Peter Ackroyd

by The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling

  He does not need my praise. Why should I repeat his victories over Darius, king of the Persians, and of a hundred thousand other rulers, generals and commanders? As far as any man could ride, or travel, the land belonged to Alexander. He owned the world. There is no more to say.

  He was the son of Philip, king of Macedon and the first high ruler of Greece, and he reigned for twelve years. Oh worthy Alexander, then Fortune rolled the dice against you. You lost the game. Your own people poisoned you.

  No tears are enough to lament your fall. In you died honour and nobility. You conquered the world, and yet that empire was not large enough for you. Are there words enough to describe false fortune and the horror of poisoning? I don’t think so.

  Julius Caesar

  By dint of labour, of wisdom, and of strength, Caesar rose up from humble beginnings to the highest power. He was the conqueror of the Western world, by force or by treaty. All the nations were tributaries of Rome at the time Caesar became emperor. But then Dame Fortune’s wheel turned.

  Mighty Caesar fought in Thessaly against his father-in-law, Pompey the Great. Pompey had a vast force, made up of all the Eastern nations as far as the rising of the sun. Yet the valour and strength of Caesar conquered that Eastern army. Only a few soldiers, with Pompey himself, escaped from the battlefield. So Caesar became the object of awe in the East. Fortune was then his friend.

  May I take a moment to lament the fate of Pompey himself? He fled the battle, as I said, but one of his men proved to be a foul traitor. He cut off Pompey’s head and presented it to Caesar in order to win favour. The conqueror of the East was humiliated in death. Fortune had found another victim.

  Caesar returned in triumph to Rome, where wreathed in laurels he led the victory procession. Yet there were two Romans, Brutus and Cassius, who had always envied his high estate; they entered a conspiracy against Caesar, and chose a place where they could easily assassinate him with hidden knives.

  Caesar went in procession to the Capitol one morning, as he was wont to do, where he was surrounded by his enemies and struck many times by their blades. He lay there, dying in his own blood, but he did not groan at any of the blows against him - except, perhaps, for one or two from those once closest to him.

  Caesar was so proud, and so manly, that he maintained his honour even in death. He placed his toga over his waist so that no one might see his private parts. As he lay dying, and knew that his fate was drawing near, he would not be shamed.

  I recommend that you read this story in Lucan’s Pharsalia, or else in Suetonius. They will tell you how Dame Fortune first favoured, and then failed, the two great conquerors Caesar and Alexander. You cannot trust her smile. Keep an eye on her. Look what happened to all these heroes.

  Croesus

  Croesus, once king of Lydia and enemy of Cyrus the Great, was taken up in his pride and carried to the stake where he was to be burned to death; but then there descended a great rain from the heavens that quenched the flames. Croesus escaped, but he did not pay proper respect to Dame Fortune until he was suspended on the gallows.

  When he had escaped from the consuming fire he could not wait to return to war. He believed that Fortune, having rescued him with a rainstorm, had also made him invincible against all of his foes. He had a dream one night that increased his confidence and his vainglory.

  This was the dream. He was in a tree, and Jupiter there washed his entire body. Then Phoebus brought him a towel with which to dry himself. This was a good omen indeed. He asked his daughter to interpret the dream to him; she was skilled in all manner of prognostication.

  ‘The tree you saw,’ she told him, ‘signifies the gallows. The washing of Jupiter signifies the rain and the snow. The towel that Phoebus brought you is an image of the sun’s warm rays. You are going to be hanged, Father. There is no doubt about it. The rain will wash you, and the sun will dry you.’ So did his daughter, whose name was Phania, warn him of his coming fate.

  And indeed he was hanged. The proud king ended on the gallows, where his royal estate could not save him. The tragedies of the proud and the fortunate have the same burden. They are threnodies of grief against the guile of Dame Fortune, who kills where she might cure. When men put their faith in her, she fails them and covers her bright face with a cloud.

