The Clerkenwell Tales, Peter Ackroyd [sight word readers txt] 📗

“an avoided place.”6 Yet he did not follow all of Emnot’s counsel. He had heard that Sister Clarice was to visit the female prisoners of the Mint, beside the Tower of London. He waited there by the postern gate on the appointed day and, as she approached, he held out his hands to her in the familiar gesture of supplication. “Release me,” he said. “Release me, dear sister, from a world of woe.”

Clarice saw his handsome face, and his dark eyes rendered darker by tribulation. “What is your trouble?” There was no one with her but another nun, Sister Bridget, and she gestured her to stand apart.

Gabriel Hilton then told her of the spirits haunting him. She bit her underlip, and shook her head in apparent dismay. “There are other such stories in the wind. There is a great perturbation of spirits in London. They see some evil day approaching.” Then she kissed her finger and touched his cheek with it. He stepped backwards in surprise, but she smiled at him. “Are you afraid of me, or of my sex? You see from my dress that I am devoted to God. Why fear me then?”

He suspected that the nun was mocking him. “I am afraid not of you, nor of any woman born.”

She put her finger upon his forehead. “Your cousin will be in great joy and comfort.”

“Emnot?”

“He is being led to the light. Other men are at his back, hastening him onward into bliss.”

“Emnot is solitary. He is a full learned clerk.”

“Listen to what I say. He must continue his course without fear. Exmewe is his fast friend. Tell him that he must not weaken or waver. Will you tell him this?”

“Of course. If you wish it.”

“I wish it.” She left him there, and entered the little gate of the prison.

With many other citizens Gabriel watched her as she mounted a stone block in the yard, put out her arms as if she were Christ crucified, and spoke to the narrow gratings which concealed the female prisoners. The wind from the river was so strong that he heard only snatches of what she said. “I am in irons. I am in fetters. This body is my prison house. My eyes are my grilles.” Then she spoke of a day when all doors would be opened and all locks would be broken.

There was no sound from the prison itself, but suddenly a pale face appeared at one of the gratings. A mouth opened, screaming out, “False witch of hell! Ripe for the burning! When rotten fruit falls to the ground, the dogs disdain it!”

Sister Clarice turned and descended from the stone block. She called Sister Bridget to her, and together they went out of the prison of the Mint. She passed Gabriel Hilton, but she did not acknowledge him. He noticed that she whispered something to her companion, and that she laughed out loud. Surely, to be so merry, Clarice must be blessed by God? Even as he considered this, he determined not to mention her advice to his cousin. As his father had taught him, it were best not to mingle heaven and earth.

Chapter Five

The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale

In the week following the explosion in St. John’s Street, the under-sheriff had made public proclamation by the cross in Cheapside that this ruination by fire had been “rotten, stinking, and abominable to the human race.” If the offender was found he would be taken with trumpets and pipes to the stocks by the market, there to stand for a day and a night. If he were still in life, he would be taken from there and hanged beside the elms in Smithfield. He would be utterly excommunicate, and his body thrown into a lime-pit outside the walls.

There was much speculation about the identity of the miscreant, with city opinion inclining to the belief that the Lollards were responsible. These were a loosely knit group of Christian men and women who approached their faith with an egalitarian fervour. They doubted the efficacy of certain church practices, and were in any case inviolably opposed to the wealth and social power of the Church in the world. Confession could only be effective if the priest was full of grace, but no such priest had ever been found. Bread could not be made holier by being muttered over by priests. It was a sin to venerate images of the saints. Pilgrims to Canterbury were in danger of damnation, since St. Thomas had been consigned to hell for endowing the church with possessions. There was no purgatory other than this life, and so all masses for the dead and all chantry priests were without value. The Lollards asserted that it was contrary to Holy Scripture that priests should have any temporal possessions, and that friars were bound to obtain their living by the labour of their hands rather than by begging in the streets. They protested against chanting and church bells, saints’ days and precious vestments, oaths and festivals, fastings and pilgrimages.7

Some days after the proclamation by the under-sheriff, the members of the Guild of Mary the Virgin met for a solemn dinner in the Hall of the Mercers along Ironmonger Lane. The guild encompassed the worthies of London, the richer merchants, the abbots and priors of city foundations, the more notable landowners and clerics; there was among them, too, a certain canon named William Swinderby. He was accompanied by his yeoman, Drago, who always followed him at a respectful distance. Swinderby lived in the clergy house of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and had acquired fame as a preacher at Paul’s Cross; his sermons against the Lollards in recent days had excited many London crowds.8 He had attacked John Wycliffe, dead for fifteen years, as “the arch-parent of this heretical depravity.” He had then dismissed the Lollards themselves as “beardless blabbering boys who, yes, believe me, deserve to be well birched”; at that aside, Drago looked at him strangely.

Drago gave his dagger