Falstaff

by Robert Nye

  Reader, my Guest, if you did not notice this at the time, I shall take your word for it that you do now.

  Stephen Scrope has not written here yet, my stepson. Scrope is an oaf with a well-knit brow and hanging ears. He has a chip on his shoulder because I sold him once. He has translated for me two volumes – the Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers and the works of the delicious Christine of Pisan. As a translator he is no traitor. None of your Gowers in my employ, N. B. Scrope is a most reluctant amanuensis, all the same. I promise you him tomorrow or the next day. I compel these scribes to my service. I am the voice, the tongue, they the hands that take down the waggings. Today I have Hanson at my disposal, assisted by Nanton. I swear that those two boys could not write a sentence without each other. (Madam, they’re just good friends.) Two secretaries for the one job. Such extravagance. Let it be said that I am a provincial Maecenas. I am a provincial Maecenas.

  Hey didle diddle and hey diddle dan, can it be that we have only inhabited this castle for five years? But then it was a long while in the making, and cost a pretty packet to get right. All the same, here we are, Fastolf and Co., with my tapestries and my books, my rent-rolls and my diamonds, my ruby worth more than any jewel outside King Harry’s crown (which doesn’t fit his pea-sized head), my cellars full of sack, and my boxes full of paper. Paper, paper, reams and quires and whazereys of it, lovely paper. One thing I will say for W. Worcester now he isn’t here: he writes a fair hand. And no shit on the page where he’s had to take his finger out. Not like some. Nanton, control yourself.

  Today, lewd readers, is St George’s Day. The 23rd April, the day of St George, our English patron, who slew the lurid dragon.

  Well, fig it, perhaps not.

  About St George.

  Enemies of England tell his story this way. Hanson, the Cappadocian version.

  George was born in a fuller’s shop in Epiphania, in Sicily. He wangled this contract for supplying the Army with bacon and made a mint of money slicing rashers down the middle to double his profits. Of course the day came when he had to fly the country. He graduated in exile, from pork-butchery to Arianism, and in this new vocation so excelled his competitors that Constantius sent him to take over from Athanasius as Archbishop of Alexandria. (Athanasius himself was far too orthodox for the Church of that time, and holy too – they say that as a boy he used to baptise his playmates.) As an Archbishop, our George proved a marvellous tax-collector and a keen plunderer of pagan temples. Some of the Alexandrines complained, but George had the Army on his side. His downfall came with the accession of Julian, who had no room even for halfway Christians. George was thrown into prison and kept there for twenty-four days – just as long as it took the local tax-payers to beat the doors down. George’s throat was cut with a pair of scissors, and some wit doubled him by doing to his corpse what George used to do to the rashers in his grocer days. All the remains were then thrown into the sea. Of course, these events made George a martyr in the eyes of the Arians. He was canonised by the Arian party as soon as it had the money and the ear of the Congregation of Rites. Miracles associated with his name during the Crusades must have helped his cause. He poked a Saracen or two for Godfrey of Bouillon at the Battle of Antioch. He appeared in white armour to Richard Lionheart before Acre and cheered him up with the news that the day was pre-destinatedly ours. From then on, George was an Englishman.

  That is one version. The French believe it. They like to make us out a nation of grocers.

  Here is the truth. Nanton!

  George was born of generations of noble Christians, and not in Cappadocia at all. He enlisted in the Army and rose to a high rank. He did not kill a dragon, that I grant you, if by dragon you mean one of those monstrous snakes, dracontes to the Greeks, which used to lurk in the Alps and come swoughing down the sky every now and then to eat diamonds and belch fire. As I say, it depends what you mean by dragons. The Devil, St Augustine tells us, leo et draco est; leo propter impetum, draco propter insidias. George certainly resisted the persecution of Christians which was all the rage under the Emperor Diocletian, who invented farthings. George went so far as to resign his commission and to mention the Emperor in the same breath as a wild boar. (Diocletian had been elected Emperor by the troops at Chalcedon, after killing with his own hands one Harry Aper, prefect of the praetorians, and thus fulfilling a prophecy of some French witch that he would mount the throne as soon as he had slain a wild boar – aper. Like most superstitious successes, he didn’t care to be reminded of this incident in his career.) Anyway, Diocletian cut off George’s head, and George was sainted for it, by Pope Gelasius. Gregory of Tours says that the saint’s relics were once in the French village of Le Maine. They’re not there now. I know. I went to look. My uncle Hugh never claimed to have even a rasher of him either.

