Gog

by Andrew Sinclair

  “It’s God’s good grace,” the Pardoner says. “It’s often like that. Ask and it shall be given unto you. I’m glad you’ve got a few shillings for my dear beloved pony, who’s like a brother to me.” The Pardoner now begins to flick his whip up between the pony’s hind legs, to excite a little more speed from the beast. “Of course, I’ll pardon your sins for free, sir. I wouldn’t accept a fee for my holy work. I hope they’re spicy sins, sir, pardon me for saying so. Pity the poor pardoner! Sins used to be much more interesting before the war, no end to the perversions and all. But the war’s made most of the countryfolk very normal. No bestiality, like there used to be.” A curious light flickers in the goatish amber eyes of the Pardoner, as he flicks with his whip the quivering rump of his friend Jonathan. “Even the shepherds have got so little time on leave together, they only do the quickest and most boring things. And only with women! But when I caught sight of you, sir, I said, There’s a hardened old goat if I ever saw one, pardon me for the liberty of thinking so.”

  “I probably am,” Gog agrees. “But I can’t remember quite what I’ve done. I’m feeling guilty all right, but I don’t know quite what for.”

  “Then it’s an all-purpose pardon you need,” the Pardoner suggests. “It’s like an all-risks insurance, sir. It covers almost anything except rape, sodomy and beggary. They need special pardons.”

  “Why beggary?”

  “I don’t like it, sir. How can a beggar pay for hay for my horse to get a pardon? And if he can pay, then he’s no beggar. He’s a liar, and that’s worse.”

  “It sounds as if your pardons come out of the pony, smoking hot,” Gog says. “The sinners feed in hay at one end and the pony brings out the pardon in turds at the other. I don’t think I’ll have an all-purpose pardon. He might piss on it as well.”

  “You’re mocking me, pardon me, sir,” the Pardoner says. “If you don’t take me serious, then I’ll be thanking you to step off my trap. That’ll be a shilling for Jonathan for the ride, sir, and nothing for me. I’m always glad to give a fellow Christian a helping hand.”

  Gog lays a hand on the whipping arm of the Pardoner, which is as thin and hard as a flail. This action has the merit of both soothing the Pardoner and stopping the lathering of the pony, who immediately settles down to a moribund amble.

  “Don’t take me so seriously,” Gog says. “I was only having a little joke. I’d be glad to buy your pony a whole mangerful of hay and offer you a drink, if you’ll find a pardon for my vague sense of sin. The trouble is, I don’t really know what the actual sin is. I’ve done many bad things, even on the road, but I don’t feel guilty about them. I’m feeling guilty about everything, I suppose. About being a man.”

  “That’s a very guilty thing to be,” the Pardoner agrees, biting the bony knuckle of his thumb. “But you’re a rare and honest man, pardon me saying so, sir. There’s not many as admit how guilty they are, these days of war. There’s too much to be guilty for, I suppose. There’s so much sin been done, murder and all, that people have to pretend they’re innocent, when they’re not. Or they’d go mad. But, of course, that’s why a pardoner doesn’t hardly make a living now . . . for his horse, I mean.”

  “Really,” Gog says, “I suppose all our sins come out of our obsessions. It’s just easier to do one’s worst in war. I probably got used to doing all the horrible things I wanted to do, fighting. Then I came home, and I don’t know how to behave here. I’m looking for my true self so hard these days, I seem ready to do anything which my inner nature tells me to do, without question. So there you are, Pardoner. Anarchy’s my sin. Too much liberty. I couldn’t care a damn what other people and society say. I might be revenging myself in an occupied country, rather than coming home to peace. Why, I often want to tear down every shred of law and order, the whole of London and everything that comes from it. I’m a fool for freedom.”

  The Pardoner shakes his head so that the cockle-shells on his hat tinkle like a little knell.

