Morality Play (17 page)

The hubbub that followed this died quickly away, leaving silence again among the people. We too for the moment were silent and this was because Truth, having asked these questions, could not think how to go on. After some moments, not finding any other way, he had recourse once again to remembered lines:

'Truth sets no store by gold or riches

Nor by emperors, kings or princes ...'

Our play might have ended in failure here, but for Martin's readiness. And by this readiness of his he betrayed us and inspired us and brought us to danger of death. Still in the black cloak and hideous mask of Avaritia, he moved forward into the light. Very briefly, and as if merely showing an intention to interrupt, he raised his hand in the sign that means change of discourse. Then he spoke - to us and to the people assembled there:

'What does Avarice in this place?

The boy by caitiff hand was slain

But it was not for greed or gain.

So, Avarice, I take leave of you ...'

As he spoke he undid the fastening of his cloak and let it fall to the ground. With both hands, and slowly, he raised the mask from his face, brought it down to waist height, then cast it from him with the gesture of throwing a quoit. All this took us completely by surprise. It had never been practised - we had not even spoken of it. And he had given us only the briefest warning. It is my belief that he intended to shock us, along with the people, and take the guard from our tongues. And certainly it had this effect. He made a long pause now, showing himself as plain man. Then he turned towards Stephen, inclining his body forward in the attitude of courtesy:

'How came the child there, Truth, can you expound?

How came this fifth one to be found?'

There lay a hush truly terrible over the inn-yard now and over the gallery above. Stephen had no idea how to answer, dulled by ale as he was and moreover too dull of nature to be much shaken by this blow of surprise. He turned his silver face slowly from side to side. 'Truth fears no man,' he said at last. 'Four others there were, to be sure. The grave-digger told me this, whose name is Christopher Hobbs.' This said, he lapsed into silence.

Springer's nature was different, however. I saw again the quick rise and fall of his chest as he sought to manage his breathing. He raised his right hand and curled the fingers towards his face as if holding something. 'I was carrying a purse of money,' he said, and he pitched his voice high, to sound childlike.

'That is the difference, good people,

that is why the fifth child was found.

It was not because of the purse I was killed,

but because of it I was found,

because the one who killed me wanted the Weaver to be blamed.'

Straw came forward. He had removed the murder-mask but he still wore the flaxen wig. With movements of his hands and head he mimed the affliction of dumbness. Then he turned with a gesture of appeal towards Mankind who, with the same instinct, had thrust back the hood from his face. We were all without masks now - our sense of the roles we played was shifting, changing.

'The Weaver was from home,' Tobias said. 'So they took his daughter.' He paused, then said in the tone of declamation, 'Who took the daughter found the money, who found the money met the boy.'

'We met together on the road,' Thomas Wells said in his piping voice.

I was standing at the side, away from the light, waiting to come forward to make a sermon on the justice of God, who overthrows the wicked and they are no more,
vertit impios et non sunt.
My heart was beating heavily. It seemed to me that I could see exultation on the faces of the others and also suffering, as if they were looking for release.

'Who met the boy did the deed,' Mankind said.

'Where was I taken, whither was I led?' Springer said.

'Who knows, let him speak.

I was not killed there, by the road.

Where did he take me to be killed?'

I saw the knowledge of the ordeal of Thomas Wells, which was also the knowledge of evil, deepen on Springer's face. He paused a moment, then spoke in his own voice, forgetting to imitate the pitch of a child: 'Why was I taken, if it was not for the purse?'

Martin moved into the centre of the space. His face had on it the radiance I recognized. He opened his arms wide:

'That caitiff Monk, where did he hie? By whose hand -'

Whether he was meaning to answer this question himself or would have waited for an answer, I was never to learn. He was stayed by a great shout from the midst of the people: 'The Monk is dead!'

Glancing aside, I saw Margaret standing on the right side of me, near the wall. She had come through the people without my knowing it, so close had been my attention on the play. She was beckoning to me. At the same time I heard some tumult from those around the gate and saw a jostling movement there.

