The Clerkenwell Tales Peter Ackroyd (nice books to read TXT) 📖

and had suspended all services within the church for a week; he had brought the boy before the bishop’s court, asking for his excommunication, but the charge was wisely dismissed. In the role of the Creator, however, he seemed to command authority over the hundreds of citizens assembled. He was, after all, playing the angry deity of the Old Testament. His mask augmented and amplified his voice.

“I, God, that all the world have wrought,

Heaven and earth, and all of nought,

I see my people, in deed and thought,

Have pain upon their own heads brought.”

The high chant of God had summoned up a stillness in the audience which was close to fear; but this mood was suddenly broken by the voice of a child crying, “Make room! Make room, masters! Here comes a player!” A boy, riding upon a donkey, advanced into the open area before the ark and the stage.

“All hail, all hail, both blithe and glad,

For here come I, a merry lad,

I am named Japhet, Noah’s son,

My father bad me not speak too long.”

The boy playing Japhet was in fact the courier and messenger at the clerks’ hall in Garlickhythe. He was named “Bullet” and often competed with his colleagues from other guilds – “Slingaway” of the Mercers, “Gobithasty” of the Grocers and “Truebody” of the Fishmongers – in races around the streets of London. “Bullet” was known for his impudence and his quick wit, which he used with such effect in the role of Japhet that it seemed that he was acting out the type of the young city boy. The donkey was now talking to him.

“To smite me now it is shame.

You know well, Japhet, pardy,

You never had an ass like me.”

To which Japhet replied, “Go kiss my arse, ass.” It was only the first of many obscenities passing between the boy and the donkey, culminating in a mock attempt by the boy to penetrate the beast’s rear end. Dame Agnes gathered up some of the nuns watching the performance, and with many threats drove them within the convent gates.

All this time God remained before the crowd, his gilded mask reflecting the sun of early summer. Eventually the boy rode off, to great cheers and cries of “Yas, Bullet!” Then, on cue, Noah appeared upon the raised platform. The parish clerk of St. Olave, Philip Drinkmilk, had studied all the arts of disguising before ever taking on the role of Noah. His father was still a scene-painter for the city’s pageants, and he had accompanied him to the great mummings and interludes that celebrated the cycle of the city’s year. It happened that a group of travelling players had been hired for the entry into London of King Richard’s young bride, Anne of Bohemia, in the early days of 1382; Philip Drinkmilk’s father had then been employed to fashion for them the masks of the various passions. They had been lodged at the city’s expense at the Castle inn in Fish Street, and with his father Philip had visited them in what they termed their “robing room.” He particularly remembered his overwhelming fear when a bear approached him, moaning, and his sudden relief when a man’s face popped out from the skin. “Welcome,” the face said. “If the rats do not slay you here, the lice will do it.”

He became acquainted with this man, a young actor whose only name was Herbert and who, to the great joy of the company, would burn his farts in Fish Street. Herbert showed Drinkmilk the thirteen signs of the hand, tokening the various feelings, and the eight signs of the face. He also explained to him the mummery of the colours; yellow was the colour of jealousy, white of virtue, red of anger, blue of fidelity, and green of disloyalty. A good actor would wear several of these, and so create a performance of the utmost interest and subtlety. Philip Drinkmilk, under his tutelage, had become a natural mimic; he learned the dialogue of Grimalkin, Our Cat, and mastered the gestures and the expressions within a very short time. In the little vestry of St. Olave, he would perform elaborate bows and intricate dance steps; sometimes he would twirl around in the middle of the room, and sing snatches of the latest songs.

In the role of Noah, however, he adopted the attitude of weariness; his palms were flat, parallel to the ground, and his body was bent sideways. His face had become the mirror of his soul, with his eyes raised upward and his mouth half-open. He was wearing a blue and scarlet gown; he touched the blue as a memorial of his faithfulness, and the scarlet as a token of his fear, while the two colours conjoined were an emblem of suffering. When God turned from the crowd and stood before him, he lay down upon the stage.

In the same rhythmic chant, which seemed to the audience to come from some source beyond speech or song, God commanded Noah to build an ark and to shelter there two of every beast or bird upon the earth. The fact that the ark could already be seen upon the green was of no consequence; past, present and future were intermingled in the small area of Clerkenwell. The audience assembled knew precisely what would occur in front of them, but they were always surprised and entertained by it. They laughed now as Noah addressed God in fear and trembling. It was clear that he was shaking not out of respect for the presence of divinity but out of fear for the wrath of his wife.

There was Noah’s wife see-sawing on the merry-totter, with one of her female “gossips” rising and falling on the other end. It was a comic moment devised by the pageant master, and their lower smocks now billowed up to reveal their dirty undergarments; both of them were holding flasks, and were miming the words of a violent quarrel. Noah’s wife slid from the