The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling by Peter Ackroyd (20 page)

‘That noble gentleman Seneca has told the story of a magistrate of terrible temper. One day, during the course of his reign, two knights went out riding. It so befell that one of them came back. The other did not. The knight, returned home, was brought before the court where the judge pronounced sentence upon him. “You have murdered your comrade,” he said. “So I sentence you to death.” Then he turned to another knight in the court. “Take this man to the scaffold,” he said. “At once.” Now it so happened that, on their way to the executioner’s block, the other knight suddenly appeared. He was meant to be dead, but he was very much alive. So everyone thought that the best thing was to return, with both knights, to the court. “Sir,” said the knight who had accompanied the condemned man. “This knight has not killed his comrade. The dead man stands before you.”

‘“By God,” the judge replied. “I will have the heads of all three of you.” He addressed the first knight. “I have already condemned you to death. My word still stands. You will die.” Then he addressed the second knight. “Since you are the cause of this man’s death you, too, must be executed.” Then he turned to the third knight. “Since you disobeyed my order, I sentence you to beheading.” And that is what happened. All three men were executed.

‘Do you know the case of Cambises, king of Persia? He was a drunk, and a quarrelsome drunk at that. He was a bully. There was a lord in his household who was a proper and virtuous man. Now it happened one day that this good lord said to the king, “If a lord is vicious, then he is lost. Drunkenness is itself a blot on the name of any man, but especially on that of a ruler. A lot of people are watching him. He does not know all the eyes and ears that surround him. So, for God’s love, sire, drink more temperately. Wine can affect the brain. It can affect the body, too.”

‘“Is that what you think?” Cambises replied. “I will prove to you how wrong you can be. The exact opposite is the case, as you will soon find out for yourself. No wine on earth is going to affect my eyesight, or my limbs, or my strength. Watch.” So then he began to drink much more than he had ever done before – a hundred times more, I should say. When he was thoroughly pissed, he ordered the son of this courtier to be brought before him. He told the boy to stand upright in front of him. Then he took out his bow and arrow, and stretched the bow-string right back to his ear. Then he let go. The arrow killed the child, of course. “Don’t you think,” he asked the grieving father, “that I have a steady hand? Has my strength gone? Has my eyesight suffered? Has my judgement? I don’t think so.”

‘What use was the answer of the courtier? His son was dead. There was nothing more to say. So beware, my friend, how you deal with kings and lords. Just say, “If it please you, sir” or “I will do whatever I can for you, sir.” You can tell a poor man what you think of him, vices and all, but you cannot berate your master. Even if he seems to be going straight to hell, say nothing.

‘Think of that other Persian king, Cyrus, who in his anger destroyed the river Gyndes because one of his sacred white horses had drowned in it on the way to Babylon. He drained the river by diverting it into various channels, so that in the end women could cross it without getting their skirts wet. What did wise Solomon tell us? “Never make friends with an angry man. Never walk in company with a madman. You will be sorry.” I will say no more on that matter, Thomas.

‘So swallow your anger. You will find me as straight and firm as a carpenter’s square. Don’t thrust the knife of the devil into your heart. Your anger will do you infinite harm. Come now, Thomas. Give me your full confession.’

‘No way,’ Thomas replied. ‘I have already confessed to the curate this morning. I have told him everything. There is no need to repeat it all.’

‘In any case, give me some of your money. Give us gold to build a cloister for the Lord. We friars have been forced to live off oysters and mussels while people like you have drunk and eaten well. Think of what we have suffered to raise that cloister. Yet God knows that we still have not completed the foundations. The pavement is not laid. Not a tile has been put in place. We owe forty pounds alone for building materials. Can you believe it? So help us, Thomas, in the name of He who harrowed hell! Otherwise we will have to sell our books. If we cannot preach, then the whole world will suffer. To take us from our pulpits and our preaching crosses will be to take the sun out of the sky. I am being serious. Who can preach and do good works as we can? We are not some novelty. There have been friars around since the time of Elijah. And that was a very long time ago. There are records mentioning us. I need your charity, Thomas! For God’s sake, charity!’ And at that the friar fell down upon his knees, and crossed himself.

Thomas himself was already in a very bad temper. He realized well enough that the friar was full of shit. He was a liar and a hypocrite. If he had had the strength, he would have tossed him into the fire. ‘I can only give you,’ he said, ‘what I possess on my person now. Did you say that I had become a lay brother?’

‘Yes. Of course. I have brought the letter of fraternity with me. I was going to give it to your wife for safe-keeping.’

