Part 5

Then he asked that he might die in the manner which is customary with the Order, if he were so far thought worthy. So having spread a cross of ashes on the floor, they laid him thereon. Then, whispering to the Abbot, who knelt beside him, he asked that the window might be opened, that he might see the sun rise upon Christmas Day.

It was still very dark and very quiet; only the wind rustled among the grass and bare branches, and ever and anon the passing bell tolled from the great tower. The kneeling Brethren prayed, and the dying man fixed his eyes on that spot in the darkness where, in morning light, the valley between Hart Hill and Garstang was wont plainly to be seen. The bitter cold air entered the cell.

They watched an hour and then another. Blue vivid bands streaked the east, a luminous haze spread from the hilltops down into the valleys; the cloak of thick darkness slowly lifted and a grey light filled the earth. Over Hart Hill and Garstang grew and blossomed an intense radiance, a burning white rose; slant beams of splendour fell athwart the smoking hillsides; the mists rose in purple and scarlet and gold before the rising sun. From the red-roofed town below came the joyful ringing of many bells. It was Christmas morning.

Thomas the Freeman stretched out his arms towards the East; a great splendour, as of the smoke of incense, and a wondrous music as of a vast symphony filled the earth and sky.

‘Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus,’ he said, and fell back upon his cross.

GLOSS

[Added in a different and later hand.]

The meaning of this true relation is most clear. The man Thomas did not come to church as he should, and thus despised God’s holy ordinances and commands. Therefore God avenged Himself of him and struck him even where he had most offended--in his wife and children. How marvellously just and true are all His ways. Blessed be His Name for ever. Amen.

How William the Mason avenged Himself on the Twelve Apostles

William the mason was the best man of his craft in Roodborough. His father before him had been a clever craftsman, but those who best could judge were wont to say that he had never done a better piece of work than the begetting of his son. For William was exceeding skilful not only in the sculpture of stone but also in the carving of wood and the working of precious metals, and occupied himself in all branches of his mystery, in ornament and design and in figures from the life, such as those of men and birds and beasts and flowers. He it was who wove delicate traceries of leaves and tendrils out of the stubborn stone of the capitals in Blewberry Church, which were so esteemed for their excellent beauty that craftsmen came from as far as London merely to examine them. He also carved the rood-screen at Houghton, wherein, upon the one side he cut lively figures of Father Adam and Mother Eve biting upon the apple, with the devilish serpent beholding them maliciously from the boughs of the Tree of Knowledge, and upon the other a vigorous representation of the Blessed Archangel Michael casting Satan into the bottomless pit. This last was such a notable piece of work for vividness and reality, that some of the common folk took occasion thereby to excuse themselves from attending the Divine services with due Christian punctuality, saying that the Devil William had carved so feared and scared them with its hideous aspect, that they could not sleep of nights after having seen it in church. Also he wrought the great oaken rood at Charnwood, carving Christ’s figure thereon from the actual human body, to wit, taking John Dymock for a model and chiselling the wooden block into his likeness limb by limb and muscle by muscle, only altering the countenance a little. Than this nothing more skilful was ever seen, but thereby unhappily enough the aforesaid John Dymock got a great chill upon his lungs and liver, which made him cough and wheeze pitifully the whole winter through until Lammas-tide. William also worked the fair pyx of silver for the Church of Saint Osbert, which, as it was said, was of such surpassing beauty that the Evil One himself coveted it and, coming in the night, stole it away. When Abbot Absalom enlarged and beautified the Abbey Church, he employed William much in the work, and rewarded him with many precious gifts. But of this you will hear more anon.

William’s father, besides being a skilful workman, had been no unthrifty husbandman, so that when he departed this life (God rest his soul) he left unto his son, not only the good dry house at the Bridgend with its adjoining workshop, but much choice stone and timber ready prepared for working upon, a set of carving tools of such sort as were not known in these parts (some having been fetched from as far as Flanders), and a great chest in the bed-chamber nigh half full of golden coin. But although William was a better workman than his father, he was a less thrifty husbandman, for he would not give himself to the careful managing and sparing and putting by, which had made his father a burgher of substance.

