The Town House Read online

  I was speechless with awe but Brother Sebastian might have been in his own Infirmary.

  ‘The Saint’s real tributes lie there,’ he said, after giving me a moment to stare and wonder. He pointed to a space beyond the shrine, where sticks and crutches, leather neck braces, slings and bandages lay all in a jumble.

  ‘There, you have seen what he can do. Kneel down and ask him to act for you.’

  I tried. I tried to force out the prayer for the cure for the shortness of my leg, but it would not be. I found myself praying, with the utmost urgency – Let me find some work that I can do. Let me not be a burden on Kate. No other thought would come into my head and I went on praying the same thing over and over until at last Brother Sebastian touched me on the shoulder.

  ‘We must not tire him,’ he said. And something impatient and evil moved in me, I wanted to cry – How can you tire someone who has been dead and at rest for hundreds of years? And I knew that there would be no miracle for me.

  Brother Sebastian, after he had spoken to me, had moved away and was now on his knees on the step which led up from the nave to the choir stalls. I stood up and went, stamp, swing, shuffle, until I stood behind him.

  The altar was a gold table, bearing a jewelled crucifix and two seven-branched golden candlesticks. It was backed by a screen, also of gold, divided into a number of oblongs, each one a picture, done in glowing colours and worked in some way I did not understand into the gold. There were three rows of them, twenty-six to a row. From where I stood it was impossible to see them clearly.

  Brother Sebastian stood up. He knew he had failed, or I had failed, or St. Egbert had failed, and his manner took on a curious resemblance to that of a workman, say a smith, who has done a bad job and knows it and uneasily tries to divert attention by mentioning the weather or inquiring after the health of the customer or his family.

  ‘You are looking at the screen. It is interesting. Come and regard it closely. It is one of our treasures.’ We went forward.

  ‘Two hundred years old,’ he said. ‘You see, the pictures in the centre row represent scenes from the New Testament, those above and below, scenes from the Old. But each three have a common theme. How many do you recognize?’

  I looked at the three pictures in the centre.

  ‘In the middle’, I said, ‘is the Crucifixion. Above it Abraham is prepared to sacrifice Isaac, but sees the ram caught in the thicket, and below is Jephthah keeping his vow by sacrificing his daughter. These three pictures have sacrifice as their common theme. Is that right?’

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  I looked about. In many of the sections the light just shone back at me, off the surface of the gold and the inlaid colours, carrying no meaning. I was, after all, an ignorant fellow. Here and there a picture had meaning.

  ‘On the left there. In the middle is Our Lord Jesus Christ feeding the five thousand. Above is the prophet Elijah and the widow woman of Zarephath with the unfailing barrel of meal and cruse of oil. Below that same Elijah is being fed by the ravens.’

  ‘You are right. And what is the theme?’

  ‘That God, if He wills, can provide.’

  ‘Right again. That is what I wished to point out to you, but you pointed it out to me. Bear it in mind. In a few minutes the bell will ring for Compline. Come, I will help you back to bed.’

  On the way back we neither of us spoke about the miracle which had not happened. Brother Sebastian talked about the altar screen, saying that beautiful and valuable as it was it was in the wrong place. It should be in some parish church where the priest could teach those who could not read the Bible truths by its means. Then he said suddenly,

  ‘You have more learning than most. Where did you come by it?’

  ‘I always heeded what our priest had to say.’

  ‘You should thank God for a good memory.’

  The good memory which so often reminded me how I had said to Kate,‘You shall be safe with me.’ Something to be grateful for indeed.

  That was my last night in the Abbey Infirmary, and it was a poor one. I slept in snatches, each full of strange and sometimes sinister dreams. Once I dreamed that my leg, like Peg-Leg’s, was cut off at the knee and that St. Egbert answered my prayer for a miracle by causing me to grow a golden leg, very marvellous to look at, but too heavy for me to drag; I lay on Rede dunghill, unable to walk and lamenting the miracle. Then I dreamed that Kate and I and Stephen were really starving, sitting before our hut, bowed over with the pain in our bellies. A great bird came swooping down, carrying Robin’s dead body in his bloody beak. Kate said,‘It will be all right to eat this meat. It is a gift from God.’

