Morality Play (3 page)

'We have knives,' Stephen said.

He had meant for digging but there was now a terrible pause while Martin looked steadily at him and he returned the look. Then the boy Springer stepped forward before either man could say more. He was always a peace-maker, though the youngest, one of the blessed who will be known for the Children of God. 'Brendan taught me to tumble and stilt and play the woman,' he said. 'We will not leave him in a ditch, for our hope in Christ, good people all.' And to amuse us he gathered the trailing pieces of his shawl round his shoulders and made gestures of a woman who is vain of her long hair.

'Do you remember how he would caper round on those shanks of his?' Tobias said. 'He would step short as if he could not help but fall.'

'He never fell save by intention,' Martin said. He had recovered from that passion of feeling, now that he felt the others turning to his will. And he spoke directly to me, including me in these memories of Brendan, and I was grateful, there was a sweetness in his nature that made him attentive to others when not disturbed in feeling or crossed. 'He would wear the cap and bells with ass's ears and a half-mask,' he said. 'Or sometimes a mask with four horns like a Jew's.'

The one they called Straw laughed suddenly, the same sobbing laugh, and struck his knees with open hands. 'He would steal the Devil's ale and spill it in his lap, being in such haste to drink it,' he said. 'You would see him shuffle with his knees kept close and the ale dripping down while the Devil hunted high and low for his can.'

'You would just think he had pissed himself,' Springer said tenderly.

'Do you mind how he would comfort the Devil with his song?' Stephen said. It was to Martin that he spoke and I saw it was the way his pride had found of making peace. 'He made his own songs,' he said. 'He made the words himself. When the Devil was sad because Eve would not take the apple at first, Brendan sang a song of his own to lighten the Devil's mood. "Were the World All Mine", that was the song.'

Springer took up his reed pipe and played the air and all joined in the song for a verse, singing together there and looking at one another's faces as they sang, in the cold weather among the bare trees:

'If the world belonged to me I would make a broad way From the hills to the sea For Fools to ride ...'

Thus they mourned Brendan with his own song and were again in harmony one with another. I see them again now, their faces as they sang, that gleam of light touching the dead oak leaves, Straw's white angel-robe, the round copper tray in the back of the cart. But what chiefly lives in my mind is the strangeness of our nature, that men should come close to violent quarrel over the disposing of one poor husk of flesh in a time of plague and blood like ours, when every day is a Feast Day for Death, when we have seen the dead piled in the streets without distinction, rotting in carts, heaped together in common pits for graves. That is some years past, but there is again an outbreak in the north here, a stronger strain, even winter does not halt it. The fields lie unfilled, many die of famine, they fall and in haste they are shovelled away in obscure corners. Bands of brigands infest the countryside, peasants in flight from their dues of labour, soldiers returning from these endless wars with France, men who have known nothing but murder from earliest life. In parishes you will find less than half the folk left alive. And few will know clearly where those they loved have been laid. Yet there was this care over one poor player.

Little more was said of him either then or later. They had sung his epitaph. Nor was there any further argument about taking him on the cart. Then and there he was lifted up. He was laid down among the masks and costumes with a coil of rope for his pillow, and covered with pieces of scarlet cloth that they carried to make a curtain at the back of the stage. After this we set off again on our way. And so I began my life as a player.

CHAPTER THREE

In the days that followed Brendan stayed on the cart and we placed over him boards and sackcloth to keep him from rats in the yards of the poor wayside inns where we stayed, sleeping sometimes on straw in the outbuildings of the yards, sometimes all together on pallets in the wretched rooms of hovels that claimed to be inns. Martin paid all scores from the common purse. He kept the money-belt always on him and his dagger within reach. The purse was thin and there was the cost of Brendan's burial to think of. None of the players had money left except for Tobias, who was thrifty; the others had spent their share of the division. In these days we passed through no place peopled enough to make a performance worthwhile; villages were reduced to hamlets by pillage and plague, houses stood empty and half-ruined, dust of rubble was thick in the streets. The snow held off but the weather was cold, keeping Brendan's body from corruption.

