And as Gog prays standing and void in front of the Five Sisters, the First Sister on the left comes before him in the shining fleece of meekness. And she speaks:
“I am Meekness. I was born of a winter lamb. I grew among the bulrushes bending to the East Wind. My school was the grain beneath the flail that maketh the bread of men, the berries beneath the press that flow as the wine of men, the children whom the rod doth not spare, the daisy that boweth to the split hoof, the wattle pen that yieldeth to the flock but doth not allow it to pass. He who taketh me by the hand shall fall and yet he shall not fail. He shall follow his enemies while he leadeth them, he shall kneel before the proud who shall be humbled in front of him. Without me, the people shall be as the thunder and the lightning that come before the flood of their weeping and the rain of their tears on the day of retribution. With me, men shall wax fat in times of joy and preserve their bodies in times of sorrow. I am the sister of all and the stepmother of none. Shall I be thy coat, Gog?”
Before Gog may answer, the Second Sister steps out of her narrow place on the wall on the left hand of the First Sister and comes before him in the bright bark of an ash tree. And she speaks:
“I am Endurance. My father was an oaken bridge and his wife the Severn River that floweth and floweth without ceasing. Where the millstone grindeth and doth not complain, where the bollard maketh fast the merchant ship in hail and storm, where the stone paving supporteth the carriage and the slate roof covereth the hall, there I am. When the fury of the tempest lasheth the people, I shall put my cloak about them so that they may shelter until the morrow. When the wheel turneth and doth not stay for an answer, I shall give strength to all that they may serve the wheel for their bread and yet not stay for a rest. He who stands at my back shall not want, nor shall he falter. I am the staff of all men and without me there can be no men. Shall I be thy crutch, Gog?”
And lo, as Gog is about to embrace either Sister with either arm, a black breath, stinking of burned coal and oil, fumes forth and melts with its searing blast the lead strips that hem together the innumerable panes of the robes of the First Sister and the Second Sister. And from their like height of fifty feet and more that is fourteen times their breadth, the Sisters are reduced to two little pyramids of broken grey glass, from which silver trails of lead run away like the tracks of snails. And as Gog looks forwards toward the north wall, he sees that the twin stone embrasures on the left, from which the two Sisters have stepped, are now the narrow black nostrils of Magog, whose dread initial appears as the raised stone skin about his pitchy nostrils, once plugged and made holy by the two Sisters in their set places at the side of the other three Sisters. And Magog speaks:
“What is Meekness to me but the clove that I insert in my left nostril to perfume my foul breath as it issues out? And what is Endurance but the quill through the cork that I insert in my right nostril so that I may take in air through the clogged passages of my diseased nose? Through the quill of Endurance I take in the draught that my iron lungs need to ignite the fuel that drives my piston ribs. Past the clove of Meekness I expel the filthy odours of the crippled servants of my machines, their sweat and piss and pus, and these rank scents are turned into the wafting breezes of sweet bowers and orchards despite the moiling midden of their sources. Without you twin grey Sisters, Meekness and Endurance arm in arm, how should I make the mob perform its daily and necessary labour? Bring me the virtue of Lasting, and I will pin a testimonial of parchment for forty years’ service on the dewlap of withered skin about her neck. Bring me the virtue of Humble Duty and I will trick her out with a linen sheet to shroud her bony frame. In your absence, the people kick against the pricks and rear up to their ruin and my own. In your company, they walk to the grave in labour and are content. Am I not your true master, Gog?”
And as Gog groans in bitter wisdom, the sight of the fuming slits of Magog’s nostrils is hidden by the edge of the robe of the Third Sister from the far right of the group as she stands before Gog in the lowly glow of the pilgrim’s shift. And she speaks:
“I am Faith. My cradle was the green weathervane on Salisbury spire built on a swamp. Where I go, the orphan Hope also goeth. For she hath no cover but the edge of my shawl, she must die in the tempest but that my hood shieldeth her nakedness. Yet without this orphan on my arm, would not every man and every woman put a penknife into their vein? I am stronger than Hope, and yet she is prettier and vainer and littler than I, and she needeth her lessons. For the few who favour me shall be the arks of the people, while the many smile upon the dimples and babble and dreams of the child. A multitude of places are built to give me shelter, yet none shall find me there but those who know how to seek me. In the dark night when the white Word of Truth walketh about the room, then I alone can drug the hour-long minutes until the footfall of first light. Call on me boldly and I shall answer boldly. Call on the orphan child Hope and she shall answer as a child. Shall we be your glove and your pretty ring, Gog?”
Before Gog may answer, the Fourth Sister steps out of her narrow place on the wall on the right hand of the Third Sister and comes before him in the clarity of a pillar of grey matter. And she speaks:
“I am Understanding. Begotten on a sun’s shaft by an old owl at break of day. Where the pool encompasseth the frog and doth not let him sink, where the swallow laceth her nest more careful than the thatcher of cottage roofs, where the spider threadeth his warp and shuttleth upon his web, where the bat turneth away from the horsehair and doth not touch, there I pass, gone before I am seen to come. In my pouch I carry a legless girl, who knoweth affliction. And wherever I wander, she scattereth the dry soil with her tears and the melancholy puddle with her smile. To the fallen, she giveth a twig with which they may begin to raise themselves. To the lost, she giveth a little key which may open one of the many iron gates closed against them. She is too pleased with her own merits, my little legless Charity. And yet, without her, who would remember the unrecorded, who would discover the wants of the forgotten? Shall we be thy cap and thy wallet, Gog?”
