Morality Play Read Free Page A

to us all?'
    He was the leader but he needed still to persuade them. As I was to learn, everything touching their life as players was debated among them on equal terms.
    'He will be known by the tonsure,' Stephen said. The woman was his, she was not for them all as I had first thought. I knew it by the way she kept close and listened to his words. But she had eyes for me too, mocking but not altogether so, and I resolved there and then that if taken into the company I would not return these looks, so avoiding sin. Besides Stephen was dangerous. 'He will be known for a runaway,' he said now, turning his dark face from one to another of them.
    'Yes,' the one in the white robe said, 'he is travelling without licence or he would not seek to join us. He can be held in any parish, and then they would close down our play.'
    'A hat, let him wear a hat,' the old one said. He had been seeming to take no notice of the talk, pushing at the dog in play, much to the brute's delight. 'His thatch will grow soon enough,' he said. 'Not like mine.' He grinned to reveal a paucity of teeth and passed a hand over his scant grey hair and weathered scalp. 'He is a likely man for a player, priest or no,' he said. 'He wants to be of our company, so much is written on his face. And we are in need of a sixth, now that poor Brendan is gone.'
    'In sore need, that is the heart of the matter,' the leader said. 'We have practised the Play of Adam and we begin with that as all have agreed, and we cannot do it without six, and three parts doubling. This man came upon us at the bidding of a thought, as do the Virtues and Vices that contend in a Morality. He came as Brendan died and we will do best to profit from it. That is my word as master-player of this company by our lord's order. And so will we do, with your consent, good people.'
    There was silence among them for a short while, then each in turn nodded as the leader looked at him. The woman he did not look at. When all had signified assent he turned back to me and asked me my name and I gave it, Nicholas Barber, and he gave me his, Martin Ball, and he told me how the others were named. The fair-haired one was known only as Straw, and they called the boy Springer, though whether these were their true names I do not know. The old one was Tobias. The woman said her name was Margaret Cornwall.
    So with a song and a game of catch that children might play I was elected a member of this company of goliards, and so I accepted the election. Had I refused, had I left them in the clearing there, the dead Brendan in the midst with all his sins upon him, I might have now been a sub-deacon again, with all privileges restored, back among my books in the Cathedral library. However that may be, the terrors that come to me still at night I would without doubt have been spared.
    CHAPTER TWO
    I t is the weakness of my case that I can seek pardon only by revealing the pass I had come to.
    But this in turn was the result of my own folly and sin. And so I seek indulgence for a fault by revealing faults anterior to it. And there are further faults anterior to those. It is a series to which I see no end, it goes back to my mother's womb.
    First there was the shame, to cause distress to my Bishop, who had given me the tonsure, who had always treated me like a father, because this was not the first time I had left without permission but the third, and always in the Maytime of the year at the stirring of the blood. This time the reason was different but the stirring was the same; I had been sent to act as secretary to Sir Robert de Brian, a noble knight and generous in his benefactions but not of discerning taste in letters and in short a very vile poet who set me to transcribing his voluminous verses and as fast as I copied them he would bring others. All this I endured. But then in addition he set me the task of transcribing Pilato's long-winded version of Homer. The birds were singing with full throats, the hawthorn was breaking