  Make what you like of the stories, but I’ll tell you one thing. George is as English as John Fastolf, and they don’t come any more English than that. Some of your Latin and Greek churches have other saints sharing this 23rd of April with him, but in England there has never been a rival saint in sight. I have even heard that the real St George was born in England, and was actually the son of Lord Albert of Coventry, a lad with three strange marks on his body – a dragon on his chest, a garter round one of his legs, and a blood-red cross on his arm. I can tell you for a fact that King Arthur had St George’s picture on his banners, that his day has been a holiday in England since the Council of Oxford commanded it in the year 12 something or other, and that in the year 13 something, the Feast of St George was further and very properly glorified by the creation of the Order of St George, or the Blue Garter. That day, forty English knights met forty knights from France and Burgundy, from Brabant, Hainault, Flanders, and Germany – and I don’t need to tell you which forty won. The first year of Hal’s reign, and one of the best things he did – he made St George’s Day a double feast. I used to light bonfires in France to keep it, or at the very least I’d polish Bardolph’s nose in honour of the occasion.

  Hal at Harfleur. Harry le Roy – which Pistol thought must be a Cornish name. ‘God for Harry! England! And Saint George!’

  So much for villainous grocers.

  As for dragons. St Romanus killed one at Rouen, by persuading it to chase a girl into an oven. This was the dragon Gargouille. St Martha killed a dragon by the name of Tarasque on the River Rhone. St Martial killed the dragon of the Garonne at Bordeaux. I’ve seen the head of St Martha’s dragon – it’s at Aix. I admit that the dragons at Marseilles and Lyons are stuffed alligators. But the dragon of Rhodes is not. That was killed by Dieudonne, of Gozo, less than a hundred years ago. Some say its head reminds them of a hippopotamus. It reminds me of a dragon.

  I too, Johannes Fastolf, have been something of a slayer of dragons in my time. This will come out. Truth does.

  What I am bringing to your notice by this celebration of the date is the passage of days since the start of our chronicles. We began on New Year’s Day, which is to say the 25th March. Since then I have devoted part of every one of twenty-three days to memory, to recollection, to exemption from oblivion, commemoration, history, revisitings of my life and other hazards.

  But wait, cries the mathematical reader. Twenty-three days commencing on the 25th March does not bring us to the 23rd day of April. The fat knight lies. St George is not yet on us. The dragon goes unslain. His calendar is drunk.

  Not at all, little counters of numbers. This is my Hundred Days War, yes, but in setting forth to wage it I never gave you any undertaking that I would fight every day and the days one after another, did I? I undertook only to tell my life and the truth for one hundred days. That I am doing. But the most religious and foolhardy champion has to rest from his glories now and then. There were dog days – look back or think back and you will find them – it is easy enough – when I was busy with my niece Miranda, or with Desdemona my rat, or with brandy, or canaries, or other marvellous searching wines or affairs of state, and had no time for literary labo
urs.

  So then, we are arrived, by happy chance, for our twenty-fourth Day, on the 23rd day of April, St George’s very own, and mine, and England’s – for no man lives more English than myself. St George’s Day is not a day for skipping about in the Inns of Court some sixty dusty years ago. That can keep. Set down Sir John Fastolf’s spending of St George’s Day 1459. Now, today, this minute.

  I woke and played with my rodent, Desdemona. First I stripped off the bedclothes. Then I shaved. Then I rubbed some particles of parmisan cheese between my toes. It is my pet’s delight to take her breakfast daintily from between them, and her side-bites and nibbles save me valuable time that would otherwise be wasted in cutting my toenails. O Desdemona, Desdemona. She runs down my right flank and up my left. I have trained her thoroughly. She has a remarkably witty, whippy tail and eyes like intelligent bonfires.

  The long rat’s friskings put me in a good mood for my breakfast. I took Palm sack for it. There’s nothing like Palm sack for putting marrow in a man’s bones, and bone in his marrow.