‘Money!’ Will was wont to say to his boon fellows at the alehouse,--‘Money! Why, ’tis for spending! I’d as lief be an earthworm and dwell in a midden as sweat and stint and spare to hoard up bits of metal in an old chest. Wife, a good cup of ale for these gentlemen all, and draw of your best. What saith Holy Writ: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth, where the moth and the rust corrupt and thieves break through and steal”?’

Then he would run on in his old jesting vein: ‘I will give my best cloak to the man among you who can empty yon stoup without drawing breath, and a French crown to him who hath the reddest nose. I love a red nose above all things, especially when ’tis past strawberry time. What, Nicholas, thou merry devil, strike a tune!’

Whereupon merrily in the alehouse went tabor, tongues, and toes until bedtime, when Will, who called the tune, usually paid the piper in more ways than one. God knows he was a happy, devil-may-care fellow enough, like the pretty painted butterflies you can see in the fields in summertime, ready to spend right royally and to quip and to laugh with the best and worst of folk. When he gave gifts at Saint Valentine’s there were none so rare and fair as his in the town; when he gave alms he scattered his silver right and left like the Lord King when he goes up to Westminster to be crowned, and as though good coin was of no more account than hazel-nuts in September. Twice he journeyed to London to see some marvellous sculpture in a new church there of which he had heard Abbot Absalom speak, and Our Lady alone knows of how much the cozengers and lying knaves of Eastcheap cheated him. Certainly, however, he went each time with a good fat purse at his girdle and returned each time with it emaciated and chapfallen as one of Pharaoh’s lean kine. But he also brought back with him two or three great bales of rich cloths and embroideries, which he had purchased there, partly for his own back and partly for gifts to certain wenches with whom he kept company.

Idle though this good fellow was on occasion, yet when the fit came upon him no Israelite in the House of Bondage would work harder than he. ‘Ay, this is one of my working days,’ he would say to a neighbour, who had poked his nose in at the door to ask what ailed him that he worked so early and sang so loudly in his workshop nowadays. Then away he would go again with his chisel and mallet, hammering, chipping, and shaping as though ’twas all the good Lord had sent him in the world for, and singing like the birds in spring.

‘Wert thou but in this mind always,’ his neighbour would answer, ‘there were no more laborious Christian in England than thou.’

Whereat Will would laugh and say, ‘Thou must not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn; I cannot draw in plough seven days a week.’

At such times he would go with more joy to his labour than other men to the wassail, and such was the delight he took in shaping his figures and forms and fruit and flowers out of the stubborn and recalcitrant stone, that you would have said that the Almighty Himself had had no diviner ecstasy when He hewed the world out of chaos in the first great act of creation. But ardent and zealous as he was to make his thoughts live in the stone and wood, he had no skill or energy in the collection of his just dues and debts, and since folk do not generally pay what they owe unless they are asked twice or thrice, yea, many times, it came about that many a pretty piece of work that he had wrought came gratis to the hands of unscrupulous men, who did not consider that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and that a debt is a debt although it be not importunely demanded. So it came about, that by dint of free spending and poor managing, in less than three years from his father’s death, William found that the oaken chest in the upper chamber had been quite emptied of its coin, and began to be hard put to it for money in his pocket, especially as at this time there was for a short spell little employment of his kind to be gotten. William was not a man to go about with an empty purse if by hook or by crook it might be avoided, so having pondered the matter a little, he straightway bethought himself of the Twelve Apostles, and without more ado betook himself to the dwelling of one Master Matthew, the wealthiest and most notorious of them all.

