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

A priest of St. Alban, at the other end of Wood Street, had crossed the road in order to confront him. “Pardoners may not preach. They do evil through their manifest deceptions!”

Umbald glanced at him briefly. “You are an old fool. Your garb is heavy, but your tongue is light. If you had said nothing, you would have been mistaken for a philosopher. Let me be.”

St. Anthony’s Hospital in Threadneedle Street, to which the pardoner was attached, was an ancient institution. It consisted of an empty church which had been converted into a pillared hall, with rows of beds in the nave and aisles; there was a chapel at one end, with a refectory and dormitory for the priests arranged around a courtyard. It was known in the immediate neighbourhood as “the house of dying.” That was the true name for the hospital, where care for the soul was considered to be more important than treatment of the body. It benefited from many gifts and bequests, of course, but the proceeds of the pardoner were eagerly received.

“If a man full penitent come to me and pay for his sin,” he was saying, “I will assoil him. Here is the authority granted me.” The pardoner held up a sheet of vellum decorated with a great initial “I” in which monkeys clambered among vines. “If anyone gives seven shillings to Anthony’s, I will bestow upon him an indulgence of seven hundred years. I am entrusted to do this by the pope himself.” He rolled up the papal bull and carefully placed it within his bag; then he took out a small piece of bone. “Here is a holy relic of the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne. Wash this bone in any well, and the water from that well will make you whole.” An old woman selling pasties made the sign of the cross, but Umbald ignored her; she would not have seven groats, let alone shillings. “Make any sheep or cow swelling with the worm drink it, and he will be healed. Sores and scabs will be washed clean.” Two or three passers-by had stopped, curious to see the object which possessed all these miraculous properties, but Umbald had replaced the bone in his satchel. It was his way of drawing a crowd.

As he began his new oration, he saw someone whom he knew. The sub-prior of St. Bartholomew had crossed the street and turned the corner; Umbald recognised William Exmewe at once, from the great feasts held upon the love-days of the London hospitals. He considered him to be an enemy, too, since it was Exmewe who had instituted a review of the alms gathered by the pardoners for the sake of their foundations; Exmewe himself had insisted upon a scheme of proper accounting. Umbald was now obliged to keep a tally of all those to whom he distributed indulgences, which afforded him less chance of private gain.

Exmewe was waiting on the corner; he was glancing up and down Cheapside, continually folding and refolding the sleeves of his habit. He had come, as Umbald supposed, at an appointed time. Who should approach him, then, but Emnot Hallyng? Umbald knew the clerk by sight, as he knew all the noted ones of the city; Hallyng was reputed to practise the black arts and to work his cunning against the good of the Church. Why was he now in company with the sub-prior?

Umbald took his hat, saluted the few who had gathered around him and, with a “God give you grace and a good death,” walked slowly towards the corner of the street. The pardoner stopped beneath the Canute Tree, and listened.

“Why did you wish to see me in this open place?” Exmewe had not even waited for the greeting of “God is here!”

“No notice will be taken of us here,” Emnot Hallyng replied. “And I have much to impart to you.”

“Of what?”

“Of one Thomas Gunter.”

“Gunter?” Exmewe was astonished by this further mention of the leech, but he feigned ignorance. “Who is Gunter?”

“He practises physic in Bucklersbury. I have spoken to him as a convivial man. But he knows all.” Then Emnot Hallyng informed William Exmewe of the conversation in Roger of Ware’s cookshop.

“Whom did the physician name?” Exmewe asked him.

“The law-man. Vavasour.”

With this, Exmewe became alarmed, but he managed once more to conceal his feelings. “The leech, Gunter, is a rattler. A scare-bug.”

“In the cookshop he spoke to me of the five circles.”

“You should keep well your tongue and be still, Emnot Hallyng.”

“I said nothing to him. But he knew of the fire at St. Michael le Querne, even though it has yet to be achieved. How did he come by this knowledge? He is not predestined.”

“Soft, soft.” Exmewe was considering the matter carefully. “Take heed. Think of what this Gunter’s intent might be. His will is not rightful.”

“Meaning?”

“He is about our deaths.”

“But we cannot die.”

“Not in a ghostly sense, no. But our work is not yet accomplished on this earth. His murmuring must cease. His bile must be broken.”

“He has always been merry with me.”

“He drives dust in your eyes, Emnot. Believe me. His are the snares that spell death.”

They began walking along Cheapside towards the stocks; the pardoner could not follow them without being seen.

“You know, Emnot, that if anyone hinders us then God’s curse is upon him?”

“There is no need for God to curse him. He is cursed enough already.” There was an uneasy silence between them. “So what are we to do?”

“You are to do nothing as yet. I have another task for you.”

“Concerning?”

“Miles Vavasour. He troubles me. He has discovered our holy faith. He squats by holes. He lies close to the ground like a dying lark or a frightened fowl. He is a law man. If you are born of such a nest, you will never be dumb from lack of words. He gabbles. He whispers. His open mouth must be stopped. His murmuring must be restrained. You are a clerk. You