  Heere stynteth the Knyght the Monk of his tale

  The Nun’s Priest’s Prologue

  The prologe of the Nonnes Preestes Tale

  ‘Hey!’ the Knight called out. ‘That is enough, sir Monk. You have spoken justly, I am sure. It was all very true. But a little sorrow goes a long way. People cannot bear too much tragedy. As for me, I hate hearing about the sudden fall from fortune into sorrow. I prefer to look on the bright side. I like to hear of those poor folk who have attained great riches or happiness, climbing up the ladder from low estate to wealth. That cheers me up. That is the story I wish to hear.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ Harry Bailey said. ‘One hundred per cent. This Monk has spoken at length about the tragedies of various people. How did he put it? Fortune is covered with a cloud? Something like that. But there is no point in wailing and lamenting. What is done is done. As you said, sir Knight, it is not an exciting subject.’

  Our Host then turned to the Monk. ‘So, sir, no more, if you please. You are annoying the entire company. Your little homilies are not exactly entertaining. There is no fun in them. Wherefore good Monk - Peter is your name, isn’t it? - wherefore, Peter, I beg you to tell us something different. Something amusing. If it were not for the clinking of the bells on your bridle, I would have fallen asleep listening to you. I would have slipped from my horse and sunk in the mud. Who cares about Holofernes? Or Croesus? There is an old saying used by preachers and teachers. “If a man has no audience, he had better stop talking.” Of course I am always ready to listen to a well-told tale. Why not a story about hunters and hunting?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ the Monk replied. ‘My heart would not be in it. Let somebody else tell the next story.’

  So the Host spoke out boldly and rudely. ‘Come towards me, you, the Nun’s Priest over there! Tell us something that will lift our spirits. Be merry. Be daring. I see that you are riding on a poor nag of a horse, but that should not stop you. As long as it can carry you, it has my blessing. So. Make us laugh.’

  ‘Willingly, good sir,’ the Nun’s Priest said. ‘I will be as cheerful as you could wish.’ So then this sweet Priest began his story to the company of pilgrims.

  The Nun’s Priest’s Tale

  Heere bigynneth the Nonnes Preestes Tale of the Cok and Hen, Chauntecleer and Pertelote

  Once upon a time a poor widow, somewhat stooped by age, was living in a tiny cottage; it was situated in a valley, and stood within the shadow of a grove of trees. This widow had led a simple existence ever since the death of her husband; she had few cattle, and fewer possessions. She had two daughters and, between them, they owned three large sows, three cows and a sheep called Molly. The walls of her little house were thick with soot, but this is where she ate her simple meals. She had no use for spices or dainty food. Since her modest repast came from the produce of her farm, she was never flatulent from overeating. A temperate diet, physical exercise and a modest life were her only medicines. She was never hopping with the gout, or swimming in the head from apoplexy. She never touched wine, white or red. In fact her board was made up of black and white - black bread and white milk, with the occasional rasher of bacon or new-laid egg. She was a dairywoman, after all.

  Her small farmyard was protected by a palisade of sticks, with a ditch dug all around it. Here strutted a cock called Chanticleer. There was no cock in the country that crowed louder than this bird. His voice was more impassioned than the organ that is played on mass days in church. His crow was better timed, and more accurate, than the clock on the abbey tower. By natural instinct he knew the movements of the sun; whenever it covered fifteen degrees across the sky, he began to crow as mightily as he was able. His comb was redder
than the coral of the sea, and it had more notches than a castle battle- ment; his legs and toes were a beautiful shade of azure, just like lapis lazuli, and his nails were as white as the lily flower. His feathers were the colour of burnished gold.

  Chanticleer had seven hens in his household. They were his companions and his concubines, devoted to his pleasure; they were as brightly coloured as he was, and the brightest of them was a hen called Pertelote. What a gentle, kind and attentive bird she was! She carried herself so nobly, and was so affectionate, that Chanticleer had loved her ever since she was seven days old. He could not get enough of her. You should have heard them crowing together at dawn, harmonizing on the words ‘my love has left me’. In those days, of course, the birds and the animals could all speak and sing.

  So it happened that, one morning at dawn, Chanticleer sat on his perch among his seven wives; beside him was sitting Pertelote. Suddenly he began to groan and moan, just like someone who is having a bad dream. When she heard him, she became alarmed. ‘Dear heart,’ she asked him, ‘what is troubling you? Why are you crying out in this way? You are asleep, I suppose. Please wake up.’