The Twelve Apostles were not the holy and pitiful men that their name might seem to betoken, nay, they had been so nicknamed by some satirical fellow out of ridicule and contempt, and were indeed little better than Jews, being usurers. Yet the name befitted them in some respects (although not in respects the most honourable), for there were twelve of these ill-conditioned fellows, and they were mostly named after the Blessed Disciples of our Lord, one being Peter, another Matthew, another Luke, another Philip, and so on; and they lived as close to each other as possible, cheek by jowl in a corner of the Market Place, as though there were great affection between them, a thing impossible to conceive of such villains. Howbeit their nickname was commonly in men’s mouths, so that it was a common jest in the town when any one had gone a-borrowing, that ‘he had gone to church to the Twelve Apostles,’ and when any one paid them back that ‘Peter had had his pence,’ or that such a one ‘had given an offering to Saint Luke’ or ‘to Saint Philip,’ as the case might be.

God knows, it was an accursed trade these extortioners drove, laying out their money at interest, and taking bonds upon raiment, jewels, and land, and even upon consecrated churches, reaping where they had not sown, and taking up where they had not planted. Lo, what saith Master Aristotle, that learned Greek? So to do, saith he, is to sin against nature by making money to breed unnaturally and foully upon money, and ’tis widely known that Holy Mother Church strictly forbids such abominable traffic to all Christians. But why should I repeat all this? These evil men knew the law of God as well as I, but it availed nought against their accursed lust of gold, which perhaps were the more pardonable had they been Jews and heathen, but, nay, they loudly confessed and proclaimed themselves Christians, and were as punctual in all the observances of the Church as any man in town. They thought belike, that having cheated God on Week Days they might also cheat him on Holy Days; God yield them in good measure therefor, when Satan shall pour down their greedy maws in Hell the molten metal which they loved so well on earth. Yea, and as much blame and punishment is due to the Lords and powerful men, who countenanced and supported them in their usury, whereby drawing profit to themselves from the sin of others.

Now Master Matthew, to whom William had betaken himself, was a shrivelled-up old man, bow-legged and palsy-stricken, with a bald head like a bladder, a long grey beard wherein the birds might have nested, skinny loose cheeks, cunning goggling eyes, and a long sharp nose like a quill with a big black wart growing on the side of it.

‘Good morrow, Master Matthew,’ quoth Will, bursting into the chamber where the old usurer sat at work, casting up his debts with tallies on a chequered board.

‘Good morrow,’ wheezed Master Matthew as though he had a peck of March dust in his throat. He blinked cunningly at Will for one moment with his red eyelids and then resumed his calculations.

‘Nay,’ cried Will, slapping him bravely on the shoulder till he coughed again and his eyes seemed ready to start from their red sockets; ‘nay, thou greedy old cock, cease scratching thy dunghill a moment and lend me thirty crowns instanter.’

‘Lend thee “thirty crowns,”’ screamed Master Matthew. ‘“Thirty crowns?” Holy Paul, dost thou think I am a rich man? Where am I to get thirty crowns, or half that?’

‘Thou abominable old liar,’ cried Will merrily, slapping his back again. ‘For shame, for shame, aged Master Matthew. Wilt thou also add to the sin of usury the sin of lying? Consider thy bald head and grey beard, consider thy weak joints and short breath, and at thine age heap not up damnation on a soul already as damned as any in Roodborough.’

‘Blessed Saints, let my back alone; I tell thee I have it not to lend; I have no such sum by me, at least not at present. Besides, what security shall I have? What security is there, tell me that?’

‘Ah, ah, my amiable Jew, thou wilt find the thirty crowns if I find the security? Is it not so? Well, take my house, my workshop, my furnishings, my tools, my utensils, my cloak, my shirt upon my back. Is not that enough, my Barrabbas?’

‘Holy Saints, I do not know, I cannot tell, I must think about it. Perhaps ’twould do an I had the money,’ said Master Matthew eagerly, biting his scrubby, cracked nails, and throwing quick, cunning glances at William.

‘Perchance you might find the money an you looked carefully,’ said Will. ‘Hast looked in the chimney, hast looked in thy sock or in thy long beard?’

