Morality Play (21 page)

Fortune aided me, as she had done in the manner of the Knight's death. I reached the end of the passage without hearing any attempt behind me to open the door. There was a turning, then another passage, down which I groped my way. Stairs opened at my feet and I stumbled and almost fell. It was a short stairway — only six steps. I remembered we had been led down two flights of steps when taken before the Lord and so it seemed to me that I might be coming to the ground level of the castle.

And so it proved to be. I emerged from these stairs into the gallery of the hall, which was still dimly lit with candles and the dying embers in the fireplace, though it was quite deserted. There had been music at supper; the stands of the musicians were still in place along one side of the gallery. A hound slept before the dying fire but took no notice of me as I passed above. There were dishes still on the long table and the Lord's tall chair was pushed back as he had left it, with the benches on either side. I heard voices of serving people from the kitchens, but no one came into the hall as I descended the stairs and crossed the floor.

The moment when I came into the open, which I had been longing to do, was the worst of all, because just as I did so there were voices and moving torches in the courtyard and at first I thought they were in pursuit of me and remained where I was in the shadow of the wall. Then I saw that some were dismounting and among them ladies, and I understood that these were late guests arriving. But I was afraid of being seen and questioned, so I moved away, keeping close to the wall. There was moonlight, enough to see by. I turned down a gravelled alley, open to the sky but walled on both sides. I was still without any notion of how to escape from the castle. The main gate was out of the question, the guard would by now be warned.

It was now that Fortune made her boon to me and showed that saying of Terentius, that she favours the valiant, not always to be true. The alley ended in a high wall but there was a gate in it with an open portcullis above. I emerged into a field of trodden snow. Immediately across from me were the railings of the lists and the empty stands: I was in the tilt-yard.

However long my life may be, I know that moment will remain with me. The moonlight gleamed on the ridges of the snow and made violet shadows in the hollows. There was the open space to cross, then the posts of the tall pavilion, set close beside the wall.

I crossed the space at a run. I am a good climber as I have said, from earliest days I have been nimble and light of foot - it was this that made Martin incline to take me into the company. It took me not long to reach the roof timbers and swing from there on to the parapet of the wall. It was three times my height or more above ground, but I had some skill now in tumbling and the snow had drifted thick against the base. The landing jarred my spine and took the breath from me but no bones were broken. I waited there till I could breathe again, then began to make my way down towards the faint and scattered lights of the town.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
kept in cover as far as I could, not using the road much for fear of pursuit - the light was strong enough for a man to be seen moving against the snow. But in the event no pursuit came. Perhaps I was believed to be hiding in some corner of the castle; or perhaps they judged it useless to search in the dark, even with dogs. Whatever the reason I was thankful for it, for my own sake and that of the others, reasoning that while I was at large they were the less likely to come to harm.

I was wet from the waist down and chilled and exhausted when I came to the inn, hardly able to keep from staggering in my walk. The yard lay deserted. There was no sound anywhere, but one of the upstairs rooms showed a crack of light between the shutters. It was the room at the end of the gallery, the Justice's. The inn-door was open still. I mounted the stairs and went softly down the passage to the end room. Light came from under the door. I stood there for some moments, listening first to my own loud heart and then to a voice from within the room that droned and paused and resumed again. I gathered what courage I had and rapped with my knuckles against the panel.

I heard the voice break off. Then the door was opened and a man of middle years stood at the threshold, a thin man, sharp of feature, dressed in a black coat such as attorneys wear. His eyes ran over me, my shaven head, the wet and bedraggled skirts of my habit. 'What do you seek?' he said, in no very friendly manner. A larger man stood beyond him, in the middle of the room.

'I would speak with the Justice,' I said. 'On what business?'

'It is about the murdered boy,' I said. 'I am a priest ... I am one of the players.'

'It is late,' he said. 'The Lord Justice is occupied. Will it not keep until the morning?'

'Let him come in.'