  Chanticleer opened one eye. ‘Ma dame,’ he replied, ‘don’t be alarmed. God knows I have just had a frightful dream. My heart is still fluttering beneath my feathers. I hope everything turns out for the best. I hope that my dream does not prove prophetic.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I dreamed that I was walking up and down the yard here, when I saw a savage beast very much like a wolfhound. It was about to take me in its jaws and swallow me. It was a tawny colour, somewhere between orange and red, but its tail and ears were black. It had a horrible little snout, and its eyes glowed like burning coals. It gave me such a fright, I can tell you. That must have been the reason I was groaning.’

  ‘Shame on you,’ Pertelote replied. ‘What happened to your courage? Now you have forfeited all my love and respect. I cannot love a coward, for God’s sake. Whatever we women may say, we all want husbands who are generous and courageous - and discreet, too, of course. We don’t want to marry misers or fools or men who are afraid of their own shadow. And we don’t like boasters. How dare you say, to your wife and paramour, that you are afraid of anything? Do you have a man’s beard without a man’s heart? For shame! And why are you afraid of dreams? They mean nothing. They are smoke and mist. They come from bad digestion or from an overflow of bile. I am sure that this dream you describe is a direct result of your bilious stomach, which leads people to dream of flaming arrows, of orange flames, and of tawny beasts that threaten them. Bile is the red humour, after all. It stirs up images of strife and of yelping dogs, just as the melancholy humour provokes the sleeping man to cry out about black bulls and black bears and black devils. I could give you a list of the other humours, and their effects, but I will forbear.

  ‘Suffice to say what Cato said. That wise man declared that there was no truth in dreams. So, husband, when we fly down from our perch, remember to take a laxative. I swear on my life that you need to purge yourself of all these bad humours. You must shit out your bile and your melancholy as soon as possible. I know that there is no apothecary in the town, but I will teach you what medicinal herbs to chew. We can find them in the farmyard here, and they will cleanse you below and above.

  ‘You are choleric by complexion, of course, with your red crest and comb. Beware that the midday sun does not find you full of hot properties. If it does, you will fall into a fever or a chafing sickness that will kill you. I know it. So let us find some worms to aid your digestion. They can be followed by spurge laurel, centaury and fumitory. Why are you making that face? I can pick you some nice hellebore and some euphorbia. I know for a fact that ground ivy grows in the garden. Just take a stroll there and eat some of it. Stay cheerful, husband, I beg you. There is nothing to fear from a silly dream. I can say no more.’

  ‘Ma dame,’ Chanticleer said, ‘thank you for your advice. Can I bring up the subject of Cato? You are right to say that he was of great renown as a teacher and that he did dismiss the importance of dreams. But there are other authorities, all of them mentioned in the old books, who are even more learned than Cato. They take quite the opposite position. They have proved by experience that dreams are intimations of the joys and woes that people will suffer in this existence. There can be no argument about it. It is a fact of life.

  ‘One of the greatest authors tells the following story. Two young men had gone on pilgrimage, in sincere devotion, when they came into a town so full of fellow pilgrims that they could not find an inn for the night. There was not a bed to be had for either of them. So they decided to split up, and separately find whatever accommodation there was. One of them ended up for the night in a cattle-stall, surrounded by oxen, while the other had more luck and secured reasonable lodgings. That is what luck does. It favours one over another. It is the way of humankind.

  ‘So the more fortunate of them was sleeping in bed when he was visited by a bad dream. He dreamed that his companion was calling out to him in distress. “I will be murdered,” he cried, “in an ox-stall! It will happen to me tonight! Come and help me, friend, before it is too late!” The sleeper woke with a start and sat up in bed; but, when he was fully awake, he turned back to sleep again. It was just a dream, after all. But then he had the same nightmare again. It was followed by a third vision, when his friend appeared before him covered in blood. “I am slain,” he said. “Behold the wide and deep wounds that cover me. Arise at dawn tomorrow and walk down to the west gate of the town. You will find there a cart-load of dung. My corpse is hidden there. Be bold. Arrest the carter at once. I was murdered for my gold, you see.” Then the apparition, with pale face and sorrowful eyes, told the whole story of his killing in the cattle-stall. This was no false dream, I can assure you.

