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Authors: Barry Unsworth
Tags: Historical Novel
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against his cheek to sign blushes, then with both hands the motion of drawing close a shawl, like Chastity in the Morality Play.
It was all we said on the matter that night. And because in the end he had laughed and made a joke of it, my fear was overlaid. The wildness I had sensed in him, the readiness to transgress, these I found passing reasons for. He was disappointed at the poor custom for our play, he was unhappy at our poverty. Thus I sought to reassure myself. I did not properly know him yet, did not know that everything with him was serious. Perhaps that was why he chose to walk with me that night, one not so familiar with his nature, so that he could talk without betraying his intention. I am sure now that the intention was already there in him.
I know this from what more I know of Martin now; at the time it was beyond my suspecting. But the foreboding was there. With memory aiding, it is not so difficult to relate events as they follow in sequence. But the dread that comes to natures like mine, that is not so easy to trace, it moves in lurches, forward and back, it catches at new things. That fear I felt in the tavern at the power of human desire, a power for harm or good, I feel it still. The nature of power is always the same, though the masks it wears are various. The masks of the powerless are various also. I remember what was said between us that night and the changing expressions on that lean face of his. He had done already what he could always do with frightening ease: he had passed from notion to intention to strategy as if between them there were no curtain, nor even a screen of mist.
CHAPTER SEVEN
W e all attended Brendan's funeral, even the dog - kept close by Tobias on a piece of chewed rope. I had thought at first to stay behind, because of the need we would be under to uncover our heads and I was still with the ragged tonsure of my other life.
Margaret it was who found the solution - simple enough, though none of us had thought of it, being still fixed on the idea that I should wear some form of head-covering at all times. 'We will shave him,' she said, in the flat tones she always used, keeping her mouth half-closed so that the words came out in a mutter without changing the lines of her face. Margaret had suffered much hardship and degradation of body and was unwilling now to offer the world anything superfluous. In spite of this she had a very deft and gentle touch, which I knew before by the way she handled poor Brendan. With Stephen's razor and water from the pump in the yard I was shorn without a scratch.
'And if anyone asks why, we will say it is because of the ringworm,' Springer said. Being a fearful and pacific soul he always thought of reasons and excuses; and he knew it was a good answer because he had suffered this affliction himself as a child, and had his head shaved by a barber.
The church was on a hillside and from the graveyard we could see across the wooded valley where the river ran, to the bare uplands beyond, which had a faint sea-light on them - the land tilted down from there to the sea. This was a country of low hills and wide valleys. The trees were bare now, save for the stubborn russet of the oaks. The slopes of bracken beyond the river were the colour of rust. All was still - the day was windless. The sky overhead was dark, gravid with snow.
Brendan's last costume was a pauper's shroud. There was no coffin. We watched him lowered into the earth by Martin and Stephen to wait there for the Last Days, that cannot now be long in coming. Our hope and prayer for Brendan was the same as for ourselves, that though his mortal body was lost in corruption he would be dressed again in glory when the graves give forth their dead.
The frost which had come with night had loosed from the tips of the grass-blades now and they showed a darker green. There was a tidemark of death in this graveyard, a mounded line where the victims of that summer's plague were buried in their common
It was all we said on the matter that night. And because in the end he had laughed and made a joke of it, my fear was overlaid. The wildness I had sensed in him, the readiness to transgress, these I found passing reasons for. He was disappointed at the poor custom for our play, he was unhappy at our poverty. Thus I sought to reassure myself. I did not properly know him yet, did not know that everything with him was serious. Perhaps that was why he chose to walk with me that night, one not so familiar with his nature, so that he could talk without betraying his intention. I am sure now that the intention was already there in him.
I know this from what more I know of Martin now; at the time it was beyond my suspecting. But the foreboding was there. With memory aiding, it is not so difficult to relate events as they follow in sequence. But the dread that comes to natures like mine, that is not so easy to trace, it moves in lurches, forward and back, it catches at new things. That fear I felt in the tavern at the power of human desire, a power for harm or good, I feel it still. The nature of power is always the same, though the masks it wears are various. The masks of the powerless are various also. I remember what was said between us that night and the changing expressions on that lean face of his. He had done already what he could always do with frightening ease: he had passed from notion to intention to strategy as if between them there were no curtain, nor even a screen of mist.
CHAPTER SEVEN
W e all attended Brendan's funeral, even the dog - kept close by Tobias on a piece of chewed rope. I had thought at first to stay behind, because of the need we would be under to uncover our heads and I was still with the ragged tonsure of my other life.
Margaret it was who found the solution - simple enough, though none of us had thought of it, being still fixed on the idea that I should wear some form of head-covering at all times. 'We will shave him,' she said, in the flat tones she always used, keeping her mouth half-closed so that the words came out in a mutter without changing the lines of her face. Margaret had suffered much hardship and degradation of body and was unwilling now to offer the world anything superfluous. In spite of this she had a very deft and gentle touch, which I knew before by the way she handled poor Brendan. With Stephen's razor and water from the pump in the yard I was shorn without a scratch.
'And if anyone asks why, we will say it is because of the ringworm,' Springer said. Being a fearful and pacific soul he always thought of reasons and excuses; and he knew it was a good answer because he had suffered this affliction himself as a child, and had his head shaved by a barber.
The church was on a hillside and from the graveyard we could see across the wooded valley where the river ran, to the bare uplands beyond, which had a faint sea-light on them - the land tilted down from there to the sea. This was a country of low hills and wide valleys. The trees were bare now, save for the stubborn russet of the oaks. The slopes of bracken beyond the river were the colour of rust. All was still - the day was windless. The sky overhead was dark, gravid with snow.
Brendan's last costume was a pauper's shroud. There was no coffin. We watched him lowered into the earth by Martin and Stephen to wait there for the Last Days, that cannot now be long in coming. Our hope and prayer for Brendan was the same as for ourselves, that though his mortal body was lost in corruption he would be dressed again in glory when the graves give forth their dead.
The frost which had come with night had loosed from the tips of the grass-blades now and they showed a darker green. There was a tidemark of death in this graveyard, a mounded line where the victims of that summer's plague were buried in their common
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