  I put on my blue coat which I always wear on this day, once a year.

  After breakfast, I took my exercise – which is to say I worked for an hour and a half with Nanton here on my great Bill of Claims against the Government. We have computed that King Harry the holy VI owes me just over £10,000 (ten thousand pounds). When by certain extra remembrances of fact and injections of honest imagination we get it up to eleven thousand round, I will despatch this bill to London, putting a fair copy of it in these annals for safe-keeping. My Bill of Claims is nothing less than a full and true account of all regal robberies done against my person and from my estate in France, in the late lamented wars. I will forgive the robbings of the present King’s father, when he was my son. More of that another day.

  Having taken my exercise and warmed my wits a while with Madeira sack, I grew peckish. I ate a titbit of herrings from Macbeth the cook. They were not well smoked. I suspect his motives with my herrings. I gave Macbeth a bollocking. This lent me more hunger, so I munched the froth off a flagon of stout before dinner.

  For that meal I had burnt brandy and Friar Brackley instructing me anew in the mysteries of the sect of the Flagellants. I have heard this stuff before, but it’s good stirring stuff, and doesn’t stale with the repeating, or give you hiccups, and today of all days I wanted him to tell me it again.

  This sect first sprang up in Italy about two hundred years ago. Affected with the fear of God, noble and ignoble Romans, young and old alike, even children and philosophers, would go naked through the streets, walking in public, two by two, in the style of a procession. Every one of them held in his hand a sweet, sharp scourge of leather thongs, a flagellum. With eager groans they lashed themselves, all the while weeping great gouts of tears as if spectators at the passion of our Lord, imploring the forgiveness of God and his Mother, praying that he, appeased by the repentance of so many sinners, would not disdain imperfect theirs. In the vast dead of night also, hundreds – thousands – no, ten thousands of these penitents ran, notwithstanding the gnaw of winter, and frostbite in their naked toes, about the streets, and into churches, lit wax candles in their hands, brokenly prostrating themselves before altars, and whipping each other merrily, miserably, with yelps. The original author of these solemn processions of the Flagellants was St Vincent Ferrer.

  In the year of the Only Begotten 13-something – can’t remember the exact year but it was about the time that spectacles came in, and that always fashionable Cardinal Ugone started wearing them – about the time when the plague was taking Germany, then, the Flagellants started up in that country too, with great success. The Germans danced in circles drawn in dust. (Germans will do anything.) They stripped, the Huns, leaving on their bodies only a breech-cloth. Plenty of warm flesh free and firm for whipping. Each little whipper addressed his neighbour with a scourge, the scourge in the German case having knots and four iron points for luck, and the whole whipping being punctuated with the singing of Teuton-type psalms. At a signal, they would cease, and then lie throbbing and sobbing while their leader seminally sermonised, exhorting them to implore God’s mercy on souls in purgatory, not to speak of themselves.

  Whippers carried purple banners to advertise their enthusiasm. When clothed they wore grim garments with red crosses on the breast, back, and cap. Wherever they went they were welcomed by bells. Bells meant good sport. Bells meant the whippers were coming.

  They had a good run for their money, but at length Pope Clement VI issued a bull against them. The sect died out. But it started up again unlawfully some fifty years ago, led by a man called Conrad, who claimed he was really the prophet Enoch. This Conrad taught that the Flagellants being established, God had no further need of the Papacy. This Conrad taught also that there was no salvation save by means of a new baptism of blood through the instrumentality of the whip. The Inquisition took action against him. There was a grand inquiry into Mr Conrad, and ninety-one of his disciples were burnt at Sangerhusen.

  Pippin tarts and sherry sack for pudding.

  In the afternoon I walked in my orchards in the April air and spoke with Friar Brackley concerning the earthly Paradise. I asked him three questions. To wit. –

  1. Is there any such place?

  2. If there is, where is it?

  3. If there is, and where it is can be known, what’s it like?

  Fr Brackley answered the first question by saying that we have four witnesses that Paradise is in earth. First, stories that liken Sodom and Gomorrah, before they were overturned, to Paradise. I like the sound of these. Second, travellers who have said that they have been there. Third, those who have reported on its geography – e.g. the four rivers that run out of it. And – but I forget the fourth.

