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

“I open eyes. Some engrave on trees, and some on stone walls. I engrave on hearts.”

“Oh such subtle lookings and dissimulations, nun. You are a limb of the fiend.”

She was silent for a moment, her head cast down as if in prayer. “If I consented to do your will and abjure all that I have said, then indeed I were worthy to be cursed of God.”

“Wherefore abjure?” asked Gybon. “We require only silence and public penance.”

“To carry a wax candle down Cheapside? It is the same as abjuration.”

“You deserve more than the candle, nun. You are worthy to be blotted and spotted, fouled and defouled. I think, Gybon, our work is accomplished here for the time.”

“You have done me wrong, sirs. My tale is not finished. For, sirs, take it not badly that it may not all go as you wish.” The nun unclasped her arms, and held them out before her in an attitude of supplication. She seemed to the squire to become like some statue, wreathed in flowers and incense. Then she began chanting a verse of her own invention:

“Leave your reason and believe in the wonder,

For faith is above and reason is under.”

The squire still watched her carefully. Sometimes she constrained and shrank herself to the common measure of men, and sometimes it seemed that she touched heaven with the height of her head; like that of his aunt, her voice had wings.

“You know, nun,” the bishop was saying, “that it is within my power to exclude you from the threshold of Holy Mother Church?”

“I know it.”

“You are one who has knowingly and willingly sworn falsely by those things most sacred. May the one God curse you. May the Holy Mother of God curse you. May the patriarchs and prophets curse you. May the martyrs and the virgin saints curse you –”

“The virgin saints will lift my heaviness –”

“Oh, do you think you can hop into heaven?”

There was a rapping upon the great door. A messenger came in with a blazing torch, walked over to Gybon Maghfeld, and whispered in his ear. The squire turned to the bishop, knelt and kissed his ring. “Pardon, my lord bishop. I am summoned without delay to the guild hall.”

The messenger had informed him that Henry Bolingbroke had arrived at Westminster two hours before; he had despatched the king to the Tower for his own “safety” against the supposed wrath of the London populace – or, as Henry’s representative would later tell the parliament, “for the great cruelty that he beforetime has used unto the city.” The mayor and the aldermen were now gathering to consider their policy for this unsettled time. They were meeting in the guild hall close to the bishop’s palace, and Gybon walked there with the messenger through the darkening streets.

It was the hour before curfew, and the wardens of the gates were blowing their horns; the people beyond the walls were being warned to bring in their animals. Six hundred armed men had been called this night to keep peace in the streets, and there were many guards at the gates of the city; Gybon Maghfeld could sense an air of excitement and of impending change. It was as if the city were bracing itself for a fever. There were citizens moving about from street to street, or from lane to lane, with intense looks of fear and amazement. He observed their faces as he passed them, but he recognised none of them. He was then struck by a curious possibility. What if these figures were created out of panic fear, out of the anger and excitement of the city itself? They might emerge at times of fire or of the death, a visible group of walkers in the night. They might appear on the same London streets through all of the city’s history.

As the squire passed, wondering, along Silver Street and Addle Street, the bishop of London and the nun of Clerkenwell were raising cups of wine and congratulating one another on a drama well staged.

Chapter Eighteen

The Man of Law’s Tale

“Say me where was God when he made heaven and earth?”

“I say, sir, in the farther end of the wind.”

“Whereof was Adam made?”

“Of eight things: the first of earth, the second of fire, the third of wind, the fourth of clouds, the fifth of air whereby he speaks and thinks, the sixth of dew whereby he sweats, the seventh of flowers whereby Adam has his eyes, the eighth is salt whereof Adam has salt tears.”

“That is good. Very good. Whereof was found the name of Adam?”

“Of four stars by the name of Arcax, Dux, Arostolym and Momfumbres.”

“Of what state was Adam when he was made?”

“A man of thirty winters.”

Miles Vavasour was catechising his young man of law, Martin, on their way into Westminster Hall; he had explained, to all his pupils, that a thorough knowledge of biblical matters was a necessary accompaniment to the study of all codes and constitutions. He was, in appearance, a pious man. “And what length was Adam?”

“Of eight feet and six inches.”

“How long did Adam live in this world?”

“One hundred and thirty winters, and afterwards in hell till the Passion of our Lord God.”

“And tell me this, Martin. Why is the sun red at evening?”

“He goes towards hell.”

“Hell. Yes. Never trust a red-faced man, Martin. Now draw on my gear. It is more than time.”

So the man of law dressed his teacher and employer in a mantle of green cloth furred with black lamb; this ceremonial coat was embroidered with vertical stripes of mulberry and blue, so that it could be distinguished from the mantle of diagonal stripes granted to the outer barristers who were there to examine but not to plead. Miles also wore the round cap of white silk, or coif, as a token of his rank as sergeant-at-law. He was led from the chamber of the robes to the court of the king’s bench by an official holding a