  From these and similar wild dreams I woke sweating, to lie and face the old gnawing anxiety again until once more I fell into uneasy slumber. I was glad when the bell rang for Prime.

  I rose and began to dress and found that my right shoe was missing. I hunted for it until the Infirmary servant brought the breakfast and then sat down to eat my porridge while it was still warm. I had almost finished when Brother Sebastian came hurrying in, carrying my shoe.

  ‘The miracle!’ he exclaimed. ‘The miracle, Martin. It happened. In my old head! Look.’ He held out my shoe on to which had been tacked, very neatly, another sole, two inches thick.

  ‘Try it. Try it.’ He was eager and impatient as a child. ‘The thought came to me at Matins and I asked Brother Anthony, our shoemaker, if he could do the work. He stayed up and worked instead of going back to his bed. How is it now?’

  I stood up and stood level.

  ‘Most wonderfully easy.’ I began to thank him, but he cut me short.

  ‘Thank St. Egbert who put the thought into my head. Now, when the stiffness has worn off you will hardly be the worse for your mishap.’

  Once more I tried to thank him. He stopped me again, tapping my hand with his finger.

  ‘Wait. There was something else I had to tell you before you go. Now what could it be? Nothing to do with your leg or my work… that is why I have forgotten it. But I shall… Oh yes! Martin, you live in Squatters Row as they call it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, be warned by me. Begin to look for other accommodation. There is talk of clearing that wall and covering in the Ditch and making all tidy there. The Prior and the Cellarer were talking only yesterday. The Bishop of Dunwich came to visit and entered by the East Gate and made some unfavourable comment. They’re bound to take some action.’

  I’d had less than a moment to savour the joy of the shoe that mitigated my lameness.

  ‘I don’t suppose it will happen tomorrow or even next week,’ Brother Sebastian said kindly. ‘Our present Cellarer is too old to move quickly, but… well, I thought I would warn you.’

  I suppose I should have thanked him for that, too. As it was I took leave of him sullenly.

  X

  Kate’s greeting of me was proof that our sharp words towards one another, the way we now lived, hardly touching one another, and all the worry and all the woe had not really set us apart. When I hobbled home she cried, partly at grief to see me so lame, but mainly with joy at seeing me again. She said how much she had missed me, how greatly she had longed to come and nurse me herself and I in turn said that I had missed her very sorely, thought of her by day and dreamed of her by night. I could hardly tell her what form those thoughts, those dreams had taken.

  Soon, however, I had to ask the question.

  ‘And has Master Webster held my place for me?’

  All the joy, the young-Kate look went out of her face, leaving the harassed, irritable one which was her everyday one nowadays.

  ‘No. He put a new man on the very next Monday. I went to him. Martin, I spoke for you. I went on my knees, and I cried. He took no notice. Then I lost my temper and told him flatly he was ungrateful when you’d been hurt beating off robbers on his behalf.’

  ‘They weren’t robbers,’ I said. ‘There was nothing to steal that night – except the ponies, and they made no atte
mpt upon them. They let Crooky go by, and the ponies, until the last that I was riding. I think even Crooky knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That I was to be set on. You were here, Kate, when Armstrong said they had ways of dealing with those who went against their rules.’

  ‘But they might have killed you.’

  ‘They probably meant to. In any case, lying out all night I should have died. It was only lucky chance that I was found.’

  ‘Then they’re murderers. And they should be punished.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘The law. The constable.’

  ‘I have no evidence against anyone. Whom could I accuse? It was dark, and foggy. I never saw a face, or heard a voice.’