  Ha, yes. Basilius, in his Hexameron, also Isidorus, Eth. lib. quarto decimo, and Josephus, in his first book, say that waters falling from the hill of Paradise constitute a great pond, and out of that pond – as from a well – the four rivers spring …

  No – more brandy, Nanton, I can’t think clearly – no, the fourth witness and proof that Paradise is in earth is the ancient fame of the idea of it. People have been talking about Paradise for six thousand years and more. People have been talking about Paradise since the beginning of the world. Fame that is false would not have lasted so long.

  Paradise is not a long sailing-journey from earth, neither is it in the moon. If it were in the moon it would sometimes bereave the light and make an eclipse. Besides, God help us, if it were in the moon, in the sky, quite divorced from every land, how could those four rivers pass through the air and flow out in places which, however far-off, are certainly lands that men have lived in?

  It being known by experience that in eclipses of the moon, the earth makes a spherical shield, then it follows that the earth, with all her parts and organs, must be round. Rather like a duck’s egg. Everything comes to an end, and an egg comes to two. Or none. So wise men conclude that Paradise is at the uttermost end of the East, and that it is a great country of the earth no less than Ind or Egypt.

  Those wise men must be mad.

  We would live there still, if we had not sinned. (That’s a different point. And I believe it.)

  To my third question, my father confessor told me that Isidore has it, libro quarto decimo, capitulo tertio, (and thank God for Harry le Roy and plain English) – that this name Paradise turned out of Greek into Latin signifies an orchard. Yet Paradise in the Hebrew is called Eden, which word means liking.

  So: Paradise is an orchard of liking.

  No wonder, I reckon, for in that place is everything that says yes to life. There is health, for the air is in temper not too hot nor too cold, so that nothing that lives can die in it.

  As John Damascene says, that place has mirth and fair weather, apples and laughter, for it is the fount of all fairness.

  No tree there loses its leaves.

  No flowers there wither, or are blasted by the sun, or soured by the moon.


  Of paradisal fruit and trees it is written, says Fr B., in Genesis, secundo capitulo, that every one is sweet to eat and fair to see.

  (Just look what one of them taught us. How to Fall!)

  ((And I am Fall stuff.))

  Petrus assures us that the waters of the Flood were not permitted to reach Paradise.

  Yes, double brackets.

  And Isidore again – libro nono, capitulo primo – reminds us that our way to Paradise is fast stopped in this life by cause of the sin of our former father. (Yet every beat of my heart is another stride nearer.)

  This evening I toy again with my ratkin, and drink burnt brandy. There is news tonight that the Yorkists have put down Queen Margaret at Bloreheath, and the civil wars are on us again. Whether this news is true I have no way of knowing.

  It’s late. Hanson nods. Nanton scratches himself. The country’s going to the dogs. You can’t get secretaries without fleas anywhere.

  St George save England!

  (He’ll bloody need to.)

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  How Sir John Fastolf broke Skogan’s head

  24th April

  And this is where the story really begins. I’m standing on the edge of London and my life. I am an apologue, a vision, an ode, a call to devotion. I am a master of the art of fencing. I wear my codpiece open, and tied at the top with a bunch of ribbons. My sword slaps between my legs like a monkey’s tail. My long-waisted doublet is unbuttoned half-way. And what do I have in my pockets? (What a man has in his pockets is always vital to history, and curiously omitted from the history-books. Julius Caesar carried a notebook reminding him of his triumphs. King Herod never went anywhere without his kissing-comfits. Archibald, fourth Earl of Douglas and first Duke of Touraine, that Scotch mercenary who fought for France or England, depending on who would pay him most, always carried his own left eye, knocked out at Homildon Hill by Harry Hotspur.) The Fastolf pockets contain the Fastolf nous. Also a few pounds given to me by my mother, and some I.O.U.’s from my stepfather Farewell, who professed himself well-pleased that I should absent myself from Caister and seek to make my own way in the world’s ruin. Thus equipped, and with my hair curled at the back and cut in a fringe across my forehead, I put my young person in the way of friends in London. They were not slow in coming.