Morality Play (23 page)

In the circle of the torchlight there were only those busy with the body, and the Justice and I. The men-at-arms had remained some way off where the horses were tethered and the others had been sent to join them there. One of the hooded men looked up at the Justice and spoke quietly in a voice that was muffled by the mask. 'There was an act of sodomy, beyond any doubt, and violent enough. The body was not washed, or washed only hastily - there are traces of blood still. And there are marks of strangulation. But his neck is broken and that is how he died. I would say that he was strangled half to death - probably while the act was taking place - then had his neck broken in a single wrench. Somebody strong it would need to be.'

He was silent for a moment, looking up towards us through the light. Then he said, 'He would have died anyway, quite soon. You were right, my Lord Justice. He was infected. Look here.' He took the right wrist of Thomas Wells and raised his arm towards us. 'Bring the light closer,' he said to the one with the torch.

In the hollow of the armpit there was a black swelling the size of a hen's egg and the skin around this was broken where some viscid substance had oozed when the body had life, and formed a dark crust now. Particles of melting snow lay on his poor face and chest and made a wet stain like a spreading of this discharge.

‘It is there also in the right groin, though smaller,' the hooded man said. 'You would need to come closer to see it.'

‘I have seen enough.' The Justice turned away. 'Make sure the poor lad is shrouded and laid properly in earth again,' he said over his shoulder, and he moved away, taking me with him.

We rode back together, he managing his horse to keep beside me and his people staying behind. And as we went he told me what I still needed to know for my full understanding. 'The Monk it was who procured the boys,' he said. 'There will be some mire or cesspit in the castle grounds or some secret place in the cellars below where he hid the bodies after. No doubt a search would discover it, but we shall not need to go so far.'

'Why should a man do such evil? What could be the recompense?'

'These are questions without great meaning in them, Nicholas. Wickedness is too common in the world for us to think much of why and wherefore. It is more natural to ask about the rarer thing and wonder why people sometimes do good. Perhaps he liked to watch it. Perhaps he was paid. Perhaps he wanted that power that comes from being necessary to the powerful.'

I did not in my heart believe in such preponderance of wickedness and I do not still, except sometimes when my spirits are low. 'Well,' I said, 'the one he served had him hanged for his pains.'

'He was hanged for his crimes, and to keep him from speaking. And it was not done by the one he served. The one he served was already dying.'

For a moment, as we rode along, in a light less certain now, with the clouding of the moon, there came into my mind that last, strangely driven chorus of ours in the True Play of Thomas Wells:
He was the Lord's confessor, he served the noble Lord
... 'Of course,' I said. 'I see it now. It was the young lord, the son. Simon Damian was the Lord's confessor, yes, but it was the son that he served. The father must have discovered it somehow, or perhaps he knew it already in the way things are known but not admitted to the mind.'

'It may be that the young man confessed it when he knew he was going to die,' the Justice said. 'William de Guise, favourite of the ladies, only son of the house, flower of chivalry.'

'That is why he kept to his room. That is why he was not at the jousting.'

'You see,' the Justice said, 'there were two things that made Thomas Wells different from the others: he was carrying a purse of money and he was recently infected with the plague. Perhaps he felt ill already and rested on the way, and that was why he was still on the road as dark came down. The Monk knew about the purse. But no one knew of the plague marks until William de Guise, pride of his father's heart, had snapped the boy's neck. Then, with his lust sated, he would have been at more leisure to notice. Once he knew it, he would not have touched the boy again. No one would. So he lay there through the night. Then Simon Damian had his idea. He waited for as long as he dared. For twelve hours after death the disease is contagious still, or so at least the people believe, though I have heard doctors give it out as longer. It was a question of getting the body dressed again and left there on the road before daylight - he could not risk being seen. All this was obscure to me until tonight, until you told me of the plague stench in the private apartments of the castle.'

After this we went on for some time in silence. I was thinking that the Monk must have hated the Weaver greatly to have risked so much: not merely the anger of his master but the foul breath of the disease. But of course he must have known that his role of bawd was over. Perhaps he was searching for another. To the one whose savage lusts he had fed, and to whom in the end he had fed pestilence and death, no role could be given, no mask more terrible than his own face.

'He is no more now than an evil smell,' the Justice said, as if divining the current of my thoughts. 'No one lives longer than six days after the appearance of the first symptoms. It is six days now since the Monk set out with the dead boy. It must have been just at this time in the morning. See, it will soon be light.'

Ahead of us, above the roofs and chimneys of the town, there were the first livid streaks of a new day. We were coming now to the street where the prison was. One question remained, greatly troubling to my soul. I remembered Stephen's words and his gesture of an orator as he sat drunken in the barn, his long legs stretched before him.
Before that, nothing...

'Why only now, in these last months?' I said. 'Why not before? What shape of Hell could have visited the young lord when he was grown already to manhood?'

The Justice glanced down on me. His face was deeply shadowed by the hood he wore and I could make out no expression on it. 'Always you ask the why of things,' he said. 'The seed was there. There is a growing time for every plant and it may be long but the flowers open quickly when they come. And these had sun and water from the Monk, no doubt a subtle gardener enough.'

We came to the prison door and one of the men-at-arms struck on it with a mailed fist. The turnkey was grumbling as he peered through the grid, but he fell silent when he saw with whom he had to deal and he opened to us and bowed low. I waited alone there, in the alley. There were others that remained outside with the horses but I kept apart from them. The reply of the Justice had not satisfied my mind. I wondered who might have planted such a seed and when it had been done. I thought it might have been done by Satan at a time when the Lord William was sleeping or when he was too young to know it, perhaps even younger than this Thomas Wells whom he had tortured and killed...

When they came forth again the girl was walking free among them. 'She is in your keeping now,' the Justice said and he led her to me and placed her hand in mine. But it was not me she had to thank and she knew it. She made no sound but when the Justice, assisted by one of his people, had climbed back into the saddle, she moved away from me and went to him and reached for his hand to kiss. It was the first gesture of her freedom. He smiled down over her lowered head, the first smile without irony I had seen on his face. And I could not help thinking of the strangeness of it, that he should garner this gratitude and take it for his due - as I could see from his face that he did - when her life mattered nothing to him, when she had escaped hanging by merest chance, as an afterthought, a casual change of discourse in the play.

'This is an example of the King's justice,' I said. 'What of God's?'

He turned his horse, smiling still. 'That is more difficult to understand,' he said. 'It is not the King that visits us with pestilence. You have been useful to me, Nicholas Barber, and I would help you if I could. Have you thought more of my offer to restore you to the good graces of your Bishop?'

In truth I had not thought much of it, having had little time for reflection. But as I looked up at him in this first light of day I knew what my answer should be, and it was what the Play of Thomas Wells had taught me. I would not go to Lincoln again, unless it was as a player. I knew little of the world, as the Justice had seen, but I knew that we can lose ourselves in the parts we play and if this continues too long we will not find our way back again. When I was a sub-deacon transcribing Pilato's Homer for a noble patron, I had thought I was serving God but I was only acting at the direction of the Bishop, who is the master-actor for that company of the Cathedral. I was in the part of a hired scribe but I did not know this, I thought it was my true self. God is not served by self-deceiving. The impulse to run away had not been folly but the wisdom of my heart. I would be a player and I would try to guard my soul, unlike the Player in the fable. And I would not again be trapped in a pan. 'I am grateful, my Lord Justice,' I said, 'but I will remain a player now.'

The Justice nodded. He was no longer smiling. His expression was watchful and cold and a little sad, as it had been when first I began telling my story to him. 'The choice is yours to make,' he said. 'Go back now to the inn and wait there. Your friends will join you later today - you have my assurance on it. I must go now and have my talk with Sir Richard de Guise.'

He nodded again and moved away, his people falling in behind him. We watched them until their forms were lost in the uncertain light. The girl raised her hands and tried to restore some order to the wildness of her hair. And I wondered whether Martin would continue to love her, now that she was no longer chained.