The Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Ackroyd (good short books .txt) 📕

“You may be sure of it.” The monk was still intent upon the book. “Here is the argument of the learned father. It is not necessary that things happen because they have been ordained but, rather, that things that do happen have indeed been ordained. It is a subtlety worthy of a great clerk, is it not?” The sergeant, who was accustomed to the legal sophisms of Westminster Hall, gave the remark his professional approval. If the world were words, then the more erudite the better. “Hieronymus has another exposition. If a man were to sit by that trestle table, it would be your opinion that he had indeed sat down?”

“It would.”

“Two types or forms of necessity are here in operation. One, for him, is the necessity of sitting. Two, for you, is the necessity of truthful vision.”

“No no, Jolland. Ignotum per ignocius. You cannot explain the unknown by the more unknown. What is this necessity of sitting? And how are we to peer into divine things by means of a trestle table? Your God cannot be known.”

“My God?”

“The God who shapes all our destinies. He is invisible.”

“The nun tells a different story. She talks to Him.”

“Oh, the nun. The witch. She is the whore of the people.” Once more the monk recognised the extent of Vavasour’s thwarted passion. The anger was alive within him. “She decks herself with her false faith and deludes the fools whom she is leading over the abyss.”

“Yet the good doctor Thomas tells us that the soul has a faculty of its own for apprehending the true and that it may reach towards God with will and understanding. Could that not be her case?”

“The good doctor is mistaken, Jolland. God is beyond our will. Beyond reason itself. Reason pertains to matters belonging with this world, not to the things of God. Let me put an example. Self-murder is right if it is commanded by God.”

“Oh no. To be damned perpetually by God Himself?”

“Who is to prevent it? Can you prevent a pig eating a child?” Vavasour quickly rose from the table, and walked to an oriel window which overlooked the mill-house and bake-house of the abbey. “Why do you suffer yourself to sit here so long, sir monk? It is a miserable mouse that hides in one hole.”

The monk took no offence; he had been trained in humility. “I find peace among my parchments, Sir Miles. You are in the world of men and of affairs, and cannot in your cell fantastic imagine any other life. But there is a book lying in my chest which tells me of angels and patriarchs walking over the face of the earth. Why, you and I –”

There was the sound of loud argument in the courtyard below, and Jolland joined Vavasour by the window. Some four or five beggars had somehow passed through the gate, and were now crowding around the bake-house calling for bread. “They are so poor,” Jolland said, “that they will put anything in their mouths. Their meat is commonly grasshoppers.” The monks of the bake-house were throwing them horse-bread and gruel-bread, at the same time beseeching them to leave in peace. “They have had purgatory enough in this earth. They will rise into heaven.”

“They are so poor, monk, that they scarcely care what will happen to them. Heaven or hell. It is all the same if your place of rest is some stinking stable on the highway.”

“‘Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beast, out of thy stall!’ ” It was clear from the sergeant’s expression that he did not recognise the monk’s text. “I sit solitary in my thoughts, Sir Miles. You spoke of a mouse in a hole. I am more like a hound. When a hound gnaws a bone he has no companion. These old books are my bones.” There was now silence in the yard outside, broken only by the clatter of the watermill against the current of the stream which ran towards the Thames. “We were speaking of eternity. Did you ever hear anything concerning the dancers of St. Lawrence Pountney?”

“I recall some far-off thing –”

“The churchyard has now been hemmed about. Where the houses stand in that part of Candlewick, there was once a good fair space. It was Midsummer Eve, some two hundred years ago, when certain young people of that parish began their revels in the churchyard there. In those days, as in ours, dancing and jumping were forbidden in the ground of the church; yet they were busy with pigs on the back, tugs of war and other such flim-flams. The priest came out among them and commanded them to bring their unholy assembly to an end. ‘Have peace!’ he called to them. ‘Have peace!’ They were as hot as toast, but he determined to cool them. He reminded them that they had strayed into a churchyard with their noise and banners. ‘Hold your tongues,’ he said, ‘and let our neighbours under the soil continue their rest.’ But these buffoons, these gay horses, held hands and danced around him. They mocked him as the Jews once did Christ. The poor priest then took a crucifix from his bosom and, holding it before them, solemnly cursed them to the effect that they would dance all summer, and all winter too, handfasted until the end.”

“It was a strange curse.”

“Yet it was efficiens. The youths could not stop their dancing. They could neither eat nor drink, but they could kick and leap. They cried out for rest, but their legs and feet still moved in faster and faster measures. So their nights and days passed. They wailed like the wind, but they could in no wise help themselves. A father of a dancer made to pull her away from the ring, but his arm was wrenched from his body. The year passed, but the priest’s malediction did not pass. They were still in continual motion. The dancers gradually sank