  “That’s what the war does, even to good honest gentlemen like yourself, sir. I haven’t heard a worse case for many a year. Free enterprise is a good thing, but only in the way of business, for my dear pony’s sake. But free enterprise in the way of pleasuring yourself, why, sir, there’s no ready-made pardon for that! It includes everything, Babylon as well as Sodom and Gomorrah! Oh, sir, you warm the cockles of my heart as well as shake the cockles on my hat, to hear such a marvellous sin. Jonathan’ll need a whole barnful of fodder for me to absolve a crime like that. But never you mind, I’ll forgive you anything you’ve done and will do from a full heart, freely and for nothing. I’m only a poor Christian man doing my poor Christian duty. Pardon me for having to mention it, sir, but my beloved friend and source of locomotion, my brother Jonathan, is partial to a pint of stout. And as it’s just opening-time, kind sir, don’t you think you might pop in to the ale-house right here where Jonathan has happened to halt and bring out the wherewithal?”

  And indeed, the pony has stopped exactly outside a convenient pub, whether by his own will or by his driver’s. So Gog descends and buys two pints of stout and brings them out to the trap. He takes the Pardoner at his word and holds one of the pints to the pony’s mouth, while quaffing the other himself. Yet you may take a horse to the stout, but you cannot make him drink. Jonathan seems to prefer to hang his tongue out at a dripping tap, which Gog turns on fully for his benefit.

  “What my friend Jonathan spurns, four-footed brute though he may be, yet I shall humbly accept it. Bring that pint over here!” So the Pardoner commands and Gog obeys. In three long swallows, his Adam’s apple wobbling up and down his scrawny windpipe, the Pardoner empties the mug. “Jonathan’s usually very partial to the stuff,” he explains, wiping his mouth. “But I don’t like the taste, not at all. That’s why I drink it quick, so as not to have to taste it, and not to disappoint a kind sinner who’s been spurned by my ungrateful Jonathan. Oh, I’ll beat him for it, I’ll teach him to turn down the gifts of friends with a full purse and fuller heart.” The Pardoner here seems almost to wink at Gog, but it may only be a temporary drooping of one yellow eye. “But if you want to be a true Christian and wet the whistle of a true Christian who occasionally likes a glass, why, mine’s a black velvet.”

  So Gog finds himself buying another drink for the Pardoner, before they can set out again on their slow ride towards Winchester. But the Pardoner now seems to be in a merry mood and he even forgets to thrash the pony again, so full is he of the malt and hops of human kindness. And he tells Gog of the tale of the three youths of Winchester, to try to ease Gog’s soul of the crime of his unpardonable sense of liberty.

  “Once long ago, there are three youths of Winchester,” the Pardoner relates, “wily William and proud Henry and rotten Richard. And they are riotous and gambling and wenching young men, ready to dare anything and defy anyone – like you, sir, pardon me. One day, they are playing dice, a wicked and accursed game, sir, never you try it, you may lose your life that way. Then as they are rolling the barren bones, they hear a funeral bell. And in the coffin lies a friend of theirs, sir, who has gone to London to demand something of the King. He has sworn he would get an answer, he would not return home without it. So he returns home with it.

  “ ’Odd’s blood,’ cry the three youths, wily William and proud Henry and rotten Richard, ‘we will make an end to this monstrous monarch.’ So they set out to London there and then, the wine boasting in their tongues and their swords hot at their hands.

  “They have not gone half a mile, when they come on an old mother, who says, ‘Pardon me, kind sirs, good day.’ And proud Henry gives her a cuff on the side of the head for daring to say anything at all – manners are bad then, but they’re worse now. ‘And the same to you, mother,’ proud Henry says. ‘We’re off to London to kill the King.’

  “ ‘The King’s not in London, young sirs,’ the old mother says. ‘Why, I saw him sitting under an oak tree just in that wood over there by the road.’

&n
bsp; “So the three youths run off to the oak tree to find the King and kill him and free all England. But all they find beneath the oak tree is a cope and a mitre, a chasuble and a crook, covered with gold and jewels. Likewise a scarlet hat, sir, and a vestment embroidered by the hands of queens. They each try on a piece of the treasure. Wily William wears the golden cope and proud Henry holds the jewelled mitre, while Richard has the chasuble and the vestment, until that is torn from him by wily William, who loses it in turn to proud Henry.

  “ ‘Pardon me,’ wily William says, ‘there is only enough here for one of us to wear. So I suggest we cast dice for it.’ He is the best gambler.

  “ ‘Never,’ proud Henry says. ‘We will fight for it.’ He is the strongest.

  “ ‘I say divide,’ rotten Richard says. He is the best thief and he hopes to steal away the rest from the other two.