  ‘Then if it was Armstrong’s men it was because you were doing Webster’s smith work and he should have stood by you.’

  ‘Maybe in a way he has; maybe he put on the new man just until I was better.’

  Kate shook her head.

  ‘No, I made sure of that. And he seemed so against you, somehow. I think he would have sacked me, simply for being your wife, but Margit got married and left us short-handed on the floor.’

  ‘Why should he be against me? I always served him well. I shall come along in the morning and see him.’

  ‘I don’t think it will do a ha’porth of good,’ Kate said.

  In the morning I dropped Kate and the children at the door of the woolshed and went to look for Master Webster. He was m the stables and the moment he saw me his face darkened.

  ‘What d’you want?’

  I forced myself to be meek.

  ‘I’ve come back to work, Master.’

  Not here. I’ve no use for blabbermouth jugheads.’

  ‘Me?’ I was never more astounded. I was of sheer necessity the soberest man who ever wore shoe-leather, and I never talked to anyone. Even Kate hadn’t known why I worked so late so often, until Armstrong had come and let it out.

  ‘Yes. You. You got yourself tipsy in the Smith’s Arms and bragged about what you were doing here after dark.’

  ‘I haven’t been in the Smith’s Arms since the day Armstrong broke it to me I couldn’t join the Guild. Who’s the liar who said he saw me there? I’ll break his neck!’

  ‘Shouting at me won’t mend matters. This was all gone into at a full meeting of Guild Aldermen.’

  ‘What was? You know yourself, I told you at the time, that I was spied on and reported to Armstrong and that he came and saw me and threatened me. You said take no notice and go on as we were.’

  ‘Nobody spied on you. You made that up when you realized, sober, what you’d said in your cups. And it was a poor reward for my pandering to you.’

  ‘Pandering to me?’

  He fixed his eyes on some point behind me, over my shoulder and said in a wooden way which told that he was repeating something said before,

  ‘You wanted to keep your hand in – on the smith work, and I was silly enough to let you shoe a pony now and then. For practice, against the time you hoped to get back into the craft. Ain’t that right? Out of charity I did it.’

  I saw his plump red face, the eyes avoiding mine, the lips moving, spilling out the lies; and then the red mist came down and blotted it out. I could feel, beforehand, the supreme pleasure of smashing my knuckles through the mist and on to that well-padded jaw. But this time I held my hand. Hit him and short-handed or not he would give Kate her quittance, and what she earned was, at this moment, all there was between us and starvation.

  Whirling about at the back of my mind was the thought that free men can suffer humiliation deeper and more hurtful than any a serf can ever know. In order that Kate and Stephen and Robin should eat tomorrow – for myself I did not care, I never wanted to eat again – I must accept this lie. I could see exactly what had happened; the Guild Aldermen had held a solemn conclave; Webster, a member of the Woolmen’s Guild had offended the Smiths by using me, a non-member, to do smith work; and the Smiths’ Guild had committed, not a fault, but a breach in manners, by spying upon Webster. So there had been a meeting of all the Aldermen, intent only upon smoothing the whole thing over. Webster had lied about employing me and Armstrong had denied the spying. No matter what it took of lies and falsity to do it the firm unbroken face which the Guilds as a whole presented to the world outside, must remain uncracked. Throw lies, throw a living man’s body into the breach and then seal it over with cakes and ales and renewed vows of brotherhood and fair dealing.

  And I, for the sake of a loaf of bread, dared not speak.

  Jesus Christ! I said to myself, if only a miracle could happen and I could deal with them all as they have dealt with me, with joy would I rub their faces in the dirt!

  I knew I was like a child, beaten by his father, thinking, When I grow up! But there was this difference. The child will surely grow.

  I went out on the hunt for work. The town was growing in size and business was flourishing, but work was hard to find. Out in the country more and more acres of arable land were being turned into sheep runs, and one man could tend the sheep where twenty had been needed to plough and sow and reap. Those put out of work came flooding into the towns, so that there were three men for every job. A good deal of the work going forward was building, and with my stiff leg and built-up shoe I did not look a likely digger, or a climber of ladders. I was passed over again and again.