  ‘On the very next morning the man went down to the cattle-stall and called for his companion. The carter came up to him and told him that his fellow had already left town. He had gone at dawn. Of course the young pilgrim was suspicious, having in mind the dream of the night before. So he went at once to the west gate of the town and there, just as he had been informed in his dream, he found the cart-load of dung ready to manure the land. Then he cried out “Harrow!” and “Vengeance!” He told the townsmen that the body of his friend and companion lay buried here, having been foully murdered. He called out for justice. He demanded that the authorities of the town take action. “There has been a murder! The corpse of my friend lies here!” What do I need to say? The people tipped the cart on to its side and there, among the shit, was the body of the dead man.’ Chanticleer ruffled his feathers, with a little shiver of disgust, before going on.

  ‘Oh God in heaven, You are just and true. See how You have revealed the truth. “Murder will out.” That is the saying. Murder is so abominable a crime that God will not allow it to be concealed. It may take a year, or two, or three, but eventually it will be revealed and seen for what it is. The authorities took the carter and tortured him until he confessed; then he was hanged and his corpse cut down from the scaffold.

  ‘So you see, dear Pertelote, the real meaning of dreams. In the same book - in the very next chapter - there was another true story. Two men were about to pass over the ocean to a distant country, but the wind was against them. So they decided to stay in the city beside the harbour. Then, on the following day, in the evening, the wind had become favourable. The two men went to their beds in good spirits, in full expectation of being able to sail the next day.

  ‘But listen. One of these men had a strange dream. He thought he saw a man standing beside his bed, telling him to stay behind and not to sail. “If you leave tomorrow,” he said, “you will be drowned. There is no more to say.” The man woke and, rousing his companion, told him what he had seen and heard. He begged him to postpone the journey. But the fellow laughed and made fun of him. “I will never allow a dream,” he said, “to dictate my life. You must be joking. Dreams mean nothing at all. Men may dream of
owls and apes and monstrous things. Men dream of events that have never been and never will be. But since I can see that you are determined to stay here and lose the tide, I must leave you. God knows I will miss your company, but so it must be. Farewell.”

  ‘So he took his leave, and went his way. Then it happened. I do not know how or why. Midway across the ocean the ship’s hull was breached, the crew and passengers drowned. There were other ships sailing with them, having left on the same tide, but they were undamaged. Therefore Pertelote, dear chick, from such examples you may learn that there is truth in dreams. I advise you not to ignore them. You do so at your peril.

  ‘I was reading the life of Saint Kenelm the other day. He was the son of Kenelphus, the king of Mercia in times gone by. Shortly before he was murdered Kenelm dreamed that he was about to be killed. He told his nurse about the dream, and she advised him to be careful and to watch out for traitors. But he was only seven years old; he was too young and too innocent to pay much regard to his dreams. But all came to pass. He was murdered by his own sister. It is a most terrible story, which I advise you to read.

  ‘Dame Pertelote my love, listen to what I have to say. The honourable Macrobius wrote a commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, in which he declared that dreams can foretell the future. Not all of them - I grant you that - but some of them. Then, if you wish, dip into the Old Testament and see what is written in the Book of Daniel about the subject. You can read about Joseph, and about his dreams of the sheaves and of the sun. What about the pharaoh of Egypt? Ask his butler and his cook whether dreams mean anything. They were rightly interpreted by Joseph, for good or ill. Wherever there are true histories of mankind, there are reports of dreams and omens. Remember the king of Lydia, Croesus, who dreamed that he was sitting in a tree. Of course he was soon hanging on a gallows. And there was Andromache, the wife of Hector, who dreamed that on the following day her husband would be slain in battle. She tried to persuade him to avoid the field, but of course the dream came true. Hector was slain by Achilles outside the walls of Troy. It is a long story. It is almost dawn. I will say only this. I know from my dream that I will suffer some kind of misfortune. In any case, I do not need laxatives. I hate them. I distrust them. They are poison.