  “So the three youths begin to quarrel over the treasure, as people who love licence tend to do, pardon me, sir. And a harsh word leads to a hard fist. And a hard fist leads to a sharp stone. And a sharp stone leads to a pointed dagger. And a pointed dagger leads to a deadly sword. And in no time the three youths are trying to kill each other, not the King.

  “And as all three are lying badly wounded round the treasure, gathering their strength to renew the fight and finish each other off, there is the sound of a horn. And the King himself comes into the wood, surrounded by all his huntsmen in coats of green and gold.

  “ ‘So you are the three youths of Winchester,’ the King says, ‘who set out to London to kill the King. The old mother tells me that she sent you here. Now the King is here, at your service. But you seem more ready to kill yourselves.’

  “And the three youths kneel before the King to beg his pardon. And he raises them up and tells his servants to bind their wounds and give them wine mixed with herbs and honey – very good for the digestion, sir, I have a special herbal remedy under the seat, if that should interest your honour, only two bob for the horse.”

  Here the Pardoner pauses, but as Gog says nothing, he continues his story with bad grace. “Then the King says, ‘Fight no more. There shall be not one mitre, but three. There shall be not one chasuble, but three. There shall be not one cope, but three. The King has need of many servants and all shall be rewarded. Your friend did not choose to serve Me, so I sent him home to his mother in his coffin. But you have seen that all your rioting for the sake of liberty is merely rioting for the liberty of serving Me. Your quarrel is not about who should kill Me, but about who should serve Me best. So serve My Majesty first, quarrel in My name, riot against My enemies, and My purse and power are freely yours.’ ”

  By the time that the Pardoner has ended his tale, his friend Jonathan has dragged the trap into the middle of Winchester, where the perennial shop names of every town afflict Gog with the sense that he has been here ever since boyhood, even if he has never been here before. Mac Fisheries, Cadena, Timothy White’s, Boots, Marks and Sparks, Woolworths, Lyons, all are there, the places of fug and terror for infants, of treasure and joy for small boys, of scorn and derision for smarmy youths, of necessity and familiarity for adults. Because of them, every high street in England is the same, and the traveller is never lost in a strange town.

  And yet Winchester seems a different place, the ancient capital of Wessex and of all England, rose-brick and half as old as Tudor, quiet and seemly in its thank-you-nicely privacy. But the Pardoner does not stop until he has driven the trap down to the cathedral close and has hitched his friend Jonathan to a stone pillar, where the pony can take a free snack from the lush turf among the graves. Gog hardly has time to admire the vast bulk of the cathedral supporting the low cloud, before he is pulled behind the Pardoner into the cathedral entrance.

  “I’ll show you my tale isn’t just a tale,” the Pardoner says. “It’s true. How can I ease you of your guilt and tell you the way out of your woe, if my tale isn’t true? I’ll prove it to you.”

  And prove it he does. He takes Gog under the high-lacing pillars of the southern aisle and stops him at the tomb of a bishop, who lies in full vestments on top of a high bier, his face smug and complacent in its smooth skin of stone. “Wily William,” the Pardoner whispers, and Gog reads by the tomb that this is indeed William of Edington, Bishop of Winchester, Treasurer to good King Edward the Third, satisfied with a life lived in piety and order under his monarch.

  Then the Pardoner hurries Gog onwards almost to the end of the aisle. And there is a tomb of fatness and magnificence. A plump cardinal lies in state, puffed out in scarlet and blubber and glory, dressed in painted red robes from head to toe, his fiery hat as broad-brimmed as the Pardoner’s above his beaky nose, his black-gloved hands folded in unlikely piety over his chest. He seems to be praying to himself in his overweening pride. It is Cardinal Beaufort, four times Chancellor of England, brother of King Henry the Sixth, arbiter of the War of the Roses, and Bishop of Winchester. “Proud Henry, I told you,” the Pardoner announces to Gog, hurrying him backwards a little way.