  Soon, alongside Dummy and Peg-Leg, I was waiting at the town gates every morning, ready to fight for any despicable little job that might be going, to hold horses or walk hounds while their owners went into the Abbey to visit the shrine, to carry baggage, to lead the way to inns. Sometimes, standing there amongst the riff-raff I would think how far I had fallen, a smith, a craftsman who had served his time. By comparison my father’s life, bond as he was, had had dignity and purpose. I’d run a long way and borne a great deal and got nowhere.

  Now and again, having done a job and taken the meagre pay I would go into the country and buy apples or plums or eggs on some day that was not market day, and come back and hawk them through the streets. The walking tried me and I grew lop-sided, since the easiest way was to hitch the whole right-hand side of my body when I swung that leg forward. Dummy’s brood, on the rare occasions when they were sufficiently full fed to feel sportive, took to imitating me behind my back, as they did Peg Leg.

  I never passed on to Kate the word that our very hut was threatened, but some time during that summer the old midwife and layer-out, Agnes, came back from making a baker named Barnaby ready for his grave with news which seemed to excite her. She said that Barnaby had left all his money for the building of some almshouses and that as soon as they were standing everybody in Squatters Row was to move into them. It was strange to hear how that drunken old slattern, who lived under a piece of torn sail-cloth, spoke of having a house again, as though that was the one thing she wanted. But nothing came of it. The Barnaby houses were for eight widows whose husbands had been Guild members.

  ‘And there goes my last hope,’ Agnes said, and went out and got herself most enviably drunk.

  Dummy’s wife said, ‘They are only one up and one down, they’d be no good to my lot. Laying heel to head we go from here to there,’ she indicated the space between two buttresses.

  So Squatters Row went on just as before and that summer we had a new kind of visitor. The pilgrims brought their own parasites, bear-leaders, tumblers, dancers and singers, but this was something different, a travelling Friar, poorly dressed in a grey hood and gown of the coarsest stuff, and with his feet bare in the dust. At night he slept with the rest of us outcasts, between the buttresses, by day he went about preaching. He’d follow a performing bear or some other entertainer and wait until a crowd had gathered, and then he would call in a very powerful voice, ‘Brothers! I bring you good news.’ His news was the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man. The more frivolous, or the rough in the crowd would jeer and pelt him, but he would stand his ground and sooner or later he woul
d speak against the Abbey and the monks. He would say that it was wrong for professional religious to be great landlords; he decried all pomp and ceremony; he said that Christ only once in his life rode, and that on the back of a humble ass, how then could Abbots and Bishops, Christ’s representatives on earth, go mounted and robed like temporal princes?

  I do not doubt that he was honest and sincere. I suspect that his decrying of rank and power, his praise of humility and poverty were, in a manner, like the clapper, or the whistle by which other people gained the crowd’s attention. For afterwards would come the real sermon, urging the virtues of charity and mercy, chastity and honesty, with many a text and story from the Bible to illustrate his point.

  Moving around as I did, working or searching for work, I heard him often. Kate, shut away in the woolshed, had no such chance, so over supper I would tell her something of what he had said, or how he had been pelted.

  One evening she fell thoughtful and after a time said,

  ‘He is a stranger and sounds good of heart. Could he marry us?’

  ‘I don’t know. If he has taken priest’s orders, yes. But all monks are not priests, maybe all friars are not.’

  ‘You could ask him. Go now.’

  ‘Oh, not out there, with so many listening who think us married already.’

  ‘No. Get him out of earshot if you can. I know, bring him here, ask him to sup with us.’

  ‘But we’ve eaten,’ I said, looking at the bare platter.

  ‘I should think my breakfast tomorrow, aye and every morning I have left to live, a small price for such a favour.’