Margaret stood against the rope that marked the limit of the playing-space on that side. Her usual sullenness of expression was quite gone. Her face was vivid with the news she had come with. Her mouth was urgent with speech that I could not yet hear.

'He is dead, the Monk is dead,' she said when I was close enough. 'They have just come by with him. They are stopped in the press outside the gate.'

The movement at the far end of the yard was increasing and a confusion of voices came from there, too many together for me to make out the words. Margaret held to my arm so as not to be jostled aside by the people near us, who were pressing back now, in their turn, towards the gate. 'I heard one say he has been hanged,' she said, close to my ear.

Still keeping together we let ourselves be carried back. The gate was open and the street outside choked with people who had come out from the yard. It was this that had brought the horses to a halt. We stood in the press while the riders sought to control their mounts, cursing and lashing out at the people so as to make a way through. They wore livery, but it was not that of the Lord. At first, because of the throng, I could see only the upper parts of these riders and the horses' heads and necks. But I moved forward, there was a chance parang of bodies, and I had my first and last sight of Simon Damian as he lay face-down over the back of a mule. I saw his pale scalp and the fringe of his tonsure, I saw his hanging hands as they swayed with the shifting of the mule, scarce two feet above the ground, white hands, waxlike in the torchlight, darkly bruised at the wrists below the sleeves of his shift - he was dressed not in his habit of a Benedictine but in a white shift such as penitents wear when they go in procession.

How long I stood there and saw him thus I do not know. Sights that are momentary can last for ever. When I close my eyes I see him still, the fringe of hair, the dangling hands, the white shift. In the scale that we know it must have been a short time indeed that I stood staring there, before the horsemen forced a way through the crowd and the mule moved forward with its burden and was lost to sight.

Margaret had been borne aside and I could see her no more. I turned and came back quickly into the yard. But I could not at once get through to the playing-space, being hemmed in all around. The tide of feeling had changed and the voices of the people with it. They were shouting now against the players for not having given them the true play, for bringing ill-fortune and death to their town. I was afraid among them, but we were so pressed together there near the gate that I do not think they regarded me or knew who I was. All eyes were on the players, who still stood frozen there in the space between the torches. And for some moments, until I came into my proper mind again, I shared this rage against the players, a fury that had risen like a sudden storm at the passing of the dead Monk. I was no longer a player but one of the shouting crowd and in fear and rage I shouted with them. Someone hurled a stone - I saw it strike against the wall. Poor Springer's courage failed at last, he fell to his knees. When I saw this my mind cleared and I knew that the only way to save ourselves was to save the play.

I began to make my way forward as best I could. I heard, or thought I heard, someone shout, 'There is one of them, there is the priest.' Then Martin broke from stillness, stepped forward until he came to the rope, near enough to touch the front rank of the people, and raised his arms in the gesture of one who surrenders himself, and my heart leapt for his courage and wit, to offer himself to violence and so bring it on himself or disarm it.

He shouted, words not at first audible, but then the noise of the people abated and we heard him: 'Wait! The Monk is dead but the play is not!'

The shouting rose again like a wave, they were not placated. Still with arms held high, Martin shouted against the shouts: 'We knew it! We knew Death would come for him this night!'

It was this lie that saved us. There was muttering still but the shouts died away. Slowly he lowered his arms to his sides and stood thus for some moments without moving. And this stillness also required courage and it pleaded for us more than any gesture could have done. 'Do not hurt poor players,' he said at last. 'Our only wish is to please you. Grant us to finish this our play of Thomas Wells.'

Springer had struggled to his feet and the players stood now in a half-circle around Martin, emulating his stillness. I came quickly through the people with no one hindering and stepped into the playing-space. An idea had come to me. Plays can be saved by entrances. I was Good Counsel still, I would bring tidings of the death into the play along with my sermon on the theme of God's justice.

