The Town House (11 page)

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 would 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.’

‘So should I, of course. Of course,’ I said, and ran out into the night.

Squatters Row was fully occupied and the Friar had taken one of the least favourable places, mid-way between two buttresses, with no corner to huddle into. He was eating a slice of rye bread and when I proffered my invitation to supper he said,

‘That is kind of you. I have enough here. Perhaps tomorrow. … if you can afford it.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. Truth to tell my… my wife and I,’ I had to say that, for there were ears all about, ‘my wife and I wanted to ask you something… a favour. Would you come indoors with me? It is very near.’

‘Of course,’ he said and heaved himself to his feet.

Inside the hut I closed the door which hung awry from two hinges of leather which I had made, and wedged it close. In the faint light of the dying fire we all looked into one another’s faces for a moment, none of us speaking. The Friar broke silence, looking at the children in their bed by the inner wall.

‘They are sick?’ he asked gently.

‘No, Father, asleep, I hope,’ Kate said. ‘My… this man and I have a confession to make and a favour to ask. We have lived as man and wife for four years now, but we were never married…’

‘And now you wish to be?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but not openly.’ I told him – not everything, but all he needed to know – of our circumstances; how we had intended to marry and been prevented through no fault of our own, and had come to the town as man and wife and then dared not betray our state.

‘You have been living in sin; you know that?’

‘We know. And we have suffered for it.’

‘And during this time you have performed your religious duties, always with this sin unconfessed and unabsolved?’

‘Yes.’ He looked so grave that the consciousness of sin did come upon me. I must confess that in the rough and tumble of daily living the matter had troubled me very little; I had only thought of it, occasionally, as having been a mistake, the cause and reason for some of our misfortunes.

‘But you are free to marry? And during this time you have been faithful to one another?’

Kate said, ‘Always, Father.’ And I said, ‘Unswervingly.’ And that was true. I had never even looked with desire upon any woman save Kate and not for lack of temptation. During my pack-whacking days the chances had been plentiful.

This can be mended then,’ the Friar said. ‘Tomorrow you will both fast all day. At about this time in the evening I will come to you and you may make your confessions and in that state of grace, you shall be wed. We will then break fast together.’

We thanked him heartily and he went quietly away.

Next evening we fed the children and put them to bed early. Kate scrubbed the rough board which was our table top, and set out upon it the meat pie she had bought in Cooks Row, a fresh loaf and a dish of red-cheeked apples. She was in high good spirits, calling this our wedding feast, and regretting that we had no wedding garments.

‘Like the man in the Bible story,’ I said.

‘But he was sent away. That can’t happen to us.’

We had left the door open and made up the fire with dry sticks which gave light but little heat; and in the light I looked at her with new, searching eyes, making compare with the girl who had entered the hall with me at Rede and roused an old man’s lust. Hard work and poverty and misery had aged her by five times the four years that had gone by since then; her face was thin and lined, her hair rough and lustreless as hay. I thought how lightly the years would have touched her had she gone to Abhurst, and I remembered again those silly words,‘My pretty one, you shall be safe with me.’

‘It’s the Guilds that have ruined us,’ I burst out suddenly. ‘They threw me out to rot and when I refused to rot they broke my leg. Kate, I never meant it to be this way, I meant to take care of you and cherish you.’

‘And so you have,’ she said, and came over and put her arm about my neck and kissed me. ‘Few men are so careful about fetching water and carrying the heavy loads. Who else would have walked with me to work every day, to spare me? You say what
you
meant.
I
meant never to say a sharp word to you, and Heaven knows I’ve said many. But from tonight I start afresh.’

I pulled her close. I felt tenderly towards her though there was no desire in me.

‘Few women’, I said, ‘would have been so patient and worked so hard. Who else would have kept food on the table and washed and mended and made a home as you have?’

These were not romantic speeches, but they were sincere and more suited to our state than any flowery words could be. And I was angry that immediately afterwards my empty belly gave a loud rumble.

‘I’m hungry too,’ Kate said. ‘All day I’ve been too much excited to notice, but now I am hungry and he is late.’

Presently we were asking one another whether the Friar could have forgotten us and reminding ourselves that he had spoken of breaking fast together; if he intended to fast with us, surely his own emptiness would make him think of us.

Kate began to fidget, going to the door to peer out and complaining that it was too dark to see.

‘Go and see if you can find him,’ she said. I walked the length of the wall. I could not see the Friar anywhere.

I went home again, and we waited.

It was after Curfew, so we dared not replenish the fire and sitting in the dark the time stretched out endlessly, but at last it was eleven o’clock; we heard the bell tolling the hour.

‘He isn’t coming,’ Kate said.

‘Something must have happened to him.’ I remembered how some of the rough people had jeered and pelted him. I remembered, too, that many of the things he had said about monasteries and the conduct of the monks was offensive enough to make the Abbot take action against him.