During all this time Martin was tireless in teaching me. He spoke to me as we went along. All walked usually behind the cart, taking it in turn to lead the horse. He told me of the qualities a player needs, quick wits, easy movement, a ready tongue for parts that are not fully written. He showed me the thirty hand-movements that all must learn and made me practise them, reproving me always for my clumsiness, the stiffness of my wrists and shoulders. Making these signs must be as natural and easy as any normal habitual motion of the limbs or the head. Over and over again he made me do them until my movements were fluent enough and the angle of the hands and position of the fingers as they should be. He was as relentless in this schooling as in all else. The slightest praise from him had to be earned doubly over. He was proud of his art and passionate in its defence - everything with him was passionate. His father before him had been a player and had brought him up to it.

No opportunity for my instruction was let pass. In the intervals of our travelling he would put me to practise, when we paused at midday to eat our scraps of cheese and rye bread and pig's-blood sausage and drink our thin ale, in the poor lodgings we found at night, and in spite of all weariness - Martin shed weariness in the eagerness of his teaching. He gave me the Play of Adam to con over, the pages tattered and the hand poor - I vowed to make a fair copy when time allowed it.

All of them helped me, each in his different way. And each, in doing so, revealed something of himself to me. Straw was a natural mime and very gifted in it. He could be man or woman, young or old, without the need for any speech. He had been travelling alone until seen by Martin at a fair and taken into the company. He was a strange, excitable fellow, very changeable in his mood, with bouts of staring gloom. Once during these days he fell and writhed his body on the ground and Springer held him and wiped his mouth till he came to himself again. He did three times for me the mime of one who finds he has been robbed, showing me the importance of head movement and clear gesture and the frozen moment of the mime when all the meaning is expressed in stillness.

Springer gave his age as fifteen but he was not sure of it. He did women's parts. He could sing high and his face was like rubber, he could pull it any way and twist his neck like a goose, so that you laughed to see it however many times it was done. He was sweet in nature and fearful and without malice. He and Straw were close and kept much together. He came from a family of jongleurs - his father had been an acrobat who had abandoned him when he was still a child. He showed me cartwheels and somersaults at the roadside as we went. He could arch his back like a hoop, with only heels and head touching the ground, and from this position spring forward like a whip and come upright. This I could not hope to emulate, but tumbling I practised when I could. I am nimble and light of foot and achieved some skill in it, with Straw and Tobias holding a rope at the height I had to clear.

It did not seem to me that Stephen had such skill in playing as these two. He was not so concerned in it as they. But he was tall and deep-voiced and had a memory for his lines. He did parts requiring dignity and state, God the Father, King Herod in rage, the Archangel Michael. He had been an archer for some years, in the pay of the Sandville family, Earls of Nottingham - the same that owned this company of players. He had raided for them and fought for them first against Sir Richard Damory and after against the Earl of March. He was captured in a skirmish by the Earl of March's men and they severed his right thumb at the first joint, disabling him forever as a bowman and forcing him to change trade. This had been done at the lord's behest; nevertheless, Stephen was an admirer of the aristocracy and proud of his part in these bloody disorders. 'I know men who had their eyes put out,' he said. 'I was lucky.' He carried a bronze medallion of St Sebastian, patron saint of archers, in a pouch at his belt. It was a great mark of friendship on his part when on the third day he showed this medallion to me, also his mutilated thumb.

Margaret was with us for his sake. They quarrelled, though less in these days, I was told, as they had not money enough to get drunk on. She had played the whore in her time and made no great secret of it. She was harsh-tongued and gentle-handed. She had no part in the playing and very little in the counsels we took among us. She earned her place by washing and mending for all and cooking when there was something for the pot. This last often depended on the sixth person, Tobias, who played Mankind and doubled the small parts and did attendant demons. He also could play the drum and the bagpipes. He took always a practical view of things and was listened to on account of this. He was our handyman, seeing to the horse, keeping the cart in repair as best he could, making wire snares for rabbits and bringing down a quail or a partridge sometimes with his sling. He was patiently trying to teach the dog to flush out game birds but so far without any success; the brute was full of good-will but brainless. Tobias taught me how to fall without doing hurt to myself. He never spoke about the past.