And so I did, and fear was mastered in the finding of the words. I moved from side to side, passing between the players and the people, speaking slowly and with solemn gesture: 'Now is the Monk sent for, as we all must be, another way to go, to make his reckoning before that Judge whom there is no deceiving. Fair words avail him nothing now, it is no ignorant boy that listens in the dark of a winter day. Before that judgement seat there is no dark, but plenitude of light...'

I heard the silence settle over the people and I knew I had done my part to save the play, though knowing no longer where we were going. I kept up my pacing and my speaking so the others would have time to recover their wits and come back into the play: 'Too late now, for Simon Damian, for ever too late, the prayer God put into the mouth of Balaam:
Let me die the death of the righteous.
Too late, for ever too late.'

The players stood there, keeping the close half-circle, motionless still. Fear of the people had stripped them of their roles, they had no resource but stillness. But it was a stillness that had to be broken. 'The Monk abused his place,' I said, 'and God has punished him for it. What says Mankind?'

Tobias spoke, though still without moving. 'All earthly power from God doth come,' he said.

'That is a true word and it is Truth declares it so,' Stephen said, and he turned his silver face towards the people.

Straw was the first to break the circle into which they had drawn themselves to suffer the injury they had thought was coming. He took a single step to the side and said his lines directly to me:

'Power comes from God in trust to use,

Not the people to abuse ...'

I had thought Springer would take the longest to recover, forgetting that courage of the fearful which lies in the swiftness of their relief. He moved away from the others and spoke his lines without a tremor:

'Who abuses the people defiles the law

By use of power to cram his maw ...'

Stephen now remembered lines from an Interlude he had played in. They were not much in keeping with the theme of power abused but they were very much in keeping with Stephen:

'In England and France our King holds sway

And so may he do for many a day ...'

Now Martin, sensing that we were recovered, raised his hand in greeting to me, at the same time turning it inwards at the wrist in sign of question: 'Hail, Good Counsel. Right glad we are to welcome you. Didst see the dead man close?'

'As close as I see you, brother.' I realized now that, having remained there in the playing-space, none of them yet knew the manner of the Monk's death. 'Choked by rope he made his end,' I said.

'His end was like to mine,' Springer said, and again he pitched his voice high to sound like a child.

Mankind was close to the yard wall and the light from behind glinted on his sparse hairs:

'This Monk did send himself to Hell.

For him we sound no passing bell...'

But at this there rose shouts again. They were not threatening now but they were confused, so it was hard at first to make out the sense. Then it came to us: 'His hands were tied! His wrists bore the marks of the rope!'

Stephen took a step forward, still holding his stave. He seemed sobered now, perhaps through the suffering of fear. 'I am Truth, as all can see,' he said in his deep voice. 'Those who tied him hanged him. And so he is paid. Who sheds man's blood, by man will his blood be shed, so it is written.'

But there was something wrong with this. Into my mind there came again a memory of the Monk as he lay over the back of the mule. A white shift, such as penitents wear. Or those being led to execution. They who had tied his hands had dressed him in this fashion. Could the common people have done it? Anyone might have bound him and hanged him, but to dress him thus ... They had put him in costume, made a player of him, a dancer on the rope. Only those who act in coldness and certainty of power, or who believe God speaks to the God within them ...

Straw came mincing forward in his robe and wig. 'By hanging him they showed me innocent,' he said. 'Justice gives a voice to the dumb.'

We could have ended here. The lines made an ending and they were fitting. We were spent. I could feel the trembling in my knees and Straw, for all his mincing steps, looked close to fainting. But some angel of destruction led Martin further. He was still facing the people and it was to them that he spoke: 'It is not justice yet, good people. Why was the Monk hanged? When we know why, we will know who. Everything comes back to the finding of the boy. Thomas Wells was the fifth. He was the one who was found. If the Monk took Thomas Wells, is it not likely that he took the others also? But he was only punished for this one who was found. Was it because he had contrived the finding?'