higher wages and when this was denied by the Lord's right, they left his land and went to work for one who offered more. He sent armed men to bring them back.'

  'And the landowner they had gone to? The one who gave them the wages they asked, what of him?'

  The jailer stopped near the end of the passage and spat on the stone flags. 'What could he do?' he said with contempt. 'An old man with no living issue, a hundred acres of land, a steward, a dozen men-at-arms ... They fired his woods to teach him not to poach labour.'

  'And that strikes you as a just proceeding?'

  The jailer spat again and looked at me in ugly fashion. He was a burly fellow with marks of old wounds on his face. Only the thought of his shilling kept him civil towards us. It was this he asked for now, holding out his hand for it.

  'Where is the woman?' Martin asked.

  'She is here.' The jailer jerked his thumb towards the end of the passage, where a faint light lay at the edge of the stone flags. 'In the end cell. An order came to give her light ...' His hand closed over the shilling. 'Now you can have your parley,' he said, and a smile came to his face. 'You have paid dear for the pleasure of hearing your own crowing.'

  He moved forward and unlocked the door with a heavy key from his belt. 'You,' he said to me, 'you stay outside here with me. It is he who pays, my word was to him. You can watch, if you have a mind to, from the door here.'

  He spoke as if a spectacle were promised. There was a sliding panel at head height in the door. Martin went into the cell and the door was closed and I watched through this opening. There was a candle-lamp with a glass guard set in a bracket on the wall and this gave out a pallid light. The cell lay below the street; I could hear the sound of the wind outside and small puffs of snow came through the grille of the high window and drifted slowly down into the light. The flame of the lamp, though guarded, flickered slightly and shadows moved over the walls.

  Martin advanced with his light step into the room. 'I come as a friend,' he said. The Weaver's daughter stirred against the wall and I heard the sound of sliding metal and saw that she was chained by one ankle, though on a chain long enough to allow movement across the room.

  I heard Martin's voice again, saying his name, and then from the woman a sound like no human voice; and I realized at that moment, as Martin must also have done, the significance of the jailer's smile as his fingers closed over the money: the woman's tongue could not make the shape of words.

  I saw Martin check himself and stand still. 'Can you hear what I say to you?' he said. There was kindness in his tone but nothing of pity. She turned towards him and raised her head and
the light fell on her shoulders and face and the dark tangles of her hair. The eyes were in shadow but I saw the gleam in them. Her mouth was full-shaped without grossness, she was tender-lipped even in that wretchedness, even as she uttered more of those strange-pitched sounds which were all her throat could manage and which she could not hear.

  I heard the jailer chuckle at my shoulder. Then Martin broke into mime, first with the snake-sign of tonsure and belly, then the flexing of fingers to show money, then two quick steps and the twisting movements of search and find. This done, he took up the posture of question, head tilted stiffly to the left, right hand held at waist level with thumb and forefinger extended. And in all these movements he was aped by his humpbacked shadow on the wall.

  Her gestures in reply were rapid, too much so for me always to follow. I saw her shake her head and make the sign of the circle, not that slow one that indicates eternity, but hasty and repeated and made with both hands meeting and parting above and below. I did not know this sign, and perhaps it is not one that belongs to players. After it she took some steps away from the wall and the chain sounded on the stone floor. She stopped a yard from him and struck the palm of her left hand sharply with the forefinger of the right, which I took for a sign of truth-telling.

  Martin made the sign of carnal relation, not that brisk one of copulation but the one that also suggests affectionate feeling, fingers interlaced and held straight. Again I think this is a sign only players use, for she did not know it and signified so by frowning and beckoning. He made the sign again, this time also setting his mouth in the shape of kissing. She made a violent gesture of denial, like a sideways blow with the flat of the hand, and I saw her eyes flash — it may have been true what her father said, that she would not harm the meanest of God's creatures, but there was a fire of anger in her. It was there in the movements of her body, in the sudden spreading of her hands before her, as at something unclean, to show her repugnance for the Monk.

  The two of them were moving together now, not drawing nearer but stepping and turning in a kind of accord, like a dance, mocked by their own shadows, accompanied by the tune of the chains and the unearthly sounds that came from the woman. As she turned in this dance, for some moments I saw her more clearly and she was deep-browed and dark-eyed and slenderly made, with straight shoulders — even in the neglect and squalor of that place she was beautiful to look upon. But then I lost the thread of their discourse, I was not versed enough in this language of signs; in the end all was spectacle, as the jailer had promised, the poise of head, movement of hands, sway of body, the pause and pounce of shadows in that inconstant light.