‘Nay, nay, I tell thee I have it not; but perhaps my good friend, Master Luke, may help, or, now I think of it, perhaps to oblige thee, Master Luke, Master Mark, and I might make up the sum between us. Verily, I believe it might be done. Marry, good Master William Mason, if that will serve thy turn, we should be glad to help out an honest man at need. I will see, I will see; but do thou return hither this afternoon, against when I may have the bond ready for thee to sign.’

Thus William got his thirty crowns upon his bond, but upon such hard conditions were they lent that within six months (since employment still remained scarce) he began woefully to perceive that presently the Twelve Apostles would enter upon his house and shop, and confiscate the very tools wherewith he earned his bread and meat, so that in the future he might look not only for an empty purse but also for an empty belly. Without doubt this would have come to pass, had not old Abbot Absalom at this time taken it into his head to glorify the Blessed Mother of God by enlarging and beautifying the Abbey Church. This enterprise he conceived in no mean spirit, extending the nave forty feet or more, and the aisles in proportion, and ornamenting the whole church, both old and new, with many choice sculptures, wherein he made much use of William, both for his excellent advice and his skill with his hands. For which work William received many rich and generous gifts from the Abbot, and with these he was able at length to redeem his bond from the usurers, although only at three times the price he had received for it. Whereat he cursed Master Matthew and his friends right shrewdly, so that it made people rejoice to hear him, and he swore that he would yet be avenged upon the whole pack of them. Yea, he said he would fain be a Devil in Hell, if only for the pleasure of tormenting Master Matthew in the Lake of Fire.

II

When Abbot Absalom was on his way from Rome, from seeing our Father the Pope, he had been shown in a certain place in France a church porch of such exquisite proportions and workmanship as filled him with admiration. When, therefore, he enlarged the Abbey Church, he determined to build the great West door in a similar fashion, and while the work was yet in hand he sent for William and asked him to carve some religious figures for ornament upon the upper projection of the porch. William gladly agreed to do all that he wished, and hied him joyfully home and set straightway to work. He laboured diligently and without remission for very many weeks, and with such secrecy, covering up and removing each piece of sculpture as he finished it, as folk had never seen in him before, so that no one knew what subjects he had chosen to illustrate in his work. A few days before Easter Sunday, together with his men Abel and Geoffrey, he took the great stones he had carved, all swathed in old cloths so that none should see them, and fitted them in their places upon the porch, giving out to all that his work should be seen for the first time fully unveiled on Easter Sunday.

On Easter Sunday, as is the custom, nigh all the townsfolk in their best raiment flocked to the Morrow Mass in the Abbey Church, but first and earliest of all went William himself with many of his gossips, as Nicholas the Piper, Tom the Fletcher, Ned Arrowsmith and Sim the Hayward, and his two men Abel and Geoffrey. With them also went Master Brereton and his good wife, and fat Mistress Slopstone, Kate of the Cross Roads, bonny Gilly Hedgerow, and a score more of good wenches. They walked in great glee, and by the way there was talk of William’s piece of work to be seen that day.

‘Marry,’ said Nick, ‘now we shall see this handiwork of thine, which thou hast kept as secret as a priest his bastard.’

‘By Our Lady,’ quoth Mistress Slopstone, ‘it should be a bonny loaf that has been so long in the baking.’

‘Nay, nay,’ answered Will, ‘’tis a poor thing enough, I warrant you, a few holy figures to call folk to a better mind, nothing more.’

So they came to the church, and when they cast their eyes up at Will’s carvings, now plain to be seen, and perceived what manner of thing it was he had done, they burst into sudden laughter that they could not contain, until the tears ran down their cheeks, their sides heaved as though they would crack, and their knees began to give way under them. Even good Master Brereton, usually solemn as an owl, laughed until he was fain to bend double and grip his knees with his hands. As for Nick, he tumbled on the grass upon his back and laughed until he was weak as water or a six months’ child.

‘Thou witty devil, ha, ha,’ laughed Tom Fletcher.

‘Ah, ah, thou whoreson clever knave,’ gasped fat Mistress Slopstone, her fat old sides quivering and shaking until her stomacher burst.