The Devil's Fool, which part I had taken over from Brendan, should by tradition be a juggler too, but this I could not hope to learn in the time. What I could do I did, and practised hard to improve whenever there was opportunity, so as not to be a cause of disappointment to them, and in particular to Martin, who had been the most concerned in taking me and besides I was drawn to him. There was a tenderness of feeling in him. And he was constant, though with a constancy yoked always to his own will and purposes. I treasured his rare words of praise and uttered them again to myself as I walked with the cart or had my turn, the road being level, to ride for a while with Brendan, and sometimes also in the night when I lay awake. I set my heart on succeeding as a player.

I learned from them that Robert Sandville, their patron lord, was away in France fighting for the King. They belonged to him and were bound to perform when required in the hall of his castle and at those times they received wages. But of late this had been rarely. Most of the year they were obliged to travel. They had Sandville's warrant but he gave them no money while they were outside his lands. Now, with her lord away, the lady had sent them as a Christmas gift to perform for her cousin in Durham, Sir William Percy. They were hoping for generous treatment there. 'If we live so long,' Stephen said darkly. We were footsore, and progress was slow in the hilly country north of York.

Then once again Brendan decided our destiny. He had begun to smell foul the day before. Travelling on the cart with him one noticed it more, the jolting moved his body under its covering of red cloth and with these stirrings the smell of his dissolution came dank and unmistakable on the chill air. It grew stronger by the hour and we had no oil or essence we could use to cloak it. There was a fear that before we could reach Durham his corruption would be shed on to the costumes and curtain pieces that were needed for the play. Martin called a meeting to discuss the matter and we sat there at the edge of the road. It was raw weather with a thickening of mist in the air and our spirits were low.

'It is bad luck to be bearing the stink of death,' Straw said. He looked gloomily at the heap below which Brendan lay. 'It will ruin our play,' he said. He was easily downcast and had a great fear of failing, more than the others.

'It will not be easy to wash out,' Margaret said. 'Some of the costumes cannot be washed by any means. How would you wash the suit of Antichrist, that is made of horse's hair?'

'It stinks enough already without help from Brendan,' Springer said. It was this garment that he had been wearing as a shawl against the cold. 'It stinks of vomit,' he said. And he got up and walked away from us in an ill-humour very uncommon with him.

'Before ever we get there,' Tobias said, 'before ever we get to Durham it will be a cause of offence in the places where we stay.'

'If you had listened to me,' Stephen said, 'we would not be facing such a difficult thing. It is not too late even now. We need take him no further. Let us leave Brendan here to leak into the ground, as he will do soon or late for all our pains.'

'The question of what to do with Brendan was settled when we talked before,' Martin said. 'That he has now begun to stink can make no difference. We must have him buried sooner, that is all.'

This was said with Martin's customary firmness but it solved nothing, and we were sitting there in silence when Springer returned. 'There is a town,' he said. 'Down there below us, not so very far.' And he gestured across to the other side of the road.

We looked where he pointed but saw nothing. 'It is on the other side,' he said. In a body we went across. We followed Springer up a short slope of rising ground, grassland, cropped close by sheep. From the crest of this, looking westward, we saw a broad valley, well wooded, with a straight river flowing through it and on the far side of this the roofs of a town, wreathed in wood-smoke, with the tower and keep of a castle on a height beyond, the lower part veiled in mist but we saw the battlements and pennants flying. And it seemed to me that some errant light touched these roofs and also the turrets of the castle, like the light that had come when they sang over Brendan. There was a reflection, perhaps of armour, from somewhere high on the walls. We gazed for a time without speaking, at the shine of water through the bare willows, the shrouded houses beyond. And as we looked there came a sound of bells, very faint, like shudders in the air.