And lo, as Gog is about to embrace either Sister with either arm, a blinding beam, bright as the fiery furnace, strikes forth and shrivels with its searing blast the lead stitches that bind together the myriad pieces of the robes of the Third Sister and the Fourth Sister. And from their like height of fifty feet and more that is fourteen times their breadth, the Sisters are charred to two small mounds of glittering ash, from which silver dribbles of lead run away like the droolings of idiots. And as Gog looks forwards toward the north wall, he sees that the twin stone embrasures on the right, from which the two Sisters have stepped, are now the narrow black eyeholes of Magog, whose dread initial appears as the raised stone lids about his pit-deep sockets, once blinkered and made holy by the two Sisters in their ordained positions at the side of the other three Sisters. And Magog speaks:
“What is Faith but the patch that shields the maggoty socket from which my blind and sinister eye was removed? And what is Understanding but the smoked lens of the monocle set before my seeing and dexterous eye? Strip off the patch and the smoked glass, and I would cringe in the light of Truth. If I can turn my blind eye to all believers, the fools who always trust and are always disappointed, then I may ordain according to my whims and they will have faith that my fancies are revealed wisdom. When I yawn, ‘Country . . .’ they will crowd the cemeteries in certitude of the righteousness of their cause and of the orders of their betters. When I snigger ‘God . . .’ they will bruise their knees and beggar themselves to build me a stone barn for my ease. And as for the smoked glass called Understanding, how it prettifies my bloodshot eye! If that eye were bared so that men could see the surface of red veins streaking the yellow ball and the flecked iris spotted with flies like a hot turd, then they would jeer and tear it out and leave me in darkness. But as it is, they elect to have a Cyclops above them to call their natural deeds misdoings and to spy on them for the benefit of judges and courts and jails and hangmen’s knots. But Under
standing, my downy Understanding, how you are my guise and badge of respectability! I speak to you only words of honied reason, and you nod and say, ‘So shall it be, for so it has always been. I understand thee, Magog, thou couldst be worse. Better the devil thou knowst . . .’ So blessed be Faith and blessed be Understanding, for they shall veil the loathsome look of Magog. Am I not your true master, Gog?”
And as Gog groans in the terrible smart of perception, the sight of the filthy holes of Magog’s sockets is hidden by the edge of the robe of the Fifth Sister from the centre of the group as she stands before Gog in glory without seam or edge, the glory of love. And she speaks:
“I am Love. At the cry of the newborn and at the blood of the afterbirth, on the splint by the broken bone and on the lint that wipes clean the wound, in the choir of the morning and in the coupling of the evening, where the worms embrace in silver slime and the woman scrubbeth a table for the family meal, there I am. If I am not present, living things are but things that move and are not alive. The beasts of the field and the forest, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, these know me in a small measure. But men may know me in a great measure, or they may deny me. My name is called often, and often in vain. I come without asking, I go before I am known. Shall I be thy shirt, Gog?”
And lo, as Gog is about to embrace the final Sister with both arms, a putrid puff, ripe with dung and waste, belches forth and withers with its pestilence the lead ribbons that wave between the countless lights on the robes of the Fifth Sister. And from her height of heaven that is as broad as the world and all that therein is, the Sister is powdered to one small heap of grey dust, from which silver trickles of lead run away like the tears of angels. And as Gog looks forwards toward the north wall, he sees that all the five embrasures are empty and that the pillars of stone between them have become the four fangs of the black mouth of Magog, surrounded by the puckering of raised stone lips, once stoppered and made holy by the Five Sisters in their serene hierarchy. And Magog speaks:
“I adore Love, the perfect hypocrite. That word is the blanket for all the vices through which I rule the race of men. He who speaks the name of Love, lies. He who practises the art of Love, is debauched. He who gives up all for Love, gives up his precarious way through the world, and then he has no other way but mine. To die for Love is to live for ever and die no more, they say. But it is, in fact, no more than to die. Death asks no reason when he comes. Yes, Love is my favourite word, the most debased. Even God is Love, they say, and God does rule, they say. Then say Magog is Love, for Magog surely rules. Am I not your true master, Gog?”
A hand touches Gog’s shoulder like a thief in the night, and Gog wakes with a start to the fact of a darkened Minster, with all the light of evening gone from the backs of the Five Sisters so that they are indeed mere black slits between the four stone fangs of Magog’s black mouth. The verger of the Minster is pulling at Gog’s coat. “Sorry, sir. We have to lock up now. Sorry to disturb your meditation. Powerful holy, this place is.” And he ducks in deference to the far High Altar, as he conducts Gog back across the transept to the outer door and the night city of York.