‘Thou naughty--he, he, he’ laughed Mistress Kate, covering her great open mouth with her huge bony hand, while her bones rattled up and down in their skinny case.

‘Verily, William,’ said Mistress Brereton smiling heartily, ‘thou art the cunningest rogue and the best mason in England. I see a man is a right fool to fall out with thee.’

‘A few figures of religion, figures of religion,’ quoth William, taking off his bonnet and bowing right low and gallantly.

By this time other folk had come up, and shortly there was a great crowd staring and laughing at Will’s handiwork, and so loath were they to leave looking thereon, that there were few but the gravel-blind that were punctual to Mass that morning.

Will had taken a shrewd revenge on the Twelve Apostles. Above the porch he had carved with wonderful mastery, as though from the very act of life itself, a representation of Devils carrying usurers to Hell, to each of twelve usurers a couple of hideous Devils, and each usurer an exact and speaking likeness of one of these cursed Twelve Apostles. In the middle of the piece, especially plain to be seen, was Master Matthew despairingly resisting two shaggy Devils who were lugging him from his money-bags. One grisly Devil, all be-hoofed and be-horned, had twined his foul legs around him and forced his bald pate downward with his bony claw, fastening his teeth in a great bite in his naked neck. The other had grasped Master Matthew’s waist with one arm with such violence and force that his talons sank deeply into the belly and chest; with his other claw he tugged with right good will at Master Matthew’s beard. Nor was there any mistaking Master Matthew; there might you see his bald head, his little eyes goggling out of his head, his loose hanging cheeks (down which round stony tears had now been made to course), his bandy legs; yea, all so done to the life that you might discern even the wart with which God had punished him upon the side of his long nose.

To the right and left of this group were the other Apostles, done with an equal energy and faithfulness, so that folk regarding them were fain to burst into laughter of recognition, although Will had distorted their faces with grotesque grimaces of agony and dismay.

‘Holy Mary, there is Master Mark with the patch in his cloak he hath had this many a long year,’ cried one of the crowd. ‘Yea, but it is wonderful; and does the old miser intend to take that to Hell with him also?’

‘Saints,’ cried another, ‘he hath gotten the hump on Master Philip’s back to a wonderment. Eh, but I am woe to look upon that Master Philip’s face, it is that adread and afeared.’

‘Yea, neighbour,’ answered another, ‘but look upon Master John’s withered hand; I could swear to it among a thousand.’

All unwitting came the Twelve Apostles amongst the crowd to see what this star-gazing should mean, mayhap thinking, avaricious hypocrites, that a Blessed Saint had come down from Heaven to borrow a hundred crowns. The people cheered and laughed when they saw them, and did not spare their quips and quirks, casting their eyes up at the carven figures and crying, that ‘Hell must indeed be a fearsome place, where such naughty fellows went,’ and that ‘sin was written on their faces,’ and much more to that effect. Whereat the Twelve gnashed their teeth and snarled at them like dogs, and crept off homeward as fast as they might.

Thereafter, when they met William in the Market or upon the way, they glared at him with spiteful eyes and cursed him under their breath. But he, being quit of them and having gotten his revenge, smiled sweetly upon them in return and wished them ‘Good-day.’ Honest folk, seeing them go to the Abbey Church as before and nothing amend their ways, said it was a wonder that God did not make the carven images fall upon them and thus slay them in their hypocritical wickedness.

III

A few months afterwards, when the savour of the jest had become somewhat stale in the nostrils of the town, it happened that old Master Matthew, looking out of an upper chamber at the backside of the house early one morning, spied a certain maid washing out her smocks in a little green and private garden, and his mind was so perturbed at the view of her pretty cheeks, fair white arms and full bosom, that his evil old frame began to shake with desire from head to foot. He spied upon her secretly for some days, and then, unable to contain any longer, he went incontinently to her father (who was a poor man of the town) and obtained the girl in marriage, offering largely for her and buying her with money as though she had been a cow or a sheep instead of a Christian woman.