It was not said loudly, but the voice was of one accustomed to command. The man at the door moved aside and I went into the room. There was a desk with scrolls upon it and a good fire burning in the grate. Tall candles burned in a triple-headed brass sconce and they had the clear flame that only comes from good tallow. This was far beyond the means of the inn to provide, as were also the red and gold damask hangings on the walls. Facing me was a man of corpulent body and good height, dressed in a black skull-cap and a black velvet mantle held at the neck with a jewelled pin. 'So,' he said, 'a priest who is a player is not so infrequent, especially among priests who get advancement, eh, Thomas?'

'No, sir.'

'A player who is also a priest, I grant you, that is rarer. This is my secretary, and a very promising advocate. What is your name?'

I told him but I do not think he took note of it, not then. He looked at me more closely as I spoke and his face changed. 'Set a chair for him,' he said. 'Here by the fire. Give him a glass of that red wine we brought with us.'

And in truth I think he saved me from fainting in the sudden warmth and brightness of that room.

'Such wine you will not find in a place like this,' he said, watching me drink. 'I saw the play from my window here. It was very well done - far beyond the common. Your master-player is a man greatly gifted.'

'Better for us had he been less so,' I said.

'Indeed?' He mused for some moments, looking towards the fire. His face was heavy and hung in folds, as if too much flesh had piled on the bone; but the brow was high and the mouth was firmly moulded. The eyes, when he looked up at me, were considering and cold - also, as it seemed to me, in some way sad, as possessing knowledge not much prized. 'What brings you here?' he said, and he signed to the secretary to replenish my glass.

At this I told him all that had happened, trying to keep things in the order of their occurring, which was not easy in my weary state, would have not been easy whatever my state, when so much had depended on accident and surmise.

I told him how Brendan's death had brought me into the company and then brought the company to the town. I told him of our failure with the Play of Adam and our desperate need for money so as to continue on our way to Durham. I told him of Martin's idea for making a play out of the murdering of Thomas Wells, which was something that belonged to the town.

'We did not doubt at first, when we began, that the girl was guilty,' I said. 'There was no reason to think otherwise, she had been tried and condemned for it. But the more we discovered, the more difficult it was to go on believing this. And it was not only the things that we learned by inquiry.' I faltered now, coming to the part least likely to be believed. His eyes rested on me with the same expression, attentive and cold but not unkind. 'We learned through the play,' I said. 'We learned through the parts we were given. It is something not easy to explain. I am new to playing but it has seemed to me like dreaming. The player is himself and another. When he looks at the others in the play, he knows he is part of their dreaming just as they are part of his. From this come thoughts and words that outside the play he would not readily admit to his mind.'

'I see, yes,' he said. 'And as you played the murder...'

'It pointed always away from the girl, first to the Benedictine, because he had lied.'

I was beginning to tell him of these lies but he held up a hand. 'I have read the deposition of the Benedictine,' he said.

It was the first sign he gave that he had occupied himself with the matter and my heart rose at it. 'But then he was hanged,' I said. 'They dressed him in a penitent's shift and tied his hands and hanged him. And we thought it must be a punishment because he caused this one to be found. But only the powerful would punish in that way, those who hold their power from God or the King.'

'We servants of the Crown would say it is the self-same thing, eh, Thomas?'

'Yes, sir.'

He had smiled a little, saying this, and again I saw some quality of sadness in his face, something that I did not think had always been there, that had come with the years of good living and the authority of his office. 'So then,' he said, 'the Monk took the body of Thomas Wells, after someone else had killed him, and laid it there on the road. Then that someone else, or another, killed the Monk. Did you not ask yourselves why he chose that particular time to bring back the boy's body? Why did he wait so long? It was a dangerous time, was it not? It must have been getting light. In fact the man Flint found the boy not much after.'

'Perhaps he was not killed until then.'