  The tomb of rotten Richard is in a barred enclosure let into the wall. It is the tomb of blind Bishop Fox, Secretary and Keeper of the Privy Seal to Henry the Seventh and Eighth before the Reformation. Gog sees that the insolence of proud Henry Beaufort has destroyed the world nicely balanced between Pope and King, and the Monarch is about to crush the over-free church, and rotten Richard is buried crying out against the death-rattle of himself and his faith, his flesh withered away from his effigy of marble skin and bone, so that he is naked and sunken and starved, his clawing hand holding only a rag over his shrunken balls, the tragic caricature of the body after death. So wily William gives way to proud Henry and ends in rotten Richard, and the mighty Bishops of Winchester pass into the State Church under the rule of the King, and the Pardoner’s Tale is proven. And as Gog closes his eyes for a moment to reflect, he sees himself standing in front of the same tomb of rotten Richard; but his suit is narrow-­shouldered and striped, and his hair is slicked back, and his face is that of an undergraduate with a dutiful copy of Chaucer under his arm to swot up for a First.

  Gog opens his eyes again to find himself shabby and middle-­aged, walking away down the aisle with the raffish modern Pardoner. Although all seems proven, yet Gog ventures a question. “I’m sorry to be so stupid,” he says, “but the three youths of Winchester couldn’t have been friends. Each of them lived a century earlier than the other. They weren’t contemporaries.”

  The Pardoner looks at Gog with a humble sneer on his sucked-in lips. “What’s truth got to do with time?” he asks. “As though a true thing that happens at one time isn’t true in another! Pardon me, sir, you’re too intelligent not to know that you saw the mere effigies of the Bishops of Winchester. What I said was generally true. Who cares about the particulars? I speak in parables of eternal wisdom, my honoured sir. I leave statistics to plumbers.”

  With this lofty reply, the Pardoner leaves the cathedral entrance in front of Gog. There is a loud neighing from the direction of his friend Jonathan. Gog goes out onto the close to see a verger hitting the pony away from the gravestones. The pony rears and bolts, dragging the trap on its twin spoked suns on a collision course across the cobbled street into the arcade by the close, scattering old ladies with baskets and schoolgirls with books like scraps of mist before the rush of light. And the Pardoner breaks into flight himself after his bolting friend, his limbs splaying out in propeller-blades from his bony fuselage. Gog expects him to take off at any moment and prove to be the first man since Icarus to levitate himself merely by his own frantic motion.

  Gog begins to steal away from the close in another direction, when he hears the snorting and splintering crash of the pony and the trap trying to bring down the stone arcade, and failing. He cannot bear to look back, as he slinks away from the cursing cajolery of the Pardoner, who hymns his lament for his dear departed trap, pony and friend.

  “O Jonathan, thou wast slain in high places.

  I am distressed
for thee, my brother Jonathan:

  Rise, my beloved, or thy hide goeth to the knackers.

  Very pleasant hast thou been unto me:

  And very unpleasant shall I be unto thee.

  If thou dost play dead, thou art catsmeat.

  Thy love to me was wonderful,

  Passing the love of women.

  How are the mighty fallen!”

  XXX

  Some are born sour, some are born curdled, some are born vine­gary, and some are born postmistresses. The post office and store on the outskirts of Winchester, where Gog stops off to buy something to eat with his last pound, is tenanted by a lady of a certain age and more certain hostility. The moment that Gog begins pointing to any of the few poor fruit pies and rolls visible on the bare shelves of the shop, she snaps, “Already sold . . . specimen . . . where’s your ration card?” All the time that she is speaking, she is cutting the air with a heavy pair of scissors, obviously used for slicing off children’s fingers as they try to steal humbugs. Gog is glad to flee the shop with two old sausage rolls, given him grudgingly for sixpence. “They’re last week’s,” the postmistress declares. “Or I wouldn’t let you have them.” Gog can almost swear that he hears the bolt of the post office door slid home behind him as he walks out, or perhaps it is only the noise of the open scissors being held in the sign of the cross against the postmistress’s steel bosom.

  With his appetite both whetted and disgusted by the sausage rolls, Gog moves along the main road east that loops under the shoulder of the hill like an armpit, slowly rising in its lazy winding between Longwood Warren and the tall trees on Cheesefoot Head. Although the road is fairly empty as all war roads are, an occasional battering bus or lorry grinding up the hill makes Gog wince and plug his ears with his thumbs. He supposes that when there’s no shortage of petrol and cars any more, a new breed of Englishmen will have to be born, like Kotope with deaf ears of copper that reject the noise. Or else all peace will be forgotten, except if the seeker turns off with Gog down the little lanes that vein the face of England.