‘Have you seen him at all today?’ Kate asked.

‘No, I’ve been off the streets all day today. I offered to guide some pilgrims to the Angel Inn and while I was there I got a job sawing wood. I’m going there again tomorrow.’

‘He promised to come,’ Kate said, and the old complaining note was there in her voice again. ‘I really thought that at last we…’

I realized that marriage meant much more to her than it did to me; a woman who lives out of wedlock with a man is called a whore; there is no such damaging term for the man. I made a great effort to comfort her. First I said, fumbling about in the gloom for the knife and the meat pie,

‘Let’s have our supper. Everything looks worse when your belly is empty.’ And then, between the mouthfuls I said what were, perhaps, the first fanciful words I had ever said.

‘Kate,’ I began, ‘when Brother Sebastian took the broomstick off my leg and found that the bone had healed up short he said he would pray for a miracle. We went together to St. Egbert’s shrine and prayed there. Nothing happened to the bone in my leg, I didn’t expect anything, so I wasn’t disappointed; he was. But a few hours afterwards he thought about thickening the sole on my shoe and when he told me about it he called that the miracle. You see… the thing you ask for comes, but not in the shape that you think. We thought that tonight the Friar would come and marry us, but he didn’t. Kate, really, if we could only understand it we
were
married, that night by the river under the hawthorn tree… and tonight we were, in a fashion, married again when you said I’d been good about fetching water and I said you’d been good about mending and making a home. Try not to fret about the words that haven’t been said over us. We are, in very truth, married.’

‘The Friar himself said that we lived in sin.’

‘Dummy and his wife were properly married, I’ve heard her boast of it to Loose Liz. Look how they live! Worse than animals. They make the beast with two backs and as soon as a child comes of it he beats her black and blue. Their crooked child takes dole at the Alms Gate, and Dummy meets her on the way home and eats his fill without a thought for his wife’s hunger. Kate, in all the time I was a pack-whacker I never ate a mouthful
of what I was given until I was back here and sharing with you. When the Friar asked us had we been faithful to one another, we could both say yes, and truly. How could any ceremony make us more married than we are?’

She did not answer immediately; but after a moment she said,

‘All that is true; but there is another side to it. The Friar said we were living in sin and that every time we went to Mass with that sin unconfessed and unabsolved we were sinning anew. And our being faithful to one another can’t help them being bastards.’ Even in the dark I could see her arm fling out towards the bed where the children lay. ‘Nothing but ill luck ever since we’ve been here, and now nothing but ill luck to look forward to.’

I pitied the misery that sounded in her voice, but it made me impatient, too. It may be true that misery loves company, but it finds its comfort in a different misery, not in a reflection of its own.

‘I did my best and there’s nothing more to do. Let’s sleep and forget it,’ I said.

That summer had been unusually wet and wet it continued over harvest, so that some of the poor thin crop was lost in the gathering, the sheaves standing mouldering in the fields. It was clear that bread would be scarce throughout the coming winter. Part of the blame for what happened next can be laid on the fear and ill temper which this prospect roused in the hearts of all but the very rich. But something must also be blamed upon the Friar who had appeared in our midst, sown his seed of discord and vanished; and a great deal of blame must be laid upon the Abbey, in particular the Cellarer who dealt with many things affecting the good or ill will between the monks and the townsfolk.

There were two rights which the Abbey held and which I had never, during my years in Baildon, seen exercised. One was the right to
all
the dung dropped within the town boundaries; that is not merely in the streets and market, but in stables and smithies and cowsheds and pigsties. This did not mean that all the dung went on to the Abbey lands, but it did mean that anyone who wanted to use his own manure on his own land or garden must buy it back,
in situ,
from the Abbey Cellarer. That this right had fallen into abeyance I knew from my years in the smithy. Master Armstrong had derived a small but steady income from the sale of dung dropped by horses waiting to be shod.

The other right was to demand that all corn within the area of ten miles, should be ground at the Abbey Mill which stood a little way out of town on the south side, at Flaxham St. Giles. That this right had not been exercised for many years was proved by the existence of another mill, on the north of the town, which was now being worked by the son of the man who had started it. Two easy-going Cellarers had followed one another in office.

Now, in this year of poor harvest, a new one was appointed, a young man, energetic and avaricious. One of his first acts was to have cried through the town the announcement that in future the Abbey Mill must be used for all corn grinding, and that the rights to the town’s dung would be strictly enforced. Next day the Abbey servants, with a flat cart went about the town, assessing every dung heap and what was not paid for there and then, was loaded on to the cart and taken away. The Cellarer himself, riding a grey mule, went out to the north mill and curtly informed the young miller that he was welcome to grind any corn brought to him from any place more than ten miles distant from Baildon market place, but no other. That meant ruin to the miller, and two days later he drowned himself in his own mill stream. The Church refused him burial and he went to a suicide’s grave at the cross-roads.