He shook his head. 'The boy was taken in the afternoon, as it grew dark. The one he was taken to would have been waiting, no doubt impatiently. It is not likely that Thomas Wells was strangled as an afterthought. Dawn is a common time for killing oneself, but not others. Unless it be by Royal Warrant, eh, Thomas? Give him some more wine, half a glass only - he will need to keep his wits about him yet.'

'Then there was the haste of it,' I said. 'And the steward came and paid the priest and saw the boy buried. It began to seem -'

I stopped short with a sudden fear, looking at the fleshy, keen-eyed face before me. The wine was loosening my tongue, but there was danger in such frankness. Had I escaped from one trap only to fall into another? 'We meant no harm, it was only to make a play,' I said. 'We were led to it, step by step.'

'There is nothing to fear,' he said. 'I give you my word on it. I will require nothing from you, save only this account.'

I could only hope that this was true. I had gone too far now to retract or fall silent. 'Then Martin was stricken with love for the girl,' I said. 'It was beyond all reason, he saw her only once.'

I told him then of our arrest and of how we had been kept for a night and a day, then taken before the Lord and made to do the play, but in a private chamber and before the Lord and steward only, and how Martin had betrayed us.

'You will be the first players to have set foot in Sir Richard's private apartments,' he said. 'He is fond of music, they say, but not of shows and plays. He is a man of austere life.' This was said with pity almost, as if it concerned some aberration of the spirit.

'Well,' I said, 'the chamber was austere enough, there was nothing in it but a chair. There was nothing to remark anywhere but the smell of plague as we went by.'

I had said this as an afterthought but he raised his head at it and fixed his eyes on my face. 'Plague? Are you sure?'

'I am sure, yes. It is not a smell like any other. Once you have known it, you will know it always again. It came from a room that we passed on the way.'

'Perhaps the one within was gone already to his Judge?'

'I do not think so.' I sought to remember, not as myself thinking the matter important, but because of his very evident interest in it. There was the short passage, the suddenly opened door, the veiled and hooded sister with the white cloths draping the sleeves of her habit, the smell of death-in-life that followed us. 'It was only the impression of a moment, as we went by,' I said. 'I think the one in the room was still being cared for in some fashion.'

He was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded slightly and it seemed indifferently and looked away. 'Yes, I see,' he said. 'Picture it, Thomas. This player, come from nowhere, puts on the mask of Superbia and gives him back look for look in his own chamber. Sir Richard de Guise, one of the strongest barons north of the Humber, with lands that go east from here as far as Whitby, who dispenses his own justice, not the King's, and has his own army and his own court and his own prison.'

'The man must be mad,' the secretary said.

'Madness you call it?' His eyes returned to me. 'I had thought love would make a man want to preserve his life, not throw it away.'

'He is a man who goes to extremes. Besides, he had lost hope that the girl could be saved. He did not know ...' Here I was obliged to make a pause and master myself, as gratitude threatened me with tears. 'None of us knew,' I said, 'that you had come to administer the King's justice and set this foul wrong right.'

And now his eyes were full upon me, narrowed in a scrutiny that seemed half-amused, half-incredulous. 'The King's justice?' he said. 'Do you know what it is, the King's justice? Do you think I would leave his business in York and come these weary miles in this weather, to this wretched inn where I am served food not fit for the swill-tub, for the sake of a dead serf and a dumb goat-girl?'

'I did not think there could be other reason for your coming. I thought -'

'You thought I was one of your company, one of the players, somewhat belated, come to put on the mask of Justitia in your True Play of Thomas Wells. There was the Monk and the Lord and the Weaver and the Knight. And now the Justice, who sets all things right in the end. But I am in a different play. What did you say was your name?'

'Nicholas Barber.'

'How old are you, Nicholas?'

'This is my twenty-third winter, sir,' I said.

He sat back in his chair and looked at me for a moment or two, then shook, his head. 'I have no sons, only daughters,' he said. 'But if I had one such as you, I would be concerned lest simplicity bring him to folly and thence to grief. You are at the stage of folly already, are you not? You are outside your diocese without licence, you have joined a company of players.'