‘That is good. Thank you. I will make a donation to your convent, while I still live. You will hold it in your hand. I promise you. But there is one condition. You have to swear to me that every other friar in your convent has an equal share of what I am about to give you. Swear to that, on your holy brotherhood, without cavil or hesitation.’

‘I swear it,’ the friar replied, ‘on the blood and bones of Christ.’ He shook hands with Thomas. ‘You can have trust in me.’

‘All right then,’ Thomas said. ‘Just put your hand down my back. Down there. If you grope just behind my buttocks, you will find something that I have hidden away for your benefit.’

‘Aha,’ the friar thought. ‘This is going with me. This is my prize.’

So he plunged his hand under the sheets and started feeling the man’s arse to find some treasure. He put his fingers up his cleft in case there was a small package. When Thomas felt the fingers of the friar groping around his bum, he suddenly let out a great fart. A farmhorse, pulling a cart, could not have let out a greater fart. A ploughman’s ox could not have made a smellier one. The noise was terrific.

Friar John was so startled that he jumped up. ‘You bastard!’ he shouted. ‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you! God help you! You’ll pay for that fart, I promise you! Just you wait!’

The servants of the house, hearing the uproar, came scurrying into the room and chased out the friar. So he left with a scowl on his face, and went in search of the comrade who always followed him about. He looked like an old boar in pain; he was grinding his teeth or, rather, his tusks. Then he set out for the manor house of the village, where lived a gentleman of great distinction to whom he sometimes gave confession. This worthy man was, naturally, lord of the manor. He was sitting at dinner, in his hall, when Friar John approached him in a fearful rage. The friar was so angry that he could not get his words out. Then he finally managed, ‘God be with you!’

The lord looked up at him and greeted him. ‘Friar John,’ he said, ‘what on earth is the matter with you? I can see that something has happened. You look as if the wood were full of thieves. Sit down. Tell me all about it. If I can help you, I will.’

‘I have been insulted,’ the friar replied. ‘Humiliated. In your village. There is no one so poor, so lowly, so despised, who would not feel that he had been degraded by the treatment I have received. Here. Just now. Of course I do not complain on my own account. I am a mere friar. But I do mind that this – this fool – this knave – this white-haired old clown – should blaspheme against my convent.’

‘Now master friar -’

‘No, sir, not master. Never master. I am a mere servant. I know that I have been made a master of divinity, but I never use the title. It is not modest. It is not seemly, here or anywhere else.’

‘That’s up to you. But please tell me what has happened.’

‘Sir, today my order and myself have been dealt a shameful wrong. It is too dreadful to contemplate. The whole of the Holy Church – all its degrees from pope to priest – has been insulted. God help us all.’

‘I am sure,’ the lord of the manor said, ‘that you know the best way to proceed. Don’t get into a state about it. You are my confessor, after all. You are the salt of the earth. Be calm, for God’s sake. And tell me what happened.’

So the friar sat down and told him the whole story. There is no need for me to repeat it to you. The lady of the house had come in, and heard what the friar had to say. ‘Mother of God,’ she said. ‘Holy Virgin! Is there anything else? Tell me.’

‘That’s it,’ Friar John replied. ‘What do you think?’

‘What do I think? God help me, I say that a common man has done a common deed. What else am I supposed to say? He will end up in trouble, I know that much. His sickness must be affecting him. He may be having some kind of seizure. He doesn’t know what he is doing.’

‘Ma dame,’ the friar said. ‘I will not lie to you. I will be revenged upon him one way or another. I will denounce him from the pulpit. I will defame him. I will shame him. How dare he tell me to divide a thing that cannot be divided? You know what I am talking about. How can I give a portion of you-know-what to all the friars? God damn him and his fart!’

The lord listened to all this in amazement, and asked himself how it was possible for this wretched man to have the wit to put such a problem to the friar? Who could solve such a conundrum? ‘I never heard anything like it,’ he said out loud to no one in particular. ‘The devil must have put it in his mind. I don’t think that any master of arithmetic has ever asked the question. Who could demonstrate the proper method by which every friar should have a part of the sound, and the smell, of a fart? Is this man, this invalid, fiendishly clever? Or what? He is too clever for his own good. That’s for sure. Who ever heard of such a thing? One divisible part to every man alike? Tell me how. It is impossible. It cannot be done. The rumbling of a fart, well, it is just reverberation of the air. It is a hollow sound, fading ever so slowly away. No man can judge if it has been divided properly. Who would have thought that one of my own villagers would come up with something so – so problematic. And he put it to my confessor, too! He must be a madman. Eat your supper, Friar John, and forget all about it. Let the churl go hang himself!’

