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

The carpenter, Richard Marrow, did not reply. It was as if he were afraid, or unwilling, to speak. It was as if he had calculated how many words would lead him through this life, and was determined not to exceed that number. He was tall, with the willed slenderness of the ascetic.

The friar gestured to the light that had once more brought shade and brightness to the cloister. “But now, you see, God has breathed upon us. He is still here.”

The rain had cleared as suddenly as it had descended, and Hamo felt an overwhelming desire to walk out over Smithfield. He had been brought up in the priory. He had been found abandoned in Cock Lane, only a few yards from this place, and was assumed to be the unwanted child of one of the prostitutes who plied their trade in that narrow thoroughfare. He had been left at the gate of St. Bartholomew, and discovered there by the elderly porter who looked after the horses; from that day forward he had known no life other than that of the friars. It was discovered that he was skilled with his hands, and so he was trained as an illuminator in the scriptorium. He prepared the inks and the paints; he smoothed the parchments and drew lines upon them with rule and charcoal pencil. He learned to mix black and red, white and yellow. Then he was trained in the art of drawing outlines with a brush of squirrel hair. He was taught how to plaster the walls of the church in preparation for the murals; he would cover them with lime putty, rendered damp for the better retention of colour. He had worked first on the smaller paintings on these walls, known to the friars as Biblia pauperum or poor man’s Bible. In the chancel, for example, he had drawn the outline of Longinus piercing the body of the crucified Christ with a lance. The left hand of Longinus was pointing towards his face, as a token that he had miraculously recovered his sight. Over the years Hamo had learned the secrets of his art. The open palm denoted judgement; the upraised or pointed finger was the token of condemnation. The curved finger was the symbol of speech, while raised hands signified argument or exposition. The hands and arms spread out could be interpreted as wonder or adoration. Crossed legs were a sign of unnaturalness; that is why, in the mysteries, Herod was played in that position. The soul was always depicted as a small and naked figure, sometimes wearing a crown or a mitre. He painted all of these with red and yellow ochre, with lime white and lamp black, with green and lapis lazuli.

He was known to the others as “simple Hamo” or as “silent Hamo.” He took part in the rituals of the community by rote, without conviction of any kind. He did not consider himself part of the friars’ common life or fervent faith. From infancy, he had been a natural exile. When he suffered sorrow or fear, he did not consider it. This was the way of the world. Someone else might have pitied him, but he did not pity himself. He was familiar with loneliness. He was accustomed to long endurance. If he had experienced any strong feeling he would have dismissed it, since he had no one with whom he could share it. Yet over these years, he had attached himself to William Exmewe. He had begun following the young friar from a distance, staying just out of sight, but Exmewe had noticed him. He called out to Hamo one evening as he came from the refectory; the boy had been waiting for him by the corner of the building.

“What is this? Follow the leader?” Hamo looked up at him silently and intently. “What do you call yourself?” Exmewe knew his name, of course, but was determined to make him speak. He took him by the shoulders, and shook him roughly. “Do you have a tongue to use? Would it be Hamo Fulberd?” The boy nodded. “Fulberd and yet beardless, I see.” St.ill the boy said nothing. “You are like wood. God forbid that you be carved from a wicked tree.” But then Exmewe, perhaps recalling the circumstances of Hamo’s adoption, relented. “Well, Fulberd, walk in the open way ever after. Where I may see you.”

So Hamo stayed in Exmewe’s company. The other friars debated among themselves the nature of his temperament and the precise mixture of his humours. Some deemed the boy to be melancholic, therefore slow and pensive, while others believed him to possess the chaste and sad piteousness of the phlegmatic. The connection between the two was impossible to fathom except that, in some obscure fashion, Hamo Fulberd had found a father.

Now that the rain had cleared, Exmewe opened the wicket gate of the priory and walked out into Smithfield. It was not market day but the open space was churned up by horses and carts and wagons of every description; pigs were rooting among the rubbish, and black kites wandered among discarded bones as if they were in mourning for London itself. The name of God was all around them – “God save you,” “God’s speed,” “God give you grace” – muttered casually and under the breath, or cried aloud in greeting, like some susurrus of benevolence from the divine world. The smell of slaughtered animals, coming from the shambles, mingled with human scents as they passed the Broken Seld, the Bell on the Hoop, the Saresinshed, and the Cardinal’s Hat.

“Filled with priests,” Exmewe observed as he peered into the basement of the Hat. “They transubstantiate the wine into nothing.” Above the ground-floor door of this hostelry was a sign of welcome vividly painted on a wooden panel; it displayed the image of a man entering a bed where someone else was already sleeping. “They say that March is burial month. I