As soon as he leaves the Minster, Gog finds himself in a Tudor Street that some butcher wag has called the Shambles. And shambles it is, but the shambles of straight lines that can be the lilt of architecture. The heavy black beams that support the projecting upper storeys of the old shops are aslant and agley with warping and subsidence. The cross-timbers on the house fronts, which contain the white plaster, curve and bend in answer to the grain of the wood rather than of the structure. Occasionally rose-red bricks fill the heavy wooden frame of the houses, which wear their pointed caps of tile as rakishly as jesters once sported their headpieces.
In a doorway, Gog sees a wandering minstrel, a troubadour of old in a profession gone to seed. Once royalty was his open purse; the courts are less kind now. He is lean and shaggy and dressed in soiled army fatigues. His lute looks like a half-strung tennis-racket backed by an orange box. His sandals are old gym-shoes with holes cut in them to let his corns breathe. Yet a smile on his face springs up from his dejection, and he chirps cocky as a sparrow undaunted by a thousand attempts to get near a large crumb just out of beak.
“Tanner for a song, sir. Tanner for my supper.” He strums a few chords on his home-made guitar. “I’ve got songs on love and war, sir. Very popular, war now. Though I’ve got a lovely number on peace, there’s no demand. Or highwaymen. This is Dick Turpin’s home base, they hanged him here. Or Robin Hood, he was a bandit too.”
“Robin Hood,” Gog says. “I’d like to hear a song on him. The first of the Resistance heroes. Fought from the forest. The Normans never got him either, did they? The church bled his life away and . . .” In the distance, a klaxon sounds on a lorry, its far gears crack like branches and its moving tyres sigh like wind in the leaves. “You can still hear his horn.”
The minstrel smiles and begins to pluck his chords. Then he sings as a bird sings, unforced and a little shrill, yet the notes cosseted in the throat.
“I sing a song of both now and then
The song of two Lincoln highwaymen . . .
Little John and Robin Hood
Stand by the road through the greenwood.
They meet a Giant in doublet grey:
‘I shall not let you pass this way.’
‘Oho!’ quoth Robin and bends his bow:
But with a clout he is laid low.
The same befalls poor Little John
By the fist of the mighty champion.
‘Your merry men, my Robin Hood,
Might do better if better led.
The people groan ’neath the Norman yoke,
While ye lurk in the forest brake . . .’ ”
“There’s substance in that song,” Gog says. “There always was in the old ballads. And just to show you there’s still some substance left, I’ll give you a golden guinea when the song’s over.”
“I’ll have to take three quid in notes for it at the jeweller’s in the morning,” the minstrel says. “But it’ll be nice having the coin a wee bit. It’ll keep me warm all night and keep me for a fortnight after. Have you been robbing the gypsies, or something?” He then begins to sing again.
“ ‘If leading be such an easy thing,
Goodly Giant, then be our king,
My merry men shall thee follow,
By thy word, I’ll bend my bow.’
‘I will not,’ quoth Little John,
‘I will now hunt the deer alone.’
‘Little John, that shall not be.
As Robin’s man, thou art to me.’
Bound are the arms of Little John;
The Giant is chief of the merry men.
He leads them forth to Lincoln town,
There the Normans to throw down . . .”
“It’s very difficult of course,” Gog interrupts, “the whole question of what you do about discipline in a Resistance group fighting for freedom. I really don’t . . .”
“I really don’t like interruption,” the minstrel says, “even for a guinea. And I don’t like talking about songs much. They’re for singing.” So he begins to chant again.
“The Norman lord, Magus the Black,
With mace of jet leads the attack.
Knights on horses are now seen
Trampling down the Lincoln green.
Back to the brake flee the merry men,
Back flee the Giant and Robin,
They come upon a darkling pool:
‘Look in here who seeks to rule.’
The Giant looks and sees his face
Blacker than Magus’ jet-black mace.
He cuts the rope from Little John;
He leaves Robin and his merry men.”
The minstrel’s voice rises as he sings the moral flooded by a cascade of low chords.
“Robin sat under the greenwood tree:
‘He who would rule cannot be
Better than he who ruleth now.
For your own self, bend ye your bow.’ ”
At the end of the song, Gog is plunged into silence, while the minstrel gets to his feet and waits for his pay.
“Where did you find that song?” Gog asks eventually.
“When I was a student at Durham,” the minstrel says. “There was a crazy old teacher there during my time. Doctor Griffin. He soon left, but he’d grubbed up this ballad from somewhere and one of the blokes I knew put a tune to it. I’ve never heard it elsewhere. Original, maybe. You can’t tell with these ballads. They may have been made up any time.”
“Any time,” Gog says. “Do you know what happened to Doctor Griffin? George Griffin, wasn’t he?”
“Got killed in the war, I think,” the minstrel says. “Did you know him?”
“A little,” Gog says. “Yes, Doctor Griffin got killed in the war.” He fishes in his pocket and catches two of the small golden coins. “Here’s two guineas. It was a very good ballad.”
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