Jack, the young squire of the lord, was standing by the table and carving the roast meat. Of course he had heard everything. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘please don’t be angry with me. If you gave me enough cloth to make a new gown – as a reward, if you like – I think I could tell the friar the solution to this riddle. I think I could explain to him how to divide this man’s fart among all the members of his convent.’

‘If you give us the answer,’ the lord of the manor replied, ‘you can have your cloth. God knows you will have earned it.’

‘My lord,’ the squire said, ‘pick a day when the weather is mild and favourable, when there is no wind or breeze to disturb the air. Then have a cartwheel with its usual twelve spokes brought into the hall here. It has to be a complete wheel.’

‘Yes. And then?’

‘Summon twelve friars into the hall. Thirteen make up a convent, do they not? Well, your confessor here can be the thirteenth. They all have to kneel down at the same time. Then every friar has to put his nose against one of the spokes. Our worthy friar here will place his nose against the hub in the middle of the wheel. May God be with him. We will then bring the churl among them. His belly will have to be as taut as a drum, and ready to blow. He will bend down, on the other side of the hub, and let loose a great fart. I swear to you, on my life, that you will see the proof of my theory. The sound of the fart will travel along all twelve of the spokes. So will the stink of it. Of course your worthy confessor here will have the first fruit, so to speak. He deserved the first offering. That is only fair. Has he not said in the past that the worthiest friar should be the first to receive alms? He deserves the best, does he not? Only this morning I heard him preaching from the pulpit. It did me good, it really did. I would let him savour three farts, if I could. I am sure his whole convent agrees with me about that. What a holy man he is.’

The lord and his lady were in full agreement with young Jack. Everyone there said that he had explained himself as subtly as Euclid or Ptolemy – everyone, that is, except the holy friar. As for the churl who had started the whole business, they all agreed that he was neither mad nor foolish; on the contrary, he had all his wits about him. So Jack won his new gown. That is the end of my story. And just in time. Look, we are coming into a new town.

Heere endeth the Somonours Tale

Heere folweth the Prologe of the Clerkes Tale of Oxenforde

‘Come now, master scholar from Oxford,’ our Host exclaimed. ‘You have been as coy and quiet as a young virgin waiting for her first night in bed. You haven’t said a word throughout the journey. I suppose you are studying some great intellectual problem. But you know what wise Solomon believed? “There is a time for everything.”

‘For Christ’s sake cheer up, man! This is not the occasion to be serious. Tell us a funny story. Anyone who agrees to be part of the game must play by its rules. Isn’t that so? Don’t preach to us, in any case. That is for the friars. That is for Lent. Don’t start moaning about the sins of the world. And don’t tell us a tale that will bore us to death. Be jolly. Tell us about fantastic adventures. And don’t clothe everything with your Oxford rhetoric. We don’t want technical terms or figures of speech. They are for the secretaries of kings. Speak plainly in the language men use. Make sure that all of us here can understand you.’

The Oxford man answered him politely. ‘Host,’ he said, ‘I am under your authority. You are in charge. I will obey you in everything unless, of course, you become unreasonable. I will tell you a story I first heard from a worthy scholar at the university of Padua. He was a very learned man, and a good one. Alas he is now dead and nailed in his coffin. God give him rest.

‘This scholar was also a great poet, Francis Petrarch by name. Have you heard of him? His sweet rhetoric sugared the poetry of Italy. His colleague at Padua, Giovani di Lignano, did the same for law and rhetoric. But you won’t have heard of him. They have gone now. Death is no respecter of persons. It will not allow us to linger in the world. In an instant it had taken both of them. And we will all surely follow.

‘Let me tell you more about Petrarch himself. Before he recited this tale to me, he explained that he had composed it in a high style fitting its matter. He also told me that he had written a prologue before starting on the substance of the story. In this prologue he had described the area of Piedmont and its region of Saluzzo, where the action is set. He described the Apennine mountains that make up the western border of Lombardy. In particular he portrayed Mount Viso, highest of the mountains, where the river Po has its source in a little spring among the rocks. From there the river goes eastward, increasing all the way, towards Ferrara and lovely Venice before entering the sea. But that’s another story. It is irrelevant here, except as an introduction. Now that I have